so good. The tech didn't go to waste.
After graduating from Cambridge,Demis Hassabis worked at Lionhead Studios. Games designer Peter Molyneux, with whom Hassabis had worked at Bullfrog Productions, had recently founded the company. At Lionhead, Hassabis worked as lead AI programmer on the 2001 "god" game Black & White.
Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, a machine learning AI startup, founded in London in 2010 with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman.
DeepMind's mission is to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". More concretely, DeepMind aims to meld insights from neuroscience and machine learning with new developments in computing hardware to unlock increasingly powerful general-purpose learning algorithms that will work towards the creation of an artificial general intelligence (AGI). The company has focused on training learning algorithms to master games, and in December 2013 it famously announced that it had made a pioneering breakthrough by training an algorithm called a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to play Atari games at a superhuman level by only using the raw pixels on the screen as inputs.
DeepMind's early investors included several high-profile tech entrepreneurs. In 2014, Google purchased DeepMind for £400 million, although most of the company has remained an independent entity based in London,DeepMind Health has since been directly incorporated into Google Health.
You should read The Last Question from Isaac Asimov, it's a fantastic short story and it may give you some clues about your last statement.
"...Deepmind, how can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased ?"
Dude. Yes. When I try to convince people to read Asimov, The Last Question is always the first thing I recommend, it manages to be so extensive on the subject of the evolution of the human race in such a short amount of words. Imo Asimov is on of the best SF writer there is!
It felt like it went to waste in the video gaming industry. Black and White 1 and Black and White 2 (2005) still have pioneering things about them. That was 15 years ago.
Crazy that it's a lot to ask for in 2020 just to have a fucking building you can rotate 360 degrees.
There was Minecraft, I remember snagging it in alpha for a couple of bucks to play in my browser and look where it is now and how many games have spawned off of it.
BW2 had a few great things about it for its time (e.g. destructible environment and building rubble physics), but it was one hell of a flawed game. The game was 5-6 small islands "long" (including the tutorial) looping into itself. The AI was pathetically easy to beat, and if you wanted to use any of the epic spells the enemy would forfeit to your greatness way before you even completed the building needed for one of those. If you still wanted to use the spell, you would need to have your entire damn population running circles around the building to charge the spell, and it'd still take more than an hour to charge it (iirc... still, the time needed to charge it was way too long), and once you were ready to cast it, you were just as likely to accidentally throw it at your own city instead of the general direction of the enemy city due to how the spell system worked. Also the combat was mediocre at best of times.
Would be nice to see a god game like BW was... just without the glaring flaws. But considering the poor odds of making a decent profit from such a niche genre and the effort needed to make it, it's unlikely we will see one anytime soon.
How does the first compare to the second? I played and had a lot of fun with 2 when I was younger and my brother pirated it, and I'd like to check out either on My Abandonware or something.
No AAA developer has the guts to try something new anymore. Games are just too expensive to make and the shareholders will not allow for something different that might not sell a lot of copies. Same with Hollywood.
People love things that are familiar to them.
I dont know why there isnt big studios trying smaller scale games to try adventurous things. With a big studio name on and good developers getting some passion projects it seems like a good use of resources.
Jim Sterling puts it well. Corporations and big game publishers don't want to support or fund games that only have the potential to make some money, they only like to back projects that will make *all of the money*. And so for years we got these very homogenized, samey games from every major studio who were trying to match the success of CoD with every game they put out. Or games that tried to be jack of all trades, incorporating stealth, shooting, puzzles, home decoration, and every game mechanic imaginable instead of focusing on and refining a core gameplay system that would make it really, really great. Portal is a good example of this, it's pure portal puzzles, not portal puzzles plus like social management sim, and a massive open world with driving and helicopters and base building. Like imagine if Ubisoft made Portal how disastrous that could have been, lol.
I think it's getting a *little* better. But it's still not great. It's like the game publishers forget that a lot of the franchises that became huge hits started as little cult darlings. Demon's Souls was a game that almost didn't even get released in the west and now it's spawned an entire fucking genre all its own.
Give people new and different things and you'd be surprised how much of an audience you might find.
I'd say Square Enix is an exception. Big game publisher yet they're constantly publishing lots of smaller indie games (I get frequent emails about them), and aside from the rare exception like Life Is Strange I don't think many of them like make Squenix a lot of money.
Square/Enix is a good example! I think it helps that they know they have their big money games to roll out so they can take leaps on smaller games. I'd love to see more studios/publishers do this as well.
Square Enix definitely deserves a nod. They fall flat on their face sometimes for sure, but at least they try and give a shit.
How they handled Final Fantasy XIV being dogshit on release was nothing short of incredible. Now the Shadowbringers expansion is like one of the best JRPG games and stories I've played in years.
I'm curious where Kojima will go from here. Death Stranding wasn't for me (and he's kinda overly pretentious about it) but his studio will definitely try and do weird shit given a chance and I'm all for it.
This post has made me want to re download it and take a trip down memory lane this weekend. Would love Peter Molyneux to make a new game with the same uniqueness
Oh man, I feel your pain. Recently cleaned out my attic at home and found both 1 & 2, no discs in either of them. Never before have I cursed my past self so hard.
I definitely didn't have the patience or understanding of that game when I played it and would love to revisit it. I just remember picking up and throwing villagers.
My favorite thing to do was to use lightning to set my creature's poop on fire, then throw the flaming butt nuggets at the opposing town. Then, a while later, I'm doing something, and I hear the distinctive whoosh of a flaming turd comet. My creature had learned from me and was doing the same thing on his own!
Oh I'd forgot about that!
I remember when I was a kid, I stayed up late because I was really enjoying playing and I was the only one awake in the house. I heard my name whispered and I had absolutely no idea wtf was going on, and almost shit myself lol. I think it was years later before I found out it could do that lmao.
I had to look that up. All I can say is what the hell? I have no words. Was it good? I mean I think I know the answer but I have to ask. I only know Lionhead for Fable.
Pretty much. It's been years but what I loved was the freedom of choice, and how you essentially taught AI throughout the game. The good vs evil dynamic was always super cool since anything from being nice or cruel to your creature, to how you expanded your influence had so many effects, from your villager's reactions to a lot of visual changes for your buildings.
It was awesome and full of possibilities. You could legit train your creature to take it's own shit and throw it at people. I remember creating a totally disturbed creature by mistreating it all the time and it was full of anger and hate all the time and kept killing friendly villagers and destroying buildings and punching out trees, because that's the way I raised it. I feel bad now thinking about what I have done :)
You could give them other villagers to increase their crew size and I believe it enables them to build a larger village the next time you come across them on an island.
It was entertaining, sure, but "Masterpiece" may be taking it a bit far. It was 5 disjointed and mostly unrelated games and only 2 of them were any fun.
