Ouch. Tom Chick holds forth on CM:SF

[cow_cookie]

From one of Chick's Shoot Club columns on E3:

"Because it's what this business is all about these days. We're middle men. Those of us who supposedly write about games get used like ventriloquist dummies. If you don't believe me, go out there and read the E3 coverage, or read any preview of any given game. They're all the same. And that's because there's nothing to say beyond what the publishers have given us to say. What else am I going to write about a five minute demo of Killzone 2?"

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by cow_cookie:

From one of Chick's Shoot Club columns on E3:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> "Because it's what this business is all about these days. We're middle men. Those of us who supposedly write about games get used like ventriloquist dummies. If you don't believe me, go out there and read the E3 coverage, or read any preview of any given game. They're all the same. And that's because there's nothing to say beyond what the publishers have given us to say. What else am I going to write about a five minute demo of Killzone 2?"

</font>

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Because if the industry has moved on to a model where games aren't finished on release - why haven't the reviewers?

You know, if we set the bar on this any lower, I suspect that there will be no mass-market for these games, whatsoever. Who's gonna pay for them? I can't pitch a game to a friend, at any price, with so shabby a proviso, "just buy this, and someday the developer will finish it. Trust me, they're goodfellas."

PoE

[cow_cookie]

Michael Dorosh: I wasn't really saying anything with that post. I just found it amusing that a reviewer who's review is under review suggests that the rewiewing process needs some review.

Although it's a preview in that specific instance.

[Dirtweasle]

Nothing is truly static though Prince.

In the case of BFC / BTS their products right off ran pretty darn well, played great, and over time were improved bit by bit.

Cannot recall what release ver CMBO finally ended up but it was playable from day one when I bought it. ...might actually be, the CMx1 series the most played and playable game I've owned, and I go back to the joys of disk swaping C64 to play Kampfgruppe.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Prince of Eckmühl:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Because if the industry has moved on to a model where games aren't finished on release - why haven't the reviewers?

You know, if we set the bar on this any lower, I suspect that there will be no mass-market for these games, whatsoever. Who's gonna pay for them? I can't pitch a game to a friend, at any price, with so shabby a proviso, "just buy this, and someday the developer will finish it. Trust me, they're goodfellas."

PoE </font>

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Originally posted by Dirtweasle:

Nothing is truly static though Prince.

In the case of BFC / BTS their products right off ran pretty darn well, played great, and over time were improved bit by bit.

Cannot recall what release ver CMBO finally ended up but it was playable from day one when I bought it. ...might actually be, the CMx1 series the most played and playable game I've owned, and I go back to the joys of disk swaping C64 to play Kampfgruppe.

I don't disagree with you as to the particulars relating to Battlefront. In a philosophical sense (with considerable practical import), however, I do reject the notion that developers owe those who purchase their games essentially nothing when the formers game is shipped to the public.

One of the WORST games that I ever purchased was Red Baron 2. I tried to play it through a series of patches, only to be disappointed as each one crashed my computer(s). Then, Sierra issued a "super-patch" for the game which instantly transformed it into one of the BEST games that I've ever played (RB3D).

So, there's hope, right?

Probably not, at least not in the long wrong run. BFC will, no doubt, do right by it's customers, but don't count on the rest of the industry to do so. And Tom Chick knows that. He knows "the industry" of which he speaks and appears to have left the reservation.

More power to him.

PoE

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

I am more disenchanted with media in general than I am defending developers.

The "journalistic" end of the "bidness" is a mess. Perhaps it's always been that way. I dunno. What I do know, however, is that a review from a lot of these publications, the wargamer and armchair general included, isn't worth the paper that the marketing agreement of the interested parties is written on, PERIOD. If someone wants to go indie on the industry, then I say, let 'em speak.

PoE

[ChrisND]

I think partially what we are seeing here is folks who have been carrying a grudge ever since they announced CMx2 was going to be modern. Notice the number of long time lurkers coming out of the woodwork.

[Berlichtingen]

Prince of Eckmühl,

Completely off topic, I love your user name. Napoleon's very best

[Dirtweasle]

Originally posted by Prince of Eckmühl:

I don't disagree with you as to the particulars relating to Battlefront.

Good, because that's all I'm referring to, BFC and their CM line of products in particular.

Originally posted by Prince of Eckmühl:

In a philosophical sense (with considerable practical import), however, I do reject the notion that developers owe those who purchase their games essentially nothing when the formers game is shipped to the public.

The owe the customer a stable playable game that objectively delivers on their promises / statements of what the game is supposed to be.

See the whole Eric Young GIC fiasco for a 180' different approach.

...YMMV.

