EPTHonestly, this is one reason I was interested in this game, because I thought that Day9 might turn out to be talented at development despite his lack of experience. But design is difficult and hit or miss, and you are still dependent on technology for your success. I would liken it more to being a director than a musician.
Guardians of Atlas - Page 50
| Forum Index > General Games |
Development ended, game appears to be dead. https://forums.artillery.com/discussion/911/end-of-development -Jinro | ||
|
Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
Honestly, this is one reason I was interested in this game, because I thought that Day9 might turn out to be talented at development despite his lack of experience. But design is difficult and hit or miss, and you are still dependent on technology for your success. I would liken it more to being a director than a musician. | ||
|
Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 15 2016 09:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Game design has improved since 1980 because of the experiences of the past 35 years. Game design will continue to improve over the next 35 years as the subject is studied in greater and greater depth. guys like Nolan Bushnell, David Crane, Bob Whitehead and Daniel Buntin were good, but they were basically electrical engineers and computer scientists starting from scratch. Comp Sci. and Elec. Eng were the only fields designers could come from. Now game designers can come from many varied and different fields. As a result, game design is better than it was because there is a vastly larger talent pool from which to draw. Video Game Design will continue to evolve and improve as the industry continues to attract top notch talent who can now make the kind of big money that David Crane could never even conceive of. regarding EA v. Konami in Soccer games. i don't "lie". i might be mistaken. but i don't lie. there is no need to inflame the discussion. Konami was king for a long time and EA improved their FIFA games and took over. EA v. Konami in Soccer Games http://onlinegaming.community/a-history-of-soccer-video-games-part-2/ "In reality, Konami looked at EA’s first appearence on a next gen console with FIFA 2001, laughed and then absolutely blew it out of the water." I think i`m going to create a blog post about the history of video game design and we can continue this debate in there if you wish. We have derailed this thread enough. I`m done debating this topic in this thread. More games designers != better game designers. Ask people in the industry and they will tell you one of the biggest problems with game design these days is more than half of the design/production team are actually NOT gamers. It's become corporate, just like what happens with new genres of music. They are pure at first, but then become corporate, and about business rather than quality. Money becomes more important than the medium. Just like musicians have great records their first few albums, but can never again achieve that level of success, especially once the producers step in and start taking over more as time goes on, the same thing happens with game designers. They reach for the same level of success and usually don't get there. And the more producers step in, the lower the design quality gets. Because the people in charge are not the designer anymore. That's when the big companies like EA and Activision started reducing quality in order to get sales - that's why the cash grabs have gotten worse and worse over the years. Which is why your focus on sales is a slap in the face to true gamers. There's a difference between big sales through marketing, which are usually high profits initially but a steep drop, rather than a worse marketed game that is designed so well it continues selling for years & years to become a top series. The list earlier of top selling franchises? Notice those fit in to the LATTER category. The types that focused on good games that lasted through the years, rather than the quick cash grabs of the last 10 years. And those best selling series ever? The old design was so good that the new games (for the most part) still focus on the same design, but with upgraded engine/graphics/UI/etc. Nowdays you have a lot MORE games, but the quality is lacking compared to 20 years ago. The average game review has went down. No Mans Sky was one of the best selling games this year... Look how that turned out. They focused on sales rather than a solid game, went so far as to lie to customers. Sure, they made money, but it had the steepest drop of players of a game that sold that much in years. The game DID use "new technology", The design was incomplete, which again goes to show, money != better design, and "new technology" != better design. Again, you don't have experience in this area. You can have an armchair perspective, but most your presumptions are incorrect. About FIFA, the series was around for nearly 10 years by the time 2001 came around... Are you even familiar with the series you are talking about? | ||
|
blade55555