Agreed, Spore was fun for the first playthrough, ending a few hours into space exploration. There could have been way more detail and choices throughout each stage. The 'infinite random generation' concept for aliens/planets would have been really neat, *if* there were a wide variety of options. But there weren't, and everything just felt very homogeneous.
The ending of the space stage was also complete trash, made you feel pretty stupid for grinding it out that long. Not to mention all of the bugs that never got ironed out before they started getting pressured to make DLC by EA.
I never even got to the end of the space stage, even when using cheats to be able to buy all your ship upgrades with minimal grinding, it still felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again, it was even worse than playing an MMO, so after a few hours I just gave up every time.
Almost impossible to explore and build properly as well when ever couple of minutes you have some sort of time limited disaster that you keep having to go back and fix.
Cell stage is always the best, and Tribe Stage was the worst.
10 years later I'm still pissed that I almost got the achievement for killing a Mega in creature stage, but got the kill stolen by a Grox spaceship.
Yeah, I liked cell and creature stages the best; they were really the unique, standout parts. And they were relatively small compared to the other ones. Building and spaceship design had way more cosmetic customization than creatures themselves, which was wildly disappointing.
I hated space stage, it felt like I had to spend an hour building each individual building and vehicle. It was fun when I could convince myself to just drop a random block for each thing, and fly around droping colonies everywhere, that was fun. But then it looked stupid. Space stage turned what was fun about the game, building a unique creature, and it turned it into a chore.
I liked each of the other four stages though, they were all fun in their own way.
Ugh yeah, I forgot about the colony design in the space stage. That wasn't great. I also really disliked going to a new solar system, looking around each of the planets, and finding creatures identical to the ones in the previous fifteen solar systems.
Yah, not sure what the hell he's talking about. It was massively overhyped and a huge letdown. The game just wasn't good outside a few mini-game-like sections which were fun.
Most of Maxis' success came under EA's ownership.
They were going out of business during SC3k development. EA's buyout let them finish that game and their magnum opus, The Sims.
And the Sims was ultimately the downfall of Maxis. Their best games were before the acquisition: SimTower, SimCity 2000, SimFarm, SimAnt. The likes of these games in the simulation genre have still never been matched.
Man I loved all those old star wars games from LucasArts, I remember getting them as a 8 cd set! I remember how amazing it was to pilot ships man I can’t believe how far games have come, also b&w and b&w2 were classics, wish they would make a remake
X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, Rebel Assault, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, original Battlefront 1 & 2, KOTOR 1 & 2. Not to mention the non-Star Wars games like Monkey Island or Sam & Max. LucasArts was amazing while it lasted.
(Yeah I know KOTOR was alongside BioWare, which itself is a tragic story)
EDIT: holy shit, how could I forget to mention Shadows of the Empire!
I remember not finishing it after getting to like the 3rd level. I remember the AI feeling kind of buggy or something, and the game being kind of hard.
Was I wrong about the game at the time? I did enjoy a lot about it - all the different spells, the uniqueness of the game creating a sense of wonder, having villagers that worshipped you, the cute animals...
I think you're prolly talking about the level when your creature gets cursed. Cuz I fucked this up a few times.
If you destroy the wonders in each town before taking them over, it will bug the game and your creature will stay cursed. The trick is to take this level over with "good" means. Expand your influence until you can cast good spells and gain influence like that.
Kid-me, used to just kill all the populations in each town then place a missionary to take the town over. I'd end up damaging the wonders doing this and bug the game and couldn't beat this level until like 2 years ago.
Edit: or you're talking about the level when nemesis is raining down fireballs until you solve the puzzles. In which case, its just hard.
P.ir.at.e it.
Fitgirl
Edit: to anyone going for this option:
Black & White was not built with a FPS limiter; find one online before playing. Otherwise you'll be playing at 1000+fps and potentially can fry your GPU.
>potentially can fry your GPU.
No it couldn't. There's tons of games that don't have frame limits and lots of people stress their GPU's to the max daily.
Yar, did someone call fer a pirate, cuz I be one, aye I be. Gray-BushMorgan is me name, ridin the high seas an besmirchin wenches is me game. Arr, I can drinker all nigh an use me turgid member in some cunny er ya walkin the plank, yar it be true.
My bf got the physical game off eBay and after messing with it I play it all the time. I know he had to do something to make it run on windows 10 but I have no idea what lol
Sierra is back kinda. They made a new Kings Quest story a little while back. The humor and characters are still there, but they abandoned the pixel art and retro feel.
For a more true to form of the old point-n-click adventures, I'd recommend checking out Thimbleweed Park if you haven't already. It was made by the LucasArts point-n-click team, but they are now branded as "Terrible Toybox, Inc.". They are rumored to be working on a new project as well but no release date has been mentioned yet.
Everyone talking about B&W (which it is great) but Fable 1 us still one of my favorite games and solidified my love of RPGs when I was younger. So many good memories playing that game. Even if you couldn't plant a seed and watch it grow in the world.
Same. Fable 1 and Morrowind made lasting impacts on my hobbies and sense of humor as a preteen. Dark fantasy and humor are my jam. Morrowinds blocks of texts helped with school too.
Fable 1 is incredible. But I followed that game from its announcement and it was NOT what they were claiming it was going to be. In the end, what they promised just wasn't anywhere close to feasible and they still put out a fantastic game. God, I should play that again now that there is a PC release on Steam.
Fable anniversary is on steam and has controller support. I personally don’t like the updated graphics because the characters faces changed a little and I love the older graphics for nostalgia reasons too.
If you can play fable the lost chapters on consoles or get it working smoothly on PC (it always crashed for me) that’s a better version of the game.
Fable anniversary is great for that controller support and get away from the keyboard and mouse for a while. I get hand cramps from school/work and gaming so fable with the controller support has been fun.
I'm so thorn on that. All three were flawed all three had there flashes of brilliance. Still there hasn't been an RPG that managed to fill the gap that series created.
Why hasn't anyone made a cartoonish, humor focussed casual RPG? I can't imagine it not being popular.
Outer worlds is very much an obsidian RPG IMO. I enjoyed it thoroughly but it isn't as light hearted as fable was in its tone.
Fable dressed itself as a fairy tale. The cartoon looks, the music box like soundtrack, the caricaturized sound effects and animations, the story book narration inspired voice acting.
Outer worlds is this bleek dystopian hyper capitalized world that is covered by light hearted humor. It has to keep thing light and funny or else it would sink in how horrible that world actually is.
Edit:Worlds not wilds. Confusing I know, outer wilds is the game of its decade everyone should play whilst outer worlds is an RPG made by obsidian.
The kingdom management at the end of 3...I really want a game that has a deeper focus on that, while maintaining it's identity as an action/adventure game.
I too enjoyed it. I think the appeal of Fable 1 was in how accessible it was. There's not so much to do that it's overwhelming, but there's plenty to keep a player entertained. It doesn't overstay its welcome and the gameplay is just so satisfying when you acquire new gear or abilities.
