Vivendi shuts down Sierra, Papyrus, Impressions.
Bob Perez
Bellevue, Washington. The announcement's in all the local papers and is
starting to make its way around the industry. Over 100 people are losing
their jobs locally as part of a larger cut of over 350 jobs nationwide. Some
50 people will lose jobs in the Boston area as the Papyrus and Impressions
game studios are shut down. Finally, about 160 people in the Los Angeles
area will lose jobs.
They're going to keep the Sierra brand alive and retain publishing rights
for some key franchises including the Leisure Suit Larry and Tribes lines,
but will discontinue most of the casual games and home productivity
products. I haven't heard any word on what's going to happen to some of the
other franchises like Half-Life, Homeworld, Ground Control, NASCAR, Lords of
the Realm (weren't the NASCAR products also part of this lineup)?
Vivendi continues to lose money. Last year they reported losses of over $243
million and the first Quarter results for 2004 doubled to over $54 million.
Reacting to these shocking results, the Board sacked most of its management
team earlier in the year and hired a new team that's now starting to make
the big (and long overdue) clean up moves. Although there's probably some
element in this story of softness on the PC Gaming side, I see this as less
an indictment of the PC Games business and more about mismanagement. It
follows the closure recently of the Electronic Arts studio up here in the
Northwest. EA is on a similar track right now and it's not surprising since
they are the ones who actually defined the current "rockstar mentality" that
has pervaded the games development industry for years. Trip Hawkins, founder
of EA, actually used that analogy at the time he founded the company and
literally referred to game developers as "rockstars". Somebody forgot to
tell them that they were also businesspeople.
It's no surprise that the one company currently bucking all these trends
both on the console and the PC side is the one company that didn't have a
CLUE about gaming just a few short years ago, but through the application of
all their acquired expertise at disciplined, professional software
development and effective marketing, is now becoming a dominant player in
gaming. I'm talking of course about Microsoft. I still remember when Ed
Fries, head of the Microsoft games division, adamantly defended "Flight
Simulator" and "Fury" as indications that MSFT was a player in the games
space. And look at them now. Whether it's XBox, XBox Live, a major push into
the MMOG space via alliances first with Turbine and now with Brad McQaid,
key alliances with Brian Reynolds, Chris Taylor, Ensemble and so on, you see
a consistent pattern of aproaching the game market with all of the same
seriousness and competitiveness that they threw at OS and productivity
software. No rockstars, just good business and ever-so-slightly different
financial results ...
I met Al Lowe, creator of the Leisure Suit Larry line, years ago when he
became a customer of mine and we've been friends ever since. He was one of
the great original talents at Sierra, funny as hell and smart as they come,
and it's no surprise that his LSL franchise is one of the few survivors of
today's announcements. Al introduced me to Ken and Robert Williams (founders
of Sierra) around the time that the two of them were just moving out of
Sierra (they sold the company to CUC for about $1 billion). Fortunately, the
founders and early folks got out before things really went south, but they
left behind a fabulous family of developers, testers, producers and artists,
many of whom I've had the pleasure to work with here in the Northwest over
the last 14 years. Everyone involved with the Sierra family is pretty sad
today about the demise of one of the great icons of the industry.
Sierra (and Ken and Roberta in particular) practically invented the graphic
adventure game genre. My first multiplayer game experience *ever* took place
one weekend (1980? 1981?) when I hauled an Apple II computer up to a weekend
retreat with some friends and everyone in all of the families sat together
around the computer and played out and solved Cranston Manor, the third
graphic adventure game from Sierra (after Mystery House and Wizard & the
Princess). For me, one of the great moments in computer gaming.
Damn.
--
Bob Perez
"Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they
quit playing."
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
Corse
http://www.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/06/22/vivendi.messier.ap/
The problem is large corporations gobbling up smaller companies and then
running them into the ground. It happens over and over again. Too bad for
the consumer and too bad for the computer game business.
Corse
"Bob Perez" <ab...@fcc.gov> wrote in message
news:10dhm8c...@news.supernews.com...
Thrasher
>It's no surprise that the one company currently bucking all these trends
>both on the console and the PC side is the one company that didn't have a
>CLUE about gaming just a few short years ago, but through the application of
>all their acquired expertise at disciplined, professional software
>development and effective marketing, is now becoming a dominant player in
>gaming. I'm talking of course about Microsoft.
Well, they don't have a clue now, either. Maybe that's why they do OK.
Everyone who thought they had a clue went broke. It doesn't seem that
hard to me... PC gaming used to be a high profit margin industry. It's
a total loser now. So, here's what you do... you go back and look at
how things were being done in the industry when the industry was
thriving, and DO THEM THAT WAY. Hello?
Oh, but no, they can't do that... they have all these bright boys who
think they know better than everyone else. And so they try the same
things that failed last time, and the time before, and the time
before, and expect them somehow *not* to fail this time. Keep doing
the same thing but expect different results. Pretty smart, those PC
game guys.
BTW, You forgot to list Interplay as another one of Vivendi's holdings
that is history. Or did Vivendi unload Interplay before it went
bye-bye? I confess, I've lost track of all the failed PC game
companies and who owned them.
>I still remember when EdFries, head of the Microsoft games division, adamantly defended "Flight
>Simulator" and "Fury" as indications that MSFT was a player in the games
>space. And look at them now. Whether it's XBox, XBox Live, a major push into
>the MMOG space via alliances first with Turbine and now with Brad McQaid,
>key alliances with Brian Reynolds, Chris Taylor, Ensemble and so on, you see
>a consistent pattern of aproaching the game market with all of the same
>seriousness and competitiveness that they threw at OS and productivity
>software. No rockstars, just good business and ever-so-slightly different
>financial results ...
I don't agree with this. Microsoft came to dominate productivity
software by beating their competition. They haven't *had* any
competition in the PC game category. Their would-be competitors were
well on their way to corrporate suicide before MS enterred the market.
MS isn't the company it was in the 80s. Faced with serious competition
now, I'm not sure they'd remain on top. It's been nearly a decade
since MS has released anything truly innovative. It's really too bad
there doesn't seem to be a new Microsft waiting in the wings, ready to
take down MS the way MS took down IBM in the 80s. All we got is IBM,
trying to get back to where it used to be by selling turkeys they
purchased instead of developed, like Linux, Wordperfect and Lotus.
>I met Al Lowe, creator of the Leisure Suit Larry line, years ago when he
>became a customer of mine and we've been friends ever since. He was one of
>the great original talents at Sierra, funny as hell and smart as they come,
>and it's no surprise that his LSL franchise is one of the few survivors of
>today's announcements. Al introduced me to Ken and Robert Williams (founders
>of Sierra) around the time that the two of them were just moving out of
>Sierra (they sold the company to CUC for about $1 billion). Fortunately, the
>founders and early folks got out before things really went south, but they
>left behind a fabulous family of developers, testers, producers and artists,
>many of whom I've had the pleasure to work with here in the Northwest over
>the last 14 years. Everyone involved with the Sierra family is pretty sad
>today about the demise of one of the great icons of the industry.
I was a big Sierra fan in the 80s but they were on the interactive
idiotware bandwagon with everyone else in the mid 90s. That brain fart
killed a lot of game companies and left most the survivors crippled. I
don't think the PC game industry ever recovered. That was even worse
than the "PC = $3000 game console" trend the game companies have been
pushing recently.
>Sierra (and Ken and Roberta in particular) practically invented the graphic
>adventure game genre.
Not "practically" - they did.
>My first multiplayer game experience *ever* took place
>one weekend (1980? 1981?) when I hauled an Apple II computer up to a weekend
>retreat with some friends and everyone in all of the families sat together
>around the computer and played out and solved Cranston Manor, the third
>graphic adventure game from Sierra (after Mystery House and Wizard & the
>Princess). For me, one of the great moments in computer gaming.
>
>Damn.
Yep. I've been feeling like that a lot the last DECADE. Which is a
double-damn. The problems with the PC game industry seem so damned
obvious, yet nobody does anything about it. I guess right up until the
day they turn out the lights they keep thinking some garbage title
will miraculously sell a billion copies and save the day.
Thrasher
>The problem is large corporations gobbling up smaller companies and then
>running them into the ground. It happens over and over again. Too bad for
>the consumer and too bad for the computer game business.
I don't think that's the problem. The small game companies were
distressed already - that's what made them prime take-over targets.
The *problem* is that they keep making games that nobody wants to buy.
Mediocrity doesn't sell in an entertainment category.
Clogar
>
[snip]
> BTW, You forgot to list Interplay as another one of Vivendi's holdings
> that is history. Or did Vivendi unload Interplay before it went
> bye-bye? I confess, I've lost track of all the failed PC game
> companies and who owned them.
Titus Interactive is the parnet company of Interplay, but Interplay has
a distribution agreement with Vivendi.
[snip]
> I don't agree with this. Microsoft came to dominate productivity
> software by beating their competition. They haven't *had* any
> competition in the PC game category. Their would-be competitors were
> well on their way to corrporate suicide before MS enterred the market.
Microsoft used a similar strategy in the game market as they did
when it came to OSes - buying up other people's products and marketing
the hell out of them. Well, OK, the strategy is a little different
now - now they pretty much buy up the competition's entire company or
create "exclusive" agreements which result in a similar situation.
[snip]
> All we got is IBM,
> trying to get back to where it used to be by selling turkeys they
> purchased instead of developed, like Linux, Wordperfect and Lotus.
Isn't that exactly what Microsoft does, though? Well, except
for the "turkey" part. Mechwarrior, HALO, etc, etc... all of these
were games that were either established lines or already partially
created prior to being taken over by MS. Microsoft's greatest
contribution to gaming has been... well... eh... funneling massive
amounts of cash into gaming companies and demanding a product most
of the time.
Rob Berryhill
> Vivendi Universal Games is closing its Sierra Entertainment offices here in
> Bellevue, Washington. The announcement's in all the local papers and is
> starting to make its way around the industry. Over 100 people are losing
> their jobs locally as part of a larger cut of over 350 jobs nationwide. Some
> 50 people will lose jobs in the Boston area as the Papyrus and Impressions
> game studios are shut down. Finally, about 160 people in the Los Angeles
> area will lose jobs.
>
[ s n I p ]
Sad to say, but this has been a long time coming. Clearly they do not
understand how to run a business. They have been on the steady decline
since they ripped apart Dynamix and dropped all of those great
franchises (I still lament the loss of Front Page Sports Football -
games today are just STARTING to scratch the depth of that franchise
from 10 YEARS ago).
Any word on what will happen with the upcoming LotR MMORPG?
--
Rob Berryhill
Christoph Nahr
>It's no surprise that the one company currently bucking all these trends
>both on the console and the PC side is the one company that didn't have a
>CLUE about gaming just a few short years ago, but through the application of
>all their acquired expertise at disciplined, professional software
>development and effective marketing, is now becoming a dominant player in
>gaming. I'm talking of course about Microsoft.
Microsoft's PC games do well enough, as far as I know, but their Xbox
division is losing money hand over fist. They would be just as dead
as Sierra now if not for the Windows and Office cash cows. Hardly a
model for others to follow.
>I met Al Lowe, creator of the Leisure Suit Larry line, years ago when he
>became a customer of mine and we've been friends ever since. He was one of
>the great original talents at Sierra, funny as hell and smart as they come,
>and it's no surprise that his LSL franchise is one of the few survivors of
>today's announcements.
Well, no offense, but LSL and all of Sierra's graphic adventures are
relics of a time when we were easily amused and games were cheap to
make. Try selling such games today... you may be able to support a
small shareware outfit, nothing more. On the other hand, being
original is no requirement for making money -- look at the rampant
sequelitis on the PS2.
--
http://www.kynosarges.de
Philippe Duchon
> It would have helped if Vivendi hadn't been run by criminals. See
> http://www.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/06/22/vivendi.messier.ap/
Note that, at the moment, there are only some charges against the
former head of Vivendi; no trial has taken place, nor is it even sure
that one will, so talking about "criminals" is a bit premature.
(I certainly have no love for J-M Messier, independently of this)
And honestly, I doubt there's much of a relationship between the
two. Most likely, the Sierra et al affair is a pure business decision
as part of efforts to do whatever managers do when their corporation
is in trouble; their honesty or lack thereof has little to do in the
matter.
