3D Realms' Scott Miller Warns Warner 42
firstadopter.com writes "Scott Miller of 3D Realms, maker of Duke Nukem and non-maker of Duke Nukem Forever, is panning Warner Brothers' recent re-entry into the videogame industry. He cites the lack of focus of conglomerates and aversion to risk-taking on original brands as the heels of Warner's future downfall, suggesting of their new gaming division: 'Focused [game-only] publishers will always lead us in making the best games... It's just not as important for a [diversified into films/TV] company like Warner to really try hard in a area that, in the end, doesn't mean life or death to their company.'"
Yea right (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yea right (Score:5, Interesting)
You should read the postmortems on Gamasutra, at least half of them admit afterwards to have worked without a decent design document. For Tropico eg. the lead designer found out after a year that his designers all had different ideas about what the game should be about and were implementing all kinds of features and interfaces they thought were 'cool'. This was because the design document was too vague and general.
Daikatana failed in two ways, first because it wasn't that good. It had been in production for too long and by the time it was ready it was not technically advanced anymore. But more importantly, because its creators had such a big mouth in the press (nonsense about making you his bitch) the press were sceptical about the game, which is their right. You can't pretend to be mr. know-it-all and critisize everyone but yourself and expect to get respect for it, if you don't have any achievements to go with it.
Re:Yea right (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Game dev houses do public post-mortems. I wonder what we'd find out if traditional software developers did public post-mortems? Maybe a lot of them wouldn't have the careful planning that you might expect.
2) Games are (I believe necessarily) *somewhat* driven in design by implementation issues that cannot be found out until implementation time. It may be that having 20 goat-riding banshees running around attacking you just plain uses too much CPU time, and the game has to be changed. A d
Re:Yea right (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless your development team has only one member, you're interfacing to someone else's code.
Designs are able to be changed. That's the whole point of using flexible patterns. But if you don't have a design to begin with then nobody knows where you are planning to end up, or has a framework in which to control the change.
There is nothing special about game development that isn't part of any other software development process.
Re:Yea right (Score:5, Insightful)
All this will do (Score:1)
DNF original? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe he means the Matrix (Score:2)
Hey Scott... (Score:5, Funny)
At this rate, the PlayStation IX will be out before DNF.
Re:Hey Scott... (Score:1)
Re:Hey Scott... (Score:2)
At this point, I just want 3DRealms to put up or shut up. I really liked Duke Nukem, and even bought the Atomic Edition.
Just license the friggin' Q3 engine or UT2K3/4's and get the game out already.
And how about some free dedicated server software too? That's definitely helping Unreal Tournament's popularity..
Re:Hey Scott... (Score:1)
DNF + Half-Life 2... (Score:2)
Like a pregnant crack-whore.
Next?
hmm (Score:2, Funny)
That pretty much sums up the comments so far
Introductions are necessary (Score:5, Funny)
Warner Brothers killed atari (Score:2)
Wouldn't be a surprise at all, afterall this is the Warner brothers that killed Atari. Then after poisoning the brand sold the whole thing to the Tramiel's who repeated stuck knives into every part of it. (And everything else)
Re:Warner Brothers killed atari (Score:1, Offtopic)
atari closes microprose
on google.
Re:Warner Brothers killed atari (Score:3, Informative)
The Atari we know of today is Atari only in name. The current company is actually a re-branded Infogrames, which bought Atari's name & such when it bought the Hasbro Interactive unit from Hasbro (Microprose was also acquired by Infrogrames at this point). If I remember correctly, the Atari properties stopped at Midway between Warner Brothers and Hasbro.
Re:Warner Brothers killed atari (Score:2)
True, sorry for incomplete information.
I was Atari800 XL user, and I know that new Atari is just Infogrames.
Re:Warner Brothers killed atari (Score:2)
History lesson: (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't he remember Atari? T-W owned that from '76-'86 [igs.net], their most profitable and inventive years when they made great games.
Re:History lesson: (Score:5, Interesting)
For those who don't get the reference, Atari single-handledly destroyed the home video game market during this time, mainly by glutting the market with crappy games (E.T. for example; several million unsold cartridges were dumped in a landfill. Pac Man had more cartridges manufactured than there were consoles sold.
The home video market managed to stay destroyed until Nintendo forced their way onto the scene; they were very careful to avoid the sins of the father, so to speak, by retaining the right to not allow crappy games, limiting the amount of titles a licensee could put out in a year, and other such practices.
Re:History lesson: (Score:3, Informative)
In addition, there was the Intellivision and Coleco game systems (among others) that died during the same period.
It's funny that you cast Nintendo as some kind of hero. It would be as if you had to get permission from MS to write SW for Windows.
Re:History lesson: (Score:2)
Aye, Atari wasn't the sole responsible; it might be more accurate to say that the Atari 2600 was almost singlehandedly.....
As to Nintendo, I have no problem with their business tactics; people who played ball with them made money hand over fist. It was a relatively unique time; people were still leery about bundling hardware with software, from the IBM lawsuits.
Nevertheless, Nintendo had some valid points; not flooding the market, keeping the quality level up, and so on. You'll notice, however, that t
Re:History lesson: (Score:2)
Coleco's Adam was a mess and Mattel's computer replacements for intelevision where super junk.
