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Christmas Cheer Entertainment Games

Gaming Gaffes of 2003 Pinpointed? 89

Posted by simoniker from the unfortunate-series-of-events dept.
jvm writes "It seems that every gaming website has a Best of 2003 feature going now, and we felt that was just too cheery for our tastes. To counter that positive energy, we've assembled Gaming Gaffes of 2003 over at Curmudgeon Gamer, a list of the most embarrassing, disheartening, and bone-headed developments in the game industry over the past year. We've tried to give everyone a little frank criticism, from Sony's PlayStation 2 Online service through the lack of a Loki successor for Linux gaming, as well as specific products like EA's The Sims Online. Did we miss any?"
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Gaming Gaffes of 2003 Pinpointed? More

Gaming Gaffes of 2003 Pinpointed?

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  • SimCity 4 (Score:3, Funny)

    by scumbucket ( 680352 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @12:16PM (#7668990)
    The bone-headed decision by EA to release SimCity4 before it was ready. Only with the newly released Rush Hour 'expansion' is the game remotely playable. And enough with the gimmicks like 'U-Drive-it'. It was fun for about 2 minutes.
  • I havnt actually played it... AU$60 always seemed a little pricey for something like that..

    but i did read some magazine reviews and they ASSURED me that the game was good. so I'm basing my post on that.

    • Re:Was the sims online really that bad? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by roche ( 135922 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @01:09PM (#7669593) Homepage
      It was that bad. It was basically a chat room with Sims. You would sit there endlessly working on skills that had no relevence to the game and chatting. That is it, nothing more.

      I cancelled my subscription about 4 days into my free 30 days.

      • Re:Was the sims online really that bad? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by 2Flower ( 216318 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @01:26PM (#7669765) Homepage
        The problem with TSO wasn't so much that it was a chatroom. The idea of a chatroom with the extensive home decorating and customization abilities The Sims has is appealing; carving your own little personal niche in the game world, to your liking and tastes and having friends over to hang out and party is cool. Add in a few interactive minigames and some easy user content systems and you're done...

        No, the problem was that somewhere along the line they decided what people loved about the Sims wasn't the creativity the player could exercise, but it was -- ready for this? -- RAISING METERS! Yes, the real fun of the Sims is working on your 'skills', making money with meaningless treadmilling, and traditional MMORPG character building. Add on top of that a complete lack of user-created content and you've got TSO. After all, The Sims is so amazingly popular because of its micromanagement gameplay challenge, right? Not because people throw on a money cheat and then goof off with the AI and building systems, right?

        If TSO had been merely a chatroom but with extensive support for folks who wanted to coordinate their couch with their drapes, it might've done better than the bastard child of Everquest they were looking to make it into.
        • To me it seemed that the skills system they added in was mostly filler. Something to give you something to do so you do not realize there is noting to do.

          All there was to do in the game was the skills system. That meant playing a guitar in game for a few hours, or even doing telemarketing. I paid 50 dollars and then 10 dollars a month to play a game where my character is a telemarketer?

          That last two days I played, the only thing I could find that would even keep me the slightest bit amused was to be rando
  • My God, Nintendo announced at e3 that the newest mario kart incarnation would have online playability, but when it was released, it merely had network playability, meaning you can play with someone, as long as their in your house.

    The warp pipe project does try to remedy this, though it's still a far cry from what it should have been.

    • Re:Online Playability for Mario Kart :: Double Das (Score:4, Informative)

      by unclethursday ( 664807 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @01:38PM (#7669906)
      Actually, Nintendo didn't definitely say Mario Kart would have online play. They said it was a possibility, but decided to go LAN only.

      In fact, by E3, I beleive they had stated online was most likely not going to be there.

    • I don't recall Nintendo EVER saying it would be online. From day one, it was LAN only.
      • Even if they didn't say it would be playable online, it really should have been. I would own Double Dash and the broadband adapter right now if it were online enabled. I know Nintendo doesn't want to invest in online heavily right now but I think they're making a mistake. As well as the Gamecube has been selling and as killer an app as Mario Kart is, I think Mario Kart online could have helped them that much more.
        • Online is a dead end. It has a tiny attachment rate (10% for the XBOX, which I believe is the highest). That means only 10% of xbox customers have Live.

