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Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
Shalidor
Apprentice
Member # 5021
 written Sunday, September 26 2004 06:15 Profile #50
You might want to make it a bit more clear whether that deeply biting satire was aimed at me or the people on the other side of the argument. It would make more sense as the latter, though I'm assuming it's the former because of your high karma.
Posts: 6 | Registered: Saturday, September 25 2004 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
Shalidor
Apprentice
Member # 5021
 written Sunday, September 26 2004 05:35 Profile #48
I'd like to get a few things straight-

-I did not mention politics in the first place. It was not me who brought it into the argument in the first place; the first time I mentioned it, I tried to keep it out.

-My comment about socialists not understanding liberty was not an attack, it was a simple statement of my opinion which is based in fact. I'm not calling them mindless drones or evil Sith lords. I have little doubt that Rousseau had no concept of the havoc and death his writings and blind idealism would ultimatly cause when he wrote them. They do not, however, fully understand liberty and its corrolaries. That is not an attack. If you want to fully understand my point of view, I suggest you read The Law which can be found online; I've already read your Social Contract several times so it'd only be fair play.

-Bringing up spelling errors in my posts is kind of, to be quite honest, pathetic. No, I don't use a spell checker and I'm not perfect. You may notice I have not mentioned any of the plentiful typos in posts before mine. Really.

-I can't believe you can say with a straight face that the Iroquois commited less mass-murder. We have absolutely no way of knowing how much murder they commited. They, like most other Native American tribes, were staunch believers in their racial superiority over the rest of the world (just like the Europeans were, and 99% of the rest of the world) and they followed a eye-for-an-eye belief that revenge was noble and acceptable. This led them to destroy countless other tribes, most of which we will never know about because of the invaluable oral history that was lost when the plagues swept over the new world. I'm not demonizing the Native Americans; in my opinion, their socieites were often more humane than the European world at the time. But idolizing them is quite odd.

-Absolutely no comment to the monkey.

-If so many people here really hate Jeff for being a libertarian (using the term 'hate' a bit widely, but it's fitting based on the acidic, slanted sardonicism Corrigere displayed), why did you completely avoid mentioning it as a reason in the first place, and why the bloody hell are you still playing his games? If it chafes you to see capitalism accepted so much, I can honestly not see why you haven't just left to another community. There are a plethora of other RPG scenario making tools, game making tools and apparently plenty of shareware developers you idolize, so why stick around at all if you not only dislike the developer, but also dislike the games? Rather pointless isn't it?
Posts: 6 | Registered: Saturday, September 25 2004 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
Shalidor
Apprentice
Member # 5021
 written Saturday, September 25 2004 17:24 Profile #35
You might want to read a history book. Capatalism is a naturally occuring form of society; not the only one, but the only one that lasts when one society is exposed to another. It's also a wonderful concept in its simple ingenuity: Live and let live; practice liberty; reap the rewards of your efforts and answer for your own actions. It is a very odd coincidence that Jeff and I are both libertarians (though I'm sometimes more of a Whig) but it may explain why I like his games so much. But apparently I'm only going to get flamed more because this forum is largely socialist, or at least extremely leftist, based on the satirical nature of your comment. Oh well.
Posts: 6 | Registered: Saturday, September 25 2004 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
Shalidor
Apprentice
Member # 5021
 written Saturday, September 25 2004 17:15 Profile #33
You apparently don't understand the concept of free enterprise, personal gain and ultimatly liberty itself, which is unsurprising given your 'political' viewpoint, so I'm not even going to reply; it'll just boil down to a political argument.
Posts: 6 | Registered: Saturday, September 25 2004 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
Shalidor
Apprentice
Member # 5021
 written Saturday, September 25 2004 16:42 Profile #31
[Edit: I missed Boots' post because it took so damn long to read and write all this. Sorry.]

Damn, this is a fairly busy community isn't it?

I'd like to get one thing out of the way before I start the loooooooong process of replying to each one of these topics: No, I'm not 'JV'. The last thing I wanted to do was tarnish the poor guy's rep further with my own mild satire, so if you're reading this Jeff, I'm sorry :P . To the people who accuse me: Ask a mod. My IP is New Hampshire; Jeff's is, I presume, Washington. That rather settles it.

In order of response:

Homey: Thank you for not jumping at me with a scapel and waveblade. I have enough to quote as it is.