United States17423 Posts
On September 15 2016 15:15 Grumbels wrote: Movies, books, music etc. today are imo worse than in the past. I will believe some aspects to gaming technology and interface design can continue to improve, but there is no way that game design itself will necessarily improve. What will happen is that technology will continue to outpace design to the point that you will need a relevant masters degree in computer science to have a chance to work at a reputable developer, while designers will become an afterthought and lower standards are demanded of them. Why bother with designers that have to be creative and original and analytical when you can instead invest into technology and get dependable sales that way? Honestly, this is one reason I was interested in this game, because I thought that Day9 might turn out to be talented at development despite his lack of experience. But design is difficult and hit or miss, and you are still dependent on technology for your success. I would liken it more to being a director than a musician. You sound like an old man  . I love the books/music of today. Movies are hit or miss, but their good. Dunno how you can think they are worse than in the past, I heavily disagree on that.On the note, I am guessing something bad must have happened because Day9 didn't' even promote this game at all after he left and didn't play it when alpha was released. So probably bad blood. | ||
|
Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
On September 16 2016 07:49 blade55555 wrote: You sound like an old man . I love the books/music of today. Movies are hit or miss, but their good. Dunno how you can think they are worse than in the past, I heavily disagree on that.On the note, I am guessing something bad must have happened because Day9 didn't' even promote this game at all after he left and didn't play it when alpha was released. So probably bad blood. I don't see how artistic expression can't get worse over time. There is only a limited set of major ideas or ways to express yourself, after a certain period of time everything becomes a rehash. Furthermore genres get figured out by hacks and producers and they find ways to safely monetize and strangle whatever idiosyncratic quality is harbored within, a process that is only accelerating as time moves on. You get a situation where mainstream entertainment is so dumbed down that it becomes a toxic environment and the only quality product that can emerge is the ruminations of an inward gazing intellectual elite. I have looked around and it is very rare to find something with universal appeal that nevertheless has the spark of genius. This process happened in video games too, all the major genres were conceived and now big budget franchises compete among each other by overwhelming with production values and elaborating on tiny differences in approach calculated to corner a certain market segment. Games used to be a vehicle for original ideas by pioneering designers trying to win over an openminded audience with exciting innovations, now they are sequels that have to recreate the original experiences and cater to the existing market. And technology improvements only serve to increase budgets and lower independence. Other developments are even worse, free to play holds developers hostage to produce skins and reiterate on the same experiences over and over again, mobile and tablet devices create a market for insipid casual games etc. I see very little to be optimistic about, in fact, except for the fact that it has never been more fun and easy to play one of various established games. Much like sports really, where it is mainly facilities and materials that are improving. But video games as artistic expression within some sort of historic framework of is dead-ish, much like movies and music and literature are not really vital. But if you like to watch superhero movies at the cinema purely for a fluff experience, or listen to some vaguely engaging beats on top 40 radio, then this is the golden age. But personally, if I ever have to sit through a superhero movie again I will become very irate. I didn't become an adult just to amuse myself with insipid entertainment marketed towards children. | ||
|
Yoav
United States1874 Posts
On September 16 2016 08:28 Grumbels wrote:I have looked around and it is very rare to find something with universal appeal that nevertheless has the spark of genius. Always has been, always will be. But seriously, how many things in all the centuries meet those criteria? (Like Shakespeare? Homer? Fucking Gilgamesh?) Most literature was never "popular", and most "popular" media has always been shit. People will keep creating new kinds of literature as long as we keep thinking. We'll also keep making pulp as long as we still occasionally get bored without it. | ||
|
Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