          Why bother spending all the time needed to make the game play well online, when only 10% of your customer base can possibly use it?
          • I think that as broadband makes further penetrations, the percentage playing online will go up. Think about it - gaming on the PC has had internet play connectivity for longer than the console market. At first, not many people took advantage of it and just played the game single player. But as people experiment with it, they find that it is an enjoyable addition to the game playing experience and recommend it to their friends. Sure, it may be a bit of a dead end in this generation but I think the next gener
            • He does have a point about the attachment rate, though. Even if you look at PC games, the only ones that have a better ratio of online users to purchases are the MMO games, and there's a good chance that Blizzard does better than the FPS games.

              Half-Life has long been the most popular FPS online, and has never had more than 1% of their CDKeys online at any one time, with a total that might run as high as 5% (considering 7 million sales in the US, it's a better number than it might seem, but not a large retu
              • you're right, i wasn't really invested in the argument that online play is very profitable at this point. just that it would have been really nice to see it included and that i think online gaming is going to get much bigger in the future.

                maybe i'm just releasing some steam over online play not being included? because i've got a friend from college who keeps e-mailing me and talking up his mario kart game when i know that i could easily send him packing with his tail between his legs but we probably won't h

                • now if he ponys up and gets hammered too then i'll win BUT...if he decides to play strategically and plays against me sober, he's got a shot.

                  I haven't tried playing this one while drunk, but either I was always better at Super Mario Kart (SNES) when I was drunk or everyone else just got a lot worse than I did when we were drunk. Since it was basically one of the two games we always played when we got together to get smashed, I really couldn't say anything more.

                  That being said, I should have a review of
              • Attachment rate is actually a very poor measure, mainly because it is incredibly skewed by people that own a system and buy a mere handful of games in the system's lifespan. As I've said in similar arguments before, everyone and their mama owns a PS2, a GTA game, and a Madden game.

                The people that play online are largely the same people that buy dozens of games for their systems.

                Funny how, in a press release explaining SOCOM 2 shattering a sales record, the first quote out of an SCEA representative's mou

                • Attachment rate is actually a very poor measure, mainly because it is incredibly skewed by people that own a system and buy a mere handful of games in the system's lifespan. As I've said in similar arguments before, everyone and their mama owns a PS2, a GTA game, and a Madden game.

                  That's the attachment rate for games, though. I believe we were specifically talking about the attachment rate for the online adapter. In other words, 10% of the people that own an XBox have bought a Live subscription. Oh, and

          • Re:Online Playability for Mario Kart :: Double Das (Score:4, Insightful)

            by aliens ( 90441 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @02:48PM (#7670821) Homepage Journal
            Because those 10% are your hardcore gamers spending a butt load of money on games each year(month). They also tend to pass the word along to others about such and such game.

            Be cool to see some sales figures from that 10% compared to the rest.
            • Aliens- so true, so true.

              Everyone I know who has Xbox Live (myself included) purchase all of the A-list Live titles within a week or two of when they are released. Just to keep up with the Joneses. Looking through my collection, I purchased a total of 6 games pre-Live (the first 8 months after I got my Xbox), and 12 games once I got Live (about 6 months ago). Because those games are the ones I am interested in.

              Some people wanto to sit at home and play Kirby's Air Ride for 9 months straight. I'd rather

  • Icculus? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrResistor ( 120588 ) <peterahoff.gmail@com> on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @12:28PM (#7669112) Homepage
    It seems to me that icculus is the Loki successor. IMHO Mr. Gordon is doing a pretty good job in that regard.

    • I agree, he's doing some great work.

      The dig against LGP is a little bizzare though, since the whole point of publishing good small titles is so they don't go all Loki on us. Honestly, I think they're playing it smart with that (business) strategy.

