Briareus speaks out

Briosafreak

Briosafreak

Lived Through the Heat Death
In the NMA Fallout3 forum the question made by Gustav Drangeid on if to save time why not just drop the Real-Time combat from Van Buren had this response from Chad "Briareus" Nicholas:
<blockquote> Actually, dropping multiplayer would give far, far more dev time savings than dropping RT.</blockquote>
So why not drop both?
<blockquote> It's not the dev team's call to make. We HAVE to have MP. We HAVE to have RT. Beyond that we're pretty much free to do what we want I think.</blockquote>
Speaking of Briareus, he had this comment on the BIS Feedback Forum about the thought of anything that increases skill desireability is a good thing:
<blockquote> Not always. The desired goal should be that each skill is just as desired as the next, but no skill is believed to be required. People should not feel the need to get SkillX to RankN each time they play the game, even if they're not playing the archetype that uses SkillX.</blockquote>
 
Briareus said:
We HAVE to have MP. We HAVE to have RT. Beyond that we're pretty much free to do what we want I think.
Click to expand...

That has to suck. I mean, J.E. might not have even wanted to do RT and MP this whole time! Perhaps, in this case, he was willing to leave well enough alone, but Der Führer (Herve Caen) insisted, and this Auftrag des Führers could not be denied (or they would've been fired or something).
 
The problem is that the PR guys think every game has to have RT and MP for it to sell, and they are somewhat right. But this rule doesn't apply for every game, a game can sell good because of the story, openness etc.. ala Fallout 1 and 2..
 
Kharn said:
Odin said:
ala Fallout 1 and 2..
Click to expand...

Fallout 1 & 2 didn't really sell, did they?

I mean REALLY sell?
Click to expand...

500.000 is quite good Kharn...and selling so well in the budget market after all this time it`s something that only a few games like Diablo could pull it off.

In Puuks words, "Vivendi loves Fallout"...

It`s weird the way marketing guys forget how poor real-time killed games like Harbinger and Another War, or like MP didn`t brought better sales to Arcanum...
 
Kharn said:
Fallout 1 & 2 didn't really sell, did they?

I mean REALLY sell?
Click to expand...

I was referring to the game aspect and not the selling part of my comment...But they did sell well for their time. But compared to now, no..But give Fallout 3 good PR and if it's as great as Fallout 1 (since JE is aiming for that) it'll sell like iguana-on-a-stick at a Deathclaw rally..
 
Briosafreak said:
It`s weird the way marketing guys forget...MP didn`t brought better sales to Arcanum...
Click to expand...

MP doesn't make sense for games that are about individual choices. If I buy a CRPG it's going to be because it offers me the opportunity to play a character, not because I want to blast people across the ether.

Cooperative MP might be fun for FO3 or any other CRPG, but these games tend to be too long to be able to coordinate the scheduling involved. So even then I can't really see it.

Oh well. As long as we have stuffed shirts who make decisions based on broad market trends rather than tailored to a particular game's following we're going to see botched up messes like this.

OTB
 
Cup holders.....

I never followed Lionheart to know how it was manipulated by market trending. Pardon this Gamespy review:

http://www.gamespy.com/reviews/august03/lionheartpc/

According to this opinion, the game got split between BG and Diablo.

How accurate a "post mortum" is this?

Will "Science Guy'' survive the gantlet of RT melee rushes?

Will FO 3 survive the market demands of "FEATURES" a computer game SHOULD have? (Pardon the zen.) The burden of SHOULDS. The dillusion of style that stresses the number of cup holders, the location of cup holders, the accents that stress the predominance of cup holders, presuming something like defoggers or windshield wipers
are too tedious in function to rate clear demarkation.

Can't see where I'm going, but god damn, my Starbuck's Latte has center stage on my dashboard.


Oh! Hey dev's! Good luck guys, may you never see the color of your air bag.

4too
 
The Sims (liek OMFG teh worlds biggast sellin gaem of all tiem OMFG!!1) isn't multiplayer. They made that version long after the first one sold well.

It also doesn't have any combat system at all... Although I suppose you could argue it has 'real-time with pause'. :)
 
And Myst/Riven also had no combat at all, it is surprising it would even sell if you listened to video game market forecasters. Obviously it takes more than the magic lure of bloodshed and hopping on the populist bandwagon to make a game with mass-market appeal. But as with any sequel you become more driven by preconceptions as to how it should be so that successive products become more bland and predictable with little creativity. I applaud the fact that BIS is stepping somewhat away from that trap but they almost seem to be stepping into a doppelganger trap of what is required from the audience of a different game. So they kick out the audience of a Mad Max film at intermission and bring in the viewers of a Lord of the Rings movie?