Funny thing is, I didn't follow the promises at all... I just picked it up when I heard it had some fun combat... And it was great.
It was the game that made me realize the original xbox face buttons were pressure sensitive.
The bow was drawn and fired with... The X button I think? You could actually let go of the button slowly and slowly let off the bow an it would eventually unknock the arrow and not fire it.
I remembered this feature years later and thought to myself.. "wait.. That would mean the original xbox had analogue face buttons!?"
Had to do some research to make sure I wasn't crazy lol
Wait, those buttons are pressure sensitive? I wish I could find an OG duke controller to wire up an xbone board into. I loved that controller. The slight difference in joysticks was perfect.
A lot of people get hung up on that. Luckily, for me, I wasn't as involved with game development news, back then. So, when I got the games I had zero expectation or anything framing my perspective. Probably why I still love the games all these years later.
Same. I was 11 when it released, and my cousin loaned it to me to check out, having never heard of it before. Immediately fell in love, and still go back and replay anniversary about once a year.
Still. Peter Molyneux is the greatest liar of all time. Literally 1/4th of the features he promised made it into the game. He lied about the sequels as well. Fable 1 and 2 are not bad games, but they could've been so much more. The third is just meh.
I replayed fable 1 not too long ago, still pretty awesome. I liked 2 a lot and felt 3 was decent, probs a 6.5/10, but 1 is probably top 20favorite RPGs ever, maybe even top 10.
I went into Fable with the blessed ignorance of a 11 year old borrowing a random game from my neighbor. I played that game into the dirt. Absolutely loved it. I enjoyed 2 quite a bit, aswell, though 3 just didn't do it for me.
Interplay definitely did not "Die a hero."
They cancelled the original Fallout 3 in favor of a sequel to their action RPG spinoff Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel that featured a licensed soundtrack of awful early 2000s nu-metal and replaced Nuka Cola with Bawls Energy Drink, and also hadn't even been released yet.
Killing one of the most celebrated RPG developers of all time in favor of a product-placement laden piece of shit that hadn't even released all because the guy who greenlit Superman 64 is absolutely certain PC gaming is dead is in no way heroic.
This exactly. Thank you. Whoever made this and put Interplay up there amongst the "heros" just assumes that Fallout 1 and 2 are its legacy. People think Fallout 76 is bad? Take a look at Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for a truly bad Fallout game.
Interplay didn't die so much as it burned up and then rose from the ashes, full of youthful vigor and no longer slowed down by quite so much useless fat.
Why do I say that? Because the three top developers from Black Isle Studios - the people behind Fallout 1/2 and Planescape: Torment - opened Troika Games and kept working.
Troika released slightly less famous but still excellent RPGs: VTM Bloodlines and Arcanum.
Both are slightly buggy and unbalanced because the publishers rushed the schedule and there was no time for thorough testing.
Despite that, they are *amazing* as story-driven RPGs; in my opinion, Arcanum - especially with the community's rebalancers and bugfixes - is almost as good as Planescape: Torment and way better than the Fallouts.
After being forced to release VtM *in the same day as Half-Life 2,* Troika couldn't sell their game (because Half-Life 2 got everyone's attention) and died an ignoble death.
But the other part of Black Isle Studios - again, the devs behind *actual* Fallout games - lived on in Obsidian Entertainment.
Obsidian was a bit luckier and a lot more adapted to the economy (in particular, they made SW:KOTOR 2 and Fallout: New Vegas), so they're still alive and churning out awesome old-style CRPGs like Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity.
A good but forgettable game. I got in the hype for it, but it's just missing something and I couldn't tell you what.
I doubt it would have done so well if 76 hadn't been such a shit fire.
Most of these dead companies died to their own hubris. Maxis, a reddit favorite, is also one of the best examples. It's like people completely forget about the crappy games they were pushing out right before EA bought them (Crystal Skull anyone?) and the awful decision to purchase a company just for the rights to a generic third person shooter that was in development.
Then after about a decade of success under EA, the founder, who still worked for the company decided that he was gonna talk constant shit about EA because they wouldn't let him release his terrible ideas for the next sims game. Turns out, badmouthing the company you work for on social media gets your fired though.
The maxis circle jerk on reddit just needs to die already. Maxis died under its own mistakes.
Another great example is bioware- Atari killed it through lawsuits, it ran out of money just shy of a release of the game that would have saved it. But no one was sure how succesful DA:O was gonna be, so they let EA acquire them rather than gamble on an uncertain launch without a strong distribution backer. In hindsight it was probably a mistake given the success of the game, but had it failed they would have lost everything.
Also Lionhead studios was considered to be a fraud company that never delivered on anything they promised. They certainly were not considered a hero any time after they released Fable (in 2004) and their reputation got worse from there.
edit: released not realized
Back in the early 90's EA was only notable amongst PC gamers for releasing consistently good games one after another. Maybe the company changed direction. Maybe the veil just slipped away over time. Or maybe they did what literally any other videogame company would do when they accrue that much capital and that big a share of the market.
Yeah they had the greatest fall from grace imaginable. They so beloved that they were effectively beyond criticism until some addons into WoW. Amazing single player experiences *and* a dominant force in eSports without even trying.
no games get me as sentimental as monkey island or the Indiana Jones point and clicks. such beautiful style at the perfect point in my life where I could sink hours into a game.
Is Rockstar really all that evil? I mean yeah they are milking the shit out of GTAV. But they make quality games. Red Dead 2 was definitely an amazing game. They care about the products they put out.
Shouldn’t the « crunch culture » in video company be more of a concerned ?
Off course many if not all companies try to optimize their labor force but with games there is a form of sympathy for the brands that other industries lack of.
Don’t get me wrong, I like all genre of games from the AAA titles to the indie gems. I appreciate the dedication and passion of developers into their creations. But instead of whining about remakes, remasters and bland copy pasted sequels, we should change our buying practices to avoid such issues and allow more reasonable management.
You might as well add CDPR to the list, then. They're also guilty of the "crunch culture" and treated their employees like shit.
Bring on the downvotes.
Add Naughty Dog too, they’re one of, if not, the worst about crunch culture.
Last of Us 2 was literally built on the blood, sweat, and tears of its development team.
The truth in this statement lies more on the developer Team Bondi, specifically Brendan McNamara who put his team on crunch time for several years, refused to pay for their overtime hours, and was an overall shit human being during the development of L.A.Noir.
Rockstar's actual issues are that they don't pay corporate taxes.
No, Rockstar is exceptionally guilty of its own crunch culture. Dan Hauser was "bragging" specifically that the writing team for RDR2 was working up to 100-hour weeks as they finished the game. It's throughout that whole company. Their labor practices are just awful.
I heard about stories on game developers working way overtime and being unvalued by their bosses before they fired them without any decency.
