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2015 VIDEO GAME CATCH-ALL THREAD


Gonzo

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This Peter Molyneux interview is absolutely brutal. It feels like someone should be yelling "Worldstar!" in the background.

Since that link seems to time out or die for me, here's a link to another Peter Molyneux interview. This interview was done the day after the Rock, Paper, Shotgun one - in which Molyneux said he would no longer talk to the press.

I am of a couple minds here:

- I think Peter Molyneux is a scumbag. Screwing over a contest winner, diverting resources paid for by Kickstarter to other projects, not delivering rewards, not delivering THE GAME ITSELF, etc

- anybody who backed a Peter Molyneux project via Kickstarter is something of a fool. I mean, it's not like this guy hasn't earned himself a well-established reputation for missing deadlines, blatantly lying about the status of his projects, the capabilities of those projects, and delivering stuff that (while it may be great) doesn't come close to living up to his hype.

 

 

Not to take Peter Molyneux's side, but the interview shouldn't be called 'journalism.' It felt more like Frost/Nixon than anything resembling actual journalism.

 

If any person was asked starting out in an interview 'are you a pathological liar?,' they should walk out immediately.

 

At the same time though, if I had money to back the game and saw what little was being done to get the game out, I would be pissed.

 

I think the problem with Peter Molyneux is every game he's put out, he's had somebody (or many people) reigning him in and actually making sure it's released. How on earth does he not know to do that after leaving AAA publishers?

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Black & White remains one of the greatest disappointments I've ever played. It's two totally separate games (playing God, and upkeeping/training the Creature) that individually might work and really, really suck put together.

 

I enjoyed the first Fable, though. Even if I wish there'd been *more* of it.

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I guy on NeoGaf called Pie and Beans wrote a perfect post about the Molyneux interview that I'll (blatantly steal)borrow and paste here.

 

Whew, busy day so could only read not reply. I feel theres a lot of culture shock here for US and no Euro board-members in what an aggressive interview this was. Here in the UK, if you fuck up publicly to this extent (and for an extended period so as to become notorious for it), this what you get faced with and rightfully so.

I'm not surprised a lot of the dev community is quivering at the lip and rabble rowsing to the tune of "too harsh, unprofessional!" because 1) you've got your typical human tribal instinct where one of the tribe in GAME DEV markings is being 'attacked', and the deep instinctual urge is defend 2) Theres the fact a lot of the game industry is founded upon pathological liars. That ranges from there being little budget for a projects development; Unpaid overtime, lie to the underlings or lying to consumers to their faces over things like "this content will never see re-release!" and so on. A huge percentage of the industry runs on a sort of locomotive "its too big to stop now" principle rather than one of tight, fiscally responsible project management. So when these big 'orrible mean questions are being fielded at someone perceived as "one of the untouchable old greats", pants begin to fill.

Thats the core of it as well. Peter Molyneux could have continued to drain EA or Microsofts coffers until someone figured things out, and its "oh well, theyre big boys, they'll deal". But the second Molyneux stepped into the Kickstarter/crowdfunding/goodwill space, that changes entirely. This is no longer a situation of something being funded by the well-to-do of the world, you're now doffing your cap to anyone in the world with access to electronic funds. People that may be living paycheque to paycheque, people that had the money then down the line fall afoul of some hideous financial emergency, so on and so forth. But they either recognised your name as one to trust, or a lot of positive PR and outreach got your project infront of them and they said "yeah why not". Fans pledging for $200 books they're no closer to getting to, a kid promised a life changing sum of money left to hang (good thing he's not terminally ill eh or living in a dangerous part of the world), and even individuals passionate yet perhaps silly enough to work for a year for free to help dig Molyneux out of his mess because of his legacy. These people don't have a name though, they're nor celebs, a figure you're supposed to protect. They're just the legion of people its okay to step on because... what they gonna do?

This article is the equal and opposing force to the good-will people like Molyneux have been cashing in to with the Kickstarter gold-rush. After a straight decade or more of lying, and yes it is lying to this point, thats when the kid gloves should come off and tough questions are asked. RPS has no doubt covered GODUS themselves, and some small part of John is perhaps acting on a touch of guilt for being one of many others propping up Molyneux's promises and letting him run with it. Thats got to end in a spectacular fashion. What we read today was accountability, and theres a great lack of it in day to day life until things get leaked or brought to the public eye through other means (journalism!).

There are several points in the article that stand out to me. The perpetuation on Peter's part of trying to paint himself as a naive thinker of our time, and how could he possibly be expected to know things like "7 months or 3 years", that simply by being a creative person he is above such trifling matters. Its here, at its zenith, that I can feel him straining to throw the muddy workers under the bus for not achieving things faster and letting him down. An ex-employee that was responsible for contacting Bryan is left as the reason for that breaking down. Shedding staff isn't a good look either, and the assertion that a fair few have "left the industry" after their time with Molyneux is damning in and of itself.

Where he gets the most evasive though is on the matter of just what money Bryan is going to be accruing and making any notion of coming to a compromise despite the bullshit contract they forced him to sign. Thats when the childlike demeanour drops and suddenly Molyneux remembers complex things like legal ramifications and "do not make money promises". Funny that. He'll quote from three months to a year or anything regarding Godus development, features to entice and bedazzle, but when it counts to his bottom line, some self preservation is kicking in and preventing him from making any concessions whatsoever.