On September 16 2016 13:15 Yoav wrote: Always has been, always will be. But seriously, how many things in all the centuries meet those criteria? (Like Shakespeare? Homer? Fucking Gilgamesh?) Most literature was never "popular", and most "popular" media has always been shit. People will keep creating new kinds of literature as long as we keep thinking. We'll also keep making pulp as long as we still occasionally get bored without it. I will not say something so foolish as art being dead, nor will I say anything about other art in other cultures, but if you look at 1. popularity 2. relevancy and 3. quality of whatever is considered critically respected contemporary Western movies or rock music it seems pretty much dead (to name two things I am rather familiar with). Genres can remain popular but sort of die out critically. If there is new, interesting music being made it is off my radar, and it won't come in a form I'm familiar with. And if I want to watch quality movies it is more likely that I should adjust my expectations and get into television shows which often have better narrative qualities these days. There were times when promising writers or composers were siphoned off into Hollywood, so that if you want to evaluate classical music and literature you have to add a caveat starting from roughly 1930 and you have to take seriously film scripts and scores. I don't think video games have quite lived up to narrative potential in the genre, but still they are often extremely interesting ways to tell a story that could never have been conceived of fifty years ago. Art might not die out, nor will entertainment, but specific combinations of medium and genre imo lose their vitality due to all sorts of factors, the primary ones being exhaustion of ideas over time and financial incentives discouraging creativity once a genre has been sufficiently monetized. In return there are often new forms of expression being created, but outside of tradition. To sort of bring this back to the topic, RTS is basically dead too. But can it be revitalized? Maybe, but if it follows the traditional trajectory it has to make a serious step up in quality compared to SC2, or it has to find a new form that has more popular appeal and more future potential. Seems pretty difficult. | ||
|
nanaoei
3358 Posts
then, day by day, we're asking each other for games and separating into different groups of friends over and over until all the play sessions are done. that was what overwatch was like more recently. i don't know what atlas needs and i have no clue what kind of feedback they're even looking for, but i definitely didn't enjoy any betas for atlas up to that level. i know they probably monitor this thread or even have some devs as part of TL community but they're not going to get your QXC's and such to try and help change the game for the better (the results of all that unimportant at this point)--which primarily roots (in my opinion at least) in how the game doesn't have a good deal of potential and just isn't popular atm. | ||
|
Incognoto
France10239 Posts
| ||
|
_Spartak_
Turkey378 Posts
| ||
|
Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 16 2016 19:09 nanaoei wrote: i don't know what atlas needs and i have no clue what kind of feedback they're even looking for, but i definitely didn't enjoy any betas for atlas up to that level. i know they probably monitor this thread or even have some devs as part of TL community but they're not going to get your QXC's and such to try and help change the game for the better (the results of all that unimportant at this point)--which primarily roots (in my opinion at least) in how the game doesn't have a good deal of potential and just isn't popular atm. QXC was actually very active throughout the alpha. Not sure what you mean. To be honest, personally I went in to alpha very excited. Was happy to see my feedback sometimes get a response from the dev team, etc. Felt good and like it was a good place with developers who "care". But somewhere around the time of the "big economy changes" patch, I started to question how much of the feedback was actually listened to anymore. The game started going in a very different direction, and not a direction I seen people requesting in feedback. Most people were asking more strategic elements, less moba-like elements, less subtlety of the state of the game. One thing I think may have been a problem, is it was viewed at the time as a "good sign" because the feedback changed from issues with the direction, to feedback discussing balance issues. I wonder if this is around the time that discontent or some internal issues may have been building inside the company/with Day9. For me it was personally pretty jarring that the direction of the game changed a bit alongside their changes to improve problems with the game, and I don't know how to explain things other than I started to feel a "disconnect" from the dev team. It turned in to something I was enjoying less, and I no longer felt like they cared about that, so I started playing less each week. Others may have a bit more insight on the situation though, as I work during daytime & I was not able to attend a lot of the alpha tests that were on staging. So those players may have had a bit