Corrigere: Being a student of logic I try to avoid outright fallacies, so I'll be reading your post carefuly. Now to address your topics.

quote:
The games are competently-written simulacra entries derived from doodles made in fourth grade. Geneforge is nothing more than Pokemon 3d, the other games (from Exile I up to A3) are all experiments in keeping things solid and unique until the registration barrier.
Geneforge had far more plot to it than every single pokemon product and spinoff compound, as I'm sure you know. I'm assuming your content was satirical; to address your point in toto, I really disagree. No, they're not ingenius social commentary, groundbreaking high fantasy or a tour de force of the human soul, but they are very solid games with a good deal of lore, especially by the second and third.

quote:
(Who genuinely believes that gameplay in a Spidweb game goes UP after one crosses the registration threshold?) Obviously superfluous in comparison to the rest of the arguments you push forward, but worth riposting nevertheless.
I'm going to take the last part of that quote and turn it around against the first part there. Your argument has no standing whatsoever. Just off the top of my head, Avernum 3, which I've been playing recently, has its most interesting bits after the registration. (Spoilers ahead) Conversing and diplomacy with the empress, dealing with the giants and trogs and the final battle were fantastic.

quote:
I'll tell you about my mother when she says I'm going to Yale and sticks me in a 2-year state campus. (You'll notice that most people in this thread are disgruntled, but not inconsiderate.)
Pretentious, much? You apparently didn't notice, but I was making fun of my own choise of words there.

quote:
Honestly, I feel insulted and irritated reading this. The works of Alcritas beat those of Vogel by a longshot- if the 5 best BoE (well, including a few from BoA by proxy) designers knew C++ and weren't busy with school/work, they would blow Spidweb out of the water.
You missed my point entirely. It's that little if and and that matter. And believe me, a lot of little ifs and ands will come up over time. Saying "I could have done better if this and that" holds no merit when Jeff and the people you mentioned both started with basically nothing. Spiderweb's stayed alive by making great games; the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

quote:
If Jeff was in it for the money, he'd make his games deeper- well, most likely not (ex: FF series, Nintendo RPGs, etc)
We have similar dislikes, it's a shame you're after me with an axe...

quote:
but that's a far more plausible argument than the reverse. If he loved games, he'd make them shallower? I suppose, then, that he has begun to love his games more and more since E1?
You've twisted my argument around a good deal and that's known as a straw man fallacy. None of that is what I was saying in the quote directly above your sentence. Furthermore, anyone who can honestly say they thought Exile/Avernum 3 was less deep than #1 has just got to be high. Yes, I know that's ad hominem.

quote:
That said, it's both indicative of his apathy and laziness that he refuses not only to add features to BoE but also to fix things which were advertised to work. Sometimes, this doesn't matter. Usually, though, it does. (Just try to hide a town, for instance.) Is it too much work to make a patch? And even if it is, he's legally and morally bound to make one.
I have mixed feelings here. One side is addressed in the lower part of my post where I explain how indie developers can not continually support their games as much. The other side says that honest developers will fix glaring flaws in their product. I'm not going to try to refute what you're saying as I largely agree.

quote:
'The community' is the group of people who singlehandedly subsidize BoA, and did the same for BoE as well. (People buy BoA expecting infinite adventures, and will continue to do so for many years.) Thus even if 'the community' is not a sizable number of paying customers (FYI- it is), to limit designers is to limit the product, ultimately giving a blander product to the non-'the community' members who are paying customers. Isolating 'the community' like that is bad news, no matter how you slice it. Trust me, we've made excellent BoE scenarios- we know what we're doing more than Jeff gives us credit for (or at least seems to- but more on that...)
Point taken.

quote:
The lamest excuse ever. Why? "Affect Statistic" nodes were in Blades of Exile. In BoE, you could lower every stat for every party member to 0. If Jeff didn't want us to have the means to do unfair things, he would have never given us that, leaving me to the conclusion that he says that out of his being too lazy to give us the means rather than his objections to our having them. (Mind you, I'm not too angry over this anymore- things could be improved, but BoA allows much more control. I'm just pointing out how hollow and worthless this excuse is.)
Point taken again. Keep in mind I'm just saying what Jeff said on this one and hadn't heard a good counterargument yet.

quote:
One thing you forget is that he has been approached multiple times with the idea of making BoE "abandonware," or allowing members of 'the community' to take their free time and fix Jeff's products for No Price Whatsoever. Honestly, Jeff could practically go to a local technical college and drag in some interns to do his dirty work- t'wouldn't be very tough, and it certainly wouldn't distract him from the Pokeforge 3: More Inane Philosophy installment he's working on which will inevitably revolutionize the gaming world as we know it.
Not forgetting. I think you're forgetting that I'm not Jeff Vogel in disguise :P . I had not seen that mentioned anywhere in the earlier referenced posts.

quote:
EDIT: And for reference, let it be known that if there is a Homey Maigre Vasectomy fund, it need only contact me for a sizable donation.
Oh good, an ad hominem... don't you go attacking mine now!

