#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
If you’re a Brainstorm member and want to attend, email me with DEVGAME in the subject. If you’re not and would like to attend, please sign up here. The course starts next Saturday and will continue for 10 weeks.
There will be the opportunity to work on actual game projects, such as Elveteka, the game from which the screenshot above is taken, which is nearing completion and was developed by a team of DevGame 1.0 attendees.
Derek Smart explains why he believes Chris Roberts’s statement about a “minimum viable product” is an extinction level event:
WHY I BELIEVE THIS TO BE THE FINAL NAIL IN THE STAR CITIZEN COFFIN.
None
of the arguments people are making are relevant. And White Knights,
Shitizens, and Shillizens are doing what they always do: obfuscate,
attack, confuse, distort.These are what’s relevant; all the points from my latest blog.
1)
The game he originally pitched simply cannot be built once he increased
the scope. Period. All the features already cut out, are evidence of
this.
2) The CryEngine which he chose to build the game with, is
simply not capable of building it. And yes, even though they now have a
custom version of it, that’s more about re-inventing the wheel, than it
is about making sure the wheel is still round. The latter being the
basis of using a core engine from which a custom engine is derived.
3) Following my first July 2015 blog in which I made the statements I said as:“Without
disrespect to anyone, I’m just going to say it: it is my opinion that,
this game, as has been pitched, will never get made. Ever. There
isn’t a single publisher or developer on this planet who could build
this game as pitched, let alone for anything less than $150 million. The original vision which I backed in 2012? Yes, that was totally doable. This new vision? Not a chance.
The technical scope of this game surpasses GTAV, not to mention the likes of Halo. Do you have any idea what those games cost to make and how long they took? Do
you know how many games which cost $50 million to make took almost five
years to release? And they were nowhere in scope as Star Citizen?“He wrote an entire missive and said this:
“You
all know that already; you’ve lived that. You’ve seen Star Citizen
evolve and start to come together. You’ve watched our atoms form
molecules, our modules form a real, playable game (that you can boot up
and play today!). There are people out there who are going to tell you
that this is all a BAD THING. That it’s ‘feature creep’ and we should
make a smaller, less impressive game for the sake of having it out more
quickly or in order to meet artificial deadlines. Now I’ll answer those
claims in one word: Bullshit!
Star Citizen matters
BECAUSE it is big, because it is a bold dream. It is something everyone
else is scared to try. You didn’t back Star Citizen because you want
what you’ve seen before. You’re here and reading this because we are
willing to go big, to do the things that terrify publishers. You’ve
trusted us with your money so we can build a game, not line our pockets.
And we sure as hell didn’t run this campaign so we could put that money
in the bank, guarantee ourselves a profit and turn out some flimsy
replica of a game I’ve made before. You went all in supporting us and
we’ve gone all in making the game. Is Star Citizen today a bigger goal
than I imagined in 2012? Absolutely. Is that a bad thing? Absolutely
not: it’s the whole damn point.“As with all his
previous statements and promises, you can flush this one down the
toilet too. Chris evolved to be more of a salesman, than a game
developer/designer. And a patently dishonest one.
How coincidental is it that – again – shortly after my latest blog dropped, and which I said this:“And
as I have stated before, Chris being a dreamer, I don’t believe that he
set out to scam gamers. However, the only right thing that he can do
now is to come clean, explain to the backers what he can and cannot do,
what went wrong and how, provide the financials to the backers who are
entitled to it, and stop taking money for a project he knows all too
well that he simply cannot deliver as originally promised.”He does this latest 104TC in which he reveals that the short-term goal is to deliver a MVP.
“So,
really what we’re doing with Star Citizen is we’re working on the game,
adding features for an incredibly ambitious design – I don’t think
there is any other game that is trying to do as much as we’re trying to
do. So, degree of difficulty 11, not 10. And, we’ll have what we
determine is a minimum viable product feature list for what you would
call Star Citizen the commercial release which is basically when you
say, “Okay, we’ve gotten to this point and we’ve still got plans to add a
lot more cool stuff and more content and more functionality and more
features…” – Which by the way includes some of the later stretch goals
we have because not all of that is going to be for ‘absolutely right
here’ on the commercial release. But we’ll have something that we’ll
think, ‘Okay yeah, not everyone can play it but it doesn’t matter – you
can load it up, it plays really well, it’s really stable, there’s lots
of content, there’s lots of fun things to do, different professions,
lots of places to go, we’ve got a really good ecosystem.’ So, when we
get to that point that’s when we would say, “Now it’s not alpha, it’s
not beta, it’s Star Citizen 1.0.”
