What Would Matt Do

Yeah, we all knew Vanguard would suck. That was pretty easy to tell as soon as they announced their feature list (corpse runs, level/experience loss on death, etc). And if you played the open beta because you were curious as to what crack McQuaid was smoking, it got easier. Of course, then they went live because “they were out of funds”. You could have just put up a big sign outside the door, this game will suck at that point.

But did anyone else think Sigil would be being bought and Brad would be suggesting a game relaunch not three months in? Because that’s exactly what’s happening (find translations inline):

SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what’s best for Vanguard and its community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind.”

SOE is going to buy us out in the hopes that they will be able to salvage something from their huge costs associated with developing this stillborn of a game. We are being forced into this and while it sucks, it’ll mean I don’t have to deal with any you asshats anymore with any luck.

What does that mean? It means that right now Vanguard is doing decently but not as well as we hoped…So the bottom line is that SOE is going to be getting more involved with Sigil and Vanguard – our relationship is going to become even tighter – much tighter. At this point I can’t say much more than that.

Does this mean an acquisition? I can’t say at this point.

Does this mean more or less people at Sigil? I can’t say at this point.

Does this mean management changes at Sigil? I can’t say at this point.

What this really means is that about 5 people subscribed to the game and one of them canceled in less than a month. With that in mind, this is the reasoning for Sony to buy us out and hopefully fix this disaster.

I can’t really go on from there, it all boils down to lots of whining about why the game didn’t make it without no actual responsibility assigned to Sigil beyond some talk of development problems.

How about this, Brad, admit you shouldn’t be designing MMO anymore. Ever. Please. Really.

I can understand how you got confused and thought you had something with Everquest was the only game in town and you managed to get some subscribers. You thought you had things figured out and had some good idea. That’s understandable, though a bit laughable. If you had stopped and tried to step back and see what was really happening in the EQ, you would have seen the player base absolutely hated 99% of your design decisions and knew you didn’t respect them at all.

Had you done that, you might have seen Everquest++ with heavier system requirements, less completion at launch, and without some of the talented developers you had at the first gig, you might have seen what an absolute mess Vanguard would be.

Seriously, what did you expect when you released a game that was obviously broken in the open beta, that ran like shit on most peoples systems and even the dedicated fans couldn’t find much good to say about it beyond some talk of the odd diplomacy system…?

Honestly I’m sorry it had to go this way. I’m sorry you didn’t just realize that Everquest was only popular because it was the only game in town. That those design decisions you made in the past just won’t fly in a world where WoW exists. I’m sorry you had to launch a game early, though I don’t know what you would have done with more time. And I’m sorry your company will be bought out and you’ll probably still have to work on game that you most likely loved in conception and see it turned generic and WoW-like so that SOE can try to recoup some development costs. That must be hard.

But could you have seen it coming? Oh yeah.

What Would Matt Do: I’ll give ya hug, if you’ll promise to stop making games.

Next Gen just released some new information about the next NFL 2K game. You might remember they announced it a bit back to thundering applause (well, at least by me and two other guys).

What more do we know now? It’s going to be the 2K Legends game rumored a bit back.

John Elway, Jerry Rice, Barry Sanders and “hundreds more” classic NFL athletes will be included in the upcoming pigskin title.

Greg Thomas, president of developer Visual Concepts hyped up the roster in a statement. “With All-Pro Football 2K8, we’re bringing the greatest players in football history back to the game,” he said. “Imagine an offense featuring John Elway, Thurman Thomas and Jerry Rice going against a defense led by Ronnie Lott, Mike Singletary and Reggie White. By highlighting the signature abilities of the game’s greatest legends, we have created a highly customizable and unique football experience tailored for the football fan.”

Whoa.

The only thing I can respond to that is, where’s Dan Marino? If anyone belongs in the “Legends” game, it’s the best quarterback to ever not win a superbowl, arguably the best pocket passer ever. Take 2, take note. Marino is required.

What Would Matt Do: Salivate.

(Yeah, I’m still kicking here…slowly)

I spend so much time putting Sony and the PS3 down, I thought I should try to balance it out with some good news about the PS3.

Heard of Folding@Home? If you own a PS3, you should probably take note. Heck, your PC can run it (though it seems have some problems using it with RD or I’d be running it on my home system). What is it? It’s a program that runs and uses the Cell power in the PS3 to run complex algorithms to try to track down Alzheimer’s and other diseases. That’s pretty damn cool. And now the PS3 is up to 250k users:

“The PS3 turnout has been amazing, greatly exceeding our expectations and allowing us to push our work dramatically forward,” said Vijay Pande, associate professor of Chemistry at Stanford University and Folding@home program lead.

