Famously Overrated Developers

[Stark]

Many developers on many platforms are more or less over-rated. I'm curious to know which is considered MOST over-rated.

Bear in mind this is about their game development; you can't defend Valve by saying they turned Steam from a pile of near-useless shit into a licence to print money. It's also about game design, not popularity, so you can't defend Bungie with Halo3 sales.

The contenders are

a) Bethesda. Never made a good game. Nerds love their 'open' 'dynamic' 'player-driven' 'story-heavy' games, with plots so stupid they invented time travel to allow all of Daggerfall's endings to happen simultaneously... for no reason because it's never mentioned again. Their latest game, Fallout 3, is a showcase of totally broken skills and spotty writing with absurdly stupid design decisions.

b) Bungie. Made Halo ages ago. Nerds obsessed with trivia surrounding their games. A cult surrounds their 'good' games - like Marathon - that pretty much suck. They've spectacularly failed to follow up on their big success, and their franchise is now run by someone else. Recently released a mission pack for Halo 3 that plays the same way despite being billed as 'new'.

c) Bioware. Never made a good game. Nerds love their 'character-driven' 'story-heavy' 'living worlds'. Every game they make is massively hyped because Bioware's amazing writing is accepted wisdom. Their latest game, Mass Effect, is the pinnacle of lazy, uninspired game design contrived to push a story that makes no sense whatsoever. Famous for constantly declaring they have a 'good' ethics system while being the greatest purveyors of BAD ethics systems.

d) Valve. Made Halflife in the stone age. Nerds obsessed with trivia surrounding their games. Flagshipped episodic content only to prove why its stupid. Enjoy selling mods made by other people on Steam. Famous for an advertising campaign for their shooter that emphasised the quality of nose-hair rendering for a meaningless nerd-favourite character.

So let's hear it. It's likely everyone likes at least one game by these developers, but it's important to look at the current state (or recent record) of the games they've designed.

[Stark]

Personally, I find it difficult to choose between Beth and Bioware. Valve is massively overrated, but generally only by idiots. Bungie is just too small for me to give a shit about. I think I'll say Bioware, because their shit games are shit becasue of pure laziness, whereas Beth seems to try and just be retarded (like with their broken skill system modders fixed a decade ago).

[Nephtys]

Bethesda and Bioware both have the same problem. They make a good engine with potential, then spectacularly fail with awful content and lots of copy-paste.
Bungie made a shooter that was a little more sophisticated than Doom2, and was the only game on the Mac ever made, ever. Then, they made a console FPS that was alright in ungimping some console control limitations, and have now become a cash cow.
Valve made two games. One of them is Half Life. I wonder what the second may be! But here's the thing. Out of the previous 3, they have the best products. Even if they're lazy gits who worship !PHYSICS!.

I voted them as most overrated anyway, since they've got a cult more than the other two. Yes, even Bungie. I think the Marathon players are starting to die of old age.

[Starglider]

In reverse order of overrated-ness.

Valve games are consistently innovative and well made. The engine design is not cutting-edge, but it is solid and pretty reliable. The art is not stand-out beautiful, but it is very effective at immersing the player in a variety of environments. The gameplay design for the Orange Box games is simply superb, within the constraints of their genres (I haven't played Left4Dead but it's gotten good reviews). Writing is at least solid, sometimes inspired. I don't think they're particularly overrated; it helps that their marketing development is relatively sane, by gaming industry standards.

Bethesda is extremely overambitious. Their games are consistently overhyped and highly buggy. I give them points for trying though; they are at least interesting to play, and they do genuinely push the envelope of what can be done (I do not give a fuck if you think that all their game design elements were done in LOL OBSCURE 90s GAME, making everything work to even an FO3 standard is technically very challenging). Writing is shitty, gameplay is highly patchy, but the art is good. I don't think they're particularly overrated; even if they are, that's counterbalanced by the legions of 'Bethesda are the spawn of Satan and must die' fanatics.

Bioware are genuinely overrated. The Baldur's Gate series was only good because it could draw on a huge base of D&D material that had never been done competently in a computer RPG before. Ditto KOTOR. They have been going downhill since then; NWN was incredible blandness and substandard graphics saved only by user modules. Mass Effect was wildly overrated. The plot was unoriginal and boring, art was bland, the gameplay mechanics were pretty awful, it was horribly repetitive (or rather, padded) etc. It's conceivable but not likely that the sequel will fix most of that.