In conclusion to my response to your post... hopefuly the fact that I haven't been desperatly parrying every attack will be an indicator that I'm neither Jeff Vogel in disguise nor an entirely unreasonable person.

quote:
You came in at NG? How conveeeeenient. So you don't have, say, the odd sinking feeling that those of us who were here before you got when Jeff announced his next series of games would be Exile remakes? And you have no personal connection to BoE? No wonder...
I have absolutely no clue what you're getting at. Furthermore, I didn't 'come into' 'the community' at any particular time until now. I just discovered this whole rumpus yesterday and registered and posted today. I've just been enjoying the games. Convinient? You tell me.

quote:
Just a hobbyist? I've given previous examples -- Calling Firaxis several hundred hobbyists would be pretty far off, and yet they've consistently given a level of community recognition that has little or nothing to do with profit.
Never heard of them...

quote:
All of the old companies or designers whose games are now free as a gesture of goodwill -- I suppose they're 'hobbyists' too?
Bing! First fallacy. You're setting up a false argument again. The post of mine you're replying to had nothing to do with releasing games as abandonware/freeware/open source after a given amount of time; hell, I wasn't even talking about community support. I have no clue where you're getting this.

quote:
XEvil is free, and while it isn't made by self-described 'professionals', it's certainly more 'professional' than SW's.
Go back 10 years and make this kind of statement and people would seriously look at you funny. Gaming as a capitalist playground is the bastard child of the EA/Microsoft/Square business models, and some people are still doing it with fun in mind. Calling them 'hobbyists' and the people behind such lovely things as Final Fantasy XI and Madden 2004 'professionals' is a travesty.
Wouldn't we all love to go back ten years? Unfortunatly, we can't. I'm living in the modern world and so is Jeff Vogel, and it's a damn sight harder to survive as a shareware company now than it was back before Vivendi and EA started realizing their vision of a monopolised industry.

quote:
I don't get it -- 'if he only wanted money, he could have made them deeper'? Was that a thinko? It doesn't make any sense. And 'great story + good plot + good characters + good gameplay = heart' isn't true. As I said, Avernum was a turning point -- it showed pretty conclusively that Jeff wasn't in it for the fun any more. The heart ISN'T there, and he's just become an indie developer in a big-game coat.
Apparently I misspoke. I meant to say that if he only wanted money he'd have made his games far less deep.

And about Avernum, I don't see where your evidence for that is. Remaking an old classic is generally something a community loves. Pop over to the Elder Scrolls forums and check out the endless petitions begging Bethesda to remake Daggerfall. Same applies to a ton of companies and communities. How is remaking a classic selling out?

quote:
The 'mail fraud' was a ha-ha-only-serious joke. No one got hurt by it, though? Au contraire: the design community did. They wanted serious bugs that hurt BoE functionality to be fixed, AS HIS AGREEMENT STATED HE WOULD, and he told them to bugger off.
Okay... point taken there. I have to say, though, Jeff probably wasn't thinking when he wrote that agreement. Nobody in their right mind agrees to infinite free product support (which is apparently what he said he'd give)... you're basically signing yourself into slavery :P .

quote:
BoE is his best work, easily. That he not only refuses to acknowledge this but goes on to treat the BoE community, his largest and (formerly -- if there are still ca. 2000 archives around, look there...) most loyal, like a non-entity...
Going back to what I previously aknowledged to be the one thing I could not side with him on. Yes, that is bothering.

quote:
Crippling an editor to prevent a bad designer from screwing up someone's gaming experience is not moral, it's absurd. No one is going to come out of 'kaBOOM! NEPHARS' having fun, whether or not it is cussed difficult, and that's where a lot of his decisions amounted to.
I see what you mean.

quote:
Untrue! Indie devs have a smaller fanbase, a smaller devoted fanbase, and usually a more devoted smaller devoted fanbase. When he asked for suggestions on BoA, he was dealing with people who knew EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANTED AND WHY, AND WHY OTHER PEOPLE WOULD WANT IT. He ignored them -- these people who have, in essence, made his product worthwhile -- to cater to the hypothetical eight-year-old.
That's typical practices for big development houses, sure. And you can't exactly blame someone like EA or Blizzard for catering to the hypothetical eight-year-old, but in this case it was absurd.
You're totally missing the point of my argument. It has to do with a constant stream of funds. And a small community can be every bit as demanding when it comes to constant support as a large one can.