more of a better idea of where the direction was going. All I know is things felt a bit different around that time. And I found it very strange that around then in one of the surveys we received, one of the questions was asking if Day9 was the reason we found the game. Sure, this information could have been used for marketing. But it raises a question - because it's obvious most of the players found the game because of Day9, so for what reason would they actually need to know the exact percentage of players who were playing because of him...? Sadly, I think whatever was going on behind the scenes at this time really hurt the game. Production value was massively improving, but things seemed "different". Early on in the test, it was known many builds would not be "fun". But the game became fun. Then at this stage, things started becoming less "fun" and more... "serious"? Now I'm not really excited anymore, but still following the game in hopes it does well. Same situation as SC2 to be honest. Kind of makes me sad, because for awhile I had a lot more faith in this game than SC2. Even though combat didn't feel as smooth as SC2, the game itself used to feel more rewarding, and you could see the love of the developers. Now, as much as the production improved, I dont see all the love anymore. I've seen extremely large changes throughout testing so I know changes may happen again in the future. I just hope the situation after the shift in development & feeling of "disconnect" improves a bit. I'd love a reason to go back (other than visual/audio quality). | ||
|
JimmyJRaynor
Canada16294 Posts
i think they're running out of cash... and whoever gave them their last injection of cash is starting to call the shots. i'm impressed by how well it runs on crappy hardware and how it manages to use so little CPU and GPU resources. i have no idea if these guys can make a fun game.. they probably can't; As software engineers they're at least average and maybe way better than average. their 1st big error was overestimating what their (probably) very talented software engineers could pull off 3 years ago. | ||
|
Spyridon
United States997 Posts
On September 17 2016 01:32 JimmyJRaynor wrote: interesting insights... i think they're running out of cash... and whoever gave them their last injection of cash is starting to call the shots. i'm impressed by how well it runs on crappy hardware and how it manages to use so little CPU and GPU resources. i have no idea if these guys can make a fun game.. they probably can't; As software engineers they're at least average and maybe way better than average. I believe they are capable - it used to be fun. The game was using completely placeholder graphics/sounds at the time it was most fun. I looked forward to every wednesday/sunday (which were the patch days/testing events for daily testers) Just the direction it went wasn't exactly the best direction for the game imo. Went in too many directions and likely tried to market to the moba crowd/other gamers than RTS gamers. Throughout pre-alpha they were pretty adamant that even though they were not scared to use MOBA mechanics, their primary goal was to make a "good RTS that's easy enough for people to pick up but still strategically deep". If a MOBA mechanic fit the idea of a good RTS, they would use it. Which is a good design decision. But, it seems they have changed the intent of the game now (which probably was alongside the other issues I discussed). I don't remember exactly what they called it now, but something like strategic team based brawler. Regarding cash, I don't believe they ran out. A lot of signs indicate otherwise. They are only starting to spend cash now. Probably 3-4 months ago, seriously almost no art/sound was added yet. They were not burning through their budget until recently. Also, it's obvious SOMETHING went down with Day9. If you are the lead designer on a game, it's usually not easy to just walk away right before the game goes live, and he left 1 week before public testing started. It couldn't have been good terms he left as both sides have not mentioned a thing & avoided questions. A theory was that crunch time was killing him and he needed an escape, but if this were the case he would at least shout it out. They silently removed all of his presence from the site. It was obviously bad terms, and something other than, as the biggest investment began right before/after he left. Plus, they have some pretty big name investors who have invested a LOT, and there's no sign all of that cash has been used at all. My personal theory (completely guess-work) is that Day9 didn't feel like this was the game they had been working towards, and a rift in the company formed, which ended up with new leadership alongside a change of direction. It COULD have been due to marketing pressure from investors, but there's some obvious bad blood between the Atlas team and Day9, and that rift between him & the developers is not explained by this theory. Also, if that were the case, a larger portion of the development team would likely have left as well. There's also the "coincidence" of Day9 making the sudden BW video approximately the same time he left the company. Which just happened to focus on mechanics. Seems to me he was a bit upset that he was not able to implement mechanical counter-play - which I'm sure was not the entire reason (he's smart enough to know talking badly about the company would only make himself look bad), but was most likely the tip of the iceberg, as he had it on his mind after leaving the company. | ||