      Well, I might be a bit biased, I pretty much cherish my copy of Majesty. I can't belive how fun that game can be sometimes.

  • PS2 Online Play (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @12:31PM (#7669152) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, I've heard all the arguments and it's pretty clear that XBox Live is a much more cohesive and complete solution to online play through a console BUT (and I own a PS2 and a Gamecube so there's probably bias in what I am saying) the PS2 online experience for me hasn't been as awful as people seem to be pushing. The main games I've played online have been Madden 2004 and SOCOM. SOCOM I didn't enjoy because I didn't enjoy the game itself but I did enjoy yelling "We got charlie all over" to the 12 year olds who didn't know who Charlie was. Other than that, SOCOM collects dust. I prefer mouse and keyboard for those types of games. Now, Madden 2004 has been great. I play it regularly online and have a good time. The problems with disconnects and pauses that the article mentions aren't really problems. There is a disconnect rate in every user's profile and one can just avoid those with high disconnect rates. I enjoy it a lot.

    With all that being said, and coming from a PC gaming background, the lack of a service like XBox Live to sign into but rather a game to game solution to the situation hasn't really bothered me. I won't say it is unnessecary hand-holding but it is something I don't think I need to pay for. Now, what I would like is more online enabled games for the PS2 (and the Gamecube already!) but if there were going to be individual charges for games (that didn't have persistent worlds where there was a lot of overhead - PSO, Everquest), I would move to XBox Live. I'd rather pay a flat fee and get all the sports, fighting, and racing games I can play then pay for individual sports, fighting, and racing games.

    Assuming I have misspoken somewhere in this long-winded rant and you have found my mistake where I said X but Y was correct, you may take my apologies and realize that I meant to say Y. (I just don't feel like playing the nit-picking game today, which is what happens on Slashdot a lot.)

  • Biggest... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rhs98 ( 513802 ) * <`ku.oc.taobatisi' `ta' `89shr'> on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @12:31PM (#7669154) Homepage Journal
    IMHO this is the most embarrassing, disheartening, and bone-headed developments in the game industry over the past year: "one of the participants went to his car, got a gun, and pointed it at the head of a staff member" [slashdot.org]
    • IMHO this is the most embarrassing, disheartening, and bone-headed developments in the game industry over the past year: "one of the participants went to his car, got a gun, and pointed it at the head of a staff member"

      I could be an optimist and say 'it's amazing that it hadn't happened before' or 'I'm amazed this doesn't happen more often', but I'm a pessimist, so I really can't.

      • Re:Biggest... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Acidic_Diarrhea ( 641390 )
        It was bound to happen at some point. There are bad apples in whatever group of people you bring together. It just shows that gaming is maturing as an entertainment medium and becoming more widespread. If someone pulls a gun outside a football game or outside a race, the local news covers it but doesn't push any line about football being the cause of racing being the cause. The fact that I haven't seen any news reports talking about how a gun was pulled outside a competitive gaming event and, oh yeah, gamin
      • The more I think about it, the more it seems that you've gotten the optimist and pessimist sides confused.

  • where are they now? (Score:5, Funny)

    by kurosawdust ( 654754 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @12:34PM (#7669190)
    Also, make it notoriously embarrassing to use as a phone. (See image, left.)

    Holy crap! It's Ferguson from Clarissa Explains it All!

    Oh, and the fact that EA Sports Rugby 2003 is actually an order of magnitude worse of a game than their 2001 edition deserves mention I think.

  • Rare's Xbox Debut? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SamSim ( 630795 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @12:40PM (#7669254) Homepage Journal
    This is hardly news to those of us who are paying attention: Rare (point #8 in the article) has been going down the tubes for far longer than one might imagine. Check out their back catalogue [rareware.com]: They've made five (count them) games in the last three years, and only Conker's Bad Fur Day was any cop. That was long before the Microsoft sale.