Of course, the emotional part of PC gaming companies has even less to
do in the matter.
--
Philippe Duchon (duc...@labri.fr, duc...@labri.u-bordeaux1.fr)
magnulus
buyout of "Flight Simulator". It's hardly that they have no expertise with
gaming, quite the contrary. They have, for the most part of their history
in gaming, only published the highest quality games. Unlike some other
companies (EIDOS or Ubisoft being a good example, which has a fair amount of
very risky games and dreck under their belts).
magnulus
"Thrasher" <spect...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:jp3id0drfpsk6vs0s...@4ax.com...
> Well, they don't have a clue now, either. Maybe that's why they do OK.
> Everyone who thought they had a clue went broke. It doesn't seem that
> hard to me... PC gaming used to be a high profit margin industry. It's
> a total loser now. So, here's what you do... you go back and look at
> how things were being done in the industry when the industry was
> thriving, and DO THEM THAT WAY. Hello?
>
PC/home computer games used to be relatively cheap to make. It only took
1-2 programmers and maybe a few artists to make a game, at most. You just
cannot make games like that anymore and have the bigger, better graphics
that are expected. When you are making a game that will only sell to maybe
50,000 at most, and you make it on a shoestring budget, you can afford to do
this. But you cannot make a multi-million dollar game and have it sell to
only a handful of people.
Toby Newman
> Microsoft have, for the most part of
> their history in gaming, only published the highest quality games.
I'll never forget the demo of Microsoft Monster Truck Racing I had. That
voiceover...
"Welcome to Maaarrcrosoft Monster Truck Racing!"
"Big Bertha. ..Is on her tippytoes!!"
"Carolina Crusher. ..Is on her tippytoes!!"
--
Toby
~~FA: Quantum Redshift & Luigi's Mansion
~~http://tinyurl.com/34xwk
~~Starts at 10p
Andrew
MS games might be "highest quality" (although I wouldn't rate them
like that myself), but in my experience, they are usually dull. Eidos
et al take more risks, produce plenty of crappy games, but there are
also some real gems occasionally. Deus Ex would never have happened
under the MS design by committee ethos.
--
Andrew. To email unscramble n...@gurjevgrzrboivbhf.pbz & remove spamtrap.
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking a question.
a0a
"magnulus" <magn...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:u4bCc.2089$Pp3....@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
Ubisoft has done particularly well the last few years. With audacious
titles they managed to storm the top 10 charts multiple times. EA is mostly
cashing in on the sports franchise that they monopolise. Vivendi (or should
we say Atari) has been nothing more than a vulture eating up it's prey,
'buying' licenses and IP by simply buying the companies, and then closing
them down. Sierra is certainly not their first, and won't be the last
either. This way, Vivendi has singlehandedly destroyed numerous glorious
icons of the industry.
And it's not that there is not enough talent, or motivation, or idea's, or
creativity, or 'careless willpower to go out and do this no matter what', or
even money. It's because the money gets distributed by airheaded manager
wannabees that haven't the slightest clue what it takes to get pure gameplay
out of the door in a fancy box. All they think of is the fancy box. Games
don't start in game companies. They start with people playing.
magnulus
"Andrew" <spamtrap@localhost> wrote in message
news:f5hid0505mhn6sdun...@4ax.com...
> MS games might be "highest quality" (although I wouldn't rate them
> like that myself), but in my experience, they are usually dull. Eidos
> et al take more risks, produce plenty of crappy games, but there are
> also some real gems occasionally. Deus Ex would never have happened
> under the MS design by committee ethos.
>
Have you played Rise of Nations? I am not a huge fan of RTS's but it is
quite enjoyable for being a Civilization/RTS hybrid.
Ubisoft or EIDOS are far more risk taking, but on the other hand Microsoft
has built up a reputation over the years of publishing polished games.
That, along with their name value, is why their games rarely get pushed to
the bargain bins quickly.
Microsoft and EA's strategy, while not the greatest for gamers
necessarily, tends to produce companies and franchises that have staying
power. Vivendi, on the other hand, has basicly "plundered" their IP looking
for a quick buck.
chainbreaker
> I was a big Sierra fan in the 80s but they were on the interactive
> idiotware bandwagon with everyone else in the mid 90s. That brain fart
> killed a lot of game companies and left most the survivors crippled. I
> don't think the PC game industry ever recovered. That was even worse
> than the "PC = $3000 game console" trend the game companies have been
> pushing recently.
Phantasmagoria is the only game I ever mailed directly to them to take
advantage of the money-back guarantee they had. Brrrrr. . . . nasty stuff,
that one.
--
chainbreaker
If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it.
Michael Vondung
> PC/home computer games used to be relatively cheap to make. It only took
> 1-2 programmers and maybe a few artists to make a game, at most. You just
> cannot make games like that anymore and have the bigger, better graphics
> that are expected.
The better graphics don't make up for the lack of innovation, nor do
they compensate for the "dumbing down" of the gameplay. If I wanted a
console, I'd have one.
We have had this discussion here a few times already, so I'm probably
beginning to sound like a broken record, but if I continue to get bored
with a game in under ten hours (or two, in many cases), then I'll
discontinue shelling out money for them. Now, that's just one person and
doesn't really make a huge difference in the larger picture, but I think
(hope?) that more people will eventually tire of putting fifty dollars
on the table and not getting back anything that justifies this price.
For fifty dollars, I can get at least five paperback books. As it
stands, I get a lot more entertainment from five books than from most of
the games released in the past eighteen months.
M.
CurtAdams
>Vivendi Universal Games is closing its Sierra Entertainment offices here in
>Bellevue, Washington.
> Some
>50 people will lose jobs in the Boston area as the Papyrus and Impressions
>game studios are shut down.
Is there some requirement for large companies to buy small successful
independent game developers, run them into the ground, lose pots
of money, and close them? Do they teach it at MBA school?
It happens OVER and OVER and OVER!
Don't they ever learn?
As the original post pointed out, it's odd that MS is about the only
responsible
large corp running a game group, putting out good, and (I assume) profitable
games.
Curt Adams (curt...@aol.com)
"It is better to be wrong than to be vague" - Freeman Dyson
Michael Vondung
> As the original post pointed out, it's odd that MS is about the only
> responsible
> large corp running a game group, putting out good, and (I assume) profitable
> games.
The games are decent, with a few really good ones, like Rise of Nations.
I think Microsoft is fairly skilled when it comes to marketing and
releasing products that have a fair chance to succeed. They are not as
desperate for money as other companies and probably do have the
resources for proper research. I've never questioned their abilities in
these areas. What concerns me is their expressed desire to control the
entire market. Focusing a bit more on PC games is a smart move, since
that is one of Linux's few, serious weaknesses. If there were more games
for Linux, I'm sure more gamers would consider switching their OS.
Releasing good, addictive games for the PC "ties" customers to the
Windows platform, which helps to secure Microsoft's dominating position
in the PC market. Microsoft is not very likely to consider a Linux port
of a title. :)
As others have said, there are quite a few niche games that would never
have seen the light of the day if it hadn't been for companies like
Ubisoft, EIDOS, Encore, Take2, et al, in spite of all the crap that is
released by them. I prefer this over the alternative where we are
confronted with two or three publishers.
M.
chainbreaker
> on the table and not getting back anything that justifies this price.
> For fifty dollars, I can get at least five paperback books. As it
> stands, I get a lot more entertainment from five books than from most
> of
> the games released in the past eighteen months.
>
> M.
Amen!!
Preach, brother, preach!! :-)
--
chainbreaker-who's reading time is about 10x more than his gaming time over
the last couple of months
Bateau
Hopefully the death of these big companies will open the market to the
small 4 man teams. They won't have the resources to make their games
look great so they will have to make the game fun instead. So no more
short unreplayable games that are only fun until the awe at the graphics
wears off. If there are no developers blowing all their money on trying
to make their game look the best people will stop having to upgrade
their 3d cards and hopefully the 3d card market will die too.
It's pathetic that games are praised for having great graphics. Gamers
should thank their video cards for that not developers. Gamers are now
buying the same boring games over and over and the only reason they
think they're playing anything new is because of the hardware upgrade
they made in between.
--
.-'`-.
/ | | \
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Bateau
>magnulus wrote:
>
>> PC/home computer games used to be relatively cheap to make. It only took
>> 1-2 programmers and maybe a few artists to make a game, at most. You just
>> cannot make games like that anymore and have the bigger, better graphics
>> that are expected.
>
>The better graphics don't make up for the lack of innovation, nor do
>they compensate for the "dumbing down" of the gameplay. If I wanted a
>console, I'd have one.
I find that console games are more replayable than PC games because
console developers can't rely on a hardware upgrade every 6 months that
will provide 90% of the appeal for the new title. At least that's how it
was before they realised how crap PC games were and started using lazy
"complete the game 300 times on Hard to unlock a new loading screen"
excuses for replayability.
>We have had this discussion here a few times already, so I'm probably
>beginning to sound like a broken record, but if I continue to get bored
>with a game in under ten hours (or two, in many cases), then I'll
>discontinue shelling out money for them. Now, that's just one person and
>doesn't really make a huge difference in the larger picture, but I think
>(hope?) that more people will eventually tire of putting fifty dollars
>on the table and not getting back anything that justifies this price.
It already happened. That's why all these companies are going bust. They
gambled on having high sales for a couple of months due to the graphical
supremacy.
>For fifty dollars, I can get at least five paperback books. As it
>stands, I get a lot more entertainment from five books than from most of
>the games released in the past eighteen months.
For fifty dollars I once bought about 100 books. People who see newly
released movies and buy newly released games are the biggest morons in
the ENTIRE world.
Bateau
Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest and Gabriel Knight are for people who
are easily entertained? There is nothing as entertaining as those games
on the market now.
It's today's gamers that are easily entertained. They are only
stimulated by pretty graphics. They don't have the attention span or
intelligence to be entertained by the old adventure games.
The Shaggy DA
Ken Andrews
> MS isn't the company it was in the 80s. Faced with serious competition
> now, I'm not sure they'd remain on top. It's been nearly a decade
> since MS has released anything truly innovative. It's really too bad
> there doesn't seem to be a new Microsft waiting in the wings, ready to
> take down MS the way MS took down IBM in the 80s. All we got is IBM,
MS took down IBM? MS has never been in real competition with IBM, they are
focussed very differently, software versus hardware. The thing that hurt
IBM the most is not MS, it's IBM.
They didn't realize that big iron would become so much less important. FYI,
IBM had a laptop protodesigned before anyone else, but then the senior suits
decided nobody would want one and shelved it.
MS's biggest stroke of luck was when IBM didn't guess that people would buy
an OS separately from the computer and therefore didn't lock MS into an
exclusive provider agreement; they allowed MS to sell their OS under their
own brand name, separate from the same OS being sold under the IBM
imprimateur (PC-Dos versus MS-Dos).
Numbers for fun:
IBM quarterly sales for 2003 (all numbers in millions):
Q1 - 20,065 <-- 20 billion dollars.
Q2 - 21,631
Q3 - 21,522
Q4 - 25,913
MS quarterly sales for 2003 (all numbers in millions):
Q1 - 7,835
Q2 - 8,065
Q3 - 8,215
Q4 - 10,153
> trying to get back to where it used to be by selling turkeys they
> purchased instead of developed, like Linux, Wordperfect and Lotus.
Linux isn't a turkey.
WordPerfect wasn't a turkey originally. It was turned into one by Corel who
systematically destroyed pretty much everything that made it the best word
processing package at the time.
noman
wrote:
>It's pathetic that games are praised for having great graphics. Gamers
>should thank their video cards for that not developers.
Both should be praised.
A game like Prince of Persia or Beyond Good and Evil is as much of an
artistic achievement as it's a technical one. The soft, storybook
sketch like graphics of PoP:SoT is one of the main features of the
game and is a great example where graphic power of an engine can
enhance the core gameplay.
>Gamers are now
>buying the same boring games over and over and the only reason they
>think they're playing anything new is because of the hardware upgrade
>they made in between.
Need for Speed: Underground is nothing like any NFS game before.
