Saturday, November 1, 2008

Scary times!

So it's the day after Halloween. And, talk about scary (worst setup ever?)--this has been quite a month for me here at EA.  Let's review, shall we?  In one month I have now experienced:

1) A project cancelled
2) A team going into never-going-home crunch mode
3) A bad quarterly company report followed by layoffs and a stock skid.

Welcome to the gaming industry!

On the plus side, I am still employed.  And I am greatly enjoying my ongoing, daily edjumacation into the wonders and mysteries of game development.   While maintaining an uncharacteristic and deceptive low profile amongst my new co-workers, I have been soaking in gazillions of details into how these things get made, and, good god, is there a lot going on.  And if some of it may seem mundane to those who have been doing it all day every day, to me, it's extraordinary, just seeing how much scrutiny every teeny, tiny little thing in the game gets.   And watching how changing one of those teeny, tiny little things then has an effect on the game as a whole.  One of the coolest things to me, so far, is actually watching the game get demonstrably better every single day.  I mean, tangibly--you can feel it, see it, as the changes get incorporated.  The evolution of the product is just fascinating.   There really is a book in this to be written.  If only I knew a writer with experiencing writing about this industry to do it.  

In other news, I started two games this morning, neither of them Sims related:  Dead Space and Fallout 3.  I know as an EA Shill I should be pimping Dead Space to ya, but, honestly,  Fallout 3 is the one I ended up blowing the afternoon on.  You can't blame me.  I played (and reviewed for CGW) Fallout 1 a good 10 years ago.  I have history.  I'm a fan.   And I'm a real fan, too--not like the nincompoops on That One Special Internet Forum who have been aching for Fallout 3 to suck since it was first announced.   If I live to be 200 (just a couple more years now), I will never understand how people get that way, or why they bother, given the relative brevity of our time here on Earth.  So much bitterness....and for what?   So you don't believe Bethesda can do right by your beloved old games....go play something else.  But to waste time posting on message boards about it, with other fellow bitter people.   I don't know.   Out of morbid curiousity, I lurked over there the other day, right when the game came out, and sure enough, as the positive reviews were piling in,  it was one bitter comment after another in response: "LOL PRESS WHORES!" etc.  Because god forbid it might actually be good!  Or god forbid anyone else should enjoy it, since you're determined to hate it!  More laughable, and sad,  were the comments promising that when THEY buy the game and write their review, you can damn well be sure it's gonna be a negative one!!  Yeah.  That's great.  So your plan is to:

1) Buy a game you know you're going to hate, thereby giving the company you feel is screwing the franchise more money.
2) Play it even though you know you're gonna hate it,  thereby wasting hours out of your own life doing something you don't enjoy.
3) Write a negative review no matter what your play experience happens to be, because you know already that it's going to suck. 

Good grief does it suck to be you.

Meanwhile, I'll post my own impressions as I make my way through.   I have no agenda other than that I hope it's good, which is how I feel every time I start a new game.  Wacky notion, huh?

Oh yeah, and I'll play Dead Space too, if only to tell you ITS THE MOST AWESOME GAME EVER BECAUSE EA MADE IT AND PLEASE BUY EA GAMES SO THE COMPANY MAKES MORE MONEY AND THE STOCK GOES BACK UP AND I CAN RETIRE EARLY AND FINALLY READ ALL THE MALAZAN BOOKS.

Love,
Jeff




54 comments:

Anonymous said...

Funny as always, Mr. Green.
Dead Space is a good game, but it's got nothing on Fallout 3. I've spent something like 4 hours on it today, and I'm getting ready for some more poop-socking.
Enjoy your games!

tomsamson said...

