Why shouldn't gamers be angry at an industry that hates them? | New Statesm

[colmo]

Reposted as it deserves its own thread:

Here's an article on the increasing gulf between devs and gamers. KSP and Squad is upheld as an example of a good relationship. Long may it continue!

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/08/yes-gamers-are-angry-why-wouldn-t-they-be-when-games-industry-hates-them

[Javster]

Sometimes I don't know if Squad and the community have a good relationship. Sure, it's better than some, but the devnotes were awful until recently, and we still don't know anything about the admin facility except a very early model of it.

[Thomas988]

Squad is flippin' incredible. The relationship between us and them is the best I have ever seen in any game. The reason they keep things secretive, though, is because they themselves don't know all the details just yet. And the last devnotes, oh my lord the last devnotes, they were so good, and the features for 0.25 sound incredible! I love Squad!

[treejoe4]

Sometimes I don't know if Squad and the community have a good relationship. Sure, it's better than some, but the devnotes were awful until recently, and we still don't know anything about the admin facility except a very early model of it.

Sometimes it's more fun to have secrets. And the weird .... forumers here would only whinge and dictate about it's functions if it was released.

[MartGonzo]

Good article, really sums up the problems with major publishers and the reason I'm pretty much done with so called AAA titles.

most of these big devs and publishers have no respect at all for their customers and I've no doubt they are going to destroy themselves, just like the major record labels did by treating their customers like scum and at the same time not paying musicians a decent cut.

more and more I see comments before games are out that people have no intention of buying from them because they've been burnt so many times.

and the indie devs are taking an ever larger market share.

CDProject Red is a good example of a company that treated their customers with respect and delivered a quality product and over a few years grew into a major force in the industry, whereas companies like EA and Ubisoft because of their greed, lack of support and underhanded practices have reputations lower than dirt

[cantab]

I've become not so much angry as disinterested. KSP's the first game on anything other than my 3DS that's really caught my attention in a long time.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

I certainly wouldn't call Squad indie anymore. Strangely in this industry I quickly lose respect for either large indie studios or indie studios that sell out to large publishers to evolve into a AAA studio, it's one of the reasons I quit playing KSP and Payday 2.

I generally avoid (Or pirate to hell) games made by developers who I don't respect or who's actions I consider condemn-able among other things.

OVERKILL in Payday's case sold out to Starbreeze and developed a crap game that doesn't deserve the mindless praise it gets currently, they have made the large leap from "Small indie studio that developed a game that you play for fun" to "SMALL STUDIO PUBLISHED BY STARBREEZE THAT MADE A GAME THAT IS GRINDY TO ALL HELL".

Squad simply evolved on their own right. Tome it all went to hell around the same time they made the NASA mission, from there it was a downhill slope of modders doing the good things faster and better then the devs and in the end the Curse deal was it for me. I stopped playing KSP as it became borderline impossible to get mods I had used for quite a while now, and Curse didn't fix my issues with Spaceport either.

[KerbMav]

.

So, what are you doing here then?

[GusTurbo]

Sometimes I don't know if Squad and the community have a good relationship. Sure, it's better than some, but the devnotes were awful until recently, and we still don't know anything about the admin facility except a very early model of it.

It sounds like you're taking Squad's communications with the community for granted. Developers could just as easily provide no updates on what they're doing. The fact that they first cared enough about the community to tell us anything, then improved their communications when they were found lacking shows that they care a lot about community engagement.

[baijuncheng]

It just seems as though companies these days are only interested in your money. I get it, they're businesses and they exist to make money. What's not cool is the way they go about it. I remember when I was kid. If I had a game for my VIC-20 or Amiga 500, that was it. The game is mine, I can play it however I want and with everything available in the game. Now everything is all about DLC. They design the game, rip out half of it, then sell you the rest later. It's pathetic. Sometimes the DLC is only an aesthetic change. Other times it gives you more powerful weapons or faster cars leading to the Pay2Win crap.

I'll happily pay for a game. I'm in China and I have to go to greater extents than most to (legitimately) purchase a game, but I do it. If your game is good and entertains me for a decent amount of time, I am happy with the purchase. If not good, or holds certain features for ransom until I cough up the dough, then I am going to be annoyed. There are certain publishers whose games I will never buy. I don't care who developed it or how dedicated they are to making a great game. If the game is published by one of those publishers I don't want it. I know the developers didn't get the freedom they need to create the best game possible, and that somewhere, someone was figuring out how to make even more money from said game.

[Special Agent Sigvan]

So, what are you doing here then?

Cause I still enjoy KSP maybe?

[KerbMav]

it's one of the reasons I quit playing KSP

You do?

[Special Agent Sigvan]

You do?

Still enjoy, don't play.

[TheScareCake!]

Anybody plays space engineers? That game has something similar. They release new update every week!

[KerbMav]

Still enjoy, don't play.

Hm, I am in a kind of drought too, but for different reasons. I am having a hard time achieving my goals in my .23.5 save and denied myself access to .24 until I get them done ...

But recently I am more into watching other people playing (.24) and robbing banks in Payday 2

Maybe I just needed this change of scenes?

Fun Fact:

I hate EA for them selling incomplete games and highly overpriced expansions.