PoP:SoT is simply amazing. FarCry gives you huge areas and usually
two-three ways to solve a problem and plays very different to any
other shooter (but only if you want to). Rome:Total War promises to
give you both strategic and tactical depths with battles enacted by
thousands of troops. Gothic 2 uses the graphic hardware to make its
already immersive world, even more so.
And of course there have always been 'same games coming out over and
over'. There were various iterations of Battlefront Series, GoldBox,
Might and Magic etc which played and looked exactly the same.
Coming back to topic, Sierra died years ago when their
Oakhurst/Yosemit office was closed. This was a Sierra, only in name
and so Vivendi's decision to close the Bellevue office but continue
using the Sierra brand doens't practically change anything. Of course,
people losing jobs is never a trivial thing but maybe they will end up
working at a places which actually develop games in addition to just
putting their brand on products from other developers.
Impressions and Papyrus' demise is indeed sad.
However, several people from Impressions have already set up a new
company and they are working on a game having the same theme as their
city-building earlier efforts. Folks at Papyrus are too talented to
stay out of business for long. Maybe some of them will end up working
for the next Nascar game from EA (and EA do look serious about this
franchise)
Companies do get closed down. New companies come up and so do new
games. Obsidian and inXile (and to some extent Troika as well) can be
considered fragments of Interplay/Blackisle and I am eagerly looking
forward to their upcoming games - StarWars: KOTOR2, Bard's Tale and
Vampires:Bloodlines.
My 2¢
--
Noman
Bob Perez
"Ken Andrews" <gob...@degook.com> wrote in message
news:OKiCc.17209$mm3.6542@clgrps13...
> MS's biggest stroke of luck was when IBM didn't guess that people would
buy
> an OS separately from the computer and therefore didn't lock MS into an
> exclusive provider agreement; they allowed MS to sell their OS under their
> own brand name, separate from the same OS being sold under the IBM
> imprimateur (PC-Dos versus MS-Dos).
Bingo. That was their first stroke of luck. The next step, however, was the
critical one and that was exploiting that stroke of luck and this they did
in legendary (and in retrospect, probably illegal) fashion. The OEM
arrangements they put into place requiring hardware manufacturers to pay a
per-box royalty, *whether the manufacturer actually shipped MSDOS with the
box or not*, was the single most critical business decision they ever made
and the one that launched the cash cow that made everything else possible.
At that point, it was impossible for any other OS to get traction since the
box makers were paying MS a royalty on every box anyway, and they weren't
about to pay twice. Brilliant move.
> WordPerfect wasn't a turkey originally. It was turned into one by Corel
who
> systematically destroyed pretty much everything that made it the best word
> processing package at the time.
WordPerfect was *the* standard in the legal industry and had huge momentum
but it suffered the same fate as the other "unassailable" DOS standards
(Lotus, Harvard Graphics, et al): they were too slow moving to Windows. By
the time it became apparent that Windows was becoming the dominant platform,
MS Office was already well down the road to its own dominance.
noman
<magn...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>(EIDOS or Ubisoft being a good example, which has a fair amount of
>very risky games and dreck under their belts).
Ubisoft, these days, seem to be doing great. They published Far Cry,
Splinter Cell, Beyond Good and Evil etc and their Montreal office
continues to develop great games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.
They are probably the only publisher which picks up old franchises
that were pretty much given up on because of mediocre titles, and then
developing a new game in that series in-house - a game which does
justice to the original series. Prince of Perisa is a great example of
that. Myst 4 (not Uru) is already getting attention from Myst fans and
there have been rumours that the work on Might & Magic X is underway
at Ubisoft Montreal.
Their revenues were up 22% recently.
--
Noman
Ross Ridge
>WordPerfect wasn't a turkey originally. It was turned into one by Corel who
>systematically destroyed pretty much everything that made it the best word
>processing package at the time.
WordPerfect 6 was a turkey, and that came out long before Corel got a
hold of the product.
Ross Ridge
--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/u/rridge/
db //
John Lewis
wrote:
Maybe it is something to do with Yves Guillemot, the
CEO also being a top-class active games developer.
His latest exercise was as project leader for Beyond
Good and Evil.
Steam will blow the final whistle on the VU
games enterprise, which is obviously on the rocks
financially. Clinging to Valve is a bit like clinging to
the Titanic. And Gabe has provided just a little extra
ballast in many ways over the past year.............
John Lewis
>Noman
Christoph Nahr
>WordPerfect was *the* standard in the legal industry and had huge momentum
>but it suffered the same fate as the other "unassailable" DOS standards
>(Lotus, Harvard Graphics, et al): they were too slow moving to Windows. By
>the time it became apparent that Windows was becoming the dominant platform,
>MS Office was already well down the road to its own dominance.
Not sure if we talked about this before, but did you read "In Search
of Stupidity" by Merrill R. Chapman? You absolutely should, if you
haven't yet. He dates back to the CP/M times and talks about the rise
of IBM, Microsoft & Intel. Not a stringent analysis but a great read.
--
http://www.kynosarges.de
Brian Siano
> Ken Andrews <gob...@degook.com> wrote:
>
>>WordPerfect wasn't a turkey originally. It was turned into one by Corel who
>>systematically destroyed pretty much everything that made it the best word
>>processing package at the time.
>
>
> WordPerfect 6 was a turkey, and that came out long before Corel got a
> hold of the product.
I have to agree, and I'd place the decline with the first release of
Word Perfect for Windows. God, what a disappointment. Huge, clunky,
frequently crashing...
Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS was the best word processor, ever.
Crash86
> Ken Andrews <gob...@degook.com> wrote:
> >WordPerfect wasn't a turkey originally. It was turned into one by Corel
who
> >systematically destroyed pretty much everything that made it the best
word
> >processing package at the time.
>
> WordPerfect 6 was a turkey, and that came out long before Corel got a
> hold of the product.
WordPerfect 5.1 was the de facto standard for DOS based word processing.
There were still folks using 5.1 under Windows95.
The Windows versions of WordPerfect were/are turkeys.
Crash
Lynley James
<magn...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
>"Andrew" <spamtrap@localhost> wrote in message
>news:f5hid0505mhn6sdun...@4ax.com...
>> MS games might be "highest quality" (although I wouldn't rate them
>> like that myself), but in my experience, they are usually dull. Eidos
>> et al take more risks, produce plenty of crappy games, but there are
>> also some real gems occasionally. Deus Ex would never have happened
>> under the MS design by committee ethos.
>>
>
> Have you played Rise of Nations? I am not a huge fan of RTS's but it is
>quite enjoyable for being a Civilization/RTS hybrid.
>
On the other hand MS released the drek that was Mech Commander 2 and
Zoo Tycoon.
I must admit though that RoN was more enjoyable, for me at least, than
AoE.
Lynley
Lynley James
wrote:
>On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 04:27:00 -0400, "magnulus"
And the too short, but very good CSI games. Just finished CSI: Dark
Motives and I must say it was more fun than Broken Sword 3 or any
other Adventure game I've played in a long while.
Lynley
Joe62
wrote:
>His latest exercise was as project leader for Beyond
>Good and Evil.
Shame it didn't sell better; a lot of people are still scratching
their heads over that one. Very good game. My theory is just a bad
release date ... middle of November in Thanksgiving week, it got lost
in the hullaballoo of higher profile titles like NFS.
nos...@nowhere.com
> Numbers for fun:
>
> IBM quarterly sales for 2003 (all numbers in millions):
>
> Q1 - 20,065 <-- 20 billion dollars.
> Q2 - 21,631
> Q3 - 21,522
> Q4 - 25,913
>
> MS quarterly sales for 2003 (all numbers in millions):
>
> Q1 - 7,835
> Q2 - 8,065
> Q3 - 8,215
> Q4 - 10,153
But what's the *revenue* on those sales?
Bob Perez
> Well, they don't have a clue now, either.
You don't think Microsoft has a clue? Well then define what it means to have
a clue because I'm at a loss to understand what you mean unless what you're
really saying is that you don't like them or don't like the things that they
do. That's different. But clued in they are. They're using some of the same
tactics to gain dominance of the game business as they did in the
productivity software business. They let others pioneer the way and then
when they smell the money they come in through an acquisition and use their
channel presence and marketing war chest to gain share from everyone else.
They don't always succeed, but then the most successful venture capital
players don't always succeed either, they expect 4 out of 5 ventures to
fail. It only takes a few big hits to make all the rest of the investments
pay off. For every Asheron's Call or FASA that didn't really pay off,
there's an Age of Empires that did. New investments currently underway are
pretty interesting, including Vanguard, Brad McQuaid's new effort (McQuaid
was one of the principal designers of EverQuest) and of course XBox. Going
from "Flight Simulator" and "Fury" to the next generation MMORPG from the
creator of EverQuest and re-defining console gaming looks like pretty good
progress to me.
> It doesn't seem that hard to me... PC gaming used to be a high profit
margin industry. It's
> a total loser now. So, here's what you do... you go back and look at
> how things were being done in the industry when the industry was
> thriving, and DO THEM THAT WAY. Hello?
Yeah it didn't stay high margin very long, did it. In the beginning when you
could get away with a floppy disk in a baggy and a photocopied manual (e.g.,
the first Broderbund game I ever bought), and retailers were begging for
product, that was high margin. But it didn't take long for the COGS to jump
up pretty high. I wonder how many people reading this remember games like
Wing Commander III, The Incredible Machine, Stonekeep, Day of the Tentacle,
and other games like that and the packaging they came in. LOL it got so bad
that the entire industry had to move to standard sized boxes. And then
there's the whole issue now of having to pay retailers for shelf space, and
that's on top of distribution cuts. And all for the tiny little pittance
that publishers get for a one-shot sale with no future revenue potential.
Brutal business.
> MS isn't the company it was in the 80s. Faced with serious competition
> now, I'm not sure they'd remain on top. It's been nearly a decade
> since MS has released anything truly innovative.
When did they ever release anything that was truly innovative and since when
has that been a core part of their success?
> I was a big Sierra fan in the 80s but they were on the interactive
> idiotware bandwagon with everyone else in the mid 90s.
Yep. I think I lost interest in the adventure thing before most others, I
remember dropping out of it well before Time Zone and the Quest series
started happening. I was convinced that whole segment was dead once
Phantasmagoria came out. And look what they did to Gabriel Knight. There
were some other nice adventures still tryng to keep the old model alive,
like Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Sam & Max.
> I guess right up until the
> day they turn out the lights they keep thinking some garbage title
> will miraculously sell a billion copies and save the day.
Yeah, the death march at the end of these cycles is ugly, with a lot of good
and otherwise smart people stuck in what amounts to an infinite hope loop.
Ken Andrews
> "Ross Ridge" wrote:
> > Ken Andrews <gob...@degook.com> wrote:
> > >WordPerfect wasn't a turkey originally. It was turned into one by
Corel
> who
> > >systematically destroyed pretty much everything that made it the best
> word
> > >processing package at the time.
> >
> > WordPerfect 6 was a turkey, and that came out long before Corel got a
> > hold of the product.
>
> WordPerfect 5.1 was the de facto standard for DOS based word processing.
> There were still folks using 5.1 under Windows95.
/wave
Windows 98 for a while, too.
> The Windows versions of WordPerfect were/are turkeys.
I'll have to admit that I never used WP for Windows; I used WP 5.1
exclusively all the way into Win 98. So, maybe I'm wrong about when it
started to degrade.
chainbreaker
> Not sure if we talked about this before, but did you read "In Search
> of Stupidity" by Merrill R. Chapman? You absolutely should, if you
> haven't yet. He dates back to the CP/M times and talks about the rise
> of IBM, Microsoft & Intel. Not a stringent analysis but a great read.
My introduction to the computing world was via a Kaypro CP/M machine and
Wordstar.
--
chainbreaker
Bob Perez
"chainbreaker" <no...@nowhere.com> wrote in message
news:cbcj9...@news3.newsguy.com...
> Christoph Nahr wrote:
> > Not sure if we talked about this before, but did you read "In Search
> > of Stupidity" by Merrill R. Chapman? You absolutely should, if you
> > haven't yet. He dates back to the CP/M times and talks about the rise
> > of IBM, Microsoft & Intel. Not a stringent analysis but a great read.
>
> My introduction to the computing world was via a Kaypro CP/M machine and
> Wordstar.