Bungie is definitely the worst. Their games are utterly bland FPSes with no distinguishing features other than moderately pretty scenery. The universe is even more of a grab bag of sci-fi cliches than Mass Effect, the writing makes less sense, the games are either very short or horribly padded, immersiveness is pretty limited. The FPS mechanics are passable but nowhere near as finely tuned as Valve games. Yet the Internet is full of people claiming that the Halo universe is so deep and meaningful and that Bungie are geniuses etc etc

[Eleas]

Bethesda are just... strange. Either they do a shitty engine with a very quirky and (I'd argue) well-crafted game world / story (Morrowind), or they do a decent engine with an absolutely abysmal world / story(Oblivion). The fact that these purport to use the same setting is bizarre, but that's the way they want to play it, I guess.

[General Zod]

I'd say Valve. If only because everything they put out seems to be a Half-Life 2 mod.

[Joviwan]

I voted Bethesda before realizing that I needed to vote for Valve.

Valve has an absolutely mind-bogglingly atrocious record. Nearly every game they've brought to market was pushed back by giant lumps of time, their product library is shockingly small for the amount of lip-service they get, and the only original things they've done in the past ten years were OTHER people's ideas that they purchased.

I'd say Valve. If only because everything they put out seems to be a Half-Life 2 mod.

That's because Half Life 2 was the only game the company ever developed from the ground up. Everything else they've done throughout the entirety of their career has been mod-projects. They started out as a mod team, they've hired exclusively FROM mod teams, everything they've done that wasn't Half-Life 2 was done by mod teams.

I still play the crap out of their games, and many of their games are wonderful, but not a damn one of them was their idea; just talent they purchased on the market.

[Stark]

ATTN you can change your vote in this poll because I'm brilliant.

[Joviwan]

Brilliant.

[Vympel]

I vote Bungie. At least Valve's games have some excellent design, pacing, and were innovative in ways that hadn't been seen before in the FPS genre. Bungie is just consistently Bland Shit, who were saved by the Xbox from forgettable PC shooter mediocrity.

What, no Infinity Ward in the list?

[Stark]

There are a lot of other devs I could have put up there, but I think others are often more overrated for franchises (ie, CoD4, Total War, etc) than being expert/amazing developers themselves. I mean is anyone going to say Pandemic is an overrated developer? Or Paradox? Nobody rates them at all!

[Starglider]

There are a lot of other devs I could have put up there

Perhaps it would be simpler to list developers which you think are well-regarded for good reason, rather than being overrated.

[Stark]

Yeah that'd make plenty of sense in a thread entitled 'famously overrated developers', you simpering moron.

Oh wait, cheap shots at Stark for having the temerity to explain the rationale of a poll selection decision with reference to the OP to an interested party.

[Starglider]

Yeah that'd make plenty of sense in a thread entitled 'famously overrated developers', you simpering moron.

So there are in fact none. Thank you for confirming that in Stark land, since everything is shit, 'overrated' is an exact synonym for 'popular'.

[Stark]

Are you fucking stupid? The thread is called 'famously overrated developers', necessitating a list of potentially overrated developers. Why the flying fuck would I put NOT overrated developers up there? As a trick?

You are one dumb motherfucker to complain about the list composing 'bad' developers in a thread about bad developers. Vympel asked why 'bad developer xyz' wasn't there, so I explained the rationale (ie, 'famously overrated dev teams' as opposed to 'guys that make overrated games'). Turns out Vympel is smarter than you?

Awww, Starglider is a Valve fanboy and got butthurt because I said a mean thing. Everyone pet the spineless cunt until he goes away. Alternately, just post 'a lot' != 'all' until he gets it.

[Starglider]

Are you fucking stupid? The thread is called 'famously overrated developers', necessitating a list of potentially overrated developers. Why the flying fuck would I put NOT overrated developers up there? As a trick?

I'm not sure if you're deliberately misunderstanding me or just being stupid. I asked you to list some developers which you think don't suck. This has nothing to do with what poll options you picked. The reason is that I can't think of any examples of you actually accepting a game (or developer or anything else) as good, and without that any attempt to defend anything (to you) is pointless.

You are one dumb motherfucker

I guess so, since 'all humans are idiots' is a direct implication of your personal axiom, 'everything is shit'.