    Perfect Dark Zero? Don't make me laugh. PDZ isn't going to happen. There is no evidence that it's even in production - the character models that were floating around a year ago prove zilch. I'd be very surprised to see it this side of 2006 or the next hardware generation, whichever is later. (It never ceases to amaze me, the number of people who bought a GameCube for PDZ despite the fact that it had never even been announced... and the number of those people who then bought an Xbox for precisely the same reason...)

  • VGAs (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nyhm ( 645982 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @01:19PM (#7669693)
    The Video Game Awards were a great idea, but turned out to be the biggest pile of marketing trash I've ever fast forwarded through.

    I'll let SpikeTV off the hook, because I love MXC.

    • Re:VGAs (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Torgo's Pizza ( 547926 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @01:55PM (#7670125) Homepage Journal
      No, don't let SpikeTV off the hook. This was their idea, run by their people. Their editorial staff also chose the winners, showing that they really don't have a clue as to what a video game really is. This isn't just some network flunkie putting this out... no, it's the friggin' President of SpikeTV producing this. That show had me gouging my eyes out with a spoon.
      • It seemed as though the whole thing was fixed. DOA Volleyball winning an award? Maybe for graphics and "physics".... but nothing more. "Enter the Matrix" winning anything? Yeah right. And half of the show consisted of ads for upcoming games in the form of "And now for some more contestants for the Most Anticipated Game of 2004." The show didn't even show the competitors for any other award, it just showed the winner. Incredibly anticlimatic if you ask me. Oh, and Gamefaqs predicted the "most antici
        • Funny, but your title was also the title of my review at www.videogamestumpers.com [videogamestumpers.com] only I used "craptacular".

          Oh, and the results were fixed in the sense that SpikeTV, with the exception of the internet polls, chose the winners. Funny how the winners all fit with their programming theme of manly things.

      • WWE: Smackdown winning the best fighting game?! Have those people ever heard of Soul Calibur 2? I know its not everyone's cup of tea, but it is surely preferred by more people than own Smackdown. I'm assuming the WWE, since they are the #1 program on SpikeTV, padded the wallets of the network for that decision.
        • SC2 did win most addictive, but notice how nothing won more than one award? I recorded the whole thing on ReplayTV and watched it later. This way I didn't see any commercials, and I fast-forwarded through the musical guests. I'm glad I didn't sit there and watch it live for 2 hours.

          The show really needed nominees, and the lame repeated theme of disparaging the audience due to a stereotypical lack of sex life was way overplayed.

        • Re:VGAs (Score:2, Interesting)

          by WWWWolf ( 2428 )

          Can't get that channel here (judging from the comments it appears to be a good thing), but I looked at the web page. Yeah, plenty of weird nominations.

          I was completely amazed by the nominees (and winner) for the best music category. I definitely prefer games with original soundtracks as opposed to recycling Whatever's Playing on Radio at the time. Music is such an unrecognized area of the games in general, and preferring games that don't even have an original soundtrack is bad.

          And "best performance by h

      • I think GamingFM [gamingfm.com] has the best commentary on the VGA, in this respect at least :)
        • Ah, it all makes sense now. I apologize for obviously not seeing the true genius that Albie is.

          Although I still stand by my statement that there's a special place in gaming hell for Albie, forced to play Postal 2 and Night Trap for all eternity.

    • the VGAs were trash (Score:2, Informative)

      by jermyjerm ( 705338 )
      I'm glad other's felt the same as I did. The VGAs were a disgrace, but I don't know what I was really expecting from a network that markets to the lowest common denominator of men who can't have entertainment without strippers, sports or people injuring themselves/others.

      Everyone who was saddened by the VGAs should relay their opinions [spiketv.com] to the network. The five of us who care can make a difference!

      Ah, who am I kidding... I'll just play Viewtiful Joe instead, the game that I think should have won best a
      • men who can't have entertainment without strippers, sports or people injuring themselves/others

        Hmmm...if only there were some sort of sport...where strippers....injured themselves....and others!

        Hmmm....