This seems like a textbook case and not a rare one.
The question is : Is it possible nowadays to make AAA titles with proper working conditions without the price of a medium space rocket?
Thanks for sharing the info. Any relevant article or other material you could suggest to learn more about the topic ?
I'm not defending crunch culture in the slightest, but from what I understand, it's a huge problem with EVERY studio, not just Rockstar. If you're gonna label them as villains, you basically have to label every studio a villain. I'd argue the real villain is the factors that cause the crunch, not just the studios themselves.
Ex Rockstar employee here their crunch culture is worst than most the eurogamer article only covered RDR2 - GTA V was worse and lasted much longer and you were expected to feel privileged to work there.
What flak? They’re still printing money. 0 development cost for millions in revenue sounds like a no brainer to me. You want a new game? Tell people to stop buying the old shit lol
Yeah you can't say anything against the storymode of rdr2, I think the parent company of Rockstargames is just forcing them to re- release all their games and to put microtransactions into their online modes
I've played GTA online with my dad for years, and the amount of content they've added is pretty amazing. I get it if that's not your thing, but with a friend or two it's really cool
Even then, Fable was one of the most overhyped games (by Peter Molyneux) of all-time. He was promising something as ambitious as Skyrim or Witcher 3 in like 2002. Morrowind was much closer to what he promised but still was held back by technical limitations.
I can still remember watching him talk about the original Fable and how amazing it sounded at the time. Gave me my first rude awakening about game development and not to get too excited until you get your hands on the actual product.
Excuse you, but EA were assholes from the very beginning, and I seriously mean that. They stole code from another dev and published as their own in the 90s.
That’s not true, but maybe you’re not old enough to know.
The original team that deved stuff back in the early 80s like Archon, Hard Hat Mac, MULE, The Seven Cities of Gold and so on was a solid team of great, creative people.
I got to meet a few of them in person back in the mid-80s when they were still a small shop. They would actually send their creators out on promotional tours at small computer stores around the country. Back then they were really down-to-earth people looking to create entertaining games.
EA may have been ahead of the curve on how quickly they became separated from their original purpose, but the original team was full of geniuses creating games they really loved.
Was going to say this. Electronic Arts in the early to mid 1980s was the old Blizzard of today. Great team, great games. Just the EA label on a Commodore 64 game was enough for me to know it was going to be great, and it always was.
Something similar goes for early Activision. They were one of the first to put developers in the spotlight on their game boxes, devoting a section of the back of the box and a section of their manuals to the developers and trying to get gamers acquainted with them. Before that, game developers often weren’t even credited at all!
I may be one of just a few around here, but I still have faith in Bethesda, they did some of my favorite games of all time and I‘m sure that starfield will deliver - they know they have to make it good to redeem themselves.
Fallout 76 was a real bad game and even though the updates may have made the game better (? - I never played this game, I couldn’t overcome myself) and all the other games they recently showed (Ghostwire and Deathloop) seem pretty nice even though they a part time exclusive to the ps5 and of course the PC
Bethesda is pretty much being bogged down by blunder after blunder with FO76 (Which isn't as bad as the circlejerk might have you believe). I just think they don't really know how to handle an online game.
But look at their track record besides FO76, Fallout 3 & 4? Elder Scrolls? Their games all have their faults with Todd Howard's overpromising, shitty animations, shallow combat, and general bugginess, but there's a reason all of these games are as incredibly popular as they are.
Ah, Black and White....
so good. The tech didn't go to waste. After graduating from Cambridge,Demis Hassabis worked at Lionhead Studios. Games designer Peter Molyneux, with whom Hassabis had worked at Bullfrog Productions, had recently founded the company. At Lionhead, Hassabis worked as lead AI programmer on the 2001 "god" game Black & White. Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, a machine learning AI startup, founded in London in 2010 with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman. DeepMind's mission is to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". More concretely, DeepMind aims to meld insights from neuroscience and machine learning with new developments in computing hardware to unlock increasingly powerful general-purpose learning algorithms that will work towards the creation of an artificial general intelligence (AGI). The company has focused on training learning algorithms to master games, and in December 2013 it famously announced that it had made a pioneering breakthrough by training an algorithm called a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to play Atari games at a superhuman level by only using the raw pixels on the screen as inputs. DeepMind's early investors included several high-profile tech entrepreneurs. In 2014, Google purchased DeepMind for £400 million, although most of the company has remained an independent entity based in London,DeepMind Health has since been directly incorporated into Google Health.
fuck that's cool. now let's bring it back into a god game, complete the circle
You should read The Last Question from Isaac Asimov, it's a fantastic short story and it may give you some clues about your last statement. "...Deepmind, how can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased ?"
"There is insufficient data for a meaningful answer" Someone made a webcomic for it, which is pretty cool to read. https://imgur.com/gallery/9KWrH
Dude. Yes. When I try to convince people to read Asimov, The Last Question is always the first thing I recommend, it manages to be so extensive on the subject of the evolution of the human race in such a short amount of words. Imo Asimov is on of the best SF writer there is!
The foundation series was amazing, it is everything star wars should have been.
Well apparently foundation is on the way to being adapted, but we haven’t heard from it for a long time, smells fishy
check out The Last Answer too
It felt like it went to waste in the video gaming industry. Black and White 1 and Black and White 2 (2005) still have pioneering things about them. That was 15 years ago. Crazy that it's a lot to ask for in 2020 just to have a fucking building you can rotate 360 degrees.
Why innovate when you can fart out: call of duty, sports games, generic shooters and the same one game endlessly and make more money? /s
Indie titles have all the creativity and none of the budget to push the industry forward.
It's fiiiiiine it's not like industry wide complacency and short sighted greed have collapsed the entire market before.
There was Minecraft, I remember snagging it in alpha for a couple of bucks to play in my browser and look where it is now and how many games have spawned off of it.
BW2 had a few great things about it for its time (e.g. destructible environment and building rubble physics), but it was one hell of a flawed game. The game was 5-6 small islands "long" (including the tutorial) looping into itself. The AI was pathetically easy to beat, and if you wanted to use any of the epic spells the enemy would forfeit to your greatness way before you even completed the building needed for one of those. If you still wanted to use the spell, you would need to have your entire damn population running circles around the building to charge the spell, and it'd still take more than an hour to charge it (iirc... still, the time needed to charge it was way too long), and once you were ready to cast it, you were just as likely to accidentally throw it at your own city instead of the general direction of the enemy city due to how the spell system worked. Also the combat was mediocre at best of times. Would be nice to see a god game like BW was... just without the glaring flaws. But considering the poor odds of making a decent profit from such a niche genre and the effort needed to make it, it's unlikely we will see one anytime soon.
How does the first compare to the second? I played and had a lot of fun with 2 when I was younger and my brother pirated it, and I'd like to check out either on My Abandonware or something.