Yup, dead space is on my list of games to buy soon (ay, so many there, crazy hliday season again), if it helps you with your stance at ea, i totally buy it cause you told us to, not because its a good game by itself or anything :-D
And yeah, being an indy game developer myself i know there surely would be some interesting stories to tell about the ups and downs of how a game gets made and what its like to be making games, you should totally write a book on that if you´re allowed to (and find the time) :)
(In case you don´t remember me by looking at my avatar making me look like one of those weirdos running around making photos with booth babes all day, i´m ugur, we had some email chat recently :) , hi).
Also props for what you said on those forum guys, i hate it when someone puts so much work into something and others talk so negatively about it without even giving it a try, just being filled up with dislike in first place because its not what they´d like that thing to be (thinking they know what it is without even trying it).

Rhody said...

I can't imagine playing a game (especially one as huge as Fallout 3) just because I want to hate it. God, gamers on the internet are stupid. Look at any Kotaku article and try to deny it.

Anonymous said...

Enjoy playing Oblivion With Guns, I'm going to be replaying Fallout 2 again with killap's Restoration Mod 1.2 and basking in its superior, deeper roleplaying experience. Have fun shooting zombies.

Anonymous said...

Too bad all the best game industry writers are now working dev side and now don't have the time....or do they??

I have a question for you Jeff. Now that you have been initiated into the 'wonders and mysteries' of game development, would you have reviewed some games differently? Having known the details on how a game is made would you be more or less critical?

Rhody said...

Uh oh, Jeff. Sounds like someone posted a link to your blog on that forum (or one like it). Prepare to feel their wrath.

Anonymous said...

Fallout 3 sounds awesome, but there are people who compare Deadspace to Bioshock and so it seems like a game well worth getting into. Lol about the embittered internet trolls.

Anonymous said...

looking forward to your impressions,i finished fallout 3 earlier and was not pleased with the ending. But a good game never the less.

Jeff Green said...

LOL--I figured I might get a link. Maybe I'm just a glutton for attention!

However, the guy who said, "enjoy oblivion with guns" and he's "going back to fallout 2": That's exactly right. This, I understand. You are enjoying something you like, and not wasting time with something you don't. That was the point of my post. So, see? Not that difficult. It's the people wasting time with the hate--that's what I don't get.

Love,
The Guy Making The Game That None of You Will Like

Anonymous said...

I'm glad your still employed. Even if I joked elsewhere that if you were fired I'm sure Ryan would take you back. I really enjoy the blog. Keep it up. Also I'm still waiting for that iPhone blog post. Maybe your saving that post for rainy days that are full of writer's block.

JJ = Akia

Anonymous said...

Part time NMA-er here. Fair points Mr. Green, but I think you should consider the nature of an open internet forum. If you look carefully you'll probably find that aside from the radiated scum that occasionally blows in from the wastes---which thrives off trolling---the majority of the "resident" members are more level headed. I think you'll find that almost all ugly and unruly attacks on journalists are done away with. In many cases I think NMA (please remember it's not a hive mind) has been prematurely unfair ("innocent until proven guilty") to Bethesda, though on the other hand, many of the worries (e.g. (in no specific order) handling of the canon; design flaws from Oblivion being carried over; preservation of Fallout's meaningful freedom of choice, and versatility of character creation and play, to name just a few) have been proven "somewhat" warranted through previews and now reviews. I do find it pitiful, nonetheless, for someone to spend time complaining about it, only to eventually play it (on day 1!), and then possibly trash it (especially if done dishonestly). What is quite remarkable, however, is that some fellow members are showing signs of "redemption", and admitting the game isn't half bad. You'll find plenty---okay---some people saying its considerably better than Oblivion, that it's actually enjoyable to play, and even somehow, sometimes (oh the humanity!) manages to evoke a very Falloutian ambiance. From what I gather, nevertheless, the general consensus is that it's not a "Fallout" game per se. An understandably very (for some) fun post-apocalyptic game, set in the Fallout mythos, but with an inconspicuous disconnect with the former titles. And I believe this was the biggest gripe NMA had with Beth, on calling it a full-fledged new installation of the franchise. Despite its multiple fundamental differences (and I'm not talking about the generational gap here) Bethesda decided it wouldn't be a spin-off, or an entirely new, if inspired, IP.