  • Star Wars Galaxies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by deanj ( 519759 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @01:20PM (#7669707)
    Star Wars Galaxies was a big gaff. They released the product very shortly after the beta and didn't fix a host of problems, the main one being the economy.

    One very fundamental mistake was how they dealt with making people a Jedi. They proported let people be whatever profession they wanted, and that everyone had a chance to become a Jedi. However, those are mutually exclusive. It turns out that in order to become a Jedi, unless you got really really lucky, you had to drop whatever profession you had been working on, and start doing something completely different. Not only that, but once you became a master at that new profession, you had to drop that one two, and master other professions.

    That's not choice...that's letting the random number generator choose how you're going to play the game.

    A better alternative would have been to have completely seperate profession points that you had to spend in completely different professions beyond the "basic" set. You'd still be able to be a bounty hunter, architect, or whatever, but secretly be working on being a Jedi.

    Anyway, since people have found this out a couple of months ago, there are already 100 Jedi running around the servers. I expect that to go way up during the next few months, unless they (the SWG team) step in to slow things down.

    I didn't want this to be like Everquest, but you'd think these guys would have taken the hint and look at what game mechanics made EQ popular, and try and enhance THOSE, rather than doing what they did: taking a stab in the dark with a lightsaber, and completely missing.
    • I'm not even a big Star Wars fan, but I do know enough that to become a Jedi in the movies and previous games, the character would pretty much have to drop everything and become a Jedi. Family, profession, pretty much everything to train for that alone.

      I mean, you don't have to become a Jedi, or even try to, thats still your choice.

      • Re:Star Wars Galaxies (Score:2, Informative)

        by Herkum01 ( 592704 )
        What the parent was referring too was the fact that the character to is randomly assigned which profession that will be come a Jedi. So it you might have to become a dancer profession to be a Jedi. You start as merchant, you work your way up to master, oops that is not it, you have to lose your skills as a merchant and try the next profession. Instead of any amount of time and skill you have you are stuck trying to "guess" which profession will let you become a Jedi and you basically have to start over i
    • I didn't want this to be like Everquest

      SWG takes a lot of flak from ex-EQ players. It's not EQ in space. You have to get over the number obsession that is needed for EQ, and play it for the universe. Plus it's more of a beginners MMORPG. It doesn't stand playing for more than around 3-4 hours a day constantly like EQ does, since they only thing to attract hardcore gamers is the poorly implemented Jedi class. That said, it's a very good game before you reach that saturation point. With it's planned e
  • I think this takes the cake for most embarrassing : Half-Life 2 Delayed Following Code Leak [slashdot.org]
    • I just found their one comment about that to be pure gold:

      "The stolen source and data were released to the public, and subsequently almost nothing has been heard from Valve, except a couple of updates on the hack itself and a soft whimpering sound."

      I'm not sure WHY I find that line so funny, I just do.

  • Originality vacuum filled with money (Score:4, Insightful)

    by incompetent_bitch ( 519780 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @02:10PM (#7670320) Homepage
    I guess you can't really blame the makers of games for the originality vacuum, if those games MAKE MONEY!! Just look at #10 for the reason that there's not more original games - game shops are closing, and the ones that have been bought by EA or whoever, is going to put out titles that make money. We've seen this with movies and now that games are getting bigger and bigger and more and more money is being spent, this should not come as a surprise. Makers will take less chances, and bank on proven titles.
    But it does suck!

  • Diablo II LOD patch 1.10 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wireless Joe ( 604314 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @02:51PM (#7670860) Homepage
    I'm sure that no one will agree with me, but I hate HATE the 1.10 patch. I'm not a hardcore gamer; I fire up DII LOD about once a week for a little mind-numbing hack-n-slash with Conan the Barbarian. I understand that they wanted to make the game more challanging, but I feel like I'm playing with a level 10 character; it was too much of a jump for me.

    Here's a quick summary as to why my level 50 barbarian that used to take on Diablo in Nightmare (without even using a health potion) is now routinely being killed by uniques in act III.