The big question to this day is why the ST
Re:History lesson: (Score:2)
One of the limitations was that you couldn't have more then two independently-moving high-resolution objects in the same horizontal scan line without using tricks. PacMan multiplexed it's objects while games like Pitfall were designed to avoid the situation all together.
Re:History lesson: (Score:1)
Atari could have kept claim on the industry if the Tramiels didn't shelf the "ready-to-go" Atari 7800 in 1984 to solely make computers. They put the 7800 back on the market in 1986 after they saw the NES selling well.
Hesitation is what hurt Atari.
Oh, yeah, sorry, I forgot this one: (Score:4, Funny)
Then, there's the obvious:
(ahem)
Well, at least Time-Warner will **MAKE** [3drealms.com] games that will have an opportunity to suck.
Thank you, thank you very much, I'll be here all week!
Drive safely, remember to tip your wait staff and try teh fish!
Interesting but naive (Score:3, Interesting)
There is an assumption amongst "focused publishers" of games that leading edge (techniques, graphics, sound, action) counts. It is an assumption that holds true for (probably) most of the gaming market. Nevertheless, the current gaming market is arguably a niche market, and "focused publishers" either aren't aware of this or at a loss to exploit the bulk of the market.
A market means having (a) customers who want your product (b) who have money (c) enough to afford the price which is dictated (at minimum) by your development costs.
The current game publishers are pretty good at (a). There are millions of gamers out there who want the product. The problem is that the vast majority of those gamers do not earn an income. Those that do eventually find that they have less time for gaming in order to do something called "living" or "working" or "getting a wife and kids". Slashdotisms aside, the age profile of gamers is heavily slanted in towards youth and lack of income.
In other words, current publishers aren't a whole lot of good at (b) or (c), or "finding the deep pockets". Games are pirated or obtained occasionally via Mommy or Daddy's money.
So where are the publishers going wrong? To me that's simple. I don't play games anymore because I don't have much time to, and few modern games are entertaining for a person who only plays occasionally. Games are written for gamers, and gamers are highly skilled addicts. This means they get their "hit" from the challenge and, to get value for their money, they require game that is lengthy to complete. Something challenging to a skilled gamer is, even on easy levels, not very entertaining to me when I want to relax for half an hour.
TW is, by comparison, an entertainment company. While many people (especially here) can't stand them, they nevertheless understand how to cater to the mass market ... and I'm guessing they're going to do just that.
Why play in the highly competitive leading edge games market when you can combine non-interactive media with yesterday's techniques (that have been made into a Microsoft SDK), at a fraction of the cost, and target a far larger market that also happens to have money?
Its all about understanding your market. People who earn money (more particularly those who have "responsibilities") tend to be more price sensitive when it comes to products they aren't sure they will get their money's worth from. You may not be able to sell a $50 game to such people except at Christmas, but a $10 game a month will slip right under their radar.
There are also other markets that aren't currently served by game publishers. Do you remember interactive fiction books? They give you a paragraph or two, you decide what to do, and get a "goto" for another paragraph. There's thousands of them out there, and children and young teens love them. It would take one such book, a week of VB, and one day in your average TV series studio to turn the book into multimedia interactive fiction (30 second clips rather than paragraphs). TW could flog off stuff like that at a quarter the price of a game and still make a killing.
Re:Interesting but naive (Score:2)
Disturbingly, I fi
Re:Interesting but naive (Score:2)
Please, offer some kind of evidence for this. All studies I have seen suggest that the average age of a gamer is in the mid to late 20s - a prime disposable income market. There are certainly a lot of gamers who are young and lack income, but they are simply not remotely a majority.
Diversification is good (Score:2)
I think diversification is good. Look at a company like 3Drealms, the critics in this case. They haven't diversified (to my knowledge) and they solely make games. And yet, DNF hasn't shown up yet. They don't appear to be "really trying hard".
On the othe
a joke? (Score:1)
this article sounds like a complete joke!
where is duke nukem forever? this guy has no business criticizing anyone the software development arena. his company can't even get a game out the door after 5+ years of development.
their only goal is to keep selling crappy throwback games based on the vague "when its done" promise of a future non-existant title.
good one though..made me laugh out loud reading this.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Risk taking (Score:2)
Third time's the charm? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sony... (Score:2)
So Sony must make some real crap as they are one of the more diversified companies on the planet. Oh, and Hitachi - their stuff is all crap. Sheesh, just because a company is diversified (USUALLY considered a good thing) doesn't mean that they can't do most, if not all of those things well.
lol x infinity! (Score:2)
Somebody needs to earn the right to speak... (Score:2)
The focused [game-only] publisher in question needs to put out the game they've been leading for seven years now before they talk about leading the market ahead of the conglomerates.
My Favorite Quote (Score:2)
Let's face it, Scott-- an illiterate dirt farmer from South Buttcrack, Arkansas could lead 3DRealms in making games. You're not telling us anything we don't already know.
Anyone remember TWIG? (Score:2)
I was (un)fortunate enough to work for them for about 6 months in the end of 1993. They were having trouble with a couple of launch titles that were supposed to be bundled with Apple's then-revolutionary A/V Macs. I remember lots of problems with the DSPs. That and working on the worst game ever.
"HellCab"
I do have this really cool paperweight that they gave out to the execs that year: it's a big chunk of the Berlin wall with the following inscription: "This is a remnant