My own plain and simple, (but oh so deep) woe with all this (and I'm not only picking on poor old Bethesda, but the industry as a whole), is the slow and painful death (or as some choose to call it, evolution) of the RPG genre. I don't mind Bethesda's general gamestyle, I just don't like it, but some do (you know, some people fancy clown porn---compulsory spiteful jab, to live up to NMA's perceived image). As the target market expands, accessibility becomes a greaterr priority (which is usually associated with a "dumbing down"), budgets rise, and so do sales performance expectations. You end up with FO3, a game which---at least by the way its marketed---is supposed to appeal equally (though perhaps for different reasons), to the MMO and casual FPS crowds, plus everyone in between. It's a reflection of where the industry has come, the Goliath it has become. Not a bad thing per se, but right now the chances of an RPG as good (in terms of role-play), original, ground breaking and "immersive" (and *cough*turn-based*cough*)
as Fallout are practically null.Different times.

Anyway, I very much look forward to your review, I'd ask for perhaps a few words on how it holds as a Fallout game with all things considered, if it wouldn't be too much.

I wish you the best of luck in your new found life outside the fourth wall.

P.s. Apologies for the length.

P.p.s. I wrote this before (or rather during) this was linked

Anonymous said...

Being a gamer who missed out on the original Fallouts, I decided to play through the first two (pimp GOG.com here), while a friend of mine skipped straight to #3. Both of us are having a lot of fun. From comparing our experiences (and reading everyone elses' thanks to 'teh internets') I have come to the conclusion that:
1. Both are fun games (Impossible)
2. They are not the same game (Duh)

I've heard the term it's "Oblivion with guns" repeated several times. Right. Now I only played a couple hours of Oblivion, but someone tell me what made it so different from Fallout (besides the setting and storyline). Was it that bad? I never got the impression. From what I've read so far, F3 has been pretty deep, and, overall, a pretty faithful sequel of the first two, if not the same game (Boohoo) And yes, I am really enjoying Fallout 1 (the Queen Deathclaw is a bitch) but once I'm done with it and #2, I will be trying out the third. And I plan to enjoy all three.

P.S. This same friend has been pimping Dead Space, so it sounds like a game worth trying out.

Jeff Green said...

Good post, anonymous.

I know that there are plenty of smart and cool people over at the Internet forum that I didn't call out by name on purpose. So I wasn't dismissing the place as a whole. Just the ones who give it a bad name. And, really, I couldn't care less. It's none of my beeswax what anyone does. Folks can spend their time ragging on a game they haven't played--what do I care? I'm merely saying I don't understand it.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Mr. Green. I'll take a look at This is Your Brain on Music. How is it as a read, with your deductive reasoning?

ICallItFutile said...

I've loved the 8+ hours I've played of Fallout 3. It still suffers issues Oblivion had, but they really used the setting to it's advantage. I never feel safe and I'm always scrummaging for weapons, ammo and health. The combat is fun and the dungeons are too much of a chore to explore.

Unknown said...

Great post as always. I've been itching to hear Jeff's rebuttal to the No Mutant Allowed folks ever since that E3 2007 podcast from more than a year ago. Good things come to those who wait I guess.

And kudos to anonymous for coming up with level headed critique to Bethesda's game. Even though I will defend my claim that Baldur's Gate 2 is the best RPG ever made by far to my grave, I still believe that the RPG genre is actually moving forward. I cannot stress enough that time and time again, the illusion of choice has become increasingly stale. The extent to "role-playing" in RPGs has always been the genre's most finite dimension. It's actually refreshing when a company like Bethesda concedes the fact that RPGs have a fundamental limitation and puts out a product that does away with the pretenses and make the world its centerpiece. That's just my two cents.

Alex said...

Having played Fallout for a few enjoyable post-Halloween hangover hours I've developed a bit of nostalgia for the Oblivion experience.

Every time I wander into a post-apocalyptic wastering hole I keep secretly hoping some scarred wastelander will sidle up to me at the bar, his eyes darting nervously about the room, and whisper those cherished words:

"You like to dance close to the fire, don't you?"

Anonymous said...