If Chapman's book doesn't contain a chapter on Wordstar, it should. I still
remember the day that Seymour Rubenstein said "The mouse is the perfect
input device for anyone with three hands". Prophetic guy, eh?
--
Bob Perez
"Stupidness is not the opposite of smartness, but rather the opposite of
wisdom"
- Robert Sternberg, "Why Smart People can be so Stupid"
Bob Perez
"Christoph Nahr" <christo...@kynosarges.de> wrote in message
news:pgijd0tasfimb4jpq...@4ax.com...
Nope, hadn't seen that one but with that title it sounds like a must-read.
I'll take a look, thanks.
Christoph Nahr
>Nope, hadn't seen that one but with that title it sounds like a must-read.
>I'll take a look, thanks.
You definitely should get the book -- regarding your other post,
Chapman has *worked* at MicroPro at the time of the WordStar vs WS
2000 disaster! He covers this episode extensively. Many a great
memory (and pictures!) from the 8-bit era. :-)
--
http://www.kynosarges.de
Lynley James
>Yep. I think I lost interest in the adventure thing before most others, I
>remember dropping out of it well before Time Zone and the Quest series
>started happening. I was convinced that whole segment was dead once
>Phantasmagoria came out. And look what they did to Gabriel Knight. There
>were some other nice adventures still tryng to keep the old model alive,
>like Monkey Island, Full Throttle, Sam & Max.
>
I liked Gabriel Knight 2, sure it was a pain to have to change between
7 discs, but it was still a solid adventure. Even GK 3 wasn't bad and
it still tried to keep the point and click adventure alive when even
LucasArts was moving away with the Monkey Island series and Grim
Fandango.
Lynley
Steve Bartman
>
>"Thrasher" <spect...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:jp3id0drfpsk6vs0s...@4ax.com...
>
>> Well, they don't have a clue now, either.
>
>You don't think Microsoft has a clue? Well then define what it means to have
>a clue
$50 billion in cash? <g>
because I'm at a loss to understand what you mean unless what you're
>really saying is that you don't like them or don't like the things that they
>do. That's different. But clued in they are.
I very much agree.
They're using some of the same
>tactics to gain dominance of the game business as they did in the
>productivity software business.
Agree here too. Being first to a segment does not mean you'll be the
last standing. And those who laugh at the X-box to date will be wrong
in the end. Gates is in a marathon, not a sprint, in that space.
New investments currently underway are
>pretty interesting, including Vanguard, Brad McQuaid's new effort (McQuaid
>was one of the principal designers of EverQuest) and of course XBox. Going
>from "Flight Simulator" and "Fury" to the next generation MMORPG from the
>creator of EverQuest and re-defining console gaming looks like pretty good
>progress to me.
Absolutely. Scale lets you spread your risk. A small player today has
no hope of competing broadly. The best they can do is make good
product and look for either a new distribution channel, or seek
shelter under a behemoth's umbrella.
>> It doesn't seem that hard to me... PC gaming used to be a high profit
>margin industry. It's
>> a total loser now. So, here's what you do... you go back and look at
>> how things were being done in the industry when the industry was
>> thriving, and DO THEM THAT WAY. Hello?
>
>Yeah it didn't stay high margin very long, did it.
Everyone ignores COGS changes and a total revamp of channel realities.
In the early-80s when I was buying games from hobbyist retailers they
were happy to get me in the door of their strip-mall storefront and
personally tell me about Wizardry I for the Apple IIe. They'd played
it. Now PC games are a 2x2 ad in the BestBuy circular, fighting for
life next to the DVD ads.
In the beginning when you
>could get away with a floppy disk in a baggy and a photocopied manual (e.g.,
>the first Broderbund game I ever bought), and retailers were begging for
>product, that was high margin.
I was paying $45 in 1983 dollars for SSI hex-based wargames. And happy
to do it. Would I pay $130 for a game now? Nope. Not unless I can play
it on a holodeck.
But it didn't take long for the COGS to jump
>up pretty high. I wonder how many people reading this remember games like
>Wing Commander III, The Incredible Machine, Stonekeep, Day of the Tentacle,
>and other games like that and the packaging they came in. LOL it got so bad
>that the entire industry had to move to standard sized boxes.
When they finally got some professional business management. And then
the true fans called them weasels. <g>
And then
>there's the whole issue now of having to pay retailers for shelf space, and
>that's on top of distribution cuts. And all for the tiny little pittance
>that publishers get for a one-shot sale with no future revenue potential.
>Brutal business.
It's become like book publishing, which is really a blood-donor
program with a different sign over the door.
Steve
--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
John Lewis
Have overlooked them.... must investigate further, as I enjoyed
BS3.
Thanks,
John Lewis
>Lynley
chainbreaker
> If Chapman's book doesn't contain a chapter on Wordstar, it should. I
> still remember the day that Seymour Rubenstein said "The mouse is the
> perfect input device for anyone with three hands". Prophetic guy, eh?
I directly attribute the deterioration of my typing skills to finally having
to abandon Wordstar to a "mouse-enhanced" processor. It was Wordperfect,
but I don't remember which version. At any rate I saw the handwriting on
the wall much sooner than a lot of people did and went to the MS products
fairly early on.l
I still have a fond remembrance of Wordstar--it was hell to learn, but boy
once you did . . . :-)
--
chainbreaker
Remington Stone
}Lose the sig.
Aye. Or at the very least, make it less than 80 columns wide. It's
already doomed to be gibberish on newsreaders set to use a proportional
spacing font, you may at least cater to those who do use fixed-width
fonts, who frequently have terminals with an 80-column limit.
Now, having done that, redesign it to fit in 4 lines of text or less.
Those netiquette standards are there for a reason. It may not be a
reason you agree with, but there is a reason. Of course, you could post
to some newsgroup like alt.sigs.ascii-art instead, where people might be
more appreciative.
[65 Coercer] Zinphandel Chianti <Prism> (Gnome) Ayonae Ro
Thrasher
>Titus Interactive is the parnet company of Interplay, but Interplay has
>a distribution agreement with Vivendi.
You mean, they did, I take it.
> Microsoft used a similar strategy in the game market as they did
>when it came to OSes - buying up other people's products and marketing
>the hell out of them.
That's not the strategy MS used with operating systems. The only OS
they ever bought was the original DOS back in 1981. Not only did they
develop all versions of Windows internally, they also wrote OS/2 for
IBM. Don't believe everything Microsoft's enemies claim. Most of it is
bullshit.
>Well, OK, the strategy is a little different
>now - now they pretty much buy up the competition's entire company or
>create "exclusive" agreements which result in a similar situation.
Which is what everyone else has been trying to do, but failing at. In
10 years, Vivendi and every other media company will be filing suit
against MS for driving them, out of the gaming industry, when in fact
it was their own stupidity that killed them, not Microsoft's sound
decion making. Isn't that just what happened with productivity
software? I'll go ahead and answer that, since I have no intention of
arguing it again. Yes, that is what happened. Wordperfect and Lotus
dominated the woprd processor and spreadsheet markets when DOS more
popular than windows. Then, the market changed... everyone was using
windows and not using DOS apps. Excel and Word are windows apps.
Wordperfect and Lotus had no windows versions of their applications.
They died.
Microsoft's fault :D
> Isn't that exactly what Microsoft does, though? Well, except
>for the "turkey" part. Mechwarrior, HALO, etc, etc... all of these
>were games that were either established lines or already partially
>created prior to being taken over by MS. Microsoft's greatest
>contribution to gaming has been... well... eh... funneling massive
>amounts of cash into gaming companies and demanding a product most
>of the time.
Yes, that is exactly what MS does with games. I agree. And it works,
because that's what everyone else does too... only not as well.
However, IBM tries to do it with business and productivity software.
Not only that, they buy up products that have *already* failed in the
market place, and re-enter them in the race against the same Microsft
applications that already beat em. That's stupidity. UNIX has been
around since 1972. It will never be a popular desktop OS - if that was
going to happen, it would have a LONG time ago. It does do well on
servers - but so what? MS has never been dominant on servers and
probably never will be. That's not what made MS a giant.
No, what the computer industry needs is some bright young people with
some innovative new ideas and a lot of drive and motivation behind
them. That's what will take MS down. That's how MS took IBM down.
I'm looking forward to it. The computer industry has gotten pretty
stagnant.
Thrasher
<magn...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> PC/home computer games used to be relatively cheap to make. It only took
>1-2 programmers and maybe a few artists to make a game, at most.
I've been doing commercial software development for over 10 years and
the largest programming team I've ever bneen on was 6 programmers.
That was at a company with over 10,000 employees. And it was about 2
programmers too many. Large teams don't produce better code, they
produce bloatware. As far as the graphics, most games I've seen the
last few years have used 3rd party game engines. A couple of artists
per project should be plenty to come up with some custom textures.
But that's not really my point. My point is that the PC game industry
is a niche market and it always has been. You can't have a company of
3000 employees and make money in a niche market. You CAN NOT. As all
these game company closings are ample proof of.
Here's how it used to work:
Wasteland project
6 developers, 1 of whom was the company founder
2 artists
3 odd job - office work, QA, testing
That's 11 people. How many copies of a $50 game do you have to sell to
pay those 11 people a decent wage?
Oh, but that team can only crank out a game a year. What if you want
to release 3 games a year? Simple. Three teams just like the first. In
fact, you could probably just hirte another 10 developers and move the
rest between projects as they got near to completion.
A lot of people got rich using this method. Most of the game companies
that were huge in the 90s started in just this way. When they used
these methods, they were thriving. When they became big companies,
they started dieing off.
Which way is better?
Well, lets ignore the fact that many stores that used to have vast PC
game sections don't even stock PC games at all anymore. Lets ignore
the fact that most game companies have been losing money for years.
Lets ignore the fact that most of the original PC game companies no
longer exist.
Lets ignore all that. I just plain DON'T LIKE 95% of the games that
have been coming out the last few years. I rarely buy them, and when I
do I nearly always regret it. This hobby of mine is very near to
extinction, for me. And I'm the guy who made those game companies rich
the first time around. Me and 50,000 more like me. Well, that's fine,
you say... you and those other fossils are being replaced by 5 million
simple minded zitfaced baggy short wearing yo-dude-what-up dorks.
Yeah. Right. Where are they? Not playing PC games. No, what's
happening is old timers like me are leaving the hobby, and nobody at
all is replacing us. The evidence of this truth is everywhere.
Knight37
news:cbcrh1$nsg$1...@woodrow.ucdavis.edu:
Bateau is a troll. He's been requested many, many times to trim his
ascii art crap but he refuses to do it. In the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.*
groups he's mostly killfiled as a result. I wouldn't see his posts at
all if people would quit quoting him.
Knight37
Remington Stone
Bleah. I hated WP 5.1.
It didn't even begin to hold a candle to the simplicity and elegance of
WordStar. And if you look at how WordStar used to work, and how DOS edit
worked, there's some pretty striking similarity.
The only editor I've found that was clunkier and harder to use (for me)
than WP5.1 was vi. And for pretty similar reasons, really.
But it's all down to personal taste. I know plenty of Word Perfect
zealots. Their preference just doesn't make any sense to me.
Thrasher
>You don't think Microsoft has a clue? Well then define what it means to have
>a clue because I'm at a loss to understand what you mean unless what you're
>really saying is that you don't like them or don't like the things that they
>do.
They don't have a clue about making games. They don't make games. They
buy game companies and they publish 3rd party games. Just because they
make money doing the same things other companies lose money at doesn't
mean they know the PC game industry. It just means they know how to
make money :P
>Yeah it didn't stay high margin very long, did it. In the beginning when you
>could get away with a floppy disk in a baggy and a photocopied manual (e.g.,
>the first Broderbund game I ever bought), and retailers were begging for
>product, that was high margin. But it didn't take long for the COGS to jump
>up pretty high.
It's their own fault those things happened. Up until about 1991,
retailers would put out just about any game you asked them too. There
were maybe 30 games a year coming out, and almost all of them were
excellent games. Then the PC revolution happened and all of a sudden
there was a computer in every home and the game companies though GOLD
MINE and started cranking out a gazillion point-and-click slide shows
that they called games and started pouring in huge bucks into
marketting, think they'd all get even richer than they were... but
that isn't what happened. Instead, their talented people quit - not
wanting to be associated with idiotware and all - and they hired
droves of new age multimedia gurus and marketting whiz kids and drove
themselves into the ground.
