Rahdo's words - what happened here?

(tokamak) #181

Obviously SD knows what pc gamers want, they’ve proven it twice. There’s no need for an SDK as it would only be used to turn the game into something that SD excels at making.

They just didn’t do it with Brink. The PC version got shafted. Whether or not it was in favour of the console versions isn’t even the point. All the arguments for chipping away at what made the ET games so great were to ‘appeal to a broader audience’. And now I must ask, what audience? The handful that are playing right now? Are these the people SD aimed at making a game for? Seriously, the current playerbase could be confused for a piloting platform.

Oh and of course it’s easy to play the role of captain hindsight (bitten by a retroactive spider) but it would be unfair to push Brink’s critics in that position. For years there has been correspondence and those who were interested in the game, who cared for it’s success have been giving feedback on what little details they could get their paws on (and it needs to be noted that to this date still no official pc gameplay footage has been released). I’m not saying they haven’t been listened to but where it mattered the most, the core mechanics, their suggestions have been thrown into the wind. Particularly grating is that nobody is asking for a lot here. It’s merely a set of parameters people want to see changed.

Rahdo’s (and Exedore’s) post made me very cynical towards the extend in which this game could be salvaged.

It’s really hard to tell whether SD has retreated into a deluded state to deal with the dissonance or are just pretending to be satisfied with Brink’s ‘success’ and are trying to control financial damage by letting this disaster go.

Again, like I started this post, you KNOW what PC gamers like, you’ve proven that. Now you SEE what pc gamers don’t like. Yet in the face of all that you maintain that your direction is the best as you think it appeals to the ‘broad’ group of people that is currently not playing this game. Splash Damage has been chasing a phantom audience that supposedly was interested in a shallow dumbed down version of one of the best games of all time.

It’s the one positive thing that came from this game. It has proven that such an audience doesn’t exist, it never existed and it never will exist. But I could’ve told you that from the very start if only I knew that this was the way you would take the game.

(Verticae) #182

Since I highly respect the style with which Rahdo came in and replied to pretty much every sibngle post in the thread, I’d really like it if certain people showed some more respect. It’s just one developer, not an entire company, and quite frankly, his manner of interacting with the players here is nothing short of outstanding.

(tokamak) #183

Phony courtesies are useless to you if you’re parading around in your new fashion while everyone is disgusted by the way your schlong waves between your legs with every step.

Laying out my thoughts and feelings in a honest fashion is my way of showing that respect. If I were a game developer wondering where it went wrong then this is what I would like to hear.

(SockDog) #184

I also wonder about popularity. I think, albeit peak numbers, Steam has shown a dramatic drop in players since release. But theXbox Live usage charts also saw the game drop out of the Top 20 in two weeks, this compared against something like BF:BC2 which still charts high and you’d think was Brinks primary audience.

I do hope that units sold during the release month isn’t being used as justification or explanation for acceptance of features which are being criticised here. Brink had a weird marketing run up but there certainly was a segment of buzz out there for the game, that buzz drove a lot of pre-orders and early purchases.

My point. That the strategy to dumb down the core game to appeal to a wider audience (with the limited information available) doesn’t seem to have worked in engaging your audience. Hell, even the biggest defenders of Brink are calling it a niche game.

That said, there were flairs of originality in there that shone through such as the Challenges. I think SD has gone in the wrong direction. Instead of looking to try something new to win over customers they’ve looked to step back, duplicate, slot themselves into an established market.

(wolfnemesis75) #185

[QUOTE=tokamak;357676]Phony courtesies are useless to you if you’re parading around in your new fashion while everyone is disgusted by the way your schlong waves between your legs with every step.