    - The skills balance that worked best for my gameplay style are now worthless. Whatever rebalancing they did totally undervalued the skills that I chose to develop.

    - My unique armor sets are now less useful than the regular dropped armor that I see after the patch.

    - Items are now so much more expensive to repair. I have to fill my inventory with magic/expensive items to sell just so I can afford to go back to town for a "repair all". It also seems that all of my items' durabilities have been cut at least in half.

    That's not all, but that's a pretty good start to making the game less enjoyable for me. I haven't read any other complaints like this in the few forums that I visited, so maybe it's just me. Anyone else unhappy with 1.10?
    • Its just you.

      Yes it made the game harder.

      Yes it changed many things.

      I dont think this was a surprise. But then, I'm on the expansion ladder, so maybe I'm bias as well. Turns out one can succeed with an elemental druid now.

    • Re:Diablo II LOD patch 1.10 (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tofino ( 628530 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @05:13PM (#7672628)
      So, you're saying that the 1.10 patch, which was intended to make the game more challenging, made the game more challenging? And also gave you replayability in the form of something to strive for (better armor, a couple more levels)? Sounds horrible to me!
      • I understand that the whole idea was to make the game more challanging. All I'm saying is that it has taken a character that I've been playing for over a year and made it worthless. I'm basically having to start over in act 1. If I wanted to do that, I would have just created a new character.

  • How about X2: The Threat? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mantrid ( 250133 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @02:52PM (#7670876) Journal
    What about X2: The Threat (from Egosoft)? The first main problem - the only place you could get it on release day was from gogamer - it didn't seem like anyone else had it for like two weeks.

    An even bigger problem was letting this game out the door with some major bugs - namely Logitech joysticks and gamepads don't work with X2!! (Like the Wingman Force 3D and Wingman Rumblepad) Doh! Apparently they went and actually bought some of these joysticks to test when they heard about these problems, but damn if it didn't put a damper on the fun of many eager space jockeys! Should be a patch soon.

    Also in X2 there's many basic functions that can't be remapped!

    This game is still really cool looking so far though - it's like Elite - but you can have more than one ship, run your own factories, and even control sectors. You can have capital ships, all fully modelled in 3D - including separate views for various turrets (which you can control and slave to any of three monitors).

    This is what makes the stupid bugs and problems so bad - the fact that the underlying game just looks sooooo amazing...but I nearly quit in disgust in the first 30 minutes or so (actually it was a training mission that brought me back - when I had to switch views - discovering a rear mounted, controllable turret view). You can set commands for all your ships and their turrets etc.

  • One gaff overdone. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @02:52PM (#7670878) Homepage
    And that'-s #11, "The Originality Vacuum"

    I think this is only a perceived problem, not an actual problem. Why? Because there were plenty of original games out this year, games like Magic Pengel: The Quest for Colour. However, because they weren't sequels to popular games, they weren't hyped up as sequels. That's why most people didn't know about them.

    Last year, was there a big, "GET READY for JAX and DAXTER" hype? No, because it was an original game, and most people just didn't know. This year, Jak 2 was Jak 2 and hyped as such. The new, original releases this year (I-Ninja, Metal Arms) aren't hyped up at all the same way, so it's pretty easy to think they're not being hyped when you're just being inundated with advertising that's relying on sequel strength alone.
    • Metal Arms was so underhyped. That was definately a game that *should* have been hyped. I thought it was just a fantastic game that very few have heard of. I can't say anything about I-Ninja, I haven't played it. Just not sure about the look of it. If your reading this and haven't played Metal Arms, go play it and stop reading this.
  • Does anyone else see what is going on with all of the downsizing? Video Games are going the way of the movie and music recoding industries. Notice how there are about 6 major movie production companies (with subcompanies as well) that pump out all of the feature flicks (and their guaranteed four sequals) while only a small amount of movies are released by the small independant production houses?