Despite never having played Oblivion or any of the previous Fallout games, I was really looking foward to Fallout 3. I've put something like 20 hours into it at this point, though, and I'm not crazy about it.

It was the 50s atmosphere that I was really excited about (I was hoping for something along the lines of the 30s-50s atmosphere of BioShock)... but none of it is really that apparent yet. As far as atmosphere, it's just a whole lot of empty nothin' so far. Which, as a few people have pointed out to me, makes sense considering the whole "post-apocalypse" thing.

Eh. I'm hoping I'll enjoy it more as I play more of it.

Unknown said...

Boy Jeff, the game press misses your writing alot :) So damn funny!

Juan Letona said...

but but but...

Dead Space is good!

Grubber said...

i should have nuked megaton

Anonymous said...

Hope things rebound for EA's stock, Jeff, so you don't have to whore yourself out for Peggle review code.

I've never played Fallout 1 or 2 and I've only spent a couple of hours in Oblivion. Having nothing to compare it to, "Oblivion with guns" or "NOT A REAL FALLOUT!!!" never enter my mind while playing it. The game is amazing and I'm enjoying it more than anything I've played this year.

Michael Adamek said...

I suddenly got the overwhelming urge to go...buy...EA...games...

Michael Adamek said...

I think X-Play hit it correctly Jeff. "If you consider Fallout 3 just being Oblivion with guns, than you probably also consider Jurrasic Park just Jaws with dinosaurs" LOL

Fallout rules, always have, I'm glad Bethesda did it justice

The Meehoo with an Exactlywatt said...

Glad to hear you are still employed Jeff : D Could you do me a big favor and give the people at DICE some kudos or props, or whatever it is thats good these days for Mirror's Edge? I've been hooked on the demo since it came out and have not played anything else. Even full games just because I wanted to take seconds of my time. I know that once I get that game, my life wil be over.

Anonymous said...

Haven't touched FO3 yet - too much other stuff to do. Including an EA RTS that isn't as good as it should be...

Glad to hear you dodged the layoffs, and the idea of a book (or documentary) about the development cycle of a game is a great idea. There's a good chance nobody will ever write that book about a big company because it's too messy to have that sort of stuff aired; budgets, personalities, time constraints, reallocation of resources, fixes that never make it, features that get cut...just look at the recent fake controversy over Chris Hecker and Spore.

Anonymous said...

Hey Jeff, Don't fret what people do. Kids will do the dumbest things because, well, they're kids. Even though I pity them for they're non-sensical behaviors that is equivalent to monkeys, it's not worth developing an ulser over.

Just think it's better them than us. Besides your in an awesome place in your life where you can over look such annoyances. Hopefully one day I can join you one day.

TheToiletDuck said...

lol @ telling fanboys not to hate stuff.

Jeff Green, you so cray-zee

:D

Ryan Whiting said...

Hey, I got Fallout 3 on Friday and I gotta say it's one of the best purchases I've made in regards to gaming in a long long while. I thought Oblivion's attention to detail was amazing but Fallout takes it to the next level because of the wealth of choice that you are offered. Admittedly, I grew up in a time where I was a little too young for Fallout 1 or 2, but I admit I kind of regret not having that experience. But I'm happy that I've been introduced into a series I now love. Anyway, Fallout 3 will be the reason I fail this term. I guarantee it.

Ryan Whiting said...

BTW, "anonymous" mentioned that he'd be looking forward to a review by Jeff? Does he still do reviews, because if he does that would be pretty awesome, I might finally have a place to get some brutally honest PC reviews without having to rely on that IGN or Gamespot shit. And 1UP isn't always that great either.

Macroe said...

