Blizzard and EA are stock concerns. Money is the only One Whats important.

vmxa wrote:
It is not only the large companies that launch games that are not ready. Firaxis has done it, but they may be considered large. KB did it with SoTs II and you can find plenty of examples. Only company that comes to mind that seems to have a solid record is Blizzard.

CiV had one of the worst launches ever ... until SOTSII came out ... I was there for both, the first one with a preorder and the second one with a day 1 purchase. SOTSII was simply a mess at release, there is no other way to describe it or quantify it. CiV had a major issue for foreign users, if your XP O.S. was not in English the game crashed at start up; they took more than 2 weeks to fix this. To this day these are the only games I ever regret buying, out of hundreds over many years.



EA was not always as bad as it is today, but sadly nowadays they are the only publisher I hate and the word is not strong at all in this case. Origin is the only way to buy digitally BF3 and ME3, at least for non US/Europe users; but the problem is that for anyone else outside those territories, the prices are in Euros. It wouldn't be that bad if the exchange rate was sensible, but when it's 1$=1€ you know they are simply ripping you off. Moreover why ANYONE should have to pay more for the same thing? Steam tried that with european users in 2010 and they had to go back to the real prices, nowadays almost all prices make sense. However in Origin the non US/EU users issue was reported on April last year and nothing has been done, they still expect the rest of the world to be ripped off. Not to mention that Origins Terms of Service and EULA is pretty much saying they can take whatever info they want from your PC and before you say that other services do the same, no other service like this has so much power over your information as Origin.

All



I just wanna raise a thread to show support for an independent studio staying independent and not being bought out by a larger group, i.e. EA.



Long Live Amplitude Studio's!!!!!!!

reynanuy, I hear you. I pre order Civ 5 as well. I have not played it since the first month. At least I waited on SoTs II till I got it cheap, but got almost no play out of it. I have to go back to Outpost to have such a bad product.

The main problem of the gaming industry today, in my humble opinion, is that it is a mass product supposed to appeal to the big crowd. It leads to a watering down of what makes games fun, such things like a learning curve, or difficulty for example.

For more than a couple of years I have had the feeling that the gaming industry cares mostly about how good a game looks, how cool it sounds but not really about the real content: story, gameplay.

I remember some very silly things from my first days as Everquest player... playing an elf, spawning in Kelethin, being in the middle of a forest and not being able to orient myself... You had either to follow the roads or actually develop the talent to feel in which direction you were going otherwise you could get lost in the woods. Dying meant a naked corpse run with the possibility to die again. Compare that to WoW today....

I mean, there is a reason why, for example, so many people still like BG1 and BG2, and it is definetly NOT the graphics or the game engine or the nostalgy AD&D trip... It comes down to one thing... the story arc was awesome!



OK, I stop with my rant, could continue, but then I would foam at the mouth and my colleagues would wonder why.

Sharidann wrote:
The main problem of the gaming industry today, in my humble opinion, is that it is a mass product supposed to appeal to the big crowd. It leads to a watering down of what makes games fun, such things like a learning curve, or difficulty for example.

For more than a couple of years I have had the feeling that the gaming industry cares mostly about how good a game looks, how cool it sounds but not really about the real content: story, gameplay.

I remember some very silly things from my first days as Everquest player... playing an elf, spawning in Kelethin, being in the middle of a forest and not being able to orient myself... You had either to follow the roads or actually develop the talent to feel in which direction you were going otherwise you could get lost in the woods. Dying meant a naked corpse run with the possibility to die again. Compare that to WoW today....

I mean, there is a reason why, for example, so many people still like BG1 and BG2, and it is definetly NOT the graphics or the game engine or the nostalgy AD&D trip... It comes down to one thing... the story arc was awesome!



OK, I stop with my rant, could continue, but then I would foam at the mouth and my colleagues would wonder why.

That is just so damn right. I totally agree. The same goes for Fallout 1-2, Planescape: Torment and Dragon Age. Not to mention awesome easter eggs and the almost infinite replayability. There are different ways to finish stuff depending on stats, class, gender etc. And ofcourse one has to try them all. Whom could ever forget the Big metal unit or The crushed whale and the potted plant etc

Alderbranch wrote:


That is just so damn right. I totally agree. The same goes for Fallout 1-2, Planescape: Torment and Dragon Age. Not to mention awesome easter eggs and the almost infinite replayability. There are different ways to finish stuff depending on stats, class, gender etc. And ofcourse one has to try them all. Whom could ever forget the Big metal unit or The crushed whale and the potted plant etc

Anyone still remembering good old Kangaxx? XD

Golden parts of his body and rogue stone to enter. I also remember my solo-run where my inquisitor kicked his ass alone aswell as later on mr gorgon too.

While you vets ramble about games I have not heard of, I'm going to put in my 2 cents.



I honestly don't like big companies. I usually despise them. A personal experience made me hate EA and I only let them off the hook in special cases. I also let Bioware off the EA hook due to their games being less tainted. I solve a lot of my big company issues by trying non large company things. I picked up the ST.patricks day Indy Royal Bundle, and I love it. Those are the games I love. They are untainted by Ea and Ubisoft. I loved DLC quest and am still playing through Jolly Rover (which, I might add, Had me grinning ear to ear every time someone spoke). Those games have heart and you can tell the creators put a lot of care into those games. I also enjoy playing a lot of console games, which helps me get around a lot of EA bull. One of the only large companies I don't hate is Microsoft, and i'm still pretty P****d that they charge for Customer Support.



Now, you may return to your internet caves.

Danne wrote:
While you vets ramble about games I have not heard of, I'm going to put in my 2 cents.

Then as a vet-suggestion. Please go look for the games. They are usually still found in bargain-bins most of them. Atleast you can find good walkthroughs when you get stuck nowadays which ofcourse can be a bit of a spoiler too.

Danne wrote:
I also let Bioware off the EA hook due to their games being less tainted.

0 day DLC.

their latest ending is either worst ending in history or worst scam in history ,

I would say that they are shownig definite signs of EA indoctrination.

Poor bioware, used to so good, imo the king of rpg's. Now look at them, tainted by EA, SICK!

Smight wrote:
0 day DLC.

their latest ending is either worst ending in history or worst scam in history ,

I would say that they are shownig definite signs of EA indoctrination.

My brother tried to defend that dlc. He still thinks it is okay. He went on to say something about how "they took the time to make it" (thus should get paid for it) to which I said "they made it while they were making the core game, before it was released. They can release it with the game, as part of the game not dlc." A lot of other shit was said, and I have to say it was not a pleasant conversation. I don't know how on earth he can defend that, but I figure it is because he is younger. I doubt he ever really played any games that didn't have dlc but expansion packs (aside from sims games).





That being said, I read the title and thought EA was trying to pick this game up. "figures they'd wanna pick a game up like this." But yeah, publishers can do a lot of bad. Though... I don't normally go out of my way to refuse to pick up a game I want because I hate the publisher. I will refuse to buy full price, or even refuse to pick it up on sale in certain circumstances until it is at a price I agree with (a fine example would be the deathspank games. They're on sale this weekend at 50% off; however ea had the balls to up the price (back) to 15 dollars right before the sale. So in my mind it is only 25% off, and I refuse to pay for it if they're going to try to pull that stunt.) I won't touch a game if it has certain drm (always online for a single player game), unless I really want it...

EA would never buy out something like this, it has too small of a demographic.

I've started a change.org online petition to stop the buyout

http://www.change.org/petitions/electronic-arts-not-buy-out-amplitude-studios#