Posts by Defrag

  • Management within games industry

    Programming is arguably even worse in thatrespect. All you can do is explain to your boss/client that changes take time and money. You can have a mix of quality, speed and cheapness, but not all three things at the same time. Every time someone changes the plan/requirements, they need to understand the ramifications in terms of the amount of hours required to make those changes.

  • DOTA 2

    I think domination is definitely a better game mode for the masses, because it's much harder to do something wrong / counter-productive. I agree that CTF wasn't bad (it was great fun on certain servers), but in the general case, domination is ... less bad. You get a more consistent game experience from server to server, at least. It's that age-old chestnut : trying to make a game that satisfies the casual player as well as the hardcore. It's bloody hard!

    Quote

    There’s just no scope for stuff like that anymore.

    I agree to an extent and things like that are getting sparser and sparser nowadays, but there is still scope for it. My last 'big' game addiction was Battlefield 2, and it was absolutely packed full of nuances / tricks like:

    General gunplay mastery

    C4 chucking

    Strafe jumping

    Chopper TV missiles / soloing choppers

    Jet skills / missile avoidance patterns / tricks

    Long range TOW missile shots (always fun blowing up a chopper on the pad about 1 mile away via dipping it over a hill)

    There was always something to learn and master Loved it.

  • DOTA 2

    TFC is a pretty bad example when saying "it didn't need restrictions because it was based around a competitive game". I played TFC extensively and was in one of europe's best clans, as well as playing in |404| in North America (yup, I was a mega nerd). The leagues certainly had some rules but the vast majority of top teams adhered to various pieces of restrictive etiquette (either because they felt it made for a more enjoyable game, or they felt pressured to agree).

    It was considered bad form to:

    Use more than one HW

    Use a HW in the mid map

    Go all defence to hold a flag (unless it was in the midmap as the time ran out)

    Swap / Swing (temporarily move an attacker into defence)

    Potshot (have your attackers shoot other attackers on their way to the enemy base)

    Backtrack (have your attackers chase the other team's attackers)

    Spam respawns

    ... and all manner of things between.

    I took part in plenty of flame wars over stuff like that (good times ), including quite a few teams quitting midgame because of a dispute over unfair/unenjoyable tactics etc. In the NA leagues, there were a few clans in particular who were infamous for their tactics. Barely anyone liked playing against CNBL -- not because they were skilled (they had a few good players), but because they would try to win at all costs.

    Quote

    and the maps turned into domination deathmatch because the concept of defence is lost on 90% of pub players

    This is also true, but I don't think it's a negative. IMO TF2's non-CTF game modes are much better in general. My guess is that capture the flag will barely figure in modern team based games. Indeed, one of my biggest regrets about Fortress Forever was making so many CTF maps instead of AD/Domination/other game modes -- CTF just doesn't work as a public game mode when compared to more modern alternatives. The same CTF problems existed in TFC -- typically nobody likes attacking (seemingly) alone, so they die a lot, give up and go defence. You end up with either lots of attack or lots of defence, but rarely a good mix on both teams. It was great on 'organised' public servers where admins kicked folk who refused to attack (admins 'fixing' your game is a sign it's broken) but most pubs were terrible and boring. You can go onto any TF2 server running non-CTF maps and get the same base experience because instead of having to divide between objectives, everyone is forced to pull in the same direction. The only schism tends to come in when teams stall instead of pushing for the next cap, but most of the recent maps are pretty fluid. As such, I believe capture point gameplay is superior to CTF for general gaming.

    I have quite a few TFC friends who play clanned TF2 and they claim it's good in a different way, and that there's a lot more teamwork & tactics involved, too. In TFC your tactical discussions basically went "ok, 3 soldiers, an engy and maybe a HW. If the flag is in the rr, build a sentry outside spawn, reset after it reaches the yard". It was very prescribed and inflexible. Most offence tactics were simply kill a forward defender (like top spiral on 2fort) then pile down the spiral. Since you were getting in 60-100 attacks per map, there wasn't much time for fancy thinking, it was just blunt attacking pressure combined with a bit of familiarity.

    I've played quite a lot of TF2, but it just doesn't do it for me in the way TFC did I personally liked TFC a lot more because there were more esoteric tricks and skills to learn (concing, bhop, trimping, ramp sliding, ramp jumping, skimming, conc aim and so on), whereas in TF2 you have a smaller set of skills and have to focus on improving those. I always seem to be attracted to games with a wide range of things to do, lots of classes and lots of nuances.

