General Gaming News and Discussion
- Thread starter Wintermute
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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Brevik made a lousy ARPG called Marvel Heroes that gradually become something very fun after a couple years of post-launch work then bailed to let Dohrmann speed run the destruction of the company that would taken Brevik much longer. Brevik has basically been the kiss of death since leaving Blizzard.
Flagship Studios: Hellgate London was one of the most high profile launch disasters in history (at the time) and the studio was bankrupt in less than a year
Turbine: This could not have been a very long stint between Flagship and Gazillion but it was long enough to attach his name to an MMO that was pretty much a complete flop until it successfully re-branded under a f2p model
Gazillion: Marvel Heroes started out awful and became pretty solid but there had to have been massive issues with Gazillion that started while it was still under Brevik's leadership for Dohrmann to have run the company into the ground so quickly and thoroughly.
Graybeard Games: Some 90% finished then abandoned bland 2D slop that only sold by pretending the name David Brevik still meant something
Skystone Games: Now we'll find out if he can destroy a small indie publisher the way he destroyed development studios
Khane
Got something right about marriage
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So you had like 5k hours in a lousy game that was only fun for a short time frame that had nothing to do with Brevik?
Lots of us had fun in Marvel Heroes. You don't need to be a fucking hipster about it.
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Gavinmad
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm not being a hipster and I never said the year or two the game was actually fun had nothing to do with Brevik. I was trying to say that he probably would have run Gazillion into the ground too, just slower than Dohrmann did.
Judas (video game) - Wikipedia
~8 year development cycle if they manage to hit their March 2025 release date without delays.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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The Blizzard North guys made Torchlight but since they got none of the IP building guys like Metzen, the setting sucked which damaged the sequels.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Have any Blizz spin offs created a game that didn't suck?
I just think they all leave and take surface level gameplay but always fail to understand the importance of an artistic and thematic underpinning.
Most IPs that are successful today seem to come from an 80s aesthetic, even if it's just informing the worldview of the creator it bleeds into most things. I'm struggling to think of a single big IP that exists out of that.
Star Wars is from the late 70s but it matured into phenomenon in the 80s.
Harry Potter is 80s woman writes teen Tolkien coming of age story.
Warhammer is 80s punk on top of a Western civ class.
Warcraft is basically 80s punk on top of Tolkien in a similar vein.
Fallout is Mad Max style 80s incarnate with retro futurism aesthetic.
I think perhaps the 80s was the last decade the West was truly capable of cultural genesis.
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Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
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I think many of them are good game designers, but terrible business men. See Ken levin and mark kern.
Torchlight STARTED good, had great new ideas for arpgs. but, sequels just got worse and worse, more and more corporate.
Firefall had some great game ideas... and was destroyed by Kern being a horrible business man/boss.
making games is hard.
Even looking at someone successful now. look at Larian. Divine divinity, beyond divinity, divinity 2. dragon commander... then they got out of the normal channels of producers, and kickstarted, and suddenly they are firing on all cylinders with original sin 1, 2, and bg3.
they struggled for years, making mediocre to bad games. until boom, got into the sync they needed.
or look back at a number of the old school IPs. Look at ultima, its highs and lows. (garriot, warren spector, paul neurath, john romero) legends.. but also often hit or miss.
might and magic, wizardry.. etc.
levin in interviews comes off as a major idea guy. can't actually make his ideas reality. and, will spend millions to retool and add new ideas without making a product.
brevik in those greybeard vids comes off as having no drive, or creativity left. "let my daughter do the art". and, "tell me what you want in the game, and Ill add it." brevik might be a coder. but needs someone to design the game for him.
kern is obsessed with twitter. hes done.
Torchlight STARTED good, had great new ideas for arpgs. but, sequels just got worse and worse, more and more corporate.
Firefall had some great game ideas... and was destroyed by Kern being a horrible business man/boss.
making games is hard.
Even looking at someone successful now. look at Larian. Divine divinity, beyond divinity, divinity 2. dragon commander... then they got out of the normal channels of producers, and kickstarted, and suddenly they are firing on all cylinders with original sin 1, 2, and bg3.
they struggled for years, making mediocre to bad games. until boom, got into the sync they needed.
or look back at a number of the old school IPs. Look at ultima, its highs and lows. (garriot, warren spector, paul neurath, john romero) legends.. but also often hit or miss.
might and magic, wizardry.. etc.
levin in interviews comes off as a major idea guy. can't actually make his ideas reality. and, will spend millions to retool and add new ideas without making a product.
brevik in those greybeard vids comes off as having no drive, or creativity left. "let my daughter do the art". and, "tell me what you want in the game, and Ill add it." brevik might be a coder. but needs someone to design the game for him.
kern is obsessed with twitter. hes done.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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I mean that's undoubtedly true but Torchlight for example doesn't really grab me world wise either. Diablo (1) was dripping with that sort of 80s gothic revival and horror imagery. Torchlight seems like generic ARPG by committee vibe.
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CaughtCross
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Rob Pardo has to have some kinda business sense as he is able to get funding and keep his company running for nearly 9 years now with no game to release on the horizon. Im shocked the studio still has funding, how can it ever be profitable at this rate if it takes them this long to develop something. Maybe Morgan Webb's role in the studio is to sweet talk investors and keep the money flowing.
Chris
Potato del Grande
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These people need to make smaller proof of concept games to get the studios going.
Torchlight was that. Blizzard didn't start with WoW either.
You can't just make a gigantic game with new people out of nowhere..
This is why most MMOs fail too.
Torchlight was that. Blizzard didn't start with WoW either.
You can't just make a gigantic game with new people out of nowhere..
This is why most MMOs fail too.
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Mist
REEEEeyore
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Yeah, exactly. Show me a game with a good combat/gameplay loop. Show me you can get that done.
Only then do you get a ton of money to develop a whole world of content around it.
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Palum
what Suineg set it to
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I kinda feel I have been more forgiving for really cool games with warts than really slick games with nothing interesting going on. Best example was shadow of the horned rat was a mess of a game but I loved the shit out of.
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Chris
Potato del Grande
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Wait that's what PoE is minus the MMO features.
They made a 2 act ARPG, then 3 acts, then 4 acts, then 10 acts.
That would be interesting for a MMO. Make one zone with great mechanics and an expansion plan, go from there.
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All of this is why I find myself gravitating towards indie games these days. They can put energy into new/refined/interesting mechanics rather than trying to target investor return, and it's easier to maintain a cohesive vision with a small studio than it trying to push out AAA art with a 500 man team in six global locations. After 40 years of gaming it's just instantaneously obvious to me when a product is a pretty veneer over something that has been committeed into being fundamentally stale/boring. (I'll still buy AAA stuff, but only after seeing thorough reviews.)
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