No, they made their own beds. It wasn't the retailers, it wasn't
customer expectations, it wasn't any of the convenient excuses. It was
just old style corporate stupidity.
>I wonder how many people reading this remember games like
>Wing Commander III, The Incredible Machine, Stonekeep, Day of the Tentacle,
>and other games like that and the packaging they came in. LOL it got so bad
>that the entire industry had to move to standard sized boxes. And then
>there's the whole issue now of having to pay retailers for shelf space, and
>that's on top of distribution cuts. And all for the tiny little pittance
>that publishers get for a one-shot sale with no future revenue potential.
>Brutal business.
They made it so. The zip lock baggy thing was done in the early 80s.
There was a good 10 year period where games came in boxes, with
perfectly decent manuals, and multiple floppies. In fact, the manuals
in the 80s were probably better, on average, than the manuals now.
I've still got a bunch if you wanna compare :P
Most of the increased cost that happened when PC game makers went
after the mythical mass market is associated with bloated payrolls,
not packaging.
>When did they ever release anything that was truly innovative and since when
>has that been a core part of their success?
Are you serious? I'm in the anti-Microsoft camp these days but to deny
the impact they had on the computer industry in general and the PC
industry in particular during the 80s would be revisionist history at
it's worst.
>Yeah, the death march at the end of these cycles is ugly, with a lot of good
>and otherwise smart people stuck in what amounts to an infinite hope loop.
I just hope it doesn't take complete extinction of the industry before
somebody, somewhere, comes up with a better way of doing business.
Even Microsft will abandon the PC game industry before long... they
don't have much interest in niche markets these days, unless there's a
potential that they will become mainstream at some point. And I think
it'd take some kinda fool to believe the PC industry will ever be
mainstream now, after more than a decade of people trying and failing
to make it so.
Steve Bartman
wrote:
It does do well on
>servers - but so what? MS has never been dominant on servers and
>probably never will be. That's not what made MS a giant.
Dominant? Maybe not. But they've successfully repositioned Windows
from a toy OS (real men use Unix, grunt) to a mid-market enterprise
alternative. They're not going for GM, but you can run a $500 million
firm really well on a Windows platform, and do it with sys admins that
cost 1/2 of what Unix does.
Then, they kept plugging away at SQL Server in the same segment,
asking that $500 million CIO why he needs Oracle at $40,000/CPU plus
hot&cold running consultants. SQL Server has carved out about a
15-share of the DBMS market and is accelerating. IBM is growing there
by acquisition, and Larry E. is reduced to crying at the feds about
PeopleSoft. MS will gnaw you to death if you ignore the
currently-small customer opportunity.
>No, what the computer industry needs is some bright young people with
>some innovative new ideas and a lot of drive and motivation behind
>them. That's what will take MS down. That's how MS took IBM down.
IBM isn't "down" but they've changed. Despite what most people still
believe IBM has become a consulting company, not a core manufacturer
of hardware and software. They do that, but it's consulting that sells
the iron and code. They have over 135,000 working IT consultants after
the acquisition of PWC; it's now the Big-4 (Deloitte, Accenture,
Bearing Point, CapGem) instead of Big-5.
>I'm looking forward to it. The computer industry has gotten pretty
>stagnant.
I don't think so, just matured. The changes are more waves than
cliffs.
Steve
--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
the wharf rat
Steve Bartman <sbar...@visi.com> wrote:
>but you can run a $500 million firm really well on a Windows platform
Hmmmm for some definition of "really well" I suppose...
Steve Bartman
wrote:
>I've been doing commercial software development for over 10 years and
>the largest programming team I've ever bneen on was 6 programmers.
>That was at a company with over 10,000 employees. And it was about 2
>programmers too many. Large teams don't produce better code, they
>produce bloatware.
I have a close friend working on an enterprise team to deliver a
project in five sites across the continent, in 12-months, on five
different legacy systems, with three different managements and four
primary vendor relationships. Over 500 core modules to design, code,
and test before integration and load-testing, with parallel user
training and certification. Six programmers wouldn't even have been
able to read the business analysis and do 100 of the modules in that
time.
The scale of software projects has changed. Perhaps your environment
has shielded you from some of that.
As far as the graphics, most games I've seen the
>last few years have used 3rd party game engines. A couple of artists
>per project should be plenty to come up with some custom textures.
I don't know, but just for asking, how many textures were required in,
say, GTA:Vice City, versus Wasteland?
>But that's not really my point. My point is that the PC game industry
>is a niche market and it always has been.
It's not any more. With console titles it's a bigger industry than the
domestic movie biz. You can't totally ignore cross-over work and
revenues.
You can't have a company of
>3000 employees and make money in a niche market. You CAN NOT. As all
>these game company closings are ample proof of.
It depends what those 3000 people are doing. If 10 of them are profit
centers and the rest staff I agree with you. Or if half are profit
centers, but have a superstar attitude that leads to uncontrolled
expense account abuse. (Cough--Ion Storm--cough.)
I get so sick of designers whining "But we're artists! Business
reality doesn't apply to us!"
>Here's how it used to work:
>
>Wasteland project
>
>6 developers, 1 of whom was the company founder
>2 artists
>3 odd job - office work, QA, testing
>
>That's 11 people. How many copies of a $50 game do you have to sell to
>pay those 11 people a decent wage?
The proper question is: Could you sell Wasteland for $50 today? No.
You couldn't give it away.
>A lot of people got rich using this method.
And Henry Ford got rich selling Model Ts for $700. Then nobody wanted
them at any price.
>Well, lets ignore the fact that many stores that used to have vast PC
>game sections don't even stock PC games at all anymore.
You can't ignore that. It's a key data point.
>Lets ignore all that. I just plain DON'T LIKE 95% of the games that
>have been coming out the last few years.
By design. The industry was never going to get bigger than movies by
selling to the 200,000 geeks like you and me who were interested in
1985.
I rarely buy them, and when I
>do I nearly always regret it. This hobby of mine is very near to
>extinction, for me.
I'm sorry. I find myself buying about 20% as many games as I did in
1985, but enjoying them a whole lot more. I research them well, and I
play the hell out of them. I expect to be playing some form of Civ
until I die. The disposable dollars I used to send to games on a whim
now go to DVDs, mostly of movies and TV series I know I'll like and
want to archive. Most of the time I'm watching a DVD I'm also playing
a PC game, however.
Well, that's fine,
>you say... you and those other fossils are being replaced by 5 million
>simple minded zitfaced baggy short wearing yo-dude-what-up dorks.
I hear sour grapes. In reality us fossils are being joined by millions
of people who are normal, and increasingly, female. The average age of
a PC gamer has never been higher.
>Yeah. Right. Where are they? Not playing PC games. No, what's
>happening is old timers like me are leaving the hobby, and nobody at
>all is replacing us. The evidence of this truth is everywhere.
So why is "The Sims 2" coming out on PC first?
Steve
--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
Bradd W. Szonye
> On the other hand MS released the drek that was Mech Commander 2 and
> Zoo Tycoon.
Hey, don't diss Zoo Tycoon. My wife & kid have gotten as much gameplay
out of that as I have out of Civilization.
--
Bradd W. Szonye
http://www.szonye.com/bradd
Bradd W. Szonye
> It's their own fault those things happened. Up until about 1991,
> retailers would put out just about any game you asked them too. There
> were maybe 30 games a year coming out, and almost all of them were
> excellent games.
Dude, lose the nostalgia-colored glasses! This is too funny.
noman
wrote:
>It's their own fault those things happened. Up until about 1991,
>retailers would put out just about any game you asked them too. There
>were maybe 30 games a year coming out
This is completely untrue. A little bit of exaggeration is okay if you
want to make a point of how different things used to be but this is
too much.
> and almost all of them were excellent games.
That's a matter of opinion with which I disagree. There were lots and
lots of duds that used to get released around that time. If anything,
the signal to noise ratio in the current games is substantially better
(by few dB :) ) compared to the games coming out 15 years ago.
--
Noman
Bob Perez
"Steve Bartman" <sbar...@visi.com> wrote in message
news:dtujd05lou4f1uvqn...@4ax.com...
> So why is "The Sims 2" coming out on PC first?
Because EA listens to Will Wright now and he has far greater creative
control than he did with original? If Will Wright argued that it should come
out first on the Samsung Watchphone, they might acquiesce.
chainbreaker
>> and almost all of them were excellent games.
>
> That's a matter of opinion with which I disagree. There were lots and
> lots of duds that used to get released around that time. If anything,
> the signal to noise ratio in the current games is substantially better
> (by few dB :) ) compared to the games coming out 15 years ago.
It's easier to locate the duds now, for sure. :-)
--
chainbreaker
Bob Perez
As one of the founding members of Apple's Mac Evangelism group and a
card-carrying member of the User Interface Police, I *officially* hated
Wordstar. As a user, however, I had my CP/M card and regularly used
Wordstar. ;-) I've always been a f-a-s-t typist, and I could control-k with
the best of them. MacWrite was a fun idea and a great showcase for the
vision behind the Mac, but it was years before I found a word processor with
which I was comfortable. I'm gagging right now at the thought of Word 3.0 on
the Mac ...
Steve Bartman
>
>"Steve Bartman" <sbar...@visi.com> wrote in message
>news:dtujd05lou4f1uvqn...@4ax.com...
>
>> So why is "The Sims 2" coming out on PC first?
>
>Because EA listens to Will Wright now and he has far greater creative
>control than he did with original? If Will Wright argued that it should come
>out first on the Samsung Watchphone, they might acquiesce.
True, but Will W. argues for the PC on good, sound business bases, not
emotion. And that business argument is, for "The Sims" that the game
has the most legs when it's customizable over the Net, something
consoles can't match (yet).
Steve
--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
Bob Perez
> >You don't think Microsoft has a clue?
> They don't have a clue about making games.
Ok, different animal. But I would still maintain that they know far more
about how to get software out the door and into the hands of paying
customers than most game companies, and this is what is making them strong
players in the gaming market. They may not code the games, but they know how
to hold the right people accountable for delivering customer valued code,
that's what counts.
> Just because they
> make money doing the same things other companies lose money at doesn't
> mean they know the PC game industry. It just means they know how to
> make money :P
Trust me, Microsoft knows the PC game industry. I regularly participate in
playtesting many of the games that get discussed here and have spent much
time there over the last few years watching them evolve from their "Flight
Sim" and "Fury" days to their current stage. I've had these arguments with
Ed Fries and I've seen firsthand the transformation that he went through
before retiring earlier this year. These guys have not arrived where they
are solely on the backs of companies that they've acquired, they thoroughly
embrace the acquired domain expertise and make it their own. What do you
think happens to the people within a company like FASA when they acquire it?
Companies are not just abstract entities, they're just people bonded
together in a common enterprise and in this case Microsoft is smart enough
to know that they need gamers in there making key decisions. A lot of these
guys are gamers. Not all of them, most of the ones in the right places.
> No, they made their own beds. It wasn't the retailers, it wasn't
> customer expectations, it wasn't any of the convenient excuses. It was
> just old style corporate stupidity.
I didn't blame retailers or customers. I agree with your overall sentiment
that the industry shot itself in the foot, mostly because the smell of money
attracted everyone and, well, not everyone is talented or smart. Newsflash!
> They made it so. The zip lock baggy thing was done in the early 80s.
> There was a good 10 year period where games came in boxes, with
> perfectly decent manuals, and multiple floppies. In fact, the manuals
> in the 80s were probably better, on average, than the manuals now.
> I've still got a bunch if you wanna compare :P
Again, I agree. It's not about the quality of the manual, it's about the
cost. The two are not synomymous. There are plenty of examples of
outstanding manuals that came in 2-color (black and white), low cost formats
(SMAC's a good example, as I recall it was over 200p of quality). Then there
are those 4-color monstrosities that offered nothing but cut and paste
regurgitation, worthless but looked pretty as hell (look at the SWG manual,
or some of the Avalon Hill games back when they were still trying to put out
PC games). When your take on a game is like $10 after distribution,
spending a 40-50% of that on COGS that don't deliver value will kill you.
> Most of the increased cost that happened when PC game makers went
> after the mythical mass market is associated with bloated payrolls,
> not packaging.