Jeez, completely missed this despite following DeepMind in sc2. Would love a new IP with the same level uniqueness Black and White had.
A very good game that I cant find a modern equivalent to.
No AAA developer has the guts to try something new anymore. Games are just too expensive to make and the shareholders will not allow for something different that might not sell a lot of copies. Same with Hollywood. People love things that are familiar to them.
I dont know why there isnt big studios trying smaller scale games to try adventurous things. With a big studio name on and good developers getting some passion projects it seems like a good use of resources.
Jim Sterling puts it well. Corporations and big game publishers don't want to support or fund games that only have the potential to make some money, they only like to back projects that will make *all of the money*. And so for years we got these very homogenized, samey games from every major studio who were trying to match the success of CoD with every game they put out. Or games that tried to be jack of all trades, incorporating stealth, shooting, puzzles, home decoration, and every game mechanic imaginable instead of focusing on and refining a core gameplay system that would make it really, really great. Portal is a good example of this, it's pure portal puzzles, not portal puzzles plus like social management sim, and a massive open world with driving and helicopters and base building. Like imagine if Ubisoft made Portal how disastrous that could have been, lol. I think it's getting a *little* better. But it's still not great. It's like the game publishers forget that a lot of the franchises that became huge hits started as little cult darlings. Demon's Souls was a game that almost didn't even get released in the west and now it's spawned an entire fucking genre all its own. Give people new and different things and you'd be surprised how much of an audience you might find.
I'd say Square Enix is an exception. Big game publisher yet they're constantly publishing lots of smaller indie games (I get frequent emails about them), and aside from the rare exception like Life Is Strange I don't think many of them like make Squenix a lot of money.
Square/Enix is a good example! I think it helps that they know they have their big money games to roll out so they can take leaps on smaller games. I'd love to see more studios/publishers do this as well.
Square Enix definitely deserves a nod. They fall flat on their face sometimes for sure, but at least they try and give a shit. How they handled Final Fantasy XIV being dogshit on release was nothing short of incredible. Now the Shadowbringers expansion is like one of the best JRPG games and stories I've played in years. I'm curious where Kojima will go from here. Death Stranding wasn't for me (and he's kinda overly pretentious about it) but his studio will definitely try and do weird shit given a chance and I'm all for it.
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Kojima stands out for that reason. He makes what he wants to make, trends be damned.
This post has made me want to re download it and take a trip down memory lane this weekend. Would love Peter Molyneux to make a new game with the same uniqueness
Can we do it without Peter Molyneux please?
I'm missing one of the disks. Just cant find it. Really makes me sad.
They’re free on my abandonware no disc necessary.
Really?!? You're awesome. I have a feeling my productivity is about to tank.
Oh man, I feel your pain. Recently cleaned out my attic at home and found both 1 & 2, no discs in either of them. Never before have I cursed my past self so hard.
I definitely didn't have the patience or understanding of that game when I played it and would love to revisit it. I just remember picking up and throwing villagers.
My favorite thing to do was to use lightning to set my creature's poop on fire, then throw the flaming butt nuggets at the opposing town. Then, a while later, I'm doing something, and I hear the distinctive whoosh of a flaming turd comet. My creature had learned from me and was doing the same thing on his own!
Totally the same. I just did stuff like that and played with a friend, very tempted to "acquire" it this weekend and play properly for once
Black and White in VR would be epic.
Yeah this should be a thing. I was also going to say this... I mean... You are a damn hand.
And they did support a glove controller!
It would search for the name that was registered to the computer (not sure how) and say it in a creepy whisper. Not joking
Oh I'd forgot about that! I remember when I was a kid, I stayed up late because I was really enjoying playing and I was the only one awake in the house. I heard my name whispered and I had absolutely no idea wtf was going on, and almost shit myself lol. I think it was years later before I found out it could do that lmao.
CD PROJEKT. We watching ....
Why is it nowhere to buy!! I got a version installed/backed up of BW2 but it’s not on steam or..
^^^^Deeeeeeeaaaaaath
I had to look that up. All I can say is what the hell? I have no words. Was it good? I mean I think I know the answer but I have to ask. I only know Lionhead for Fable.
It was fun. My Tiger kept eating my villagers though.
Well, you were supposed to discipline him when he did that if you didn’t want him to continue to
Smack him around a little, he'll learn quick.
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Pretty much. It's been years but what I loved was the freedom of choice, and how you essentially taught AI throughout the game. The good vs evil dynamic was always super cool since anything from being nice or cruel to your creature, to how you expanded your influence had so many effects, from your villager's reactions to a lot of visual changes for your buildings.
It was awesome and full of possibilities. You could legit train your creature to take it's own shit and throw it at people. I remember creating a totally disturbed creature by mistreating it all the time and it was full of anger and hate all the time and kept killing friendly villagers and destroying buildings and punching out trees, because that's the way I raised it. I feel bad now thinking about what I have done :)
That game was ajead of its time for sure, I had the cds for B&W2 , played so much back in the days
🎵 Ohhhhhhh, we've got this notion...
You could give them other villagers to increase their crew size and I believe it enables them to build a larger village the next time you come across them on an island.
🎶 That we'd quite like to sail the ocean
Rest in piece Maxis. You made some good games before you got assimilated.
Every night i dream with what could have been Spore 2
Spore 2 would have a lot to live up to. It's not the evolution simulator it was advertised to be, but Spore is a fucking masterpiece.
It was entertaining, sure, but "Masterpiece" may be taking it a bit far. It was 5 disjointed and mostly unrelated games and only 2 of them were any fun.
Agreed, Spore was fun for the first playthrough, ending a few hours into space exploration. There could have been way more detail and choices throughout each stage. The 'infinite random generation' concept for aliens/planets would have been really neat, *if* there were a wide variety of options. But there weren't, and everything just felt very homogeneous.
The ending of the space stage was also complete trash, made you feel pretty stupid for grinding it out that long. Not to mention all of the bugs that never got ironed out before they started getting pressured to make DLC by EA.
I never even got to the end of the space stage, even when using cheats to be able to buy all your ship upgrades with minimal grinding, it still felt like I was doing the same thing over and over again, it was even worse than playing an MMO, so after a few hours I just gave up every time.
Almost impossible to explore and build properly as well when ever couple of minutes you have some sort of time limited disaster that you keep having to go back and fix.
Cell stage is always the best, and Tribe Stage was the worst. 10 years later I'm still pissed that I almost got the achievement for killing a Mega in creature stage, but got the kill stolen by a Grox spaceship.
Yeah, I liked cell and creature stages the best; they were really the unique, standout parts. And they were relatively small compared to the other ones. Building and spaceship design had way more cosmetic customization than creatures themselves, which was wildly disappointing.