|
_Spartak_
Turkey378 Posts
On September 17 2016 01:32 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I doubt that's the case. They would have put some sort of monetization to the game already if they were desperate for money.interesting insights... i think they're running out of cash... and whoever gave them their last injection of cash is starting to call the shots. | ||
|
JimmyJRaynor
Canada16294 Posts
i think they'll fail to raise more cash and this thing dies in 3 to 6 months. On September 17 2016 02:07 Spyridon wrote: My personal theory (completely guess-work) is that Day9 didn't feel like this was the game they had been working towards, and a rift in the company formed, which ended up with new leadership alongside a change of direction. that mysterious "rift formation" occurred when the last money-man spoke up and demanded something very specific. we'll never know and this won't ever be publicized. the company is a house of cards generating zero revenue with no track record.  its been an entertaining 3 years.On September 17 2016 02:07 Spyridon wrote: I believe they are capable - it used to be fun. The game was using completely placeholder graphics/sounds at the time it was most fun. I looked forward to every wednesday/sunday (which were the patch days/testing events for daily testers) Just the direction it went wasn't exactly the best direction for the game imo. if the wrong people have creative control it doesn't matter how many geniuses are working underneath them. also, more comprehensive testing a la "strike teams" must be performed to see if a broad spectrum of users view the game as "fun". I think NHL '94 is more fun than NHL '17. I also know a group of guys who feel that way. You know what that opinion is worth? just about nothing. EA should not be influenced by us except by adding an NHL '94 mode. 1 Possible Day9 Theory Evil Corporation: "ok Mr. Plott we're going into Alpha testing and so now you can broadcast the game just like all of our employees will be doing over the next few months" Mr. Plott : " i've built my community base over many years through lots of hard work and so i'll of course be compensated when its broadcast on Day9TV as any other premier streamer like Grubby would be paid." Evil Corporation: "you are getting paid as an employee. that is your compensation. Every other employee will also be going on Twitch.tv as well. you are just another employee so shut up." Mr. Plott: "bye" in other words its just like when Ray Kassar said to David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembly the cartridges.".. except its 2016 instead of 1979. David Crane went on to make Pitfall. It'll be interesting to see what is next for Day9. | ||
|
The Bottle
242 Posts
On September 17 2016 02:07 Spyridon wrote: I believe they are capable - it used to be fun. The game was using completely placeholder graphics/sounds at the time it was most fun. I looked forward to every wednesday/sunday (which were the patch days/testing events for daily testers) Just the direction it went wasn't exactly the best direction for the game imo. May I ask what the game was like at that time, when you found it most fun? Or does the NDA you signed back then disallow you to describe it, even now? | ||
|
_Spartak_
Turkey378 Posts
https://forums.artillery.com/discussion/911/end-of-development I was a bit worried that developers suddenly stopped tweeting and talking in the chat the last 2 days and I thought something might have been wrong but it is still a shock. Terrible news, I was enjoying the game a lot. Could have been great for the RTS genre as well. | ||
ZeromuS
Canada13378 Posts
| ||
|
Atimo
France38 Posts
 | ||
|
-NegativeZero-
United States2140 Posts
| ||
|
JimmyJRaynor
Canada16294 Posts
no man may be bigger than his money. it may have failed but it was interesting to watch the journey. On September 16 2016 23:54 _Spartak_ wrote: so I don't expect a big influx of players before Artillery makes a big marketing push or a popular streamer/Youtuber picks it up. i guess going Alpha was their Hail Mary pass hoping a big streamer like TB would latch onto the game On September 17 2016 03:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote: the company is a house of cards generating zero revenue with no track record. its been an entertaining 3 years.i post this and then an hour later the place is shuttered. On September 17 2016 04:53 Atimo wrote: Yeah i'm now kinda desesperate to find a good RTS to play RA2, Generals, AoE2, CoH1... everything Blizzard has ever made. lots of great stuff out there. | ||
| ||