It's not any of those things alone, it's all of them. It's a mindset issue.
It's about treating the game business AS a business, where all decisions are
made based on value delivered for investment made, whether it's the
packaging or the corporate payroll.
> >When did they ever release anything that was truly innovative and since
when
> >has that been a core part of their success?
>
> Are you serious? I'm in the anti-Microsoft camp these days but to deny
> the impact they had on the computer industry in general and the PC
> industry in particular during the 80s would be revisionist history at
> it's worst.
Um, where exactly am I denying that they had an impact? I asked you a simple
question. Name me something that they delivered to the marketplace that was
truly innovative, as opposed to delivering something to the market that had
been done before and established as commercially viable, but not as
successfully executed and marketed.
> And I think
> it'd take some kinda fool to believe the PC industry will ever be
> mainstream now, after more than a decade of people trying and failing
> to make it so.
Yeah, it has never has been and never will be, but it'll continue making a
fair amount of noise (witness EverQuest II ads in movie theaters now) on its
way to evolving into something that can and will be mainstream. Probably
another platform yet to be invented and closer to the convergent holy grail
we keep hearing about.
Graeme Dice
> The Shaggy DA said:
> }Lose the sig.
>
> Aye. Or at the very least, make it less than 80 columns wide. It's
> already doomed to be gibberish on newsreaders set to use a proportional
> spacing font, you may at least cater to those who do use fixed-width
> fonts, who frequently have terminals with an 80-column limit.
He makes the signature file large specifically to annoy people, then
records their responses on a webpage, so I wouldn't bother responding to
him.
Graeme Dice
--
"The people - could you patent the sun?"
-- Jonas E. Salk (1914-1995), US virologist. On being
asked who owned the patent on his polio vaccine.
Bob Perez
"Bradd W. Szonye" <bradd...@szonye.com> wrote in message
news:slrncdk1qo.s...@szonye.com...
> Hey, don't diss Zoo Tycoon. My wife & kid have gotten as much gameplay
> out of that as I have out of Civilization.
No kidding, it's a fine game and it's getting better. I playtested Zoo
Tycoon 2 at Microsoft late last year and even back then it was great fun and
excellent use of a 3d interface to add benefit to an already good game. I
see it's been announced now and there's a site for it, but still shows a
Fall release date. If you liked the original you should check this one out.
Bob Perez
Very true. Those reasons are *theoretically* diminishing as we speak, given
XBox Live and the internal storage capacity (although it'll be a years
before there's enough critical mass to compete with the PC).
Thrasher
wrote:
>Dominant? Maybe not. But they've successfully repositioned Windows
>from a toy OS (real men use Unix, grunt) to a mid-market enterprise
>alternative. They're not going for GM, but you can run a $500 million
>firm really well on a Windows platform, and do it with sys admins that
>cost 1/2 of what Unix does.
>
>Then, they kept plugging away at SQL Server in the same segment,
>asking that $500 million CIO why he needs Oracle at $40,000/CPU plus
>hot&cold running consultants. SQL Server has carved out about a
>15-share of the DBMS market and is accelerating. IBM is growing there
>by acquisition, and Larry E. is reduced to crying at the feds about
>PeopleSoft. MS will gnaw you to death if you ignore the
>currently-small customer opportunity.
Yes, this is all true. That's because the only real opportunity for
growth for MS is on the server side... so that's what they are after
now. Maybe that's why their stuff on the desktop has changed so little
in the last 10 years.
>IBM isn't "down" but they've changed. Despite what most people still
>believe IBM has become a consulting company, not a core manufacturer
>of hardware and software. They do that, but it's consulting that sells
>the iron and code. They have over 135,000 working IT consultants after
>the acquisition of PWC; it's now the Big-4 (Deloitte, Accenture,
>Bearing Point, CapGem) instead of Big-5.
IBM is still a huge company, and will likely always BE a huge company.
However, they lost the PC industry they created in the late 80s and
their attempts to get their foot back in the door are laughable.
They'd probably be better off not even trying.
>I don't think so, just matured. The changes are more waves than
>cliffs.
Matured? Like the mainframe market matured in the 70s? The PC didn't
take over the world by trying to do what Mainframes could do. Makers
of PC hardware and software catered to individuals and mom & pop small
businesses. I'd tend to agree that the emphasis now is on pleasing
corporate customers. That's a mistake. A mistake that's been made
before. Innovation in the computer industry is bottom up, not
top-down. And of all industries, the computer industry should know
best that you either change or you die. The improvements are so minor
and so few and far between in the PC industry now that it really
*does* remind me of the Big Iron days of the 1970s. I hope the PC
doesn't share the Mainframe's fate, but if it goes on like this much
longer it will.
John Lewis
>Vivendi Universal Games is closing its Sierra Entertainment offices here in
>Bellevue, Washington. The announcement's in all the local papers and is
>starting to make its way around the industry. Over 100 people are losing
>their jobs locally as part of a larger cut of over 350 jobs nationwide. Some
>50 people will lose jobs in the Boston area as the Papyrus and Impressions
>game studios are shut down. Finally, about 160 people in the Los Angeles
>area will lose jobs.
>
>It's no surprise that the one company currently bucking all these trends
>both on the console and the PC side is the one company that didn't have a
>CLUE about gaming just a few short years ago, but through the application of
>all their acquired expertise at disciplined, professional software
>development and effective marketing, is now becoming a dominant player in
>gaming. I'm talking of course about Microsoft.
And Ubisoft, who had more than a clue even a few years
ago and is run by the very sharp ( and risk-taking ) Guillemot
brothers............. ??
Far Cry, Prince of Persia, Splinter Cell etc., etc...........
John Lewis
Bob Perez
"John Lewis" <john...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:40da29dc...@news.verizon.net...
> And Ubisoft, who had more than a clue even a few years
> ago and is run by the very sharp ( and risk-taking ) Guillemot
> brothers............. ??
Yes, Ubisoft looks to be making some good moves these days. We'lll see how
well they manage those businesses going forward.
Another player to watch is NCSoft, publishers of City of Heroes and the
upcoming Guild Wars (from the original creators of Diablo). Well ok, they
also publish Lineage, but everyone's allowed one mistake. ;-)
--
The Protector Server's husband-and-wife Super Hero team:
(The Ultimate Petrifying) Hypnotist
"Things are not what they seem".
29th Level Controller (Illusion/Storm)
(The Ultimate Mythic) Breath of Life
"Breathing Life into your body"
29th Level Defender (Empathy/Radiation)
http://www.shadowpike.com/pub/pics/hypnobreath.jpg
alt.games.coh <--- tell your ISP
Thrasher
wrote:
>I have a close friend working on an enterprise team to deliver a
>project in five sites across the continent, in 12-months, on five
>different legacy systems, with three different managements and four
>primary vendor relationships.
I have no idea what this means. I do commercial software development.
I don't deliver code. I don't install code. I don't train users. I
don't write manuals. I don't do quality assurance. I write code.
>five sites across the continent
Irrelevant. My job is identical whether the company I work for sells
my application to 1 customer or 1000 customers.
>five different legacy systems
Five different operating systems is five different projects, not one
project.
>with three different managements and four
>primary vendor relationships.
This is a corporate political problem not a development problem.
>Over 500 core modules to design, code, and test before integration
> and load-testing
I have no idea what a "core module" is... what programming language
are you talking about? Do you mean 500 different programs? That would
be 500 different projects, with 500 different development teams, not
one. Or do you mean 500 functions within a single program? I could do
that myself in a year's time, easily.
>with parallel user training and certification. Six programmers wouldn't even have been
>able to read the business analysis and do 100 of the modules in that
>time.
We're obviously talking about apples and oranges here. No software
developer at a company I've worked for has ever been asked to read a
"business analysis" :D
>The scale of software projects has changed. Perhaps your environment
>has shielded you from some of that.
Hmmm.... for the last 8 years I have done the Windows client side
applications for industrial grade client/server applications. Some of
the biggest companies in the world use apps that I've written. Dunno
what's larger scale than that.
I think maybe the problem is your friend works for a company that does
custom software on a customer by customer basis. I used to do that,
working for small companies. It's a royal pain in the ass, and I'm
glad I don't do it anymore. The large software companies make
pre-packaged apllications, and sell custom "suites" made up of
whatever of the pre-packaged products they have available that they've
been able to sell to the company. Usually under an Enterprise
Management shell of some sort. Each of the point products in the suite
would consist of at least two teams, one for client side and one for
server side, and therefore two different projects. Possible more, if
the work load could be broken down into more than two cohesive
individual sections.
>I don't know, but just for asking, how many textures were required in,
>say, GTA:Vice City, versus Wasteland?
I don't know either. I experimented with modding Vice City, though,
and as I recall it has a couple hundred detailed textures - cars,
people, etc - and a couple hundred more simple textures.
Which is certainly within the capabilities of a few graphic artists to
do in a year's time.
>It's not any more. With console titles it's a bigger industry than the
>domestic movie biz. You can't totally ignore cross-over work and
>revenues.
I said PC. I didn't say console. The console industry has ALWAYS been
huge. It's also always been a completely different market than the PC
game industry. 42 million people bought super mario brothers games for
the Nintendo in the 1980s. I wasn't one of them. I was one of the
100,000 or so fans of PC games. The fundamentals of the PC game
industry and the console game industry have not changed in the last 20
years. Some people have just thought that they have. And they've paid
for that mistake dearly.
Thrasher
wrote:
>It's easier to locate the duds now, for sure. :-)
They are all duds. That's why.
Thrasher
wrote:
>This is completely untrue. A little bit of exaggeration is okay if you
>want to make a point of how different things used to be but this is
>too much.
Eh? You think there were more than 30 PC games out per year in the
80s? Or, are you saying they were mostly crap?
Not my recollection at all, sorry. Shovelware didn't start until the
90s.
>That's a matter of opinion with which I disagree. There were lots and
>lots of duds that used to get released around that time. If anything,
>the signal to noise ratio in the current games is substantially better
>(by few dB :) ) compared to the games coming out 15 years ago.
OK, I challenge you. Name more than 30 PC games that came out in 1989.
Then name more than 15 that were "duds" - then we can talk.
Thrasher
(agreed on the MS stuff)
>I didn't blame retailers or customers. I agree with your overall sentiment
>that the industry shot itself in the foot, mostly because the smell of money
>attracted everyone and, well, not everyone is talented or smart. Newsflash!
In defense of the new hires of the 90s, the smell of money got to some
of the industry vets as well. Origin and Sirtech both went down that
road with leadership from the top.
>Again, I agree. It's not about the quality of the manual, it's about the
>cost. The two are not synomymous. There are plenty of examples of
>outstanding manuals that came in 2-color (black and white), low cost formats
>(SMAC's a good example, as I recall it was over 200p of quality). Then there
>are those 4-color monstrosities that offered nothing but cut and paste
>regurgitation, worthless but looked pretty as hell (look at the SWG manual,
>or some of the Avalon Hill games back when they were still trying to put out
>PC games). When your take on a game is like $10 after distribution,
>spending a 40-50% of that on COGS that don't deliver value will kill you.
Yeah, I recall more than a few manuals in the 80s that were just
mimeographed on looseleaf copier paper, folded over and stapled. These
days, a company could make a homegrown manual that was much better and
didn't cost any more to publish. And that would be fine by me, I don't
need a manual for a computer game that looks like something I'd buy at
Barnes & Noble.
>It's not any of those things alone, it's all of them. It's a mindset issue.
>It's about treating the game business AS a business, where all decisions are
>made based on value delivered for investment made, whether it's the
>packaging or the corporate payroll.
Well, maybe so, but I've worked for small businesses before that
manage to deliver quality products at a low cost. It can be done. What
can't be done is things like having twice as many salesman and three
times as many customer service reps as you have programmers. Not if
you want to keep costs down. A big business mentality relies on
extremely high volume to offset low profit margins. That's the wrong
business model to use for a niche market. Of course, they weren't
aware that they were selling into a niche market, apparrently.
>Um, where exactly am I denying that they had an impact? I asked you a simple
>question. Name me something that they delivered to the marketplace that was
>truly innovative, as opposed to delivering something to the market that had
>been done before and established as commercially viable, but not as
>successfully executed and marketed.
Visual C++ !!
