3321

Yeah, I understand why Brad would be frustrated with people breaking the street date, but it seems the solution is simple. Set the release date 1 week past when you are ready and have everything up and running to the best of your ability. Don’t wait until the weekend before to get your MP servers up and running. Don’t wait until day 1 to have the day 1 patch ready.

I know developers love to cram as much as they can into a game until the last minute, but that’s the hard decision they have to make for a smooth release.

As for locking out gamers until day one, while I know developers who have done that, when it becomes apparent that major retailers are breaking street, I seem to recall they work as hard as possible to get the game online since it’s not the consumers fault street was broken. Maybe I’m misremembering. Can anyone point me to other developers repeatedly saying “Tough Luck, wait until day 1?”

3322

Well, that’s it then. Bring on the dinosaurs. Bonus points for posting Dinosaur involving screenshots from Elemental!

3323

That’s a bad example. It would be more like Tom creating a thread to discuss his reviews specificlly and get feedback as well as provide further insight and in that case it would be absolutly valid if his opinions of a game were quoted elsewhere.
Brad wasn’t in here as some “tourist”.
I mean I don’t get you people there. Is there no credibility to what you write around here, especially when it comes to someones own work/job?
If yes then how can you have issues with it being published somewhere else?
Simple answer would be only that your true opinion isn’t “PR material” and I think that is what you guys are trying to defend.
You want devs to voice their opinion in public without any of the responsibilities that come with it.

Once upon a time there was something called “implied off the record” where responsible journalists used some common sense…

Is this one of those myths about how everything was better in the past?
I don’t know why we talk about “bad journalism” here when the issue at hand is a game released in an unfinished state. Talk about “once upon a time” in regards to game quality…

3324

Bill nails several keys points.

I think it’s newsworthy when the CEO of a gaming company who has made a big deal in the past about developers shipping broken games not only ships a broken game (a piece of news that exists without QT3), but then goes and says on a public forum, “Don’t buy our games if you think they’re broken.”

I don’t care what kind of crunch time Mr. Wardell puts in, maybe he should lay off the forum posting if he’s so stressed out. It’s not doing anyone any good, and I don’t see how that is a contribution that Tom wants in his living room.

Do you want devs acting like petulant childs and assholes to consumers? Is that a good thing?

Yeah, people who demand games they pre-ordered and can’t get refunds on, people who buy games and expect them to work properly on day 1, those people are part of the problem.

Oh, wait.

A dude got pissed, he said something stupid, and he very quickly apologized for it. And Kiernon Gillen and crew, as well as Tom Francis, decided to feature that comment as if it somehow meant something more, without getting any sort of comment from Brad, or without any meaningful context.

There’s much more to those articles than the quote itself. His apology, as Bill rightly points out, was hollow, full of excuses and nonsense. It was buggy because the street date broke? So by breaking street date, those retailers caused buggy code to retroactively engrave itself on the CDs? He violated his own crusade, something that’s newsworthy because it’s sad. Lots of us, despite our opinions of him personally and his politics, respect him as a game maker because he has stood up for gamer’s rights and has taken an intelligent and reasoned stand against the stupidity of DRM and other issues that plague games. Then he goes and commits the same sins he rails against.

That’s news. That’s the actual problem.

I’ll take 50 Matt Gallants over a Brad Wardell any day of the week, but the mathematics for who gets banned and who keeps stinking up the forum have never made any sense to me.

3325

No, he was here as a long time forum member ill advisably going off on a friend.

It is a cheap shot and poor journalism to shove that quote up his ass on another site.

3326

That reminds me of politicians that say something stupid (not because they didn’t mean it this way but they forget about the usual PR sweat talk) in public and later blame the media for it like they are responsible for someones statements.

I don’t see dev’s like Brad complaining when they are quoted in a positive way and yes that happened a lot when that whole DRM discussion took place (just one example).
But I guess getting the “good PR” based on forum posts is ok but anything that might be considered as “cheap shot” is off limits, that’s simply hypocrisy.
You also continue to make it look like the quote is the whole cause of these news which it isn’t.
And you also ignore that Brad still hasn’t changed anything about his view that the game was shipped with “release quality”.

3327

He was also here promoting his latest game release and trying his best to do damage control when people reacted poorly to the state the game was released in.

People fall into many roles in life. Sometimes they’re separate, sometimes they intersect, and sometimes it’s hard to tell where one ends and another begins.