We spent two hours discussing this at Brainstorm a few months ago, and considering the way in which Derek managed to impress even his most inveterate skeptics and haters with his expertise and technical observations during that session, I see absolutely no reason to doubt him now.
This is just too freaking funny. From File 770:
If anyone wonders what side of the cultural divide that Chuck Tingle, author of Rapid Puppy pick “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” , falls on, he’s having Zoe Quinn, Gamergate patient zero, make his video game.
Beautiful. Simply beautiful. I very much doubt any of these SJWs have ever actually seen Depression Quest. It should be absolutely fascinating to see what Locke Valentine does with Mr. Tingle’s inimitable oeuvre, given her almost unbelievably limited skill set.
Grimfate notes that Beamdog’s response to the criticism of Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear falls into what has come to be a recognizable pattern:
Usually if there’s a big uproar, the company will try to make things
right, try to save face and hopefully do something to appease those who
have decided not to purchase the game because of it. For example, the
ending of Mass Effect 3. Also, whenever an SJW complains about
something, the company seems quick to address the issue, such as the
butt thing with Blizzard’s latest game. So it’s interesting to see that
when there is an uproar AGAINST the SJW side, the company digs their
heels in, asking people to post positive reviews for the game instead
of, you know, addressing the concerns of their actual and potential
customers…
This is the tell. This is what informs gamers that a game developer is not on their side, and is sufficiently SJW-converged to stand their ground on the basis of SJW politics rather than artistic expression or creative freedom.
If you are the sort of organization that would immediately cave, (or worse, has caved) before a single SJW pointing-and-shrieking racist, or sexist, or goblinist, or geometrist, or whatever the complaint du jour is, you cannot expect people to take you seriously when you suddenly stand firm against tens of thousands of ordinary gamers expressing their disapproval of your design choices. Observe that the review ratings are consistent: 70 to 75 percent of gamers are openly hostile to Beamdog’s “enhancements”.
An SJW complains about a single character’s pose: “OMG! We are SO sorry! We will change it ASAFP! Do you like her new butt better? Is that okay? PLEASE FORGIVE US!”
Tens of thousands of gamers complain about smirking SJW convergence inserted into a beloved series: “Too bad, small minded bigots! You’re just a vocal minority and you’re BANNED!”
Moreover, if you are going to disrespect a much-loved classic of the genre by rejecting various elements of it and “improving” it, you really should understand that you are also rejecting its fans and that more people are going to actively hate your enhancements than are going to enthusiastically embrace them.
It’s a legitimate choice, although I would argue it is a foolish and self-destructive one. And while the developer has the right to make that choice, it is very important to understand that a deliberate choice is being made by someone inside the organization. It’s not like any of this is new, as the memelords well know.
Meanwhile, a longtime fan of the Baldur’s Gate series reviews Siege of Dragonspear:
Creating more content for a game that is in desperate need of a revival at a time when CRPGs are finally coming back into vogue was a great idea, and had I been a game developer, I would have jumped at the chance to do it myself.
Of course I was warned, both by friends and by readers of this site posting in comments on Dragonspear news articles I posted, that the game wasn’t going to be worth the money.
“They hired Gaider, you know what that means”
“Did you see how bad that stream was”
“You know they’ll screw it up.”
Naturally, I didn’t believe them. Call it putting the nostalgia goggles on, but I couldn’t possibly believe Beamdog’s Baldur’s Gate expansion would be anything but a continuation of the same events and personalities that made the original so timeless and memorable….
After five hours with the game, I encountered numerous situations where a
combination of very poor writing and social justice pandering began to
weigh the game down. Technical and gameplay missteps were one thing, but
the sheer amount of modern 2016 Tumblr-level politics turned what was
once a grand medieval swords & sorcery epic into the equivalent of a
emotional teenage girl’s self-insert fanfic.
What a small minded bigot! Nevertheless, it appears the controversy has already broken through and hit the mainstream media:
The problem with Minsc’s dig at #GamerGate isn’t that it breaks the fabled “Fourth Wall.” After all, Minsc is already making a jump through the fourth wall with his delightful pet Spelljammer reference. Heck, Baldur’s Gate is just as happy to reference The Bob Newhart Show and Monty Python as it is murder and betrayal.