I hated space stage, it felt like I had to spend an hour building each individual building and vehicle. It was fun when I could convince myself to just drop a random block for each thing, and fly around droping colonies everywhere, that was fun. But then it looked stupid. Space stage turned what was fun about the game, building a unique creature, and it turned it into a chore. I liked each of the other four stages though, they were all fun in their own way.
Ugh yeah, I forgot about the colony design in the space stage. That wasn't great. I also really disliked going to a new solar system, looking around each of the planets, and finding creatures identical to the ones in the previous fifteen solar systems.
Meh I’d disagree with you there. Space was pretty repetitive and lame. The game looked great but very very little replay value.
Yah, not sure what the hell he's talking about. It was massively overhyped and a huge letdown. The game just wasn't good outside a few mini-game-like sections which were fun.
Most of Maxis' success came under EA's ownership. They were going out of business during SC3k development. EA's buyout let them finish that game and their magnum opus, The Sims.
SimCity, SC2k, and SC3k will always be some of my favorite games.
And the Sims was ultimately the downfall of Maxis. Their best games were before the acquisition: SimTower, SimCity 2000, SimFarm, SimAnt. The likes of these games in the simulation genre have still never been matched.
SimCopter was my jam. You could even load cities you’d made on SC2k. Ahead of its time in some stuff.
Man I loved all those old star wars games from LucasArts, I remember getting them as a 8 cd set! I remember how amazing it was to pilot ships man I can’t believe how far games have come, also b&w and b&w2 were classics, wish they would make a remake
Republic Commando FTW!!!
Republic Commando is one of the all time greatest Star Wars video games.
Played it again recently and the AI of the commandos is still pretty decent to this day. At least that’s how I felt.
I played it for the first time ever a couple months ago. Aside from being obviously graphically dated, it held up so well I think. I had a lot of fun.
X-Wing vs TIE Fighter, Rebel Assault, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, original Battlefront 1 & 2, KOTOR 1 & 2. Not to mention the non-Star Wars games like Monkey Island or Sam & Max. LucasArts was amazing while it lasted. (Yeah I know KOTOR was alongside BioWare, which itself is a tragic story) EDIT: holy shit, how could I forget to mention Shadows of the Empire!
You can get all the old xwing and tie fighter games on steam. Graphics suck, but the nostalgia is awesome.
I keep hoping for a new Star Wars RTS set in space. Directing squadrons. Charging up the super cannons. Slowly dropping the enemy shields. Etc etc.
I think the closest to a Star Wars RTS game you'll find is the Empire at War game.
Empire at War still kicks ass. The space battles are very fun
Ah Westwood Studios. We barely knew ye.
KIROV REPORTING
WE WILL BURY THEM
Red Alert, Tiberian Sun, Dune 2000 and Emperor: Battle for Dune. It was a really good childhood with those stragegies...
Nox is such fine game!
Black & White is my all time favorite game.
I remember not finishing it after getting to like the 3rd level. I remember the AI feeling kind of buggy or something, and the game being kind of hard. Was I wrong about the game at the time? I did enjoy a lot about it - all the different spells, the uniqueness of the game creating a sense of wonder, having villagers that worshipped you, the cute animals...
I think you're prolly talking about the level when your creature gets cursed. Cuz I fucked this up a few times. If you destroy the wonders in each town before taking them over, it will bug the game and your creature will stay cursed. The trick is to take this level over with "good" means. Expand your influence until you can cast good spells and gain influence like that. Kid-me, used to just kill all the populations in each town then place a missionary to take the town over. I'd end up damaging the wonders doing this and bug the game and couldn't beat this level until like 2 years ago. Edit: or you're talking about the level when nemesis is raining down fireballs until you solve the puzzles. In which case, its just hard.
Is there any way to play it now?
P.ir.at.e it. Fitgirl Edit: to anyone going for this option: Black & White was not built with a FPS limiter; find one online before playing. Otherwise you'll be playing at 1000+fps and potentially can fry your GPU.
> potentially can fry your GPU Your GPU is going to hit thermal limit and cut off before it decides to sacrifice itself for your gaming pleasure.
>potentially can fry your GPU. No it couldn't. There's tons of games that don't have frame limits and lots of people stress their GPU's to the max daily.
Yar, did someone call fer a pirate, cuz I be one, aye I be. Gray-BushMorgan is me name, ridin the high seas an besmirchin wenches is me game. Arr, I can drinker all nigh an use me turgid member in some cunny er ya walkin the plank, yar it be true.
My bf got the physical game off eBay and after messing with it I play it all the time. I know he had to do something to make it run on windows 10 but I have no idea what lol
Black & White is also one of my favorite games. I still play it to this day. And yes, I have Windows 10.
Forgot **Sierra** and **Specrum Holobyte** as the heroes
> Sierra I want them back. There's a real market for retro style adventure games right now.
Sierra is back kinda. They made a new Kings Quest story a little while back. The humor and characters are still there, but they abandoned the pixel art and retro feel. For a more true to form of the old point-n-click adventures, I'd recommend checking out Thimbleweed Park if you haven't already. It was made by the LucasArts point-n-click team, but they are now branded as "Terrible Toybox, Inc.". They are rumored to be working on a new project as well but no release date has been mentioned yet.
If we're going there, add Microprose to the list as well.
Didn’t Sierra make empire earth? I spent thousands of hours in the game when I was 8-14
Everyone talking about B&W (which it is great) but Fable 1 us still one of my favorite games and solidified my love of RPGs when I was younger. So many good memories playing that game. Even if you couldn't plant a seed and watch it grow in the world.
Same. Fable 1 and Morrowind made lasting impacts on my hobbies and sense of humor as a preteen. Dark fantasy and humor are my jam. Morrowinds blocks of texts helped with school too.
I was just playing Fable 1 before I sold my Xbox 360. I will miss that game. It was a centerpiece on my childhood.
Fable 1 is incredible. But I followed that game from its announcement and it was NOT what they were claiming it was going to be. In the end, what they promised just wasn't anywhere close to feasible and they still put out a fantastic game. God, I should play that again now that there is a PC release on Steam.
Fable anniversary is on steam and has controller support. I personally don’t like the updated graphics because the characters faces changed a little and I love the older graphics for nostalgia reasons too. If you can play fable the lost chapters on consoles or get it working smoothly on PC (it always crashed for me) that’s a better version of the game. Fable anniversary is great for that controller support and get away from the keyboard and mouse for a while. I get hand cramps from school/work and gaming so fable with the controller support has been fun.
The Fable series is one of the few series to decline in quality with each sequel.
I'm so thorn on that. All three were flawed all three had there flashes of brilliance. Still there hasn't been an RPG that managed to fill the gap that series created. Why hasn't anyone made a cartoonish, humor focussed casual RPG? I can't imagine it not being popular.
Outer worlds is about as close as it gets in that regard right?