Laying out my thoughts and feelings in a honest fashion is my way of showing that respect. If I were a game developer wondering where it went wrong then this is what I would like to hear.[/QUOTE]

I found this funny on tons of levels. :penguin:

(Thundermuffin) #186

I have to give my respect for rahdo for posting; using the word lying may have been too strong, but without anyone ever coming back to tell us none of this stuff made it, it made lots of us just think “they did it before, it’s gotta be in there.” I figured if you weren’t able to get it completely in the game, it would have been there as a cvar that was “use at your own risk” and we would just be able to use it anyways until you all got it to work perfectly.

I already mentioned this earlier, but if you feel that way, then it means we did too good a job making parkour usage require dedication and exploration. With the benefit of hindsight, we maybe should have made it all more obvious, but that was one of those sacrifices we thought we were making to mass market players to appease hardcore. But I guess maybe that one backfired?

It isn’t that it requires a huge amount of dedicated or exploration, it’s just that there’s no reason to really use it besides the jump to red room on Aquarium, the jumps on Shipyard or other situational jumps. It’s rare to see anyone use it for anything but those jumps and that’s sad, because the videos of Warsow where they use wall jumps are pretty nice. The players there are able to use them throughout the game maps, and they’re actually pretty useful for the most part as it creates even more dynamic firefights (strafejumping + wallhops create some really neat moves).

You weren’t wrong talking to us about features, but I think maybe SD took it wrong and thought we wanted 500 crosshairs or all of this stuff, when really we just want an alternative to it. We didn’t want 500 crosshairs; we wanted maybe 1 or 2 (from everyone I’ve ever talked to most competitive players use just a . or a + so all of those wacky crosshairs are useless a lot of the time) and the ability to color them and scale their size to our liking. A lot of things could be put down to misunderstandings between both parties, yet we had no knowledge of what the PC game looked like or the features going into it. That could have saved development time in some cases where we could have said, “hey, guys that’s a great idea for consoles but we just don’t need it and you can skip that for us, but instead maybe give us this little feature to replace it.”

Most of us weren’t asking for the world, but were asking for simple things previous games have had for years. We can understand how long some of these things can take, but the standards have been set by games like Quake, Counter-Strike and Wolfenstein games when it comes to PC gaming. It just saddens a lot of us that these games are years old, and it’s unlikely they’ll last for another 10+ years, yet no developer is really able to topple them or beat them feature wise.

I can understand that you all need to meet certain numbers to keep the lights running and be able to continue development, but it seems like if you make a game “really hardcore” (and I use that in quotes as sometimes casual gamers see certain games as “hardcore” that really just aren’t when you’re actually playing it) and gear it towards balanced, competitive play even the casuals will end up loving it. I hate always bringing it up, but it’s really the definition of this. Counter-Strike is a pretty hardcore game, yet the 2 CS games always have 110k+ people on them. The game is really one of the best team based FPS and it’s one of those games every professional organization has a team playing, yet you’ll see the most casual people playing it and having a great time.

This (paraphrased) quote always comes to mind: “Make a hardcore, balanced competitive game and the casuals will come en mass.” I can’t remember who said it, but it’s really true when you look back at a lot of the big hitter e-sports titles. It doesn’t have to be as brutal and unforgiving as some games, but if you make a game where everything is balanced and working almost perfectly, the casuals/console players will probably love it. I know when I sit down at my 360 and play CoD or Halo, one of the first things I always realize is how bad this 1 map’s design is or how unbalanced some combination of perks/weapons is, but it’s lapped up because there’s nothing else for them to really get. My friends always complain about it too, but they don’t have anything to go to besides CoD, Gears of War, and Halo.

(wolfnemesis75) #187

[QUOTE=SockDog;357680]I also wonder about popularity. I think, albeit peak numbers, Steam has shown a dramatic drop in players since release. But theXbox Live usage charts also saw the game drop out of the Top 20 in two weeks, this compared against something like BF:BC2 which still charts high and you’d think was Brinks primary audience.

I do hope that units sold during the release month isn’t being used as justification or explanation for acceptance of features which are being criticised here. Brink had a weird marketing run up but there certainly was a segment of buzz out there for the game, that buzz drove a lot of pre-orders and early purchases.