Rather, the problem lies in Beamdog’s level of respect — or lack thereof — for a character that is deeply meaningful to an entire generation of gamers. Minsc is the lovable hamster-toting warrior of both Baldur’s Gate titles. His legacy extends into novelization and comic books, and he’s been praised by just about every conceivable gaming publication at one time or another. He’s an intellectual innocent, a gentle giant.
With one quip, they’ve turned that great big teddy bear of a hero into a passive-aggressive tool to insult a portion of their potential customers. It’s a cynical decision, and a needless one. It’s intentionally sarcastic and insulting, stooping to the tactics that people consistently ladle onto anyone who has ever participated in the #GamerGate conversation, without offering any useful rebuttal.
Not only is it grossly out of character for Minsc, it’s a little bit of the Internet’s ugliness that quite simply didn’t need to be there. Where the transgender character is an expression of the developer’s intentions toward inclusion, Minsc’s dig is designed to exclude people with whom Beamdog disagrees. It’s trite, it’s catty, and it makes Beamdog’s other in-game statements come off as posturing rather than sincere.
Beamdog’s response to the controversy hasn’t been extremely constructive and suggests a very loose grasp on the heart of the problem.
The problem is that the amenable authorities think their best interests are served by pandering to the SJWs who put them in their untenable position in the first place rather than jettisoning them at the earliest opportunity. What every leader of an organization needs to understand is that the SJWs within have no loyalty to the organization nor do they harbor any concerns for it. The organization is only of interest to them insofar as it provides them with a vehicle for pushing their Narrative.
Give them the chance, and they will burn it all down around them in the interest of virtue-signaling without even a moment’s hesitation. And then they’ll move on to their next victim.
It’s time to start thinking about the next DEVGAME course, but even though the recent course is over, the learning doesn’t stop. I’ve put up a post about putting my own production principles into action, which worked out rather well in the case of Art of Sword, and the game’s lead programmer has put up sample code to duplicate and order 2D animation sprites in Unity.
There are also other posts by programmers, artists, and even musicians. It’s rapidly turning into a great resource for neophyte game developers. If you’re interested in attending, or you know someone who might be interested, let them know about the DEVGAME blog before the next session begins in May.
In other news, we’re looking at offering additional advanced education courses, including Astronomy and Economics, about which more soon.
Here is a textbook example of SJW entryists ruining an organization through convergence. In this case, I very much doubt the people running the organization even had any idea that their simple and straightforward objective – make an entertaining and enhanced expansion of Baldur’s Gate – and been subverted to serve the interests of the SJW Narrative.
But Amber Scott’s little declaration of war on #GamerGate didn’t escape GG’s attention, as the reviews of Siege of Dragonspear on Steam and GOG and Metacritic show. Here are three examples from GOG:
Apr 2, 2016
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Thanks for your vote!
(426 of 879 users found this helpful)Not in the spirit of Baldur’s Gate by Valerie.377
While the mechanics of the game are in line with the originals, the story falls short. It sacrifices the narrative and world building of the original Baldur’s Gate in order to break the 4th wall and beat players over the head with messages about social issues with the grace and subtlety of a Saturday morning cartoon from the 90’s.There is no problem with having messages about social issues in a game. The problem comes when one hijacks another franchise, gut out its soul and fill it with vapid maxims and fables in its place. That is one of the surest ways to kill off a franchise, and it is especially odious when it happens to a well-loved franchise.
Want social justice? Sure, but stop hijacking the industry and make your own games. You’re not going to improve the industry, you’re just going to kill it from the inside out.
Apr 3, 2016 | Thanks for your vote! (182 of 223 users found this helpful)
Apr 2, 2016
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Thanks for your vote!
(251 of 337 users found this helpful)
The ability of devs to keep quiet and remain neutral is rapidly vanishing. This is not due to the gamers, but due to the SJWs in their own organizations who will not permit ANYONE to refuse submission to their sacred Narrative. And if you’re foolish enough to permit SJWs to penetrate your organization, this is exactly the sort of thing you have to look forward to – your involuntary enlistment in their cultural war.