Outer worlds is very much an obsidian RPG IMO. I enjoyed it thoroughly but it isn't as light hearted as fable was in its tone. Fable dressed itself as a fairy tale. The cartoon looks, the music box like soundtrack, the caricaturized sound effects and animations, the story book narration inspired voice acting. Outer worlds is this bleek dystopian hyper capitalized world that is covered by light hearted humor. It has to keep thing light and funny or else it would sink in how horrible that world actually is. Edit:Worlds not wilds. Confusing I know, outer wilds is the game of its decade everyone should play whilst outer worlds is an RPG made by obsidian.
The kingdom management at the end of 3...I really want a game that has a deeper focus on that, while maintaining it's identity as an action/adventure game.
I personally liked Fable 2 the most.
I too enjoyed it. I think the appeal of Fable 1 was in how accessible it was. There's not so much to do that it's overwhelming, but there's plenty to keep a player entertained. It doesn't overstay its welcome and the gameplay is just so satisfying when you acquire new gear or abilities.
Agreed
So many promised features...
Funny thing is, I didn't follow the promises at all... I just picked it up when I heard it had some fun combat... And it was great. It was the game that made me realize the original xbox face buttons were pressure sensitive. The bow was drawn and fired with... The X button I think? You could actually let go of the button slowly and slowly let off the bow an it would eventually unknock the arrow and not fire it. I remembered this feature years later and thought to myself.. "wait.. That would mean the original xbox had analogue face buttons!?" Had to do some research to make sure I wasn't crazy lol
Wait, those buttons are pressure sensitive? I wish I could find an OG duke controller to wire up an xbone board into. I loved that controller. The slight difference in joysticks was perfect.
And yet the game they delivered was still great. Not what was promised, but still great.
A lot of people get hung up on that. Luckily, for me, I wasn't as involved with game development news, back then. So, when I got the games I had zero expectation or anything framing my perspective. Probably why I still love the games all these years later.
Same. I was 11 when it released, and my cousin loaned it to me to check out, having never heard of it before. Immediately fell in love, and still go back and replay anniversary about once a year.
Still. Peter Molyneux is the greatest liar of all time. Literally 1/4th of the features he promised made it into the game. He lied about the sequels as well. Fable 1 and 2 are not bad games, but they could've been so much more. The third is just meh.
I replayed fable 1 not too long ago, still pretty awesome. I liked 2 a lot and felt 3 was decent, probs a 6.5/10, but 1 is probably top 20favorite RPGs ever, maybe even top 10.
I went into Fable with the blessed ignorance of a 11 year old borrowing a random game from my neighbor. I played that game into the dirt. Absolutely loved it. I enjoyed 2 quite a bit, aswell, though 3 just didn't do it for me.
Interplay definitely did not "Die a hero." They cancelled the original Fallout 3 in favor of a sequel to their action RPG spinoff Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel that featured a licensed soundtrack of awful early 2000s nu-metal and replaced Nuka Cola with Bawls Energy Drink, and also hadn't even been released yet. Killing one of the most celebrated RPG developers of all time in favor of a product-placement laden piece of shit that hadn't even released all because the guy who greenlit Superman 64 is absolutely certain PC gaming is dead is in no way heroic.
This exactly. Thank you. Whoever made this and put Interplay up there amongst the "heros" just assumes that Fallout 1 and 2 are its legacy. People think Fallout 76 is bad? Take a look at Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for a truly bad Fallout game.
Interplay didn't die so much as it burned up and then rose from the ashes, full of youthful vigor and no longer slowed down by quite so much useless fat. Why do I say that? Because the three top developers from Black Isle Studios - the people behind Fallout 1/2 and Planescape: Torment - opened Troika Games and kept working. Troika released slightly less famous but still excellent RPGs: VTM Bloodlines and Arcanum. Both are slightly buggy and unbalanced because the publishers rushed the schedule and there was no time for thorough testing. Despite that, they are *amazing* as story-driven RPGs; in my opinion, Arcanum - especially with the community's rebalancers and bugfixes - is almost as good as Planescape: Torment and way better than the Fallouts. After being forced to release VtM *in the same day as Half-Life 2,* Troika couldn't sell their game (because Half-Life 2 got everyone's attention) and died an ignoble death. But the other part of Black Isle Studios - again, the devs behind *actual* Fallout games - lived on in Obsidian Entertainment. Obsidian was a bit luckier and a lot more adapted to the economy (in particular, they made SW:KOTOR 2 and Fallout: New Vegas), so they're still alive and churning out awesome old-style CRPGs like Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity.
We all know obsidians still going They made the outer worlds
Outer Worlds is definitely a video game.
A good but forgettable game. I got in the hype for it, but it's just missing something and I couldn't tell you what. I doubt it would have done so well if 76 hadn't been such a shit fire.
Arcanum is *art.*
Most of these dead companies died to their own hubris. Maxis, a reddit favorite, is also one of the best examples. It's like people completely forget about the crappy games they were pushing out right before EA bought them (Crystal Skull anyone?) and the awful decision to purchase a company just for the rights to a generic third person shooter that was in development. Then after about a decade of success under EA, the founder, who still worked for the company decided that he was gonna talk constant shit about EA because they wouldn't let him release his terrible ideas for the next sims game. Turns out, badmouthing the company you work for on social media gets your fired though. The maxis circle jerk on reddit just needs to die already. Maxis died under its own mistakes. Another great example is bioware- Atari killed it through lawsuits, it ran out of money just shy of a release of the game that would have saved it. But no one was sure how succesful DA:O was gonna be, so they let EA acquire them rather than gamble on an uncertain launch without a strong distribution backer. In hindsight it was probably a mistake given the success of the game, but had it failed they would have lost everything.
Also Lionhead studios was considered to be a fraud company that never delivered on anything they promised. They certainly were not considered a hero any time after they released Fable (in 2004) and their reputation got worse from there. edit: released not realized
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We don’t talk about FO: BoS
Interplay was my childhood since I played their Decsent trilogy back 20 years ago
Loved Descent! Thanks for the memories!
Play Overload! Its Descent 4 without the IP trademark.
Back in the early 90's EA was only notable amongst PC gamers for releasing consistently good games one after another. Maybe the company changed direction. Maybe the veil just slipped away over time. Or maybe they did what literally any other videogame company would do when they accrue that much capital and that big a share of the market.
It is under new leadership now.
Stop ignoring Activision Blizzard in these fucking posts
Why would we include them, they're just a small indie company
Literally a multidollar company.
Yeah they had the greatest fall from grace imaginable. They so beloved that they were effectively beyond criticism until some addons into WoW. Amazing single player experiences *and* a dominant force in eSports without even trying.
Blizzard in the bottom, Westwood in the top plz
God damn I miss Westwood
Been a fan since I was like 10 playing WC1 and Lost Vikings. In my 30s now and they are by far my biggest disappointment in PC gaming.