Will it fly young Frodo?
 
Briosafreak said:
500.000 is quite good Kharn...and selling so well in the budget market after all this time it`s something that only a few games like Diablo could pull it off.

In Puuks words, "Vivendi loves Fallout"...

It`s weird the way marketing guys forget how poor real-time killed games like Harbinger and Another War, or like MP didn`t brought better sales to Arcanum...
Click to expand...
500k units over the shelf life of a title is shit. What matters to a company is how many sales they get in the first couple of quarters (exception: a game REALLY takes off after that or you happen to be Valve or a solo small team (<5) dev house). A slow trickle of 500k units over several years does not help a game company continue making games. It's nice, but it won't pay the bills.

Puuks quote regarding Vivendi isn't due to sales figures, it's due to the franchise itself. Many people love the Fallouts, so it's no suprise that people in the game industry do as well, and that some of those people happen to work at Vivendi.

Also, "the marketing guys" rarely, if ever, demand a feature be added. They might ask for a characters appearance to change depending on who they're trying to market a game towards but demanding features that add months to a game's dev cycle is typically beyond their purview (even at other companies). Then of course if you're using a licensed property you've also got to deal with the people who own the property (and usually have less than zero knowledge of video games, let alone game development, marketing, consumer wants and desires, etc.).
 
I agree with everything you said Briareus, even if the almost 500,000 copies are from sales figures, and not shelf numbers ( the great champion of beeing stuck on shelves beeing BGDA2, that really only started selling extremely well after a price reduction) aren`t not that bad either.

But i disagree in this point:
Puuks quote regarding Vivendi isn't due to sales figures, it's due to the franchise itself. Many people love the Fallouts, so it's no suprise that people in the game industry do as well, and that some of those people happen to work at Vivendi.
Click to expand...

He was refering for the fact the budget releases of the Fallout games beeing very successful in that market, keeping a steady influx of cash that is much apreciated by the Vivendi suits.
It was posted on the Mistress Lair forum.

On the "have to do this" departement i don`t usually blame the marketing departments per se but other layers of corporate policy decision.

Still i hope that they do a better job than what they did with IWD2...

Oh and this time i underlined your name so you could see it`s alright now :D
 
Re: Cup holders.....

4too said:
How accurate a "post mortum" is this?
Click to expand...
None since it's a review. You'd have to wait for a real post mortem.

4too said:
Will "Science Guy'' survive the gantlet of RT melee rushes?
Click to expand...
Sure, due to better equipment (weapons, armor, tools) and he'll have "TEH UBER" robot cnpcs. :wink:

4too said:
Will FO 3 survive the market demands of "FEATURES" a computer game SHOULD have?
Click to expand...
I believe so since we knew from the get-go that we'd have to include MP and RT. This has allowed us to plan ahead for it rather than trying to tack it on at the end -- which would be far more costly in terms of dev time and quality.
 
I believe so since we knew from the get-go that we'd have to include MP and RT. This has allowed us to plan ahead for it rather than trying to tack it on at the end -- which would be far more costly in terms of dev time and quality.
Click to expand...

Tim Cain once said the original Fallout was made in a peculiar way, with an early real-time combat mode that was used as a base to make the Turn Based combat.

Since you are working on both modes now is that the same way you are operating?
 
Briosafreak said:
Tim Cain once said the original Fallout was made in a peculiar way, with an early real-time combat mode that was used as a base to make the Turn Based combat.

Since you are working on both modes now is that the same way you are operating?
Click to expand...
No. While we do have more RT functionality than TB, this is only due to RT being far, far easier to implement than TB. All of the programmers are coding everything with TB in mind now. You'd be suprised what has to take TB and RT into account. :shock:
 
You'd be suprised what has to take TB and RT into account.
Click to expand...

Do tell us when you have the time, i get quite a number of mails from guys that want to know more on the production side of games since they want to follow a carreer in that line of work (but then again, who doesn`t?...)
 
Re: Cup holders.....

Briareus said:
4too said:
Will "Science Guy'' survive the gantlet of RT melee rushes?
Click to expand...
Sure, due to better equipment (weapons, armor, tools) and he'll have "TEH UBER" robot cnpcs. :wink:
Click to expand...

Are you joking around, or will "science guys" be able to build and/or upgrade robot NPC's?
 
So Briareus, I wonder..why did you have to include RT and MP, besides the obvious answer that it could sell more titles. Sales is probably the only reason to put it in..

But it pleases my heart that you guys are doing this title with TB in mind, which tells me that you're listening to what we say and are not fucking it up..

And remember to ship some spoilers to us soon, the crowd is demanding blood....err.. spoilers..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top