Friday, May 25, 2012. Report 3

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by ATAG_Colander

Sometimes I wish UBI and 1C returned the money to every one, disabled the game on steam and started a new sale with the following warning:
"THIS GAME HAS ISSUES, BUY ONLY IF YOU HAVE THE WILL TO HELP AND THE PATIENCE TO WAIT WHILE WE MAKE A GAME WE WILL ALL LOVE"

But I doubt even this would stop the constant whining and complaints on this forum as some people just love to hear (read) themselves talk (write).

Please, Please, Please, stop. You all read the reviews before buying it and if not, you should have had to.

--- Insert insulting replies (to be ignored) bellow ---
↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

If i ever win the lottery i'll pay for the refunds personally, just to improve the signal to noise ratio here

I'm not too thrilled about waiting myself, but i think it's worthless worrying about things outside my direct control. The way i see it, i just paid some money to keep the development going and get a finished game at some point.

It's all a matter of perception really. Small companies of well known developers in specific gaming genres have taken to starting kickstarter projects to fund their games. People literally rush to support not a game or franchise, but a mere intention to develop one, just because they love the genre and the developers happened to work on a few really good titles in the past.

Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango) and Ron Gilbert (Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island) are two people who were working for Lucasarts games, making adventures back in the day. They wanted to get half a million dollars or so to fund a new adventure game project, but they didn't want to go to a big publisher company, get a loan and then effectively be held hostage over what the game will include and what kind of copy protection they would have to use.

So they started a fund raiser on kickstarter (google it up if you are unfamiliar with it), asked the fans to contribute and implemented a reward system. So, someone who donated $15 will get the digital download version of the game WHEN it is complete. Someone who donated $30 gets the boxed edition, $50 gets you a collectors edition, signed autograph or something, $100 gets you all the previous rewards plus maybe a t-shirt and the soundtrack on CD, etc, etc...The rewards i mention are not exact matches for the prices quoted, but it's close. You can even get your name in the credits of the game if you want.

So, they did this and collected, wait for it... more than $2.7 million.

Because their fans know that nobody else will make an old school adventure game today.
Nobody asked when, what or how, nobody assumed the rest of their developer team is worthless because it will take time that their money will be sitting idle with no finished game in their hands, nobody started any conspiracy theories about them taking the money to fund a stereotypical, to the point of racism, unhealthy American activity. "OMG they will take our $2.7 mil and buy supersized McDonalds burgers with ALL of it i tell you!"

All these fans did was put a bit of down payment on a dream.

Then some guys who used to work in Interplay and had the first post-apocalyptic RPG (way before the first Fallout game) did the same. Now some people are doing the same to resurrect Carmageddon.

Meanwhile in flight sim land, another of the "days of glory past" gaming genres, the only reason our sims are not up to spec is that the developers took our money to buy vodka, not that a lot of features were aimed for by the devs (but also asked for by the community) and have to be implemented under tight hardware and financial constraints

I think the proverbial " 'nuff said " is how i should close this post, but it really needs to be spelled out a bit further to sink in.

The average flight sim fan has his head so far buried inside his heap of performance charts that has lost the ability to dream, has forgotten the time when he was building plastic model airplanes with his father, or dreaming about having a way to get in a pilot's shoes once a day, holding a P38 model on one hand and a Fw190 model on the other and playing mock dogfights in the living room while making funny sounds with his voice to simulate engine and gunfire sounds and thinking to himself..."how i wish i could hook some electronic game to my TV and be able to step into that cockpit in some way".

That is the real pity here and not the state of this or any other sim. It's the lack of magic that is going to kill this genre, if it happens, along with the fact that dreaming is a punishable offense in this community.

Just because it has to be realistic, it doesn't mean we can't dream of better realism or features though

[GOA_Potenz]

there's no update here, same old lies, we are working on blah blah blah... BORING!

[ACE-OF-ACES]

Originally Posted by GOA_Potenz

there's no update here, same old lies, we are working on blah blah blah... BORING!