Originally posted by Prince of Eckmühl:

... He knows "the industry" of which he speaks and appears to have left the reservation.

More power to him.

PoE

Why did he leave?

Personaly, I have no idea who this person is and it's a bit late to find out, and I'm commenting on my impressions, my experiences as a customer.

Maybe he is correct in general on the state of wargame products, the game software industry and so on. Beats me, I don't buy many games, don;t have time to play 'em if I did, so I stick with stuff I enjoy, and for the past several years now it's been the CM series.

It's possible whne I finally get a chance to try CMSF I'll be disapointed, it's possible I won't though too. My take though based on following the development from the outside looking in via this forum and bfc's webpages in addition to my experience with the earlier CM series is I'll likey be very satisified.

Will know soon enough I reckon.

[Lawndart]

I'm not even going to mention the state Silent Hunter 4 was in on release... But reviews were plenty nice to it in reviews.

CM to me has been this odd attraction, there is a certain art to things that are hand made... Yeah, it might not be as smooth and streamlined but it sure is rich and jucey!

When I played the other CM games it reminded me of playing with my GI Joe’s as a kid.. I had this "play space" where I could play around with the "toys" and knowing there was so much logic under the hook and supporting history made it that much sweeter. It might sound odd but that’s the best way to explain it, a grown up toy box... Thinking mans toys...

That being said I play everything. You name it I've played at least one of the series... There isn't anything out there like these games, a hybrid as Steve mentioned. So as long as CM sticks to its roots I'm always going to keep coming back... Eventually, if they truly desire they will break out, much like the Panzer Generals (SSI stuff), and more recently the Total War Series… I just thank god that someone is still making games that wouldn’t make it through a marketing survey… Just look what happened to Flight Sims!

Oh, and Steve, its funny you mentioned Redneck Rampage, I worked on that too... I was fresh from OH and sounded pretty red neck… So it was logical for me to participate. I kinda miss those old Interplay days, Descent (my first), Carmagedon, Fallout, Starfleet academy, Plainscape Torment,etc. all the mistakes we made back then... We have come so far…

One day our industry will be pushing (planned) 30 mil budgets and games as we know it will be over. The marketing machine will be too big and the trust fund MBA's will be running everything right out of school...

Has anyone figured out that I'm just killing time waiting for the download notification?

[Dogface]

grog Dorosh typed

If a game is pants - or perceived as pants - out the gate, by all means, report it.

Wait, does pants mean bad? My boss uses the word pants all the time. But just the word, Pants. For example: We need to get such and such done. Pants. Hmmm now that I see it typed out that might be.<hr> Dammit, Dorosh just one more reason to hate you.

[dima]

Carmageddon, Redneck Rampage... classic games, made by gamers and for gamers. Good old days.

Back then I thought that they were just the start, a sneak peak at what the future of gaming will be. Where did it fail?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Dogface:

Dammit, Dorosh just one more reason to hate you.

That will be 5 dollars, please.

[dima]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Dogface:

Dammit, Dorosh just one more reason to hate you.

That will be 5 dollars, please. </font>

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by dima:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Dogface:

Dammit, Dorosh just one more reason to hate you.

That will be 5 dollars, please. </font>

[MikeyD]

"We're getting close to par."

I suppose Bush has been pushing so hard for passports into an out of Canada in anticipation of when the exchange rate passes over to YOUR favor.

[aka_tom_w]

roger that

[JaguarUSF]

Hello again everyone.

I've been "away" for a few days because of the birth of my first child (hooray!) and I come back and see this post. I'm flattered to be referenced as ammunition in arguments

The scenarios that I did that got improved for the game I did for fun when I played the preview version of CMSF, just so everyone knows. I wasn't asked to, I just did them to test out the editor and create some more content in the game (the early builds only had a couple of scenarios), and I shared them with Battlefront, so I would not call myself an active member of the team or a major contributor to the game, although I did help in finding out the apparent cause of nVidia poor performance.

I think the mass opinion of CMSF will lie somewhere between my enthusiastic approval and Tom's disappointment; a lot of the issues he brought up have validity, while others missed the mark due to being uninformed or giving the game a quick glance. Again, everyone will find out soon enough! So enjoy the game!

[lucero1148]

Having read various reviews on cmsf and after reading this thread I'm glad I made my pre-order. We can all decide how good or bad cmsf is once its out.

all best

Patrick

[Prince of Eckmühl]

Originally posted by Dirtweasle:

Personaly, I have no idea who this person is and it's a bit late to find out, and I'm commenting on my impressions, my experiences as a customer.

In any sort of personal or professional sense, me neither. My sole knowledge of Tom Chick is a function of my having read his reviews, which I've always found excellent.