Regarding the stock situation at EA, it's tough working for a public company and having to suffer through a stock nose dive and see others get laid off. I read that the suits at EA will cut 10% of the workforce, which is a lot of people. Still, from my experience as a general manager + owner of a factory here in Mexico City, I can tell you that there is no easy way about it although I would wish we could just find an easy way out of a crisis. This time around it's a worldwide crisis and it's really a fundamental change in the "global village" that touches even the most die-hard Greenspeak fans. How can I explain to someone who makes 15 bucks a day in Mexico that they are "too expensive" for the company? That chinese make 10 dollars a week? This makes no sense, regardless of how good the product is. I don't want to sound like a pessimistic male Cassandra, but remember "The Road"? Let's hope we all get our act together soon. I'm sure that you will see many go before this is over, but I'm also sure that your value at EA is known to the people who hired you as well as to all of us, your loyal and grateful readers.
So, nothing else to do but grab a bottle of a nice cold Pacifico beer and keep the posts coming!

Peter Fall said...

yup. it's stupid. but it is understandable WHY people like to hate on sequels; it's because most people are afraid of change. the Fallout fans in particular. but that's because it has been SO long since they've gotten a sequel. they've grown very attached to their old dusty familiar game. it's as if they've ACTUALLY been living in a fallout shelter all these years, refusing to come out because they're scared to change! but everyone's got to take that step out into the unknown radiation. everyone needs to mutate and adapt!

good blog as ever. happy halooweeen!

Anonymous said...

I wonder if all those people who bitch about games have: a) played the game and b) paid for the game. For the longest time, I'ved avoided Crysis because of all the bad things I've heard about it and it ended up to be one of the few games I've really enjoyed.

Grubber said...

did you notice that in the beginning of fallout 3, you're character is implicitly christian?

i mean, your father and mother were pretty emphatic about revelations 2:16.

Patrick said...

Huh? Fallout 3?

Anonymous said...

Must buy Dead Space.
Satisfy the EA overlords.
Keep Jeff employed.
Yes master I obey

Anonymous said...

Both Dead Space and Fallout 3 are AMAZING GAMES. They both play and run like a dream at max settings/4xAA/1920x1200 5.1 on my 'aging' 8800GTX in Vista32. The presentation of both games is amazing and the 5.1 speakers are getting utilized to the fullest.

Its a great time to be a PC gamer once again. :)

Anonymous said...

I started Planescape:Torment again. I realize how much I enjoyed reading all that text as it adds such depth.

This was yet another great post, and having been in the games business for almost two centuries you definitely have a mighty amount to offer the development side of the industry.

So how is Fallout 3? Taken over the Jet biz yet? What type of character are you playing?

Happy Halloween and all that jazz.

Anonymous said...

I've been enjoying the heck out of Dead Space and can't wait to hear your thoughts on Fallout 3.

Dtrescott said...

Dead Space and Fallout 3 are on my list to eventually buy, I keep hearing good things about both.

Keep working hard there Jeff so I can catch up with you on the Malazan books..(about half way through Gardens of the Moon)

Anonymous said...

No Mutants Allowed is the most pitiful website on the Internet. A day or two after the release they were having a Fallout "giveaway" which included copies of Fallout 1 & 2 with a Fallout 3 t-shirt that was riddled with bullet holes. And then I went into the forums...

Well, that was a mistake. It was an extremely sickening experience, and not in a Tub Girl kind of way, but in a way that makes you lose all faith in humanity. Those guys are serious about their Fallout. They're also serious morons.

Anonymous said...

In response to the long anonymous post:

The "contest" I was speaking of was on the front page of the website (which makes me think that the administrators of the website are actually as crazy as some of the other people there). It could have been a community highlight post that was put on the homepage, or a joke directed at the idiots of NMA who also plague every Internet forum with open registrations. I'm sure NMA has its fair share of mature posters, and I can understand not being interested in the game with so much being changed (namely the first person view point). If there are still a lot of the top-down, isometric, PC RPG lovers out there then I truly feel sorry for them if that's the only thing that can satisfy their modern RPG needs. I guess Dragon Age is about all that group has to look forward to at this moment in time.

Things change. The sooner people realize this, the sooner the Internet can be a happier place!

Yeah right! I need a place to bitch and moan about crap I don't like too! I need to overcome my outspoken hatred of YouTube anime/Linkin Park montages.