The very first question of the article is perfect because it is, with laser precision, the root of it all. Molyneux should never lead a studio or be the one calling the shots, because he is incapable of doing so. Thats why he and people like Dyack fell onto hard times. Businesses outside of infinite money reserves like MS need to run on Reality, and not fiction or they get into trouble fast. When Molyneux makes promises pertaining to game design, he's doing so almost entirely at the cost of other people's hard work and ability regarding code, art, animation, and so on. Even the simplest of us can just say out loud "I want to make a game with 'best things ever' in", but its realising that talk is cheap and management and planning are the true requirement to such an end goal is what makes someone a great leader of development. Molyneux quite simply is not and hasn't been for a damn long time. Tough love occurred, and its up to him how he reshuffles.

You can check the original here http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=151946210&postcount=1212

 

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Guest The Magnificent 7

Yeah I feel much the same way about Molyneux, but the part of the article posted where the writer is talking about people investing money they don't have in a VIDEO GAME development that they won't get any actual return on other than play time I'll never understand.  Powerball tickets, kickstarters for video games, movies, projects you won't receive a dime on you shouldn't be investing in even if your finances are sound. 

 

No I'm not saying anyone deserves to have their money taken and treated like some of these people do. 

 

But it's not your responsibility to fund people's projects.  Especially if you don't have the green. 

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So, Darkest Dungeon is pretty god damned awesome.  It's an early access game on Steam, and it's a brutal rogue-like RPG that's about hiring a band of adventurers to get loot and then keeping them sane in between dungeon crawls with some well deserved R&R.  The graphics and music are gorgeous.  Well worth the $20 price tag.

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I was going to buy Offworld Trading Company, but considering one of the companies behind it is Stardock, whose CEO is generally known as an asshat (sexual harassment and a vocal supporter of "gamergate" ).. yeah, that money's staying in my pocket.

I had this struggle with Evolve a few months ago when Turtle Rock fired their community manager in a matter that made me outraged. Ultimately, I obviously caved and decided to get into it because I didn't feel good about skipping the work of an entire huge team because of bad decisions by a few execs. Didn't hurt that I loved the game too.

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Played through Brothers today. Such a pretty game. Really interesting mechanically and a really emotional story. It's short, but feels exactly as long as it needs to be.

I think today is the last day it's free via Games for Gold. Definitely worth a download for free...

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Since I decided not to spend $60 on "Evolve" after seeing their future plans to bilk me out of more money at every opportunity, I spent this weekend spreading some of that $60 around on some indy games whose developers might appreciate my patronage a bit more.  Based on a recommendation I received from a friend who works for a game developer, I ponied up $20 for "Darkest Dungeon" on Steam and was not disappointed.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/

 

It's a very stylized Lovecraft-influenced roguelike dungeon crawler.  It looks cool, it's hard as heck, and it's damn fun.  For a game still in development there's plenty of gameplay to be had here.  Did I mention it was punishingly hard and unfair and mean to me?  Yeah.  Love it.

 

After spending the whole $20 I went into cheapskate mode and struck jackpot with the very cool work-in-progress, Beseige.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/346010/

 

Just watch the video, my explanation wouldn't do it justice.  Rest assured it's very cool, fun, and addictive in the best sort of way.  Only $7 and that's money well spent.

 

I also picked up Rome Total War 2 for $15, but that's a AAA title, everyone should know about that.  

 

Sorry Turtle Rock and 2K games, I'm voting with my wallet.  I'll check back in around the Steam Summer Sale and see if you're still full of yourselves.

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If you enjoy punishing Roguelikes and old school pen-and-paper feel RPG you should check out Tales of Maj'Eyal. You can play the full game for free, off of their own website. Steam also sells a contributor package which basically gives you access to some cosmetic stuff (different character models you can choose), and a small multi-character item vault. I think you get one bonus character class for the $7 purchase or whatever it currently is on Steam too.

 

It also has a non-permadeath mode which is good because my level 20 character has died 46(!) times. I am a wimp.

 

It's real good but just be prepared to die a lot if you're like me and when the game goes "this door is PROBABLY SEALED FOR A REASON OPEN IT ANYWAY Yes/No" you have to always pick yes.

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If you enjoy punishing Roguelikes and old school pen-and-paper feel RPG you should check out Tales of Maj'Eyal. You can play the full game for free, off of their own website. Steam also sells a contributor package which basically gives you access to some cosmetic stuff (different character models you can choose), and a small multi-character item vault. I think you get one bonus character class for the $7 purchase or whatever it currently is on Steam too.

 

It also has a non-permadeath mode which is good because my level 20 character has died 46(!) times. I am a wimp.

 

It's real good but just be prepared to die a lot if you're like me and when the game goes "this door is PROBABLY SEALED FOR A REASON OPEN IT ANYWAY Yes/No" you have to always pick yes.

 

Thanks for the recommendation! Been playing around with it for the last half hour or so and this is the sort of game I can see myself pumping a lot of time into.

Note to self: Don't fuck with a grizzly bear. It hits way harder than you do.

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I'll back up what everyone else is saying about Darkest Dungeon. What a wonderful game it is. I can't remember the last time I paid full price for a game and it is worth every penny of the $20 it is. It is worth so much more and they are planning to add more to it later this year before it gets its full release. Great, great game!

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The Order 1886 can apparently be beat in 4 hours and people are pissed. The average playtime seems to be 12 hours. To me, I'm glad. I was probably gonna skip it because my backlog is so ridiculous already. Now I can whip this out quickly, so I'll probably do that.

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I'm not pissed about it, but I won't get it right away, especially for full price. 12 hours is fine, but what bugs me is no New Game+. That's the best part of short action games. 

 

And yeah, Darkest Dungeon looks great. Amazing art style. Been thinking of playing a turn based game recently, and while I don't play games on the computer much, I'm tempted to try this one. Will probably lose my mind if I play this and Bloodborne at the same time.

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