In my recollection, he was always very tolerant of developers going out on a limb with a product. He'd cut them a lot of slack. Conversely, he was rather less likely to embrace anything that he perceived as being a "knockoff" of a previous title, a "cash-cow." But, what I remember that he was particularly dismissive of was anything that simply didn't work, a good example being the Silent Hunter 2/Destroyer Command experiment.

The first of the games, SH2 was just mediocre, particularly when juxtaposed with the original. The second game, however, DC, simply didn't work, particularly in its role as a multi-player add-on to the sub-simulation. Chick hammered Destroyer Command at Gamespot. IIRC, he gave it a "35" or something. And why not? It didn't work with SH2 for MP as advertised. Talk about fanatics? The SH/DC community eventually raised enough money in donations to "fix" the game, but Chick was spot on in his criticism of the developer and publisher.

Which leads back to the quality issue. In the global sense, the guy is on to something, whether he's sold BF short, or not. For my part, I won't comment about the particulars of CMSF until I've played it. I buy everything, but that doesn't mean that my friends will.

Originally posted by Dirtweasle:

Why did he leave?

Mendacity?

PoE

[Lurker765]

After seeing the post complaining about complainers I figured things should be evened out and I drug up this 'old' thread to counter the "Good Lord" one. It seems that someone can't point out flaws they would like to see fixed in their paid for copy of the game without being attacked.

Lots of name calling about his last name (pretty immature). He was called juvenile, uniformed and whiney for the review despite it being the precursor of similar reviews.

He was cut down for reporting:

1) LOS tool doesn't exist and isn't accurate

2) Replays are buggy (zombies anyone?)

3) Daring to suggest the code was released early and violating everyone's belief that BFC has a very rigid policy of not releasing a game until its clean.

4) Suggesting that the code was going to be beta tested by the paying users.

5) Many of the orders in WEGO won't queue up

6) Uncons spawn out of thin air (I actually haven't seen this one, but I believe it does exist)

7) v1.01 would have fixed all the problems if he had known to ask for it like the other reviewer that designed scenarios that shipped with the game. From what I can tell I don't think v1.01 has fixed all the problems with the game.

8) Reporting that his machine had graphics and stability problems (ATI or 8800 springs to mind, although of course it could have been a dual core issue as well) and he was torn a new one by people claiming it was his fault for not updating his drivers, etc.

9) Daring to suggest the UI was not up to par. This one is subjective, but it's not like he has been the only one to notice this and have an issue with this presentation.

10) No tutorial shipping with the game.

11) The PDF manual being incomplete for many common questions (how to place your units on a setup turn for example).

12) Imbalanced or questionably designed scenarios. This one is probably debatable as well, but once again he isn't the only person to have noticed this.

13) AI is dumb as a stick. Well, the Tac AI is currently causing a nuclear war on these boards and the strat AI does a crawl of death if you lucky in a QB (otherwise it just sits in the setup zones).

14) Complaining that the real time nature limits the scope of the game (true for multiplayer without pauses).

15) That he was a real time junkie just because he dared post a critical review (when he has actually given praise to CMx1).

16) Complaining about a scenario where the uncons were given few RPG assets to deal with armor and daring to mention that the HEAT rounds used by the RPGs caused the game to rely on luck since a hit a win while a miss or three was a loss for the scenario.

17) No tooltips in the game to help people out since the icons are tiny on high resolution screens.

18) Poor graphics performance (separate from the graphic card crashes)

19) He expected more from this game and was then chewed out and told that if the budget/staffing was higher like other game companies they could have done better -- but they still charge the same amount for the game?

20) Slow camera panning (possibly due to the lag issues fixed in v1.02)

I could probably find more issues, but there really isn't a need to further drive home the point.

So...did anyone ever apologize to Tom Chick about this firestorm?

Anyway, I am withholding judgement on the game. I preordered it because BFC has treated me great over the years. They get a mulligan from me for this one until the patches are completed. It just bothers me when either the fanbois/haters jump on people in this forum (like they did on Tom).

[Sitting Duck]

Originally posted by Lurker765:

...Anyway, I am withholding judgement on the game. I preordered it because BFC has treated me great over the years. They get a mulligan from me for this one until the patches are completed. It just bothers me when either the fanbois/haters jump on people in this forum (like they did on Tom).

x2

[thewood]

I was in the bowels of china when this was written. I downloaded CMSF and started playing before I even saw this thread. I am glad I skipped it because I would have knee-jerked and skewered the reviewer for bashing my beloved CM. Now I see he has a lot of the same issues I have had with gameplay.