38 Studios Chairman and Founder Curt Schilling took the company’s official forums to discuss the decision of adding an Online Pass to the awaited Kingdoms of Amalur.
Why do game studios keep imploding?
Dysfunction is baked into the video game production process, as it currently exists. The big-budget games industry is dominated by a few large companies, the publishers. Like book publishers, they are responsible for distributing and marketing games (much but not all of this is entirely digital now, but most of the publishers established themselves when game distribution meant getting physical discs and cartridges on retail store shelves). Games are actually made by studios, which are generally either owned directly by the publishers or independent. Making big-budget video games takes an enormous amount of highly specialized labor. It is possible for one person to make a game, and even for that game to be a hit, but the biggest, most profitable games released each year are nearly always made by enormous teams of people, working directly or indirectly for those publishers.
Create their own studio ala Activision but never forget where they came from ala Activision
Unions breed garbage product no matter what’s being made. Passion and drive to make awesome stuff goes out the window and it’s replaced by laziness, seniority over skill, office politics and all around horseshit. As a welder of 23 years, I’ve seen it first hand, over and over again.
I’d say there’s a time and a place for unions. If work conditions have gotten so bad because the company is run by tyrants, unions will help.
But, on the contrary, I work for one of those rare companies that is better for the employee than a union is. Family owned, we purchased a new facility in Jersey and the workers voted the union out based on the offer (pay, hours, benefits, etc). Now we have UNION scabs, hired by the union, to protest against us at various locations.
Do you remember the good old days, when video games put fast hack-and-slashing combat sequences and extensive levelling systems first and a deep narrative with memorable characters second? BigHuge Games certainly banked on gamers holding some kind of nostalgia for those titles of yore with their fantasy RPG Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning.
This is hilarious that i would see an article after I went and re-bought the game and playing it all week! I love the QTEs in this game its satisfying, the combat is fluid where you can switch from weapons to magic so easily, the weapons, armor, quests, character customizations, lore, world, voice acting, are all great this game has almost everything you'd need and want from an RPG!
I really wish there was going to be a KoAR 2!
COG writes - The games of the last generation were amazing and the COGconnected team decided to get together to countdown their favorites. The countdown inches to number 6 and the games are starting to get good... real good.
People are sooo stupid and cheap. Learn to budget your money, and buying a game new wont be such an issue. We, as gamers, made the CHOICE of investing into the industry, buying whatever console you prefered. If you dont like how much games cost, or if there is an online pass...sell your system, and purchase a last-gen model and play for free/cheap all you want. If you cant accept the fact that these developers are in the BUSINESS of making money, thats an indictment of how dumb you really are. I've been a gamer since Nintendo launched its first system, and I can appreciate the effort put into these games, and I can understand the importance of developers making money. Welcome to the business world people.
I support used game sales, like any used product market, if we didn't have it, we would have landfills full of perfectly good game discs doing god knows what to the environment over decades of erosion in the soil. Nobody is whining about used furniture sales, DVD movie sales or used audio CD sales, but somehow games are supposed to be held to a higher standard, even to the point where ignorant narrow minded individuals will refer to people who buy used games "pirates". Give me a break.
At the same time, I support developers/publishers doing what they can to recoup some of the costs on used game sales if they feel the need. If I buy a used copy of Amalur for $20-$30, and I enjoy it enough to feel the need to drop another $10 on the "new copy DLC", I will, and I'll be fine with it.
The only problem I see with this formula is when a game has reached a point where it's no longer viable for publishers to provide that DLC online anymore, and I suddenly have what could be called an incomplete title because, even tho I either bought the game new or paid for the "new copy DLC", the server where I would have downloaded that DLC off of is now gone.
This strategy is pretty short sighted for gamers, but a boon for publishers and developers who want to potentially make a few bucks off of used game sales. In the end, both new and used game buyers will suffer from it.
This is alright, actually. It's an incentive, not a punishment like it is with most other games. You simply get some extra quests if you buy. There aren't any features taken out.
Piracy = you give copies of a BOUGHT game away for FREE and the Devs/Pubs get NO MONEY except for the original game that was bought.
Game Stop/Best Buy/Gamers who ever = make money from the sales of used games and the Devs/Pub get NO MONEY except for the original game that was bought!
Online Pass tries to stop both situations so therefore Devs/Pubs GET MONEY.
So Used game sales are OK even though Devs/Pubs make no money while everyone else makes cash off of the Devs/Pub product.
Piracy is down out right wrong even though it's all Free!
So if i lend someone a game that i bought is that right or wrong and how is that different from Piracy or Used Sales? Either way someone gets to play a game and the Dev/Pub got no money for it.
You still have to BUY a copy of a game to pirate it. If you have a game before it's release date then that's THEFT and a whole different issue.