3328

Here ya go

3329

That caravan is in for a shock.

3330

Exactly.

We can’t complain about the state of video game journalism then keep complaining when journalism actually occurs.

3331

…

Can we quote this one, too? Or do we need ‘context’?

3332

That reminds me of politicians that say something stupid (not because they didn’t mean it this way but they forget about the usual PR sweat talk) in public and later blame the media for it like they are responsible for someones statements.

Have we resorted to comparing videogame developers to elected officials that run our country? Brad didn’t flesh out a lengthy opinion; he said something stupid in the heat of the moment in a topic that was becoming hostile to what he’s worked on for years. He made a mistake, but why is it news at all? Does anyone here truly think he doesn’t want Ben, or anyone like him, buying his future games? Yea, he said it, we know that. But it was defensive bluster, nothing more, and in the couple thousand posts of his he’s probably guilty of it more than once. Some sites might consider that noteworthy, but I can’t imagine what purpose it serves other than to wet the appetite of the drama seekers. Look how many people (including myself) have been weighing in on this topic, how quickly it exploded. It gets attention, we’re sucked in by the drama.

I know I’ve refreshed this topic way too many times than I should have. I don’t blame sites for mentioning it, considering it does grab attention. I just don’t see what it has to do with the game. At best, and this is if someone sincerely believes Brad meant what he said, it has to do with one of the developers of the game. At worst, well, there’s plenty of gossip sites that report factual statements of celebrities out there too.

3333

I’m pretty sure we can.

3334

I’m pretty sure we can.

3335

Yes, it is.

3336

Now THIS thread is going places.

3337

Well, while all you ninnies have been getting your panties in a bunch over the current state of videogame “journalism” (someday, a potential employer will read those quotes during a cursory Googling and pass my resume over), I’ve been playing the ever-loving-shit out of the game.

Stability generally increased (still getting out of memory errors when I hit 1.5gb of usage, which is an absurd amount), but as far as I can tell, this game isn’t hitting my 4870 at all. Like, I’ve been monitoring temps, and I idle at 66 (near-broken fan). During the game, it hit 68 once. Seeing as how I’ve got Mip Maps, AA, and texture sizes all maxed, I have to assume the game would be doing something to my GPU temperature/activity meters if it were using it at all.

A forum post on the Elemental site recommended upgrading to the brand new 10.8 ATI drivers. These did nothing for stability/performance, but they did manage to make the software mouse cursor disappear while in motion in the game. Seeing as how clicking stuff in the game is oftentimes an exercise in adventure-game-esque find-the-pixel frustration, using the hardware cursor also sort of sucks and I’m wondering what my PC would do if I installed 10.7 over the newer drivers.

On the other hand, the game itself is fun. I had to crank the difficulty down to beginner to stand a chance against the AI strategically, but I don’t know that I’ve lost an even moderately fair battle while battling tactically. But whatever the AI does to bum-rush to stacks + metal weapons while I’m still trying to get huts down in my first three towns on Normal difficulty has be utterly beat.

Essentially, I am still having tons of fun coupled with ludicrous amounts of bug-frustration. Icons disappearing, text fading out or popping in when it shouldn’t, seconds-long total hangups in the game, white fog everywhere for 30 seconds everytime I transition from battles to the main screen or vice-a-versa, and of course, the complete inability of the game to recognize my mousewheel scrolling 3/4s of the time. I can scroll my mousewheel for 5 full spins and the scren will jerk up once. It’s absurd.

But I keep diving back into it, over and over and over again. Powering up the military and civilization trees is hella fun. . . I’m virtually ignoring magic/adventuring until heroes and spellcasters become worthwhile in the lategame, as my Sovereign, implacable badass that he may be, wouldn’t stand a chance in hell vs. a 4-stack of armored knights. Micromanaging towns into specialized superproducers is rewarding and useful. Hell, even the diplomacy’s fairly decent, even if the screens for it are butt-ugly and the concept of “Diplomacy Points” is suuuuuper gamey.

Alright, you lot may resume your whinging on about context-quoting, FOX-reporting, and Populous now!

3338

Well isn’t that just precious.

3339

As is the dinosaur! Do you know how much dinosaur toes sell for in Rinin?

3340

Okay. This thread is crazy nuts out of control. The dinosaur/ caravan thing was pretty darn funny. Actually, it was down right awesomely hilarious when considering the mood in here.