My point. That the strategy to dumb down the core game to appeal to a wider audience (with the limited information available) doesn’t seem to have worked in engaging your audience. Hell, even the biggest defenders of Brink are calling it a niche game.

That said, there were flairs of originality in there that shone through such as the Challenges. I think SD has gone in the wrong direction. Instead of looking to try something new to win over customers they’ve looked to step back, duplicate, slot themselves into an established market.[/QUOTE]

Not fair to compare a new IP to an established one. Brink has not the brand recognition of BF:BC2. Or the HUGE marketing level or studio size of Rockstar games. Brink 2 will be gravitated towards because Brink broke the mold and established the parameters for a game and identity for it, where-as even now, Brink suffers from identity crisis only as a result of a “not easily classified” game in today’s market. Brink 2 would sell many more copies because now a track record is established. You have to think in terms of 3 games rather than 1 now-a-days. The market is dominated by sequels.

(Verticae) #188

[QUOTE=tokamak;357676]Phony courtesies are useless to you if you’re parading around in your new fashion while everyone is disgusted by the way your schlong waves between your legs with every step.

Laying out my thoughts and feelings in a honest fashion is my way of showing that respect. If I were a game developer wondering where it went wrong then this is what I would like to hear.[/QUOTE]

That’s why it wasn’t directed at you. :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #189

I don’t wonder about that, the lack of popularity is pretty obvious. I just wonder what SD’s take on this is, especially because so much has been sacrificed for this ‘popularity’. That what makes it so grating (that and the lack of pc footage, which was reason to worry yet we kept our faith which now feels trodden on). I would’ve accepted Brink for what it was if it had been popular. Then I would’ve just have shut my trap, I would’ve been proven wrong as SD would’ve demonstrated that they could sell the ET format to a large group of people.

Great, thanks. :slight_smile:

(gooey79) #190

I like the way you excluded 2 new IP’s in your argument.

LA Noire and Red Dead Redemption are both valid and are on those lists. Let’s not forget Bethesda are a fairly big company and wholly capable of marketing a game.

Brink is very easily classified in today’s market. It’s a First Person Shooter - probably the most popular type of game out there.

Speculative on Brink 2. Given player drops etc, it might not be as easy as you think. I do wish Splash Damage well, even if I’ll not be a day one adopter next time around.

(alberto) #191

rahdo the truth is another. Both know that the game sold but not so well as you said.
Atm you’r mystifying the results and this is a market choice. DLC is coming out and this way you hope that someone fall in the “trap” and buy your game. We already saw that there was malice when you told us you would let “professional testers” try the game instead make a public beta

Want to tell me that you even tried the game? I am not a professional beta tester but i found a bunch of bugs that i don’t believe your PRO missed. check here

The game leaks in everything. It’s a damn beta test that we paid for gold
.And it’s not important you say the game is played cause in all europe u can’t even find more than 200 servers (and the game is out from 2 months) and only 2-3 servers have some players inside.
This for pc but it’s not rare that xbox guys come in these forums to ask for friendship cause the scene is dead.

You can tell me all the bull****s you want but i am mature (37 years old) i work in marketing and i am able to use google to know how many copies brink sold out.
You say that you don’t want to run out of business cause many GREAT games didnt sell good. Probably cause they weren’t so good. This cause software house think exactly like you “let’s massively advertise the product and sell. Not important if its buggy and no one likes it”… Those aren’t great gamers, those are cheesy games that pretend to be great: exactly like brink.

You said that sd’d forums don’t mean a thing but in the same reply you say that the game is ok cause you found a match (where there were bots too… LOL)

But this time we’re lucky and in real world, there are official stats that are more talkative than my opinion or yours. BRINK doesn’t please the mass.
Brink is not even on 100 first games on steam and it’s steamwork only.

