To call the battlefield franchise "well made" is a bit of an insult to high quality fps games. BF2 was released CHOCK full of bugs (if you played it, you'll know) and was left unmaintained. Certain game-breaking bugs were left in for months and months at a time despite ruining huge aspects of the game. On top of the bugs that were not fixed, new content was released and promoted - that ALSO contained bugs. Even when bugs were fixed, new bugs were introduced. And many of the fixes involved changes that negatively affected other aspects of play! How can this be called "well made"?

I consider myself an experienced gamer. I enjoy many genres, and have been playing for ~18 years. I don't just play huge titles, but i do play those too. I play indie games, casual games, you name it. The only company that i go out of my way to avoid is EA and that's due to bad experiences with their games. I am not "just a hater", as i did play dragon age and sang its praises once i'd come to accept that it wasn't simply another standard EA title.

Take bioware for example. Before they were 'bought' by EA they made some of the (arguably, but almost universally accepted) best games of their particular genre. Baldur's gate 1 and 2, neverwinter nights.... we're talking sweeping epics that involved in depth and original story lines that carried the game single handedly (i mean, it was only isometric, the story was everything). Then suddenly, EA get involved and bioware produce mass effect - instead of being able to choose from a plethora of moral and immoral dialog options, actions, we get a good/neutral/evil meter and equivalent options. I'm not going to tell anyone mass effect is a bad game; it is up to the public to decide and they have decided it's good. But i insist that, but for the dated graphics, their earlier RPGs were better in every single other way, and what they provide in their modern RPGs falls short on any RPG checklist you care to make when you put it up against Baldur's gate, icewind dale, etc.

I was very excited when dragon age was released, but then immediately disappointed again when dragon age 2 was released - and who can honestly claim that 2 lived up to 1? Can anyone deny that it was shat out at maximum velocity to cash in quickly on the success of the first? It was a completely different game!?

I hope i have managed to not sound like an anti-fanboy cock; i have spent hundreds and hundreds of pounds on game flops by EA which were underhandedly promoted by reviewers that i then learned not to trust. I feel utterly cheated by them but that is why i don't buy their games now, and that's why you'll find more and more people expressing the opinions herein and in the video. So yes, it's very easy to say "lolz u shudnt buy there gamez u foolz", but when there's several teams of people working together to try and trick you into doing something it may take you a few goes before you learn what the shape of the turd looks like. It's underhanded and i would have thought you could understand why people get annoyed by that.

I'm not surprised piracy has increased with the steady decline in VALUE FOR MONEY. I payed £30 for half life 1 and i still play it to this day. I'd gladly pay £100 for it in retrospect. The first installment of a battlefield game costs me £40, and £15 for an extra few maps or guns they add. Valve are still giving me stuff for free, and i cannot thank them enough for putting pride in their work, and for that they will have the kind of brand respect that EA will never get.

@Fletch hit the nail right on the head. I don't think people who disagree are stupid, or wrong, or anything. But if you haven't experienced the old AND the new (that goes for everyone, not just fans of the new or just fans of the old), then you are not in an ideal position to put forward arguments about whether or not games have increased in value for money, or decreased in value for money; i'm glad you enjoy modern games, but i feel disappointed and cheated by them and that's a perfectly valid thing to express, and it is not your place to tell someone they're over reacting or being a baby. If you haven't tried it yourself, you can't know for sure.

I think that is what this guy was trying to say in a humourous way, probably didn't do the best job of it ever but it was at least funny. And do remember it was meant to be funny. I think some people in this thread in favour of EA have looked more foolish in their pro-EA arguments than this guy did in his anti-EA exaggerations. Remember it was meant to be funny.

TL:DR - i don't blame you

Seems like a lot of anger and energy has gone into this. Anger and energy maybe better spent just not buying their games.

I mean, I hadn't even HEARD of Origin (I thought he was referring to the Australian power retailer, which is not surprising, given this is the power company logo and this is the EA one. Not entirely dissimilar.

In any case, it's not lot Steam isn't doing insanely well, it's not like indie games aren't going great guns. So really I feel this is more about this guy falling for marketing over and over and feeling pretty damn stupid about it.

>> ^SlipperyPete:

>> ^Sarzy:
Saw this a few weeks ago. Might just be one of the best documentaries I've ever seen -- yes, it's that good. Even if you're not into videogames, you need to watch this film.
quality

HotDocs? I saw it too, and agree 100%. One of the best - very well shot, well paced, great visual treatment, and super engaging.


Yep. I actually saw it via the satellite feed in a theatre in Etobicoke, and the massive thunderstorm that night caused the feed to cut out a couple of times, which sucked. I'll have to go watch it again now that it's playing at the Lightbox.

I love indie games, but fuck me, the way this is presented, you'd swear they were trying to cure cancer. It should be called "A Typical Tumblr Site: The Movie".

>> ^Sarzy:

Saw this a few weeks ago. Might just be one of the best documentaries I've ever seen -- yes, it's that good. Even if you're not into videogames, you need to watch this film.
quality


HotDocs? I saw it too, and agree 100%. One of the best - very well shot, well paced, great visual treatment, and super engaging.

My mistake, I mixed it up with Rosen's solo product (and Overgrowth's ancestor) Lugaru.

>> ^spoco2:

>> ^hpqp:
promote, even thought I think they really missed out by not featuring Overgrowth's Wolfire, who is making what is probably the most anticipated one-man-made indie game of all time.