When they released it in 1992 it instantly and forever changed the
nature of software development. I've been using it just about every
day for 14 years.
There are plenty of other examples, I just mention that one because
it's had the biggest impact on me, personally. Maybe you don't
consider something like that innovative, because it wasn't the first C
compiler, but it was a quantum leap ahead of anything that had been
done before - and it contained many features that had never previously
been seen in any software product, let alone compiler.
>Yeah, it has never has been and never will be, but it'll continue making a
>fair amount of noise (witness EverQuest II ads in movie theaters now) on its
>way to evolving into something that can and will be mainstream. Probably
>another platform yet to be invented and closer to the convergent holy grail
>we keep hearing about.
Actually, I'm hoping that the new Holy Grail platform will be for
techies and hobbyists like the PC was in the old days... the soccer
moms and daytona dads can keep the PC. It lets em do their online
shopping and checking accounts just fine :D
chainbreaker
> OK, I challenge you. Name more than 30 PC games that came out in 1989.
> Then name more than 15 that were "duds" - then we can talk.
Check out Underdogs for 6+ pages of 1989 releases at at least 30-40 per page
(I didn't bother counting), and that's probably just a fraction of the
year's total.
If there aren't at least 15 duds among those listed I'll kiss your virtual
butt, and the really nasty duds probably aren't even listed.
I think your memory has the "golden age" colored just a bit too golden.
There was a lot of great stuff to be had back then, but it wasn't all great
by any stretch.
--
chainbreaker
Bradd W. Szonye
>> Hey, don't diss Zoo Tycoon. My wife & kid have gotten as much gameplay
>> out of that as I have out of Civilization.
Bob Perez wrote:
> No kidding, it's a fine game and it's getting better.
It seems like a good, challenging builder game. I haven't played it
myself -- only a few builders can hold my interest for long -- but they
certainly like it.
> I playtested Zoo Tycoon 2 at Microsoft late last year and even back
> then it was great fun and excellent use of a 3d interface to add
> benefit to an already good game. I see it's been announced now and
> there's a site for it, but still shows a Fall release date. If you
> liked the original you should check this one out.
I think they already know about it, and I'm sure they'll pick it up when
it comes out.
Bradd W. Szonye
> IBM is still a huge company, and will likely always BE a huge company.
> However, they lost the PC industry they created in the late 80s and
> their attempts to get their foot back in the door are laughable.
> They'd probably be better off not even trying.
Haven't they already been out of the PC biz for a while now?
noman
> Eh? You think there were more than 30 PC games out per year in the
> 80s? Or, are you saying they were mostly crap?
More than 30.
Worse signal to noise ratio than today.
> Not my recollection at all, sorry. Shovelware didn't start until the
> 90s.
Maybe 1890.
>>That's a matter of opinion with which I disagree. There were lots and
>>lots of duds that used to get released around that time. If anything,
>>the signal to noise ratio in the current games is substantially better
>>(by few dB :) ) compared to the games coming out 15 years ago.
>
>
> OK, I challenge you. Name more than 30 PC games that came out in 1989.
> Then name more than 15 that were "duds" - then we can talk.
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/a,2/b,1989/?v=1&o=3a1
They list 257 games.
The action, RPG and adventure games are pretty much all crap with only a
few exceptions. Interestingly, the racing/driving genre seems to have
the best selection (or the best gems-to-crap ratio) - Stunt Car Racer
(this had unbelievable graphics and gameplay at the time..... not to be
confused with Stunts), Test Drive II, Indy 500, Cycles (from DSI, the
company Chris Taylor of Total Annihilation was working for) etc.
Anyway lots of crap there. Go there and check it out.
--
Noman
Bradd W. Szonye
>> I have a close friend working on an enterprise team to deliver a
>> project in five sites across the continent, in 12-months, on five
>> different legacy systems, with three different managements and four
>> primary vendor relationships.
Thrasher wrote:
> I have no idea what this means .... [snip a bunch more cluelessness]
Good grief, do you know anything about software engineering at all?
> Hmmm.... for the last 8 years I have done the Windows client side
> applications for industrial grade client/server applications. Some of
> the biggest companies in the world use apps that I've written. Dunno
> what's larger scale than that.
That's small stuff. You clearly have no concept what "large scale"
means. Even the biggest, most bloated commercial apps are small stuff
compared to, say, a telecom system.
Bradd W. Szonye
>> Um, where exactly am I denying that they had an impact? I asked you a
>> simple question. Name me something that they delivered to the
>> marketplace that was truly innovative, as opposed to delivering
>> something to the market that had been done before and established as
>> commercially viable, but not as successfully executed and marketed.
Thrasher wrote:
> Visual C++ !!
>
> When they released it in 1992 it instantly and forever changed the
> nature of software development. I've been using it just about every
> day for 14 years.
You're joking, right? Visual C++ isn't even a 2nd-generation application
in its niche, let alone an innovator.
noman
That's because of wider accessibility of the internet. I don't know
how heavily you were using BBS at the time, but there were the
obligatory Thrashers populating most boards back then as well.
--
Noman
Michael Vondung
> UNIX has been
> around since 1972. It will never be a popular desktop OS - if that was
> going to happen, it would have a LONG time ago.
Please read up on OSX.
M.
Bradd W. Szonye
> In alt.games.everquest Ken Andrews <gob...@degook.com> wrote:
>> Numbers for fun:
>>
>> IBM quarterly sales for 2003 (all numbers in millions):
>>
>> Q1 - 20,065 <-- 20 billion dollars.
>> Q2 - 21,631
>> Q3 - 21,522
>> Q4 - 25,913
>>
>> MS quarterly sales for 2003 (all numbers in millions):
>>
>> Q1 - 7,835
>> Q2 - 8,065
>> Q3 - 8,215
>> Q4 - 10,153
>
> But what's the *revenue* on those sales?
Those look like revenue numbers already. Did you mean profit?
Clogar
>
[snip]
> the upcoming Guild Wars (from the original creators of Diablo). Well
> ok, they also publish Lineage, but everyone's allowed one mistake. ;-)
I'm not expecting Guild Wars to do well. A lot of people seemed
to dislike the E3 trial, and may not purchase it after that
experience (I am one of them).
Andrew
> I'm not expecting Guild Wars to do well. A lot of people seemed
>to dislike the E3 trial, and may not purchase it after that
>experience (I am one of them).
I am one of the ones that really enjoyed it, along with most of the
people I talked to when playing the E3 trial. I can see how various
gamers (e.g. hardcore RPG players) might dislike it, but I think it
fits a large gap in the market for people who want to play MMORPG's
but don't have the time (or money) to commit to playing the
traditional games. I loved that in the trial I could easily join a
team, play through a fun and balanced story driven mission, then quit
all within 15-30 minutes. 15 minutes doesn't go very far in EQ.
--
Andrew. To email unscramble n...@gurjevgrzrboivbhf.pbz & remove spamtrap.
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevant text.
Check groups.google.com before asking a question.
Steve Bartman
wrote:
>Yes, this is all true. That's because the only real opportunity for
>growth for MS is on the server side...
"Only"? I don't think so. They have about $50 billion on hand. They
could buy their own consulting company and acquire 50,000 new hands-on
salesmen to put in Server 2003 and SQL Server. They're serious about
entertainment, not just X-Box. There's a lot of room left in cell
phone techs, PDAs, e-money, publishing, music, etc. Gates is still
dreaming of the "electronic wallet". You're too doctrinaire in your
segment thinking. It's not 1990.
so that's what they are after
>now. Maybe that's why their stuff on the desktop has changed so little
>in the last 10 years.
The desktop is evolutionary, not revolutionary any more.
>IBM is still a huge company, and will likely always BE a huge company.
>However, they lost the PC industry they created in the late 80s and
>their attempts to get their foot back in the door are laughable.
They make the corporate-standard laptops. By far the favored models of
road-warriors who can afford them. Desktops are a commodity business
and have been since the days of Leading Edge and Eagle. Commodity
isn't IBM's strong suit.
>They'd probably be better off not even trying.
They make lots of money in notebooks. Why stop?
>>I don't think so, just matured. The changes are more waves than
>>cliffs.
>
>Matured? Like the mainframe market matured in the 70s?
Not at all like that.
The PC didn't
>take over the world by trying to do what Mainframes could do.
No, it took over by doing what typewriters and accounting pads could
do. Mainframes kept chugging away doing what they do. There are still
lots of mainframes around BTW.
Makers
>of PC hardware and software catered to individuals and mom & pop small
>businesses.
Not even close. I don't know how old you are, but the facts show that
the original IBM PC was targeted at business and bought by business,
and that's when minicomputers took off. Apple and Radio Shack were
hobbyist toys. When IBM signaled that the time was now corporations
took notice. Not before. The $3000 price (an excellent used car that
year) had something to do with it. Those prices held for a few years,
but the cost curves came down fast and lots of cloners were in the
market by about 1987. I bought my first 286 Intel machine that year
from a mail-order company called PC's Limited, a start-up run by a guy
named Dell. There was no way a poor grad student could have afforded a
"real" IBM AT.
I'd tend to agree that the emphasis now is on pleasing
>corporate customers. That's a mistake. A mistake that's been made
>before.
Well, they have money and are far easier to forecast than household
consumers. It was that way in 1986 too. One meeting with the CIO and
you know how big the order will be. Call the factory.
Innovation in the computer industry is bottom up, not
>top-down.
Baloney.
And of all industries, the computer industry should know
>best that you either change or you die.
I see constant change. In fact, I ordered a new notebook today. Far
more capability than a Cray supercomputer of 1986. Far more capability
than my 2-YO desktop.
The improvements are so minor
>and so few and far between in the PC industry now that it really
>*does* remind me of the Big Iron days of the 1970s.
All new industries follow this model to some extent. A lot of the
early "innovation" was shaking out things that didn't work. There were
something like 1000 car manufacturers in the world in 1920 as well. IF
something comes along that is so radically better for most consumers
as the difference between a mainframe programmed with cards and a PC
with Lotus 123 I expect you'll see a huge, lurching shift. What will
bring it? I think a new task set that isn't currently being served.
I've done audit working papers on accounting pads. The advantages of
spreadsheets over stubby pencil was so massive there was no question
the PC was going to win. Show me that kind of gap in any task set and
I'll agree that there's a chasm coming. Until then we're doing fine.
I hope the PC
>doesn't share the Mainframe's fate, but if it goes on like this much
>longer it will.
Why do you see doom and gloom? Cost per instruction and cost per MB of
storage are laughably low. What tasks can't you do that you want to
do? (Self-programming computers would be nice, but that's not the
hardware's fault.)
Steve
Steve Bartman
>Very true. Those reasons are *theoretically* diminishing as we speak, given
>XBox Live and the internal storage capacity (although it'll be a years
>before there's enough critical mass to compete with the PC).
I hope so, as I just ordered a new Dell Inspiron XPS today. <g>
I don't plan on ever owning a console for the sole reason that I don't
want to play games on my TV. I watch my TV while playing games on the
PC.
Steve
--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
Michael Vondung
> I am one of the ones that really enjoyed it, along with most of the
> people I talked to when playing the E3 trial. I can see how various
> gamers (e.g. hardcore RPG players) might dislike it, but I think it
> fits a large gap in the market for people who want to play MMORPG's
> but don't have the time (or money) to commit to playing the
> traditional games.
The game is aimed at the Diablo II audience, and other people who prefer
pseudo-MMORPGs without a monthly fee. I didn't dislike the trial,
however, the "load areas on demand" stuff is a huge turn-off for me. I
don't have cable or DSL (stuck with ISDN), and I don't really want to
sit and wait fifteen or thirty minutes before I can continue playing. If
they fix that, I'll buy a copy. If it's not changed, I'll pass.
M.
Steve Bartman
wrote:
>On Wed, 23 Jun 2004 17:12:24 -0500, Steve Bartman <sbar...@visi.com>
>wrote:
>
>>I have a close friend working on an enterprise team to deliver a
>>project in five sites across the continent, in 12-months, on five
>>different legacy systems, with three different managements and four
>>primary vendor relationships.
>
>I have no idea what this means.
I'm sorry. I thought it was fairly clearly written.
I do commercial software development.
>I don't deliver code. I don't install code. I don't train users. I
>don't write manuals. I don't do quality assurance. I write code.