And the SJWs are just going to LOVE how you can gain experience by killing a trans character after he bores you, appropos of nothing, with a tedious tale of discovering his true self. I’ll be shocked if Literally Wu doesn’t find a way to insist it’s actually a LITERAL attempt on his life by #GamerGate and “flee his home” again.
UPDATE: The Beamdog CEO doubles down on Techraptor:
I find the controversy ridiculous. Yes, we have a transgendered character. I know a number of transgendered people and they are genuine, wonderful humans. Yes, we also have a character who cracks a joke about ethics. The original Baldur’s Gate had a whole sequence about the Bob Newhart show. If this generates controversy it makes a sad statement about the world we live in.
As for my post on the forums, I merely asked people who were enjoying the game to share their positive feedback. I know our fans can become engrossed in their enjoyment and I really don’t want potential fans to miss out on the series because of protest reviews by small minded individuals.
As for Amber’s interview, I also believe in strong female characters and I feel she did an excellent job bringing dimension and interest to Safana with her writing in Siege of Dragonspear. Her “Too bad” comment, I chalk up to a long day of interviews, having personally done such interviews.
Regards,
-Trent
I guess we know where the SJW rot set in, then. Too bad. Notice how despite their talk of “choices”, you can’t express any disapproval of Mizhena blathering about “the truest reflection of who I am”. There is no 4: Who asked you, you self-absorbed freak?
I saw that the Enhanced Editions of Baldur’s Gate were on sale at Good Old Games and put them in my cart. However, in between that and clicking through to checkout, a tweet by Escape Velocity drew my attention to this interview with a writer at Beamdog concerning the expansion they’d created in the process of enhancing the original games.
And by “enhancing” them, of course, they mean “converging” them:
“If there was something for the original Baldur’s Gate that
just doesn’t mesh for modern day gamers like the sexism, [we tried to
address that],” said writer Amber Scott. “In the original there’s a lot
of jokes at women’s expense. Or if not a lot, there’s a couple, like
Safana was just a sex object in BG 1, and Jaheira was the nagging wife
and that was played for comedy. We were able to say, ‘No, that’s not
really the kind of story we want to make.’ In Siege of Dragonspear, Safana gets her own little storyline, she got a way better personality upgrade. If people don’t like that, then too bad.”“I got to write a little tender, romance-y side quest for Khalid and
Jaheira where you could learn a little bit about how their marriage
works and how they really feel about each other.”There’s also four new companions, one of whom is gay, one of whom is bisexual.
They loved the games so much they just needed to remake them in their own converged image. Consider this absurd example.
We don’t like that. We won’t play it. Too bad.
While the battle to the east is fast, brutal, and direct, with the big-gunned tanks blowing holes in each other at an alarming rate, the 1st Panzer Division has recovered from its initial setbacks and is beginning to make some headway by outflanking the Soviet’s western defenses. This is the situation after the end of Turn 3. The second turn.
The most important action was the armor battle in the east (top). My Tiger first took out the T-34 at the crossroads it had already acquired, then, with a nearly 500-meter side shot, killed the Stalin that had traversed the big northeastern hill and took out my Panther guarding the northern road. Three kills in three turns for the crew, but in doing so, the Tiger left its much weaker side armor exposed to the AT gun in the village. Fortunately the 57L gun missed its first shot and although the second shot hit, it didn’t penetrate the Tiger’s armor.
The combination of the second Tiger, the Panther, and the infantry all pounding away at the Guards platoon defending the eastern approach to the village killed the leader and two of the three squads, but the Soviet commander somehow managed to extricate the surviving squad safely, thereby preventing me from rapidly exploiting my chosen schwerpunkt. That squad fell back and reclaimed the first building I’d taken, but soon found itself surrounded on three sides as the troops I’d sent around the southern side of the village moved in and took possession two of the buildings there. They kept the well-led Soviet platoon that was established in the village occupied while the German officer leading the assault headed north to try to take out the anti-tank gun before it could kill the Tiger with a third shot.
In the west, the key development was the immediate rallying of my surviving infantry platoon combined with the two Panthers taking out the T-34 on the north side of the building. Also, the assault engineers who rushed the building in the center were able to break the two Soviet squads that had been holding the nearby hill, catching them out in the open as they tried to fall back to the village. And to the southwest, lacking any infantry support, the one T-34 proved unable to stop the dispersed platoon that was seeking to link up with the panzergrenadiers attacking the village from the southeast.