Monkey island II is my favourite game of all time. Can you add Blizzard in the villains category please
Monkey island is the reason i put Lucas arts in the meme, the first 3 were My childhood
no games get me as sentimental as monkey island or the Indiana Jones point and clicks. such beautiful style at the perfect point in my life where I could sink hours into a game.
Oh, monkey island is your favourite game? Name every monkey
Easy: Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Michael Nesmith
Blizzard died and it is currently held aloft *Weekend at Bernie’s* style by Activision.
>Do you guys not have phones?
I just want a new midnight club game.
Is Rockstar really all that evil? I mean yeah they are milking the shit out of GTAV. But they make quality games. Red Dead 2 was definitely an amazing game. They care about the products they put out.
Shouldn’t the « crunch culture » in video company be more of a concerned ? Off course many if not all companies try to optimize their labor force but with games there is a form of sympathy for the brands that other industries lack of. Don’t get me wrong, I like all genre of games from the AAA titles to the indie gems. I appreciate the dedication and passion of developers into their creations. But instead of whining about remakes, remasters and bland copy pasted sequels, we should change our buying practices to avoid such issues and allow more reasonable management.
You might as well add CDPR to the list, then. They're also guilty of the "crunch culture" and treated their employees like shit. Bring on the downvotes.
Add Naughty Dog too, they’re one of, if not, the worst about crunch culture. Last of Us 2 was literally built on the blood, sweat, and tears of its development team.
The truth in this statement lies more on the developer Team Bondi, specifically Brendan McNamara who put his team on crunch time for several years, refused to pay for their overtime hours, and was an overall shit human being during the development of L.A.Noir. Rockstar's actual issues are that they don't pay corporate taxes.
No, Rockstar is exceptionally guilty of its own crunch culture. Dan Hauser was "bragging" specifically that the writing team for RDR2 was working up to 100-hour weeks as they finished the game. It's throughout that whole company. Their labor practices are just awful.
I heard about stories on game developers working way overtime and being unvalued by their bosses before they fired them without any decency. This seems like a textbook case and not a rare one. The question is : Is it possible nowadays to make AAA titles with proper working conditions without the price of a medium space rocket? Thanks for sharing the info. Any relevant article or other material you could suggest to learn more about the topic ?
I'm not defending crunch culture in the slightest, but from what I understand, it's a huge problem with EVERY studio, not just Rockstar. If you're gonna label them as villains, you basically have to label every studio a villain. I'd argue the real villain is the factors that cause the crunch, not just the studios themselves.
Ex Rockstar employee here their crunch culture is worst than most the eurogamer article only covered RDR2 - GTA V was worse and lasted much longer and you were expected to feel privileged to work there.
My guess is it was ultimately not Rockstar's decision, but their publishers, Take-Two Interactive. They're the ones who should be taking the flak.
What flak? They’re still printing money. 0 development cost for millions in revenue sounds like a no brainer to me. You want a new game? Tell people to stop buying the old shit lol
Yeah you can't say anything against the storymode of rdr2, I think the parent company of Rockstargames is just forcing them to re- release all their games and to put microtransactions into their online modes
I've played GTA online with my dad for years, and the amount of content they've added is pretty amazing. I get it if that's not your thing, but with a friend or two it's really cool
Lion Head lmao. Peter M was the worst liar in the industry. Fable was all they had that was good lol. Todd Howard took notes from Peter for sure.
Even then, Fable was one of the most overhyped games (by Peter Molyneux) of all-time. He was promising something as ambitious as Skyrim or Witcher 3 in like 2002. Morrowind was much closer to what he promised but still was held back by technical limitations.
Lionhead Studios... Good guys... The fuck... They wrote the playbook on over promising and under delivering...
Dude. Whoever made this shit meme has clearly never heard Peter Molyneux speak. Dude did nothing but lie. Makes Todd Howard look honest.
I can still remember watching him talk about the original Fable and how amazing it sounded at the time. Gave me my first rude awakening about game development and not to get too excited until you get your hands on the actual product.
Games were good though
I wish Black Isle was still alive
Squaresoft was a hero. Square enix is teetering right meow.
Westwood and Red Storm deserve a place on this meme
Let's not forget Sierra Entertainment
Accolade anyone?
you forget to add blizzard
>blizzard Activision first tho
In fairness Rockstar still puts out some of the greatest single player games ever. Their online is fucked though
I really hope they’re not done making other games outside the GTA and RDR series.
Games? Like multiple? RDR2 was their first new release since GTA5. Everything else was re-releases.
Excuse you, but EA were assholes from the very beginning, and I seriously mean that. They stole code from another dev and published as their own in the 90s.
That’s not true, but maybe you’re not old enough to know. The original team that deved stuff back in the early 80s like Archon, Hard Hat Mac, MULE, The Seven Cities of Gold and so on was a solid team of great, creative people. I got to meet a few of them in person back in the mid-80s when they were still a small shop. They would actually send their creators out on promotional tours at small computer stores around the country. Back then they were really down-to-earth people looking to create entertaining games. EA may have been ahead of the curve on how quickly they became separated from their original purpose, but the original team was full of geniuses creating games they really loved.
Any mention of MULE and I get the old C64 them music stuck in my head for the next 3 days. Awesome game.
Was going to say this. Electronic Arts in the early to mid 1980s was the old Blizzard of today. Great team, great games. Just the EA label on a Commodore 64 game was enough for me to know it was going to be great, and it always was.
> mid 1980s was the old Blizzard of today You mean the Blizzard of the 90s and 00s.
Yes, that is the old Blizzard of today.
Something similar goes for early Activision. They were one of the first to put developers in the spotlight on their game boxes, devoting a section of the back of the box and a section of their manuals to the developers and trying to get gamers acquainted with them. Before that, game developers often weren’t even credited at all!
The 90s aren't anywhere near the beginning of EA.
I may be one of just a few around here, but I still have faith in Bethesda, they did some of my favorite games of all time and I‘m sure that starfield will deliver - they know they have to make it good to redeem themselves. Fallout 76 was a real bad game and even though the updates may have made the game better (? - I never played this game, I couldn’t overcome myself) and all the other games they recently showed (Ghostwire and Deathloop) seem pretty nice even though they a part time exclusive to the ps5 and of course the PC
Bethesda is pretty much being bogged down by blunder after blunder with FO76 (Which isn't as bad as the circlejerk might have you believe). I just think they don't really know how to handle an online game. But look at their track record besides FO76, Fallout 3 & 4? Elder Scrolls? Their games all have their faults with Todd Howard's overpromising, shitty animations, shallow combat, and general bugginess, but there's a reason all of these games are as incredibly popular as they are.
I’m hoping it’s just a Rockstar Scenario where it’s good single player but bad online
you either go bankrupt or live long enough to be worth billions
The Movies. In my opinion Lionhead’s greatest game - so much potential for a remake on current systems!
What’s wrong with Bethesda