[Vaporous]

For the largest difference between reputation and actual product, you have to go to Bungie. Having made the same boring game three (now four) times, they somehow rode their mediocre opus into prominence with the help of an advertising machine geared entirely towards drunken frat-monkeys. Valve and Bio-ware might have rabid fan bases, but even their droppings have some semblance of substance. Bungie built a palace of shit on a foundation of copy-pasted art and scifi cliches.

[Eleas]

Vympel asked why 'bad developer xyz' wasn't there, so I explained the rationale (ie, 'famously overrated dev teams' as opposed to 'guys that make overrated games').

Honestly, it's a pity John Romero's ego prevented him from actually naming his development team (presumably because they were mere extensions of his Will). If he had, we could name that as the most famously overrated dev team in the history of gaming.

Actually, that makes me wonder if the personality cult (as in a single person) in gaming is greater than the tendency to fawn over development teams. Sure, fanboys will buy turds straight from Bungie if they put little Master Chief helmets on the ends, but can even that really compare to the crazy pavlovian reactions unleashed by names like Peter Molyneux, David Braben, Chris Roberts, John Carmack, and (lest we forget) American McGee?

[Losonti Tokash]

I'm not sure if you're deliberately misunderstanding me or just being stupid. I asked you to list some developers which you think don't suck. This has nothing to do with what poll options you picked. The reason is that I can't think of any examples of you actually accepting a game (or developer or anything else) as good, and without that any attempt to defend anything (to you) is pointless.I guess so, since 'all humans are idiots' is a direct implication of your personal axiom, 'everything is shit'.

Yeah, Stark definitely hates him some Gears, that's why we're playing it all the time. Burnout too.

[Vympel]

Actually, that makes me wonder if the personality cult (as in a single person) in gaming is greater than the tendency to fawn over development teams. Sure, fanboys will buy turds straight from Bungie if they put little Master Chief helmets on the ends, but can even that really compare to the crazy pavlovian reactions unleashed by names like Peter Molyneux, David Braben, Chris Roberts, John Carmack, and (lest we forget) American McGee?

Does anyone give a fuck about those guys anymore? The only ones who are even remotely relevant nowadays are Peter Molyneux, John Carmack, and of course Will Wright (Will Wright! Pee on Us!).

[Eleas]

Actually, that makes me wonder if the personality cult (as in a single person) in gaming is greater than the tendency to fawn over development teams. Sure, fanboys will buy turds straight from Bungie if they put little Master Chief helmets on the ends, but can even that really compare to the crazy pavlovian reactions unleashed by names like Peter Molyneux, David Braben, Chris Roberts, John Carmack, and (lest we forget) American McGee?

Does anyone give a fuck about those guys anymore? The only ones who are even remotely relevant nowadays are Peter Molyneux, John Carmack, and of course Will Wright (Will Wright! Pee on Us!).

Not really. Oh, there was a brief resurgence of some names. So you mean this thread is about today?

now I must reimagine my world

[Stark]

Does anyone give a fuck about those guys anymore? The only ones who are even remotely relevant nowadays are Peter Molyneux, John Carmack, and of course Will Wright (Will Wright! Pee on Us!).

Shit that's all good stuff. Not current enough for today's kiddies, I think. Fucking Will Wright. Fucking Peter 'Everything I Say Is A Lie' Molyneux.

[Serafina]

Bioware.

Why? Well, at least the people i know preach them as the "gods of (pc)rpgs".
They aren't.

They made a good game with Baldurs Gate, mainly because they had a lot of material to work with and a genre to recreate.
But they learned nothing since then.

KOTOR was actually worse then BG - less possibilities, the plot was worse and so on. And the game mechanics sucked for Star Wars, too. It was a nice game, but another developer could have done a better job.

And if a developer can only copy his old work (badly) - well, thats a recipe for being overrated.

[Nephtys]

What has Chris Roberts of all people, achieved since 1996?

[Vympel]

Not really. Oh, there was a brief resurgence of some names. So you mean this thread is about today?

now I must reimagine my world

I dunno. Gaming seems fickle to me, if these guys are still around but they've lost the buzz, then I hazard to say that they were never considered that great. *shrug*

Chris Roberts, there's a weird one - was so obsessed with doing movies, he turned his games into them, then went off to produce films, or some shit.