All in all, it was a very favorable series of three half-turns for the attacking Germans, and although the battle isn’t over, I feel quite confident that I’ll be able to secure the necessary nine buildings well before Turn 7. I was able to crack the village in the east while simultaneously flanking his massed firepower in the west to the north and south, which was exactly what I intended.
Now that the second pincer of the German attack has entered the map, this is how the battlefield stood after the German Turn 2. The first turn.
The Soviet commander divided his tanks into two squadrons, sending four to deal with the Tigers from the 23rd Panzer Division shielding my assault on the village in the west (top) and three to bolster the infantry preparing to meet the company-sized assault from the east (bottom).
The Panther on the northern hill was destroyed right away; in retrospect this position was a foolish decision on my part. However, the Soviets lost the T-34 defending the approach to the village in an exchange of fire with one of the Tigers, and more crucially, a Stalin to a timely critical hit as it charged past a Panther in an attempt to get a shot at close range on the exposed side of the engaged Tiger. Despite being buttoned up and having to swivel its turret, the Panther managed to take out the heavier tank at a range of 120 meters.
However despite the assistance of the other Tiger delivering suppressive fire, the Panzergrenadiers were unable to dislodge the platoon of Soviet Guards from the building near the hills. And in the west, the T-34s and Stalins wreaked havoc on the 1st Panzer Division.
I’d set up a death star of a platoon with both medium machine guns under my best leader, a 9-2, and advanced them into the stone building at the bottom of the map, thinking to use them to suppress the Soviet infantry and permit the other two platoons to advance. A single shell from a Stalin’s 122L killed most of them and broke the survivors. That allowed the Soviets to concentrate their fire on my second-best platoon, who also broke under the pressure.
My only success was rushing one squad of engineers armed with a demolition charge into position where they would be able to claim the first of the nine buildings the Germans require for victory. Also, a pair of squads managed to make their way towards the village on the south side of the map, although it will be another two turns before they are able to reach it.
At this point, I have to admit that it doesn’t look good for the attacking Germans. I needed to break that Guards platoon to give me access to the village before the carnage in the west permits him to start falling back and reinforcing the troops he’s got there. Also, I made a serious mistake in exposing the side of one Tiger to the anti-tank gun in the village, which is quite capable of punching through the monster’s relatively light side armor. I am going to need some luck to stay in this one.
As the previous game of S23 ended as quickly as I’d expected – Ender’s last German platoon didn’t manage to take out the gun or make it across the street before being broken and I didn’t even need to reveal my squad in L8 to stop them – we decided to tackle something bigger. This time he picked S26: Last Ally, Last Victory and gave me the challenge of attacking the village and taking nine of the multi-hex buildings with the Germans.
It’s a late-war 1944 scenario set in Hungary, so the Germans are outgunned despite having two Tigers at their disposal; the Soviet main armaments range from 76L to a nightmarish 122L although their armor can’t compare with the 26 To Kill of the Tigers’ front armor.
It’s a complicated setup, with two German formations coming in from the east and west, and Soviet armored reinforcements arriving from the north. As the German commander, I had to decide which group would enter in Turn One and which in Turn Two, SchwerePanzerAbteiling 503rd platoon in the west (top) or a company from the 1st Panzer Division in the east(bottom) prior to the Soviet setup.
I assumed the Soviets would focus on stopping the larger, well-led company, plus the open fields gave them the opportunity to set up a deadly killzone to the east, so I decided the focus of my attack would have to come from the west and thereby decided to make my Turn One entry and subsequent push for the village there.
I decided I’d use my armor to screen the platoon, but kept my Panthers out of the line of sight of the anti-tank gun and lone T-34 by daring them to take on the Tigers and their massive front armor. The Panthers took up positions to the north, where I hoped to slow down the coming Soviet reinforcements and prevent them from disrupting the infantry before they could reach the safety of the stone buildings. So, there was virtually no fire exchanged during the first German turn, which ended like this.
I was a little surprised by the placement of the two Soviet platoons in the woods to the north, which gave me some degree of encouragement that I’d be able to quickly take the two multihex wooden buildings with the 1st Panzer when they entered from the east on Turn Two. My armor wasn’t able to take out the one T-34 defending the western approach, but with two 88Ls and one 75L trained on it, I was confident it wasn’t going to survive for long, after which the big cats could turn their attention to the single platoon of the 6th Guards and give me easy entry to the village.