EA Louse - Why Warhammer failed

ps3ud0 said:
Indeed - what a small-minded thing to say :confused: - I didnt say that Japanese publishers dont make poor games...

ps3ud0 :cool:
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I guess generalizing US developers as releasing shoddy games due to corporate ethic and deadlines isn't a small-minded thing to say.
:confused: right back at you.
 
I did question my assumption in the first place, so it was already a concession. Perhaps there are other people that are capable of making a point but question the reasoning behind it - lo behold it might raise a nice debate rather than the need to be picked apart...

Also I said US publishers not developers - as some of the better games Sony/Sega have published have come from US developers...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
Me Ea Louse has some problems, either the game was crap and it wasn't worth spending millions to advertise it and it was worth rushing out, get what money they could without spending more. Or it was great, and shouldn't be rushed and should be publicised better.

IF its crap, as they said, then in general pushing something back a couple months simply won't do anything.

This is where people irk me, reading a few 3d design mags and a couple game mags, I see several guys say EA gave them all the space they wanted, they liked EA, had successful games etc, etc. People that make bad games go and blame EA.

If the several people in charge made a bad game, why exactly is it EA's fault they don't fund another 4 years to start from fresh? $50mil down the tube, spend another 10-15mil to polish a turd, hype it up with adverts and have a 65-70mil turd, why?

At some point a game is beyond recovery, is just bad from the ground up and needs way to much work to be great. I mean the last game you can think of that was delayed and essentially started again is Duke Nukem, its all well and good saying give them a couple years to fix it, but you're asking for huge sums of money to allow someone to do that. Do you just indefinately push warhammer back, 4 years, 8 years, 12 years, make it a $200mil game and its still got the wrong team behind it and its still crap.

If it was bad, as she/he says it was, nothing else matters, bad game is bad no matter how many delays or advertising goes into it.

The biggest problem it had was on release, no community AT ALL. The text/chat was appauling, I played for a week and barely saw anyone ask a question, or try and talk to anyone, didn't look for teams, no one else really teamed up, largely because everything was so damn easy.

After 50mil if I was at EA I'd have said, thats it, funding up, I want that game out, making a bit of money and I'm going to fire half of you for being not particularly good at your job.

People also seem to forget that EA have been bleeding money for years, absolutely losing money hand over fist and have been changing the company pretty massively.

End of the day they had $50mil to make that game good, and the team couldn't, if you ask me it was a group effort of failure.
 
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I disagree. If a project fails it's the project manager's failure. He's the one that puts the team together in the first place, and has (or should have) complete control, subject to management approval, over everything that happens.

So either management didn't do any oversight, or the guy in charge didn't have a clue. Sounds like a bit of both to me.
 
drunkenmaster said:
At some point a game is beyond recovery, is just bad from the ground up and needs way to much work to be great.
/shorten quote
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I chose this sentence as it pretty much summed up your whole post, which i agree with.

They tried several times during the game's hellishly long beta to fix the core problems of why the game just wouldn't appeal but they failed every time. Even when they pulled it for months on end promising that when we got to testing again they'd have something worthwhile, they brought it back up and it was just a fatter turd. Not a polished one but just fleshed out, almost everything that was wrong with the game was still there and continued to be there all the way into launch.

The game was delayed multiple times as it was and for lengthy periods, even adding another year on would have made no difference whatsoever.
 
$300 million in dev costs for SWTOR?....blimey, I thought $150 mil was bad, which is what many said it was costing. Mind you, that was over a year ago so maybe the $300 mil is for real if the budget has really blown out.....lol, if this is true and it does tank then it may well end up the biggest failure in gaming history, not just MMO's. Certainly in terms of money lost. $300 mil is a LOT to recoup on...

I'm not saying I believe this guy, you have be wary of blogs on the internet but with SWTOR everything else I've seen and heard about it does seem to tally with his rather harsh assesment.
 
Although I was worried when I first read it, the response from mods on the swtor forum have made me feel much more relieved. If this was a big problem then I think it would have probably been brought off the swtor forums and people who brought it up punished. But they have acted coolly, which suggests three things to me either:

A) Very little of it is true, no real worry for the game.
B) They are trying to play it down by acting coolly(They have got me if this is true)
or C) The managers are so incompetent they have no idea how to act to stop this.
 
SWTOR does look like a flop of epic proportions. only time will tell for sure though
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2nd'd. Even by WAR standards, and considering the cash being spent according to "The Louse". It might even make me go back to WAR.

After second thoughts, nah.
 
Did you guys see Sanya Weathers' (Ex-Mythic community director during DAoC era) response to the EA Louse too? http://eatingbees.brokentoys.org/2010/10/13/yes-i-saw-the-louse-blog/

I'm pretty sure a lot of the rant is sensationalist, but even if there is a small amount that is true, it's pretty damning. Judging by Jeff's reply, it certainly has some truth to it.

Partially on topic but as a slight aside; I've been concerned about SW:TOR's development for a long while now, well before I read this blog at least, and the issue I've seen is definitely the fact that they're putting so much money and focus into the massive amount of voice-acting that's required, that I feel they're going to be sorely neglecting the all important gameplay. Every gameplay video I see leaves me feeling less and less excited, it's really quite sad as I doubt there's a bigger star wars fan on these forums than myself. In all honesty, I'm much more excited about Guild Wars 2...
 
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looks like I'm the only one still playing WAR ? :)

Interesting reading, can't say how true it all is, but I expect that there is some truth in there.

Shame, WAR, the game that could have been? :(
 
What really cracked me up was the Admiral Akbar "It's a trap!" comment every time someone tried to get EA Louse to reveal their identity :)
 
Monkeymatt said:
Although I was worried when I first read it, the response from mods on the swtor forum have made me feel much more relieved. If this was a big problem then I think it would have probably been brought off the swtor forums and people who brought it up punished. But they have acted coolly, which suggests three things to me either:

A) Very little of it is true, no real worry for the game.
B) They are trying to play it down by acting coolly(They have got me if this is true)
or C) The managers are so incompetent they have no idea how to act to stop this.
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The damage limitation is working then. :p

At a time like this it's their job to reassure people like you that the game is worth your money.

Wait for user reviews, ignore website reviews if the game has had $300m spent on it as they'll probably have bribed the editors.
 
mmj_uk said:
Big corporations like EA don't care about anything except profits.

This is the reason why I have a huge respect for the Sony/Polyphony Digital relationship, Polyphony Digital are given the freedom/time they need and it shows in the end product.

It's just a shame for everyone that all these other developers are given impossible deadlines and their game suffers as a result.
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+1
 
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