But I own every expansion of Payday 2 (only bought on steam sales though and they are not really very expensive to begin with). They simply offer better community service I think?

I still do not get your problems with Squad though, and cannot follow where the NASA coop lead everything down hill - modders were always faster and had a higher output for their sheer numbers. The NASA parts may have delayed other parts of the game, but it got us asteroids, something players found important enough that mods were made even.

I concur that a heap of mods might be incorporated into the stock game, but that is a decision the brain behind the game has to make.

[Nuke]

games have actually gotten better for the most part.

source avgn (google it)

joking aside games have sort of an accumulated complexity that makes their continued production in lieu of advancing technology rather challenging. its hard to screw up a game like asteroids (i recently ported hackvision asteroids to an arduino with an lcd screen wired to it, hardly any code makes my incomplete 3d engine look like bloatware). there is only so much code you can fit on an antiquated rom chip. a hand full of vector images and algorithms found in every first year computer science book were all you needed. high school students who have had some programming experience can do likewise these days (i made several 2d shooters in highschool). now games are notoriously complicated. you have these massive dev teams (the dev team for quake fit on one screen!), terabytes of assets and millions of lines of code to deal with, and multimillion dollar budgets. a game engine by itself is a commodity, its easier to revamp an old one or lease one thats newer than it is to write a new one from scratch. of course you carry over all the unresolved bugs. then you got bugs in libraries, some of which are locked down as closed source and are outside of your control as a developer. its an impossible job. the fact that we still spend a lot of time playing games would indicate that its a job they are actually pulling off quite well.

the fact that games have become such big buisness is the reason why you cant please everybody. its not like the 90s, where all the niche markets were found and exploited. dev teams were cheap then, games would pay for themselves over time eventually. you could shotgun money around and if a few of them were successes you paid the bill and created the next generation of games. you now have to make a game that will be guaranteed to sell to justify the budget. you need something that as wide a swath of players can play as possible. its the kind of industry which would have never made a newtonian space flight simulator with orbital mechanics and a complete solar system, because thats not the thing they expect teenagers to want to do. indie games bring back all the niche genres that have all but been stamped out by aaa titles and thats where i cast my dollar.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Nuke

[Special Agent Sigvan]

Hm, I am in a kind of drought too, but for different reasons. I am having a hard time achieving my goals in my .23.5 save and denied myself access to .24 until I get them done ...

But recently I am more into watching other people playing (.24) and robbing banks in Payday 2

Maybe I just needed this change of scenes?

I think it's a generally accepted fact that robbing banks is more action-y then flying in SPAAAAAAACE.

Fun Fact:

I hate EA for them selling incomplete games and highly overpriced expansions.

But I own every expansion of Payday 2 (only bought on steam sales though and they are not really very expensive to begin with). They simply offer better community service I think?

I didn't buy any expansion for PD2 to be honest. I stopped because Overkill went "Screw it! DLC" and made the game crap compared to the last one.

I still do not get your problems with Squad though, and cannot follow where the NASA coop lead everything down hill - modders were always faster and had a higher output for their sheer numbers. The NASA parts may have delayed other parts of the game, but it got us asteroids, something players found important enough that mods were made even.

I concur that a heap of mods might be incorporated into the stock game, but that is a decision the brain behind the game has to make.

My problem with Squad is that they stopped being the itty-bitty indie studio and evolved into a large indie studio.

Existing in the same vein as FTL or Papers, Please. Neither made by large teams or studios, both still indie.

Once indie studios evolve into large scale indie studios (Think those making Star Citizen) I quickly lose my respect for them (A few exceptions include The Indie Stone, who are making PZ and Introversion who are making Prison Architect). Generally because they both sell out (Overkill) or pollute the general meaning of indie (Star Citizen devs).

[Guest]

Sorry Sigvan but you spit on KSP and Star Citizen for no reason and without any arguments.

Fact: Star Citizen IS an indie with an AAA sized team. wich means the dev will focus on features they like and find appealing themselves (who are for the most part fans of sci fi and talented artists).

All that resulting in crazy never ending amount of details on ships and environments. Just check your bank account to upgrade your graphic card before they release it for real and you're good to go

Anybody plays space engineers? That game has something similar. They release new update every week!

I tried it a couple times and I'd say that the game isn't as realistic as KSP (all asteroid are static/ speed is capped etc) BUT it has better physics, you can walk inside moving ships taking into account inertia on character, crash your ships in asteroids (digging holes in asteroid during the process) etc. You could say it's a mix of ksp / minecraft / battlefield elements.

Theres also a native multiplayer, with a bit of dogfighting. It's doesn't have much to offer on the exploration side though, just plain ressource grinding (might change in the future).

Also you can roll in all direction with your jetpack when you walk on an asteroid (no up/down) like in Shattered Horizon (if anyone remembers this one lol)

Edited October 1, 2014 by RevanCorana

[RuBisCO]

I think the whole GG issue has nothing what so ever to do with KSP and Squad. That is a issue between gamedevelopers, gamejournalist and gamers. Squad I think has a great relationship with its clients (us, the players) so what happens out there to other games and players is unimportant to us.