quote:
Spidweb is big as indie houses go. Let's put it this way: if he weren't making money doing it, he wouldn't have hired a secretary (an astoundingly incompetent and hostile one, at that), had a kid, or maintained a site like Irony Central. He's not a starving artist, I'm sorry.
Incompetent and hostile? How so? That aside, mainting sites is pretty cheap as that goes. But I'll let that slide as I have no evidence to the contrary of your argument.

quote:
Sales are international and continuous, and he doesn't have server costs to worry about, so it's a tradeoff.
I really don't see how you'd know sales were continuous. And yes, I know about the gambit MMOs are with the server and support costs versus the constant income... I was just bringing up an example of constant income to contrast his business model with.

quote:
It's called 'acknowledging bug reports'. Other indie gaming houses do this. Paradox not only fixes bugs in programs that don't sell well any more, but they continue to tweak gameplay. This is because Johann, head of the company, actually likes doing what he does and, get this, plays his own games. That's an indie developer. To get the sort of community apathy Jeff has displayed, you'd have to move into a MUCH bigger crowd.
Not really. If you make good games and market them well enough, you wouldn't even need any forums period, never mind ignoring their residents.

quote:
I made no such comparison. And again, I don't think Jeff is a starving artist, given the evidence we have to the contrary. He's probably at least comfortable on what he makes; even Exile 1 is probably still selling.
Again, I don't see how you would possibly know this...

quote:
Why the hell not? It's his job. That's like me starting a pizzeria, promising customers generous toppings, and when they complain about getting two pepperonis on an extra-pepperoni pizza, me saying that I can't afford any more and if they don't like it they're hosed.
Well, yeah, with all the admissions I've made earlier I guess that is accurate.

quote:
Sense of perspective: Several people offered to fix BoE for Jeff, and he refused. That's not an affordability issue, is it?
Two sides to that coin. Releasing the source code even in private is very dangerous. It's certainly not in use anymore at this point, but if 'Exile 1 is still selling' like you said above, I would fully understand his wanting to keep the game source completely private.

quote:
No. He is trying to make a PROFITABLE game.
With the market he's selling to, they're virtually synonymous-- case in point, if they weren't and you're right, his games wouldn't be enjoyable as well as profitable :) .

quote:
His company clearly has not got much to worry about...
Once more you pull this 'Spiderweb is doing fine' card out of nowhere. How in the world would you know? They could be on the verge of bankrupcy (much as I doubt it) and the community's first alert of it would be the footrace between the domain names and the server space to see which expired first.

quote:
Anyone who's in it for personal profit isn't what the gaming market needs. We have too goddamn many football and golf games and shooters and Japanese RPGs on the market that exist for no reason besides profit. It isn't good. It's perverse and wrong, and it needs to be stopped.
I'm sorry but I find that incredibly insulting. You're basically attacking the entire concept of the free market there. You're saying it's wrong to want to make a profit from your work. You know, it's not black and white, love of making games or love of money; you can have both in strong amounts. Money isn't an evil thing to aspire to, especially for a family man. This industry would be missing 99% of its past and present greats if it was all about game-making passion and not about supporting your livelihood.

quote:
Jeff once said in an interview, 'For all I know, most of my fans could be septagenarian eskimos'. It's called 'the community' not because these are critics of his games, but people who will buy them whenever they come out. I bought every one of his games up until Avernum 2, for instance, and I've made several scenarios (albeit not good ones) -- why do I mean less than the hypothetical 8-year-old? Why does Stareye, who has been a beta-tester for Jeff many times, who has also bought many of his titles, and who has designed many GOOD scenarios -- why does his opinion matter less than that of the hypothetical 8-year-old's?
You're totally twisting the argument. You don't mean less; you mean just as much as the average customer. Seeing as his market is rather small, most people on the forums fall into the average customer range pretty clearly (especially with how many of his games you've apparently purchased). A better question to ask would be, why should he make the game less enjoyable for the majority of his paying customers just to make it moreso for the people who take the time and have the talent and interest to make scenarios with it? Sure, that's cool, and it's nice to have support, but you're using "the average 8-year old" as a device to make your argument seem more compelling: The 'average customer' is looking for a great game as much as anyone else, as that's why to be fair to as many people as possible it has to be aimed at the average customer.

quote:
I tried to be friendly, but frankly at times it seems you were more interested in defending Jeff than being reasonable about things.
I'm fairly interested in both for reasons stated at the top of my first post :) .

quote:
Look over the facts here -- yes, there have been deranged rants, but some real good points have been made, and Jeff's name isn't mud for no good reason.
Agreed.