Except that the site says it's by 4 guys. Not that it isn't a tinsy, tiny team, but still

Your right but back then they were still constricted by programming and memory constraints since the average computer had maybe 128k of ram to work with. I remember programming in Basic when I was like 8yrs old. I remember having to do programs sometimes upwards of 500 lines or more that only ran once and couldn't be saved in anyway. And the finished product was some Pixel Art or maybe a song that played "Mary had a Little Lamb" through a PC Speaker. Granted Basic was a very limited programming language to begin with.

Then there was the gaming crash of 83' that pretty much destroyed those same bedroom coders your speaking of.
It wasn't really till the invention of Shareware which didn't become widely used till the late 80's that things started to get back on track and people had some of the freedoms we are enjoying now with indie games and crowd-funding. Though I see and acknowledge your point about things being cyclical. If games hadn't suffered such a major setback in the early 80's things would have been very different today.


>> ^spoco2:

>> ^Auger8:
A new age has dawned for games. The ideas of the common man can now be expressed to the world in a way that was never possible before. Free of the restrictions of publishers and corporate giants. Free of the expectation to make the next great cookie cutter FPS or RPG. We can now for the first time in history truly make the games that we WANT to make. We can innovate. We can push the boundaries of the old genres. We can create new genres and we can tell the stories that not only change the industry but change the hearts of the players we strive so hard to reach. This is the second Golden Age of Gaming and I for one couldn't be more excited to see it arrive!

Erm, hardly 'for the first time'.
The first games on home computers, back in the mid 80s, were largely one man jobs. A whole collection of bedroom coders made buckets of money back then creating games for computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.
Yeah, it then became taken over by the giant media companies, and yes it's now becoming far more accessible for people to be able to code quality games with tiny teams, and have them reach people via the internet and delivery systems like Steam.
But it's a return to that, not a first time thing, it's all cyclic

Your video, Indie Game: The Movie - Official Trailer, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^Auger8:

A new age has dawned for games. The ideas of the common man can now be expressed to the world in a way that was never possible before. Free of the restrictions of publishers and corporate giants. Free of the expectation to make the next great cookie cutter FPS or RPG. We can now for the first time in history truly make the games that we WANT to make. We can innovate. We can push the boundaries of the old genres. We can create new genres and we can tell the stories that not only change the industry but change the hearts of the players we strive so hard to reach. This is the second Golden Age of Gaming and I for one couldn't be more excited to see it arrive!


Erm, hardly 'for the first time'.

The first games on home computers, back in the mid 80s, were largely one man jobs. A whole collection of bedroom coders made buckets of money back then creating games for computers like the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Yeah, it then became taken over by the giant media companies, and yes it's now becoming far more accessible for people to be able to code quality games with tiny teams, and have them reach people via the internet and delivery systems like Steam.

But it's a return to that, not a first time thing, it's all cyclic

>> ^hpqp:

promote, even thought I think they really missed out by not featuring Overgrowth's Wolfire, who is making what is probably the most anticipated one-man-made indie game of all time.


Except that the site says it's by 4 guys. Not that it isn't a tinsy, tiny team, but still

*promote, even thought I think they really missed out by not featuring Overgrowth's Wolfire, who is making what is probably the most anticipated one-man-made indie game of all time.

>> ^Payback:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
>> ^Peroxide:
Nowadays with the money in my budget I do the best to go to the movies, shows, and buy the media that I actually like.
Before access to the internet I can recall too many bad memories of coming home with CDs and DVDs that I thought I would love, and then ended up being really upset that I had purchased them.

Laziness did it for me. Stealing games is just to hard compared to downloading it on steam. When I was a kid, driving to the store was harder than just downloading it (and it was also free). I would wager that a large majority of people wouldn't pirate if the copyright holders offered their content in the right way. I like the way valve put it, "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem". Not always true, some cheap thief's out there, but I know I have bought more games via steam and more books via amazon then I did before them.

I noticed ME3 is going for $80. 80 fucking American fucking dollars. Not fucking likely.


Great post then great reply. I think it's a service problem and a price problem, steam does well because they do good deals. Fact.

I see a game, it looks good, but i've been stung so many times i'm tempted not to try. Then i see it's worth 4.99, and it's completely worth the purchase. 40 pounds for a game i may or may not like and may or may not be able to return at my own expensive of time and effort is an absolute joke. Especially modern day games. Sorry, that's how i see it. Not that i pirate, i just play indie games and get the right games.

Valve so far are the company to release games that i would admit i've had about £150 worth of fun from, and in retrospect i'd have happily paid that for the game. How often can you say that with the £40 titles?

just wow...

hey Ocean Marketing ... we all know who you are now... kind of a dick!

welcome to the club

http://www.youtube.com/user/OceanMarketing

from youtube comments:

"For the record - the inventor of device fired Ocean Marketing today and apologized for picking a shitty PR face."

from reddit:

"He hasn't been fired. The company that makes the controllers is simply not doing business with Ocean Market[t]ing any more"

and Twitter:

http://twitter.com/OceanMarketting

Hello, my name is “Mark”
Alright, my name is not Mark, nor is it Paul and I do not work for some “marketting company on the wweb” I was lucky enough to snag the twitter account once the original @OceanMarketting switched twitter accounts (No Hacks, or anything). Now that I can control the tweets on @OceanMarketting (and their Blog on their site, until they change the API) I will be using this account for good, I want to promote Indie Games, and Gaming Charities and other awesome things.

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Tags for this video have been changed from 'Being Poor and Having No Budget is Good For Making Games, Indie, development, ASM' to 'assembly 2011, budget, limitations, innovation, Indie, game development, ASM' - edited by xxovercastxx