MSUSteve said...

Jeff man, you left off a fourth tick on your NMA list.

4. Share review with a small number of insane, but like minded people, who already believe blindly that the game is bad, making your work reviewing the game even more pointless.

Those people really are nuts.

Anonymous said...

There are few games I've played more than the original Fallouts, and despite being skeptical about Bethesda's take on the series, after 40 hours of play I have been blown away by Fallout 3's faithfulness to the design choices that made the originals so great; the freedom to approach things from a myriad of angles, all according to the whims of the player.
It is Bethesda's best game, a game that unquestionably deserves to be included in the true "Fallout canon", and one of the most insightful pop-culture allegories of our current political clime out there.
Here's what it isn't. A shooter. Get past the surface impressions.

Slapshot said...

Fallout 3 is really amazing. Congrats to Bethesda once again.

Jordan said...

I have dead space so I got you covered. Hope you had a good Halloween

Anonymous said...

I know this is the Fallout 3 "luv fest" (and I'll be picking it up eventually) but check out Fable 2 when you get time. I really love the roll playing elements. I played an evil character, got engaged to an aristocrat, took her out to a poor gypsy camp, knocked her up and made her live with the kid in a wagon with no money, had sex with another chick in front of her which pissed her off, and then sacrificed the sidekick chick at the Temple of Shadows - she was decapitated on the Wheel of Fate. I got back to the gypsy camp to be met by my wife who promptly divorced me and took the kid and left. I've yet to run across her again but when I do . . .
- Hamilton

Slapshot said...

Fable 2 might be the game that may force me to finally buy a 360. Well that and the latest machine price drop.

Unknown said...

Fable 2 = awesome
Fallout 3 = awesome
Dead Space = Awesome


We win as gamers!!!

Anonymous said...

Oh god don't talk to me about Fallout 3.

The worst time for a PC gamer is when his PC is on its last legs and he's still about six months away from being able to buy that new machine. You're just kind of out there in limbo land, walking amongst the living dead.

Presently, the PC that's on my desktop is a 3GHZ Pentium 4 D class machine, and all I've go installed in the old girl is a 7950 gt video card. If Loyd Case were here he'd probably say to me: She's dead, Jim.

Yeah, I could probably run Fallout 3 on this rig. But I want to play Fallout 3 the way it was meant to be played. Which means that I have to wait a whole six months to get my hands on Bethesda's latest masterpiece.

Damn.

Double damn.

Triple damn.

Quadruple damn.

Quadruple double dog damn.

Quadruple triple dog damn.

Right now I'm a slave to the Dell website. I go there every single day to check out their XPS 730 system. I like to play around with the different configurations and explore all the possibilities. Why maybe one day I might even buy one of Dell's machines!

But seriously all of my problems might be solved pretty soon. I went hiking on the weekend with some friends, and while they were looking elsewhere (most folks just aren't as observant as I am) I spotted, lurking off in the bushes, a sasquatch. My reflexive instincts were to whip out my camera and snap off a few pictures - those pictures are being developed even as we speak, my friends, so it's highly likely that by next week I'll be a millionaire.

Jon Lynch said...

Take Bethesda related bitterness to task, Mr. Green.

The other 90% of us who bought the originals and can manage not to vomit torrents of spite when Fallout 3 is brought up in conversation will thank you for it.

The Forum That Shall Not Be Named manages (despite the anonymous post above mine saying otherwise) to be a one-stop-shop for self proclaimed series purists that never tire of espousing variations of "Beth sucks" and "non-isometric = fail."

Even in the face of contrary evidence, they remain defiant. Of the avalanche of positive reviews, one poster writes:

"Do we need to perform some ritual or something, slay some evil creature with a wooden stake or silver? Call in a priest to do an exorcism?"

Yes, clearly established gaming journalists are in need of an exorcism and not this putrid slice of the internet.

John said...

I couldn't get past the first Malazan book - it was billed in the book store as 'If you like George RR Martin, you'll love...' but there were way too many deliberately weird names.

Do they get better?

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