“Thanks to PS3, we have performed simulations in the first few weeks that would normally take us more than a year to calculate. We are now gearing up for new simulations that will continue our current studies of Alzheimer’s and other diseases.”

So while there aren’t many games on the PS3 yet, you can help solve world problems.

And I for one am relieved. It was more annoying to think they reserved their stupid for just the game division.

Here’s the goods:

He called Sony who admitted that the problem was being caused by its new copy protection making these discs unplayable in some players including our own. Sony says that it does not not intend to change the copy protection.

They told him he would have to have a firmware update to his player. Unfortunately this has not been released yet. In fact they do not know when it will be released.

I don’t know about you, but that annoys me in several different ways. One, where is the offer to refund the DVD player because he can’t use it to play movies? Two, what the fuck are they doing releasing movies that their own hardware can’t play. Don’t they test? Do they care at all? (this may be the real question). Three, why are the putting copy protection on the DVD’s in the first place? That doesn’t stop piracy, it doesn’t stop people from downloading movies, etc. The only reason to put copy protection on your DVD like that is to look like you’re doing something about piracy. So for show, or shits and giggles as it were, they are breaking brand new DVDs. Impressive.

You know what the most annoying thing is though? The callous way they just don’t give a shit. It doesn’t matter to them. What’s a few customers (every single purchaser of that and other DVD players) compared to saying they are doing something about piracy? What’s customer satisfaction compared to being able to tell VP of fucktards that they are being proactive. This is an incredibly rude, uncalled for and retarded move on their part.

I guess I should I expect that from Sony at this point.

What Would Matt Do: Long for the days of Sony being a brand name you could trust. The brand you didn’t have a problem paying a bit extra for because you knew it would be high quality. /me waves good-bye to those days.

I mean more so than usual. How are they brining the hate these days? XBLA. Yeah I know, it’s that spiffy cool service that allows us to buy games online and play demos on our console. That’s cool. Except well, it’s not.

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff recently about how Microsoft forces developers to charge for the stuff they release on XBLA, even if they don’t want to. See that last part? Microsoft forces developers to charge for extra game content, even if the developers don’t want to.

What we have here is simply a difference of opinion on how to maximize the return on Gears of War - something both Epic and Microsoft want to do. While we create products like Gears because we love games, and we have a passion for making them, at the end of the day this is a business for both companies and how we earn our living.

Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So what we’ve agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That’s what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players.

Well thanks a fucking a lot. A two fold thanks here. One, thanks Epic for going to battle for us. Sorry you lost, but at least we’ll get the stuff you wanted to give away at some point. At least you had the clout to able to stand up for awhile. Two, thanks a lot fucking Microsoft. Thanks for charging us for things the developers wanted to give us for free. Really, I’m so happy about that I can’t even tell you.

This isn’t about entitlement, this about Microsoft wanting to nickel and dime us for something that the creators of the mother fucking game want to give to us, the loyal customers. This is about Microsoft losing sight of the bigger picture. This about Microsoft losing some of the customer love they’ve built up ever since launching Live on the original XBox.

See, this isn’t the only time this has happened. Other developers have mentioned similar problems on message boards here and there.

Great. So now, on the service I pay $60 a year for, I now get jacked of free stuff so Microsoft can make up some of their hardware costs.

Oh, and you think that’s rough, well how about paying for the free stuff we get now on the PC. Microsoft thinks we should.

Taking all of these things that everybody has come to expect for free and now yanking them back and trying to sell them isn’t going to fly with the Windows platform–not with Epic and not with the big publishers.

He’s right, that won’t fly with us PC gamers…but I’m think more than a few publishers would be pretty happy about (I’m looking at you EA).

Microsoft is really missing the point here and looking at this short term. Yeah, in the short term they are making more money. Great. I’m excited. But are they building or alienating a customer base? How do you get people to use your system? By giving them stuff. How do you get people to appreciate your system? By giving them stuff.

It’s that simple. Microsoft just isn’t thinking this through. Sure, charge for some of it. Lovely. But charging for everything? Charging for crap like Horse Armor (an absolute success, sold about a million times…for Horse Armor. Ugh). Charging for things the developers want to give away for free? Over charging for content? That’s not going to work.

So what’s the solution? The PS3. Yeah, I know. But think about it. What’s going to define this generation of consoles? Not graphics, they can both do some amazing things now. It’s going to be content they provide online. It’s going to be that which they give to their consumers on their respective services. So as soon as the PS3’s Home service, or whatever it is, gets up off it’s ass and starts to get things done for real, XBLA will have to pay attention and react accordingly. Hopefully.

Or maybe Microsoft will wake up. And maybe I’ll get that moon pony I’ve always wanted.

What Would Matt Do: Sit Microsoft down and explain longer term view to them.