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Portal 2 pushed back to 2011
- Thread starter aiqw9182
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Valve should hire some more people. The potential for success with EP3/HL3 and Portal 2 should justify to a publisher; growing the roster to narrow milestones with less slip, and hit release dates within days or weeks, not months or years.
Most of the games I've worked on didn't have the luxury of date slipping, the publishers simply wouldn't have it. The last one took 2 months off of development time, so that it could pick up momentum leading into the holidays. You do the best that you can, compress your workload of two or more days into one, and work weekends. You don't go into the gaming industry not expecting crunch times.
Most of the games I've worked on didn't have the luxury of date slipping, the publishers simply wouldn't have it. The last one took 2 months off of development time, so that it could pick up momentum leading into the holidays. You do the best that you can, compress your workload of two or more days into one, and work weekends. You don't go into the gaming industry not expecting crunch times.
They're one of the few devs who can easily go over deadlines though, and I rather like that. Every game Valve has made has been great. You can't really say that about any other developer, and if that means going over their own self-imposed deadlines (they are independent devs after all) then so be it. So long as we eventually get to play perfection.
I'll give you that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockstar_Games#External_developers, there are duds in that list
.
Doom 3, Quake 4
Are either of these games worth ten bucks? They are cheap on GameAgent right now.
For $10 yea. They're very bland and uninteresting though. Doesn't help that HL2 came out around the time of Doom 3.
You are right that most of the Game Industry work this way.
However, the best devs (like Valve) do not, and thank god for that.
Unfortunately, that's a claim also made by those who worked on Duke Nukem Forever (company name intentionally omitted), no offense intended- as I use to email back and forth with George Broussard back when I worked on Microsoft Golf (Microsoft's main AAA game title at the time), and he's a very cool guy.
I happen to believe that the best devs are the ones capable of creating great AAA titles AND still hit release dates (or fairly close.) Missed release dates can mean a lot of things, and one can't always assume it's because of dedication to their art. Developing games is very technical, and very expensive. So such a decision is not lightly taken, as far as I'm aware.
Valve of course does not apply here, they do make great games- and in this case more time spent is a good thing, but it's not a safe bet to generalize that the "best devs" spend more time on something. if you take extra time to polish a turd, you'll still have a shiny turd in the end.
I would never in a million years put 3D Realms in the category of devs I was referring to. I think you may have missed my point, it's wasn't "devs who ignore deadlines are better" but more like "the best devs aren't slaves to deadlines". You can't just reverse that idea and expect it to still describe the same thing.
BTW I don't worship Valve either, I am pretty unimpressed with the L4D series personally. Also, there has never been a Blizzard game I've liked...
Anyway, I agree with most of your points. However the 'crunch time' BS is unacceptable and needs to end. Biggest problems are when marketing (and other idiot meddlers) are not kept in check.
BTW I don't worship Valve either, I am pretty unimpressed with the L4D series personally. Also, there has never been a Blizzard game I've liked...
Anyway, I agree with most of your points. However the 'crunch time' BS is unacceptable and needs to end. Biggest problems are when marketing (and other idiot meddlers) are not kept in check.
I am upset because Portal was so epic, but you have to give Valve credit for not offering poor excuses and sugarcoating everything. I think press releases like this help, not hurt, their image. Like the quote on MR today in the TF2 "making games is hard."
It's sarcastic, funny, and doesn't avoid the question. I know all Apple fans (or just followers) have come to expect that from Stevie, so this is just more of the same...
We like this.
It's sarcastic, funny, and doesn't avoid the question. I know all Apple fans (or just followers) have come to expect that from Stevie, so this is just more of the same...
We like this.
I really enjoyed both Doom 3 and Quake 4....
I did too, they were kinda bad guilty pleasures
. Didn't like the final act to Quake 4 though. I thought the story just got really naff and the ending was especially badly written.
I think we can actually give Valve credit this time for actually telling us this time!!!. I mean, we all expected it because its Valve but still, they bothered to make an announcement and tell us!!!