Originally posted by aesperus

Honestly, I don't think anyone should be making comments like this, with the possible exception to those who have proven themselves to be 'great game designers'.

This kinda arrogance usually just makes you look like a giant tool, and everytime someone has basically called out the rest of an industry for 'sucking' it's ALWAYS come back to bite them in the arse. While I would agree that there are a lot of bad game designers out there, I wouldn't say 'most', and I think a lot of people really don't understand what makes a good game designer anyway.

 hahaha, did you just make the hint that Garriott has not proven himself to be a great game designer? ROFLMAO!

The man that invented the RPG with graphics...the man that invented full world map overlay...the man that invented the 3D dungeon...the man that the entire RPG genre based its games off of for 15 YEARS, created the first RPG with an actual written narrative instead of the typical minial plots. First RPG with MORALs effecting gameplay. He pushed MMORPGs(and even NAMED it that) to the forefront with UO by vastly improving design tech that allowed far more people to play a server along with a great many game designs that are still used today.

Even his BAD games like Ultima 8, brought the first M rated game due to its graphic depictions of violence, death and cultism forever opening the door to the games we have today and the royal crapfest that was Ultima 9 (mostly made by others) brought the first true 3D world to RPGs when most thought it wasnt possible in a large setting. And then Tablua Rasa, being BAD, was still way ahead of its time and brought NEW things to the genre, something few designers can claim today.

Originally posted by johnisme

Did you read on why Tabula Rasa failed and that Richard Garriot sued  NCsoft for 28 million and won over his departure from Tabula Rasa?

I wouldn't want a publisher after that and do a kick starter instead.

Care to explain why it failed?

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by johnisme

Did you read on why Tabula Rasa failed and that Richard Garriot sued  NCsoft for 28 million and won over his departure from Tabula Rasa?

I wouldn't want a publisher after that and do a kick starter instead.

Care to explain why it failed?

 Thats actually very simple.

The game was well loved in Beta 1, the game played out more like a shooter, high action and fast. Then they started to make it more like an MMO and it went downhill from Beta 2 onward and got even worse with open beta and more changes to slow it all down.

He isn't saying anything different than what 99% of the forum users here say every day. You would think that the MMORPG.com forum community would be thrilled that an insider FINALLY agrees with them and their never-ending negative criticisms are now justified!!

Utterly arrogant for him to say, developers are restricted by money, they're not goign to be gambling with their livelihoods with risky science experiments that will probably not work. So they have to work with what sells, that limits them but it gives them a livelihood.

Developers are some of the most talented/inventive people you can possibly know, and they understand the complexities involved in making videogames, it's just that culture isn't there yet to allow them to reach greater  heights, but to suggest that they 'suck' because they're in culture that greatly limits them is horribly misinformed.

Developers don't suck, consumers buying the same generic crap over and over again do. How dare they make money by making the things that sell.
 

Originally posted by Psychow

He isn't saying anything different than what 99% of the forum users here say every day. You would think that the MMORPG.com forum community would be thrilled that an insider FINALLY agrees with them and their never-ending negative criticisms are now justified!!

He hasnt made anything worthwile since last century, forgive us if were a bit skeptical. 

Originally posted by birdycephon

Originally posted by Psychow

He isn't saying anything different than what 99% of the forum users here say every day. You would think that the MMORPG.com forum community would be thrilled that an insider FINALLY agrees with them and their never-ending negative criticisms are now justified!!

He hasnt made anything worthwile since last century, forgive us if were a bit skeptical. 

That makes a lot of sense...hey, we think the genre is stagnant due to poor game designers not thinking outside the box!

"hey, the genre is filled with sucky game designers"

I am sorry, who are you to say that, you havent made anything good since before your last game...I am skeptical!

Says a lot about the world when people defend some schumck who un-constructively bashes the industry he just happens to be re-entering with a kickstarter campaign that basically says PAY ME I R MADE TEH ULTIMAZ after failing in his last attempt. It's like the exact definition of bad form, poor taste, cashing in on the latest financial scam (im not saying kickstarter cant be a good thing .. but this wreaks of a cash in) .. etc.

Originally posted by Psychow

He isn't saying anything different than what 99% of the forum users here say every day. You would think that the MMORPG.com forum community would be thrilled that an insider FINALLY agrees with them and their never-ending negative criticisms are now justified!!

I don't think the majority of people here are questioning whether he's right or wrong. This is really more about the source of the statement, and the irony of it all, as well as whether they believe he's just aiming for publicity to help his kickstarter game, and whether or not that in itself is a cash grab.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by johnisme

Did you read on why Tabula Rasa failed and that Richard Garriot sued  NCsoft for 28 million and won over his departure from Tabula Rasa?

I wouldn't want a publisher after that and do a kick starter instead.

Care to explain why it failed?

Originally posted by birdycephon
I dunno, it seems like the guy is living in "the good ol' days". His new game concept looks so 90's. I hope things work out for him, but I doubt I will find his game appealing.

Of course he does. He has done nothing successful since then.

Only a has-been blowing a lot of hot-air.

So I was thinking about this and came up with a couple thoughts.

1.  Facebook type/social games have been shown to be quite successfull, and IMO in teh future almost all MMO's are going to at least have some kind of tie into social media either through facebook/twitter/apps or whatever so that people can access the MMO in some capactity basically from anyway.  Is this a good idea?  In some ways yes, it will keep people more involved, more involved is typically good for the consumer and for the dev means more money.  In some ways it might make games a bit cheesier and more simplified - of course the devil is in the details.

From that perspective I think he is bang on and the game probably will be a success.  However I likely won't play it.  This may just be a case of it may be a great fun game, but not for us, not marketed or geared towards us.