    The same thing is happening to the video game world. Big companies (EA, MS, SquareEnix, etc.) are merging and
    • Actually, that isn't true. There are a lot of of independent movies out there. You just don't get to hear about them because their budget is low and they can't do a wide release nor spend a lot on advertising.
      • That was my point.. You only hear about the major players because they have all the money. Independent movie houses, when they do well, are purchased. Take New Line for example. They used to be a B rate movie company.. Very small. When they released their 1st successful movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, they became a bigger company with a successful movie under their belt. Who owns them now? Time Warner, a big conglomerate. Unfortunately consolidation is a sign that a media is becoming mature.
    • The situation with games might be even worse, because while someone can buy/borrow a cheap digital camera and (theoretically) make a good movie viewable to anyone with a computer, vcr or dvd player, that's not really possible for games.

      Well, console games anyway, but that's the risk you take when buying into a corporate funded content delivery tool.

      I haven't been a pc gamer in a long time because of the steep price of (re)entry, but thinking about it, if the worst case scenario of game homoginization take

  • The Real Valve Gaffe (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 09, 2003 @03:17PM (#7671216)
    It isn't HL2-- yeah the hack was bad but the setup was so anticipated from E3 that it kind of balances out.

    The real problems were:

    1) Steam-- buggy rollout and ongoing problems, neverending promises of CS 1.6 till it arrived with bugs, and how the heck are you really going to manage all those HL2 downloads???

    2) Condition Zero-- 4 (is it 5) dev studios couldn't bring out a decent game based on the most popular online franchise. A captive market opportunity squandered. As I now understand it, it has some bots for CS (uh where's the content?).

    2003-- bound to show just how far a developer can lose its fanbase.

    • Well, developers disenfranchising their player-base seems to be becoming a regular thing lately. Look at Deus Ex 2. They pretty much tossed most of the things that made the first one fun and interesting out the window and created something that fans of the first game mostly hate. It's like a completely different game, and not in a good way either. And this from one of the most (formerly) respected developers around too.

    • You should have mentioned Counter Strike on Xbox. What the hell were they thinking? Great game, but where the hell are the upgrades? It's like they just added bots, wait, that is all they did do. Why they didn't spend time atleast upgrading the textures is beyond me. Even on progressive scan it looks like a monkey is constantly slinging shit at the screen. It should have been a budget title, even though I'm an addict.
  • Why hasnt anyone considered this idea as a way to get commercial games on linux:
    1.get some tallented programmers who want to work on a port of
    and 2.approach the makers of said game.
    Basicly, the deal would go like this:
    We (the programmers doing the port) aggree to:
    A.Assign all copyrights in our efforts over to the maker of the game
    B.Sign Non-Disclosure-Aggreements and not publish any source, binaries, data, information or whatever without getting it cleared by the maker of the game
    C.Port the game (and, once
    • So in other words you want game companies to hire programmers under typical professional relationships except pay them peanuts.

      Why would programmers volunteer their (derivitive) code to be copyrighted by other people without compensation ($$$)

      NDA's only work with existing business relationships.

      What could be done is the companies publish the formats for their game resources (media, scripts, etc). So that only the engine needs to be rewritten by GPL projects without a lot of reverse engineering.

      GPL vers
  • Tomb Raider AOD... how can you forget that one from the list? Rushleased in time for the movie, TRAOD was the biggest lead-weight in the series.

    You can't turn or run quickly, no side stepping, clipping-clipping-clipping problems, krazy kamera, awful voice acting that makes Hollywood 'B' movies seem professional. Bugs galore.

    And you thought Halo PC was a porker...
  • How could nobody have mentioned, one of the most highly anticipated games of 2002, which finally came out in spring 2003, with gamers chanting "It took so long it must be good."

    Why Master Of Orion 3 of course. God, I want my money back, and the month of my time I spent on the Quicksilver forums. A game that was both Unbelievably Hard to play, yet with such an idiotic AI that it was easy to win by doing nothing. They actually attempted to make a game that could play itself, that you oversaw which decisio
  • Duke Nukem Forever is still "DNF"... :b

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