My friend is a consultant, but the client is writhing all the module
code. Insisting on it in fact. My point is, six programmers wouldn't
have made a dent in the project. And the coders are not only coders.
They're half-pregnant as business analysts as well. Have to be to live
within the legacy boundaries.
I also hope you're very, very good at what you do because pure coding
is becoming a commodity. If you can't add other value it'll go
offshore. Large data-intensive firms are learning fast what can be
offshored and what can't be, and how much pre-work has to be done for
what can be. It's not a nirvana solution, but it's here to stay.
>>five sites across the continent
>
>Irrelevant. My job is identical whether the company I work for sells
>my application to 1 customer or 1000 customers.
>
>>five different legacy systems
>
>Five different operating systems is five different projects, not one
>project.
Not O/Ses specifically, mostly DBMS and call center software.
>>with three different managements and four
>>primary vendor relationships.
>
>This is a corporate political problem not a development problem.
It's a massive development problem as it happens. IF you want to keep
your head down and pound code fine, but don't be surprised when you
get run over. Solving the problem is the goal, not producing X lines
of code.
>>Over 500 core modules to design, code, and test before integration
>> and load-testing
>
>I have no idea what a "core module" is... what programming language
>are you talking about?
XML and COM objects, with an outer envelope of proprietary stuff to
get through a multi-step queuing process on both ends of a
trans-continental backbone. I'm not a developer, so a lot of it goes
over my head. My impression was it's not rocket-science coding, just
massive amounts of it.
> Do you mean 500 different programs?
Essentially yes, but called sequentially by CSRs and sharing client
RAM. The testing scripts are pretty hairy.
That would
>be 500 different projects, with 500 different development teams, not
>one. Or do you mean 500 functions within a single program? I could do
>that myself in a year's time, easily.
Uh, no, you couldn't. Just defining the data schema and determining
lay-out trade-offs was over 5000 man-hours. Programming was a couple
of milestones past that.
I'm not denigrating what you do. I'm just saying that there may be a
bigger world outside your cube you're not seeing.
>>with parallel user training and certification. Six programmers wouldn't even have been
>>able to read the business analysis and do 100 of the modules in that
>>time.
>
>We're obviously talking about apples and oranges here. No software
>developer at a company I've worked for has ever been asked to read a
>"business analysis" :D
Then you work on very simple projects. I'm talking UML primarily. You
don't use it or something similar?
>>The scale of software projects has changed. Perhaps your environment
>>has shielded you from some of that.
>
>Hmmm.... for the last 8 years I have done the Windows client side
>applications for industrial grade client/server applications. Some of
>the biggest companies in the world use apps that I've written. Dunno
>what's larger scale than that.
We're using "scale" differently.
>I think maybe the problem is your friend works for a company that does
>custom software on a customer by customer basis.
No, big consulting company. Most of what they do is slamming in apps,
like SAP and Siebel, but sometimes the client insists on developing
in-house. They give more or less help as the client wants and can pay
for.
I used to do that,
>working for small companies. It's a royal pain in the ass, and I'm
>glad I don't do it anymore. The large software companies make
>pre-packaged apllications, and sell custom "suites" made up of
>whatever of the pre-packaged products they have available that they've
>been able to sell to the company. Usually under an Enterprise
>Management shell of some sort. Each of the point products in the suite
>would consist of at least two teams, one for client side and one for
>server side, and therefore two different projects. Possible more, if
>the work load could be broken down into more than two cohesive
>individual sections.
When this company does a major Siebel installation for example, it's
not unusual to have six or more teams working concurrently. It depends
on the geographic spread (international is a bitch), how much database
work needs doing, how much DTS, how many screens they want, which app
modules, etc. Not unusual to take 50+ people two years, with new
skills coming and going as needed.
>>I don't know, but just for asking, how many textures were required in,
>>say, GTA:Vice City, versus Wasteland?
>
>I don't know either. I experimented with modding Vice City, though,
>and as I recall it has a couple hundred detailed textures - cars,
>people, etc - and a couple hundred more simple textures.
I don't know how to define textures, but when I play I see thousands
of storefront and residence graphics alone. Are those textures?
>>It's not any more. With console titles it's a bigger industry than the
>>domestic movie biz. You can't totally ignore cross-over work and
>>revenues.
>
>I said PC. I didn't say console.
I know, but business-wise you can't ignore the crossover. It's one
good reason I don't think PC games are going anywhere. Much of the
work can be done for one or the other, and successful titles can
cross-over and earn out far more than they could in either alone. The
GTA series is great example. Having consoles there lowers the
development risk for PC games tremendously. It doesn't help on
strategy games as much, but it helps the publishers on the total
portfolio, which washes into strategy games on a financial basis.
The console industry has ALWAYS been
>huge.
I remember when it didn't exist, but PC games did.
It's also always been a completely different market than the PC
>game industry.
I'm not sure how you're using "market" here, but the two are moving
closer on a variety of marketing element fronts: distribution,
pricing, promotional vehicles, user demographics, even genres.
42 million people bought super mario brothers games for
>the Nintendo in the 1980s. I wasn't one of them. I was one of the
>100,000 or so fans of PC games. The fundamentals of the PC game
>industry and the console game industry have not changed in the last 20
>years. Some people have just thought that they have. And they've paid
>for that mistake dearly.
Well, I continue to disagree. The PC segment has changed, yes, but in
many ways it's healthier than it was in 1990. Console games have
helped make electronic entertainment an acceptable middle-class time
waster. We both remember how strange were the looks we got at parties
when we told "regular" 1990 people that we played computer games. It's
a mainstream activity now, and mostly due to consoles.
Steve
Steve Bartman
>
>"Bradd W. Szonye" <bradd...@szonye.com> wrote in message
>news:slrncdk1qo.s...@szonye.com...
>
>> Hey, don't diss Zoo Tycoon. My wife & kid have gotten as much gameplay
>> out of that as I have out of Civilization.
>
>No kidding, it's a fine game and it's getting better. I playtested Zoo
>Tycoon 2 at Microsoft late last year and even back then it was great fun and
>excellent use of a 3d interface to add benefit to an already good game. I
>see it's been announced now and there's a site for it, but still shows a
>Fall release date. If you liked the original you should check this one out.
I liked the concept of the original (I love zoos) and bought the
bundle pack with the dinos and the Sea World stuff. But I just
couldn't stand to play it and soon put it away. The amount of
twiddling to get the damn dirt and plants and rocks and fences to the
animals' liking was stupefying. I want to MANAGE and DESIGN a big zoo,
not worry if my gazelles don't like pine straw. The game was a great
execution of a bad feature set.
At least let me lay down an optimal pen for the animal with a couple
of clicks rather than color it in piece by tiny piece.
Steve
--
www.thepaxamsolution.com
hammerstein
wrote:
>I don't know, but just for asking, how many textures were required in,
>say, GTA:Vice City, versus Wasteland?
When wasteland was produced, the best a graphics artist could hope for
was Deluxe Paint or an equivalent. Using today's applications,
productivity has increased by at least an order of magnitude.
I expect nowadays, you'd be fired for producing the graphics in
wasteland...especially if it took you more than a couple of weeks ;o)
j.
Michael Vondung
> For fifty dollars I once bought about 100 books. People who see newly
> released movies and buy newly released games are the biggest morons in
> the ENTIRE world.
Well, there are some games that I buy when they come out. Two reasons
for this:
#1 I've anticipated the title. In this case I sometimes even pre-order a
game, though that is rare. The last three games I pre-ordered were Port
Royale II, Sacred and the Diablo II expansion. I had pre-ordered Beyond
Divinity and Against Rome, but cancelled them after I played the demos.
Games I might buy when they come out this year are Locomotion (Transport
Tycoon II), Pirates!2, Zoo Tycoon II and perhaps the new Roller Coaster
Tycoon, though I'll wait for reviews on the last one. Well, there's a
pattern here: they are all sequels.
#2 It's a game that many players talk about and that promises to attract
a following/community. I enjoy talking with people about a new game,
discussing strategies or likes/dislikes. If you buy a game two years
after its release, this element will be nearly gone, though there will
be more patches and "walkthroughs" available. Good examples are
Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind, but also the Age of Wonders series
(the community at heavengames.com).
Thanks for removing the pre-face signature, by the way. I can actually
read your messages now. (Bit tedious to scroll on a low resolution.)
M.
Michael Vondung
> However, several people from Impressions have already set up a new
> company and they are working on a game having the same theme as their
> city-building earlier efforts.
Do you know the company's name?
Thanks,
M.
Michael Vondung
> My introduction to the computing world was via a Kaypro CP/M machine and
> Wordstar.
My first machine also ran under CP/M (who would have thought!), but it
was an Amstrad CPC. I still have one ... somewhere. Attic, I think.
M.
chainbreaker
> The game is aimed at the Diablo II audience, and other people who
> prefer pseudo-MMORPGs without a monthly fee. I didn't dislike the
> trial, however, the "load areas on demand" stuff is a huge turn-off
> for me. I don't have cable or DSL (stuck with ISDN), and I don't
> really want to sit and wait fifteen or thirty minutes before I can
> continue playing. If they fix that, I'll buy a copy. If it's not
> changed, I'll pass.
>
> M.
I'm part of that audience, and if GW was aimed at me, I certainly couldn't
tell it. :-)
I'll probably still buy it, but my enthusiasm has waned greatly.
--
chainbreaker
If you need to email, then chainbreaker (naturally) at comcast dot
net--that's "net" not "com"--should do it.
Michael Vondung
> I'll probably still buy it, but my enthusiasm has waned greatly.
If you keep it longer than CoH, I'll buy it, too. ;) Well, actually, it
pretty much depends on whether it'll be available in Germany when it
comes out. I won't import it for $25 extra bucks.
M.
chainbreaker
> As one of the founding members of Apple's Mac Evangelism group and a
> card-carrying member of the User Interface Police, I *officially*
> hated Wordstar. As a user, however, I had my CP/M card and regularly
> used Wordstar. ;-) I've always been a f-a-s-t typist, and I could
> control-k with the best of them. MacWrite was a fun idea and a great
> showcase for the vision behind the Mac, but it was years before I
> found a word processor with which I was comfortable. I'm gagging
> right now at the thought of Word 3.0 on the Mac ...
I got close enough to a few of the early Apples to drool on them, but that
was about it.
I suppose my fondness for Wordstar comes partly from the fact that it beat
the hell out of the Royal 440 I'd been tied to. :-)
David Carson
> Thrasher wrote:
>> OK, I challenge you. Name more than 30 PC games that came out in 1989.
>> Then name more than 15 that were "duds" - then we can talk.
>
> http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/a,2/b,1989/?v=1&o=3a1
> They list 257 games.
pwned.
Cheers!
David...
chainbreaker
Heh, I knew better than to buy CoH to begin with. It was surprising that I
enjoyed it as long as I did, and if the traveling grind was changed I might
still, at least for a time.
I don't expect any sweeping changes in the travel routine, though. What
they'd have to do to get me interested again would pretty much negate all
their "advanced" traveling skills, and that most likely wouldn't happen.
It's just hard for me to see large numbers of people maintaining an interest
in CoH for an extended period. There's nothing really wrong with the game,
and it's quite good for what it is, but it's kinda like trying to live on
cotton candy.
Tron
--
Tron
----
"You ate the whole bag of dumb, didn't you?" - Cliff Yablonski
"Michael Vondung" <mvon...@gmx.net> wrote in message
news:2jv3ggF...@uni-berlin.de...
Bateau
>The Shaggy DA said:
>}Lose the sig.
>
>Aye. Or at the very least, make it less than 80 columns wide. It's
>already doomed to be gibberish on newsreaders set to use a proportional
>spacing font, you may at least cater to those who do use fixed-width
>fonts, who frequently have terminals with an 80-column limit.
>
>Now, having done that, redesign it to fit in 4 lines of text or less.
>Those netiquette standards are there for a reason. It may not be a
>reason you agree with, but there is a reason.
If it's not a reason I agree with then it is not a reason to me, genius.
>Of course, you could post
>to some newsgroup like alt.sigs.ascii-art instead, where people might be
>more appreciative.
>
>[65 Coercer] Zinphandel Chianti <Prism> (Gnome) Ayonae Ro
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