2.  He may just be trying to cash in on the social media band wagon

Sorry guys but if you didn't know Richard Garriott was a bit of an eccentric loose cannon then... well now you know and as far as what he said being controversial.... it isn't really, few game designers these days are doing their job for the love of the medium itself, it isn't so much talent as desire to build something you can, for better or utter shit, call your own work. As far as his right to say these things... well... he's one of the founding fathers of gaming, he created a genre which today is still going strong and is being mixed into many other genres or birthing completely new offshoots of itself (MOBAs for example are at their basic level RPG games) ergo if anyone has the right to call anyone else a "sucky game designer" it's this guy or one of the few other founding fathers but Gariott is the only one... lets say ballsy enough to actually say it but I doubt it isn't a sentiment shared by most of the old guard game designers like Roberts, Alex Garden, Erik Yeo, Sid Meier, etc. These people built games because they loved games, some of em still do what they love and do it not for the money but for the medium and that, not talent, many may contradict me but talent is wasted on those who do not use it or even misuse it and even without talent someone can still create through trial and error good games, that makes a great game designer.

TL;DR version: Richard Gariott's right, most game designer suuuuck because most don't find ways to innovate even when forced to work in a set mould (example: in Deadspace 3 there were many times when I found myself wondering about something from within the game and had to alt tab to pull up a wiki and find out about it, it wouldn't have cost or impacted much to have a built in encyclopedia to the game or a lorehandbook or something just for people like me and it would've helped with immersion from my point of view or another example would be having alternate control schemes in most games, especially PC ports, which actually work). And by innovation I don't mean "wow" things, I mean things which improve your game experience in one way or another and may even just be flavour text with a personal touch like say a weird joke or something which just seems odd and makes you wonder.

Originally posted by Dampyre

Originally posted by strangiato2112

 

 The reason he is going to kickstarter is because innovation in the MMO market is dead projects tommorow's themepark games are gonna be influenced by indie projects that are succesful.

Because GW2 (no trinity, not heavily gearbased), TSW (modern setting, puzzle/mystery solving gameplay, skill wheel), and TERA (action oriented combat) are all standard games?  people that think everything is still WoW clones are blind to whats going on around them.  okay, TERA maybe be 'poor quality WoW with action combat", but the other two games are far, far from WoW clonish.  And of course games like PS2, Defiance and EoN (if it releases0 that are crossgenre games.

 

There is plenty of innovation out there.

 

 

The real question is why is a millionaire who can spend 30 million to go to space asking for crowd funding?

yep GW2 is innovative and its why i play it, as far as the TSW goes pretty standard themepark, ya its a different setting that has not been done before but to me that is minor and has very little to do with actuall gameplay, how many games out there have we seen that are just WoW with a couple of tweaks...the majority of games in the industry you can't define a industry by a couple of titles. If you look at the console market there is way more innovation then the MMO industry , mostly because the games cost less , the creative people are not the problem its the financial side that has made so many clones out there.

  hence why kickstarter is becoming so popular, becauase there are tons of gamers like myself who are sick of the same old themepark games with one or two minor tweaks. Yes we are starting to see 'some' inovation in the MMO industry but its very little and only because the last couple of big budget wow copies fell flat on their face,  but for years it was the only thing being made and its still the majority.  Besides when a game starts with a subscription model and quickly moves to F2P its because the game flopped.

TSW isnt 'WoW with tweaks' or 'standard themepark'.  Its class/skill structure is very different and the nature of the quests is quite different too.  If TSW didnt have terrible combat it would be much more highly regarded.  Is it a themepark?  Sure.  is it a copy/paste of WoW with feature tweaks like, LOTRO(somewhat), SWTOR and Rift?  Not at all.  The best indicator of that is can you honestly answer yes to this question?  Did The Secret World play it safe and make a familiar game?.  thats what SWTOR and Rift certainly did.

And I would argue that kickstarters popularity is to prey on people who think like you.  In the case of a game like The Repopulation which is mostly funded normally, kickstarter is fine.  When you have successes like Mark Jacobs and people that build multimillion dollar homes of ridiculousness like Garriot asking for kickstarter donations things have taken a turn towards the dark side.

Originally posted by birdycephon
I dunno, it seems like the guy is living in "the good ol' days". His new game concept looks so 90's. I hope things work out for him, but I doubt I will find his game appealing.

Before we judge him too harshly, I I think we need to take in to the perspective which point of view he is coming from.

The 90's was the golden age of RPGs. Almost all the most famous computer games RPG franchise was started in that era (Ultima, the golden boxes AD&D, Might & Magic, Wizardry, Fallout, etc the list is too long to go on). Back then because technology was limited, gameplay has to be good - and they WERE indeed really good.

If you compare Baldur's Gate or Ultima 7 for example the level of details and the freedom to manipulate things in the world in those RPG still beats the hell out of modern day RPGs like Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

It wasn't because developers was smarter - it was just a result of more effort spent on gameplay instead of fluffs.

Originally posted by MumboJumbo
If he says this after SotA releases to 10/10 reviews, then I might lend him an ear.

He'll have to do another kickstarter to buy all those reviews o.O (in this day and age 10/10 from major reviewers is never legit).

So long as failure is handled correctly, it is a building block for greater success and is a primary source of gaining experience in your chosen profession.

I think we are not doing ourselves any favors by labelling developers as failures just because they have failed games under thier belt.  If anything, it should be viewed as a rite of passage.

If the dev team for SWTOR could go back and redo thier game with the knowledge they currently have, I would bet it would be a far greater game.

No if someone continually screws up, that is a different story.