Famously Overrated Developers

[CaptHawkeye]

Like mentioned their are plenty of other reasons the old cliches keep coming back and never quite die. I hate a lot of game developers taking the path of least resistance, but i've never kept it secret that I ALSO hate the fanboys and consumers who encourage predictable development patterns. Not to mention the publishers and corporate demographic chart worshipers who literally ORDER the developer to hold to archaic design paths.

Now Stark has got the right idea too. I hate developers because they flat out lie. The Publishers just want money and I can't necessarily blame them for that. The fanboys are retards but also generally aren't interested in digging around or waiting for "innovative" games when they can have whatever they see on store shelves. I hate developers because they flat out lie. I'm not talking from an entrepreneureal or artistic perspective as much as i'm talking from the perspective of a humble (if incredibly agitated) consumer.

To be honest, it doesn't annoy me and Stark that much that these developers aren't trying to do "new tricks". It annoys us that they simply make piss designs that we've seen better in OTHER games. Look at Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall and all of its features. Then compare that to Oblivion. Stark can list you any number of 90s titles that had great design choices that were ultimately dropped for NO REASON AT ALL. Bethesda is literally so stupid they can't even remember their OWN good games.

Actually, it's doubly annoying that studios like Bethesda or Valve talk lots of shit and dont back it up. You know why? They don't have any publishers they need to please anyway. They're both so rich they can publish their own games and yet they still can't ass themselves to try anything different. It's not like it would be hard to convince their fan-nerds to move with the times. They'll do whatever daddy dev tells them to. Yet they don't, as if to be mocking us in some way.

[Stark]

Salm makes an interesting point; if a big developer buys a smaller, in order to 'own' their game ... but make it polished, finished, tested, instead off buggy, ideosyncratic, clunky or obtuse, isn't that a good thing? I've played heaps of interesting yet totally broken, poorly tested, poorly presented Eastern European games, for isntance. If EA bought them and finsihed the game to a higher standard, wouldn't that be good? Does this ever happen? STALKER is a counter-example because they pissed all THQ's money away on hookers.

Valve's example is coloured by the fact that Valve only buys Source mod teams, apparently, which isn't nearly as philanthropic as it sounds.

[chitoryu12]

I had to vote for Bungie. I had fun with Halo and played the shit out of it when I got it, and I had some fun with Halo 2 and Halo 3. The problem is that all three games are almost exactly alike. The games are more like expansions than anything else, and they spend so much effort on pleasing the idiot fanboys that 99% of their titles are in the Halo universe.

Also, as for how in-depth the universe is? It is, but it ain't Bungie's doing. It's mostly the authors of the novels.