    Basically, I think games like QWTF/TFC were amazing, but they were also very much of their time.

  • EA Montreal is now Visceral Montreal

    Leads don't necessarily get paid much more (or even any more at all) -- it depends on the company and position. Some companies offer a dual career ladder where you can progress as a technical specialist and earn just as much as a lead. Others will offer a lot more money for leads. It just depends.

    Quote

    Lead the guys who do the REAL job and keep the BIG BUCKS.

    That's a pretty naive outlook. If you've ever worked under leads of variable quality, you'll know why good leads are worth their weight in gold. I moved team about 5 times at RTW and the difference in productivity / effectiveness from team to team can be very noticeable. When an excellent lead is involved, they pro-actively identify and solve problems, offer support (either moral or technical) when needed, mentor team members and help foster a culture of self-improvement. The notion that you only do real work when sitting at a desk producing code/art assets etc. is totally ridiculous. I know you may have been half-joking when you said that, but it's a bit of a disservice to the awesome leads who really do make a huge difference Two of the most effective leads I worked under spent less than half of their time developing despite being in fairly small teams.

    The flipside is that some folk just aren't cut out for it. Some leads basically end up either ignoring most of their responsibilities and spend the maximum amount of time in the trenches. Someone can be an excellent developer and a lousy lead, but they take the job because there's more money on offer, or they feel they have to due to management pressure. Others just don't have the required personal qualities to lead teams, but fail to develop on the job and also receive a lack of support from management.

    So yeah, don't be hatin' on leads. I wouldn't mind being a lead one day

  • EA Montreal is now Visceral Montreal

    What Thrik said, though the level of management work varies depending on the team size. Some leads will basically do nothing but admin work (organising / scheduling / planning / communicating / geeing up the troops) to help ease the burden for the rest of their team. As a general rule, the more people you have under you as lead, the less production work you do. Leads are usually very busy chasing up problems and making sure the rest of their team can progress without issue.

    If you see a lead who is in charge of a huge team but spends most of their time doing production work, you should be... suspicious

  • Minecraft

    I think it's fucking awesome that he's put out a totally unique game without compromise (I mean... seriously, you have to go trawl youtube to even know what the hell to do) and still become filthy rich.

  • Valve creates micro-transaction steam support

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    These prices are just delusional. Please tell me they accidently added one or two zeros too much.

    You'll soon see if they're delusional -- they'll come down rather sharpish if they're too pricey. My guess is that a lot of people have more money than time and you'll see quite a few purchases. It probably takes valve very little effort to add a new hat, and any purchases are basically pure profit. If you're charging $10 for a hat (steep, yes!) and you get 500 purchases a week, that's still $5k in sales that you had to do very little for. They'll probably start with the price being overly steep and then bring it down, watching the effect it has on purchase count and revenue as they do so.

    If you check out some of the payment models in freemium games, it's not a surprising move to charge so much; look at this from Nimblebit's Pocket Frogs, for example. The 8% of very expensive transactions ($29.99) account for nearly half of their revenue for that game. Those numbers shocked me a bit, too, but it proves that a small proportion of gamers are willing to spend what you and I would consider a ridiculous amount of money.

  • Valve creates micro-transaction steam support

    edit -- I wrote a big post due to misinterpreting the store UI. Deleted most of it, as it was misleading

    Also, to the people sneering at the prices: Only a fraction of people will pay those prices, but that's all Valve needs. In "freemium" games where micro-transactions are supported, it's usually the case that only a few percent of players will shell out for items -- but a few percent of hundreds of thousands of active players is a large number! There are some simple tricks you can employ to drive revenue, too. If an item costs 10p, it is perceived as cheap and not very valuable. If you charge £3 for it, then the item's perceived worth is increased. Furthermore, only a subset of customers will even get over the barrier to purchasing -- once they're past that barrier they're going to spend a bit. Personally, after wasting 15 minutes setting up an account, I'd be just as willing to pay £1 for an item as I would be to pay £0.10. Moreover, fewer people may pay the £3 price point, but you may well make a lot more money out of it (as you only need 1 purchase at £3 instead of 30 x £0.10). Throw in 'rare' items with high prices and they're going to make a killing. Valve will monitor and analyse all item prices and sales over time and tweak things to arrive at optimum prices for maximum revenue -- they're not stupid. Lots of companies do this.