Now for the ominously and mysteriously named *i, who may or may not rule Pluto with an iron fist.

quote:
You are probably ignorant of many Blades of Exile scenarios. There are a good number of them that, many people feel, are superior to any of Jeff's games.
You can always improve. I'm not saying the plot in all of his games is 10/10, but it could have been one hell of a lot worse if he was only in it for the cash and not for the quality.

quote:
What is not debatable is these designers did NOT get paid for their work. They did it completely on their own time and are the hobbists you speak of.
But they didn't make the game, did they? My point about hobbyists was referring to the work he put into creating the game system and engine, not the plot and storyline. Apparently I didn't phrase that very well as nobody has understood it.

quote:
This was more of a satire thing than anything else. Taking it seriously is not meant to be true. Alcritas is a lawyer and just showing how technically Jeff is a felon. Your caustic response to this is quite insulting in my opinion.
Just showing how technically Jeff is a felon... why? Because he already disliked him. Really disliked him. The post shows that quite clearly. My response may have been caustic, but your appraisal of the situation only compounds my point that it was only brought up in the first place because people disliked Jeff for totally seperate reasons.

quote:
While I agree with this in part. Jeff, by his own omission, claims that the Exile Trilogy still makes him decent sales. Probably not as much in their hayday, but still, they are a source of income. I agree he needs to make new games, but from what I have heard, a few months extension on any one title will hardly break his bank.
Yes, I suppose there is a middle ground to be found.

quote:
Again, fixing is not such a time consuming process such as to retard his income severely. I understand there are limitations, but Jeff could afford to fix them.

Jeff's argument was never, "I cannot afford this". If this was so, I could understand. His argument was, "I don't want to make people download a patch because it could confuse some people who don't visit the website, and I don't want to take the time to refer people to the appropriate links."

Money was never the primary issue (although it is an issue, yes) with this as far as Jeff has indicated.
Don't really have anything to say to that but okay.

quote:
You see these four things as independent issues when they are not. For a game like Geneforge, this is true. A game like Blades of Avernum is dependant upon having good scenarios to play for sales. Sure, you might get several, but in the long term, the sales are directly related to the number of good scenarios released. I sure wouldn't buy BoE if there were only ten cruddy scenarios released for it.

[Big Chop]

As I said before, he has indicated positive signs to this. If he wants to keep the good designers in Blades of Exile, who will produce good scenarios early on in BoA and increase sales, he needs to listen to their needs and concerns.
I see what you're getting at :) .

Now that I may or may not have been trounced on every subject I originally came in to discuss, I'll sit back and wait for a mod to drop by and prove to me that I am in fact only hallucinating that I live in New Hampshire, and am really Jeff Vogel's alter-ego :P

[ Saturday, September 25, 2004 16:43: Message edited by: Shalidor ]
Posts: 6 | Registered: Saturday, September 25 2004 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
Shalidor
Apprentice
Member # 5021
 written Saturday, September 25 2004 13:01 Profile #25
Well there are certainly two notable sides to this coin...

Firstly, look at my post count if you haven't already. Yes, I'm just visiting.

Now onto what I want to say.

I've enjoyed Spiderweb games since shortly after Nethergate was released for Windows and I read about it on a website, I forget where. Every one of them has been well made, well written, and intelligently crafted. As I'm a kind of aspiring indie developer myself, I naturally look up to Jeff for consistently making such good games.

Of course, there's a lot of evidence here that he hasn't been treating his community so good. I think a few people are definatly overstating their case, having read all the links posted here, but mostly I understand the anger and feelings of betrayal (and tell me about your mother).

Now the first thing I'd like to address is the attacks claiming he puts no heart into his games and just makes them to sell. Two things here-

-Anyone who makes games for anything but the money as a primary reason is not a professional, they are a hobbyist. You will not find them making games the quality of Spiderweb's.

-If a game has a great story, good plot, good characters and good gameplay, I think it has some heart behind it, period. If Jeff really only wanted money he could have made his games far, far deeper.