Check it (plant vs zombies is thousand times played more than brink…)

Oh wait! Your policy is not that we have to play it, we have to buy it! Not important if every platform’s scene is dead, important is you sold out your copies!

Do you really think youre talkin to goats? Please rahdo i am losing the respect i have for you.

[B][U]A BIG SUGGESTION:

RELEASE THE SDK [/U][/B]

(SockDog) #192

You’d have a point if Brink never charted. The fact it hit 12, then fell to 16, then disappeared tells of it’s longevity and has nothing to do with it’s market penetration. If people are still playing and charting BF:BC2 this long after release it has a lot more to do with it being a game they want to play than having a 2 on the end of the name.

He managed to exclude big name dev/publishers too, ruling out LA Noire and RDR. Doesn’t really leave much room for argument. Shame that argument is, “Did you release a game named Brink in May?”. :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #193

That argument would be more valid if Brink had any competition, LA noire only had some overlap but wasn’t direct competition to Brink.

(wolfnemesis75) #194

[QUOTE=*goo;357688]I like the way you excluded 2 new IP’s in your argument.

LA Noire and Red Dead Redemption are both valid and are on those lists. Let’s not forget Bethesda are a fairly big company and wholly capable of marketing a game.

Brink is very easily classified in today’s market. It’s a First Person Shooter - probably the most popular type of game out there.

Speculative on Brink 2. Given player drops etc, it might not be as easy as you think. I do wish Splash Damage well, even if I’ll not be a day one adopter next time around.[/QUOTE]

Yeah right. How many Team-based OBJ FPS games are on the market? And how many FPS games take risks? Not many. Brink is a fun game at the end of the day even though it may not get every single check-mark in the PC Bible checklist. You’ll buy Brink 2 day 1 it comes out at midnight. You and the rest of the “won’t be fooled again” crowd got nobody fooled. :tongue:

(jazevec) #195

I do hope that units sold during the release month isn’t being used as justification or explanation for acceptance of features which are being criticised here. Brink had a weird marketing run up but there certainly was a segment of buzz out there for the game, that buzz drove a lot of pre-orders and early purchases.

Game 1 pays for the development of Game 2. ET:QW paid for development of Brink. Brink will pay for development of something else. It lags, offset by 1.

In 4 years, they will learn that reputation also lags. Bad reputation wasn’t quick enough to prevent lots of people from buying the bad game. But the next time SD makes a game*, people will be prejudiced. There will be a huge difference between the number of copies sold and people’s expectations. Money spent, but people who remember Brink will think twice.

  • Evidence points to 4 year production cycle at SD. Expect new game announced in 1.5 years, with release 2 years later.
(Verticae) #196

Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2, Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Call Of Duty (series), Day of Defeat: Source… Yeah, must be just Brink.

Please, mind you that we’re looking into Rahdo’s quotes from a comeptitive PC player perspective, I understand there’s a much smaller market for this on console. That doesn’t mean, though, we can’t compare it to PC games. :slight_smile:

(wolfnemesis75) #197

[QUOTE=Verticae;357695]Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Team Fortress 2, Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Call Of Duty (series), Day of Defeat: Source… Yeah, must be just Brink.

Please, mind you that we’re looking into Rahdo’s quotes from a comeptitive PC player perspective, I understand there’s a much smaller market for this on console. That doesn’t mean, though, we can’t compare it to PC games. :)[/QUOTE]

Those games aren’t on the market, that list reads like the history of games and the Land Before Time. They’re at the free level, like “public domain” so old they don’t count. Call of Duty. Ha ha ha. No way. :smiley:

(Thundermuffin) #198

Counter-Strike
Call of Duty
Wolfenstein
QUAKE

Pretty sure those games are still on the market and bought all the time; I even see The Orange Box and the CoD games in Walmart.

(engiebenjy) #199

Abandon this thread Rahdo, it will just descend into a flame war (if it hasnt already!) :slight_smile:

(tokamak) #200

It hasn’t and if people keep sticking to their genuine concerns it won’t need to.