And some people wonder why some game makers choose not to provide updates

Thanks, somebody, somewhere.

I'm not sure who i should be thanking, or why I should thank them, but since this thread consists of no news, but lots of thanks, I feel I should join in the general spirit of thankyou-ness. So thanks, to everyone.

(and thankyou Ben)

No, don't mention it.

Thanks....

[Skoshi Tiger]

[QUOTE=Falstaff;429291]Thanks, somebody, somewhere.
QUOTE]

You really shouldn't have! I did nothing, really. But I appreciate your gratitude and will attempt to do better in future to really earn your thanks!

Now back to the Update, It has only been a week since the hot fix and people are already moaning that they're being left out and Sim is finished and the same old rubbish that has plaugued this sim Oleg mention "Storm of War"

Get a grip on reality peeps!

For the sake of discussion I'll pull a couple of figures out of the ether. Lets say it takes a person five minutes to open a crash dump file and have a quick squizie at it to see what category it belongs to. How many crash dumps have been sumbitted? If everyone who's said the sent one in wasnt lying there would be at least a thousand. Just that would take up ten and a half man/days (working with an eight hour day)! And thats without any sort of indepth analysis of the actual reason for the crash

People swore blue that all they wanted was a short update even if there was nothing to talk about! Well that's what we got yeaterday.

Thanks BlackSix and the development team. Keep up the good work and hope every thing is going good.

[Highwayman-Ed]

I'm just grateful that the devs who are working on improving the product rather than walking away with the cash are working on the product at all.

I've seen so many half baked products released because the publisher wants their return in investment now and not tomorrow, and the devs are dragged on to the next product with no say in the matter.

Thank you for the update, even if there is no news. I thank you for your efforts, even if there isn't another patch yet, and I thank you for supporting us even though I'm sure that here is pressure to move on to the next title.

[priller26]

Wish I could say thanks but my patience is done. Nothing new here, just the same old we are fixing it...and will get back to you in a while. This game is shelved until next year. All these years of development, and this. I don't know what system they were testing this thing on, but I don't think the game was even half finished when released. Truly a massive cluster.......and a waste of my money.
You all that are diehard and keep thinking the genie will come out of the bottle if they rub it long and hard enough..well...good luck with that!

[Force10]

Originally Posted by Highwayman-Ed

I'm just grateful that the devs who are working on improving the product rather than walking away with the cash are working on the product at all.

I would venture a guess that the profit margin was slim at best for COD. If they walk away now, it would probably translate into a sizeable loss. I don't think they can walk away yet, they need to release BOM to get some money back, so they have to fix COD first to get some level of trust back from the customers so they will purchase BOM.

[GOA_Potenz]

Originally Posted by ACE-OF-ACES

And some people wonder why some game makers choose not to provide updates

if in 6+ months is the only info you get, so it becomes a lie...

[ACE-OF-ACES]

Originally Posted by GOA_Potenz

if in 6+ months is the only info you get, so it becomes a lie...

Well the good news is game makers are use to dealing with child like views of the world

So chances are comments like yours are tossed to the bin without much thought..

My only concern is some of the moderate people here who might actually put some merit into such silly statements..

Because the flight sim market is a small one and the more moderates we loose to the silly side means less future sales which can hurt the flight sim maker, which in turn hurts flight sim users like me.

The simple truth that your sort forgets is that you would be hard pressed to find any game released that is bug free.. And your sort also wants to play both sides of the fence and say such silly things as '1C just put it out to take the money and run'.. Yet.. 1C is STILL here working on it.. How some fall for that sort of sillyness is beyond me, my guess is it goes back to the child like view of the world.

But I digress..

Now, for the moderates out there, to put this into perspective, take a look at RoF.. In that it went through a similar process.. Day one it had bugs that were fixed over time, but it took them well over a year to get it to the game it is today. Just keep that in mind the next time one of these whinny types trys to tell you that 1C took the $ and ran with it.. Even though 1C is still here working on it and put a patch out just a couple of weeks ago.