The reviews that direct people to his site generally don't even scratch the surface of the things you can do. He could get away with it. But he consistently makes quality titles.

Oh yes, and the mail fraud thing. I really tried to look at this both ways but I simply can not within me find a shred of sympathy for 'the community' on this one; if Spiderweb really did miss an obscure legal note when they set up their mail system, well boo-hoo. I hardly think anyone has suffered because of this horrible fraud that hurt nobody and was completely morally sound. Best I can see it's just being used as a different tack of argument against him because he's already disliked for more serious and founded reasons, which leads me to:

The issue of how he treated the BoE community. I never really used the editor and I suppose that makes me one of the many customers who merrily played through the game and many additional scenarios never knowing anything was wrong with the development community. It did strike me as a powerful and user-friendly tool the few times I looked it over. I can't really see any good reason for how he treated the community on this one, and I do find it rather disturbing. Most of all the issues I'm discussing actually.

Then there's the way he made Blades of Avernum 'against' what 'the community' wanted. Allow me to say first off that any indie game developer would have to be not only idealistic but plain dumb to not cater their game to the majority of their paying customers. Some of the things he left out because they would have made it too easy to screw up players' parties or frustrate players, I think he had very good reasons for. The unique selling point of BoA was the scenario designer and community, so unlike tools that are only partially modular like Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind (full games in their own rights, though they also have complete editing toolsets), so he can't really leave the average user with a note saying 'Caveat Emptor' and a link to a scenario download site. Making the scenarios safe is important.

Of course, that only covers part of the big issue, and there are other ways of keeping public scenarios safe than completely restricting designer power (though it is probably the most brutally effective way). It does strike me as rather odd he ignored a lot of the community requests.

But ultimatly, was it a crime to do so? I'll finish addressing this right after I finish the other topic that leads up to it--

Major game development houses can afford to actively support their community more than indie devs.

May be a shock to your sensibilities or a slap in the face, but it's a simple fact. I have no clue how much money Spiderweb makes but if these games are a primary source of income for Mr. Vogel, it's almost certain that he needs to keep making them. He's not getting a continous flow of income from Blades of Avernum; it's not an MMO. Once it's done, he has got to move on and start making a new game to keep the company alive. Major development groups, especially incredibly successful ones like Bioware, can afford, and I mean this literaly, to rest on their laurels with their next game while they patch every little glitch and add in every little feature their community wants. They are not in a constant struggle to stay alive. It's a completely different situation, and it's totally unfair to compare Bioware's support to Spiderweb's for this reason.

Related to this, I'll go back to Morrowind again. Bethesda Softworks is a self-publishing company. They do not have the budget that huge game developers do (for a perspective on how much money developers can be given for absolutely nothing, take a walk down memory lane to the ION Storm debacle); on the other hand, they are a subsidiary of a major media company, which keeps them alive through the hard times and means their budget is, oh, five thousand times more than Spiderweb's is. I don't have any statistics on how much money they rake in and fork into their games, but I'm fairly certain they're somewhere inbetween Spiderweb and Bioware (obviously on the Bioware side of things).

Bethesda has been supporting the Morrowind mod community a good deal. They've patched a lot of bugs long after the release and added a couple of requested features. But they're busy on their next game and they can't really afford to fix all the problems that are there. Ask any veteran of the Elder Scrolls Construction Set and he will gladly point out a bazillion flaws in the scripting engine, commands that don't work at all, weird errors when you make your game worlds too large, holes in the dialogue system, etc. It's not because it's a poorly designed game or a completely unsupported one, but these things simply will be found with an active community, and unless you're a really heavily funded development group with a load of money, you can not afford to fix them.

It was almost funny, in fact, reading some of these rants. They're almost identical to some of them from the spats that broke out in the Elder Scrolls forums sometimes. The soap opera drama element is all there. People feel betrayed by the company they've been loyal too. What's missing, I think, is a sense of perspective.

Bringing me back to the major point. Was it a crime to leave out so many of the much-wanted features in BoA, 'ignoring' the community? I don't think so. He's trying to make an enjoyable game, keep his company alive and make a profit for himself. That's good. Looking at it from the point of view of an indie developer, I'd love my community and try to work with them as much as possible (which is Jeff's sole loss in this little debate I've been having with myself), but the community's requests, if it was not indicative of the majority of paying customers, would simply have to come second (fourth) to the above three issues.

Rant over... feel free to flame me. I'd be more interested in a friendly discussion however :) .
Posts: 6 | Registered: Saturday, September 25 2004 07:00