Re: Re[2]: [escepticos] [OT] [Fwd: Software patents. Speak now.]

[Tei <421621@...>]

At 00:14 03/03/03 +0100, Eloy Anguiano Rey wrote:
>El dom, 02-03-2003 a las 12:00, jmbello escribió:
>
>> Sip, pero ahí quiero ver yo ahora a nuestros queridos neoliberales,
>> los grandes profetas de la religión del Mercado.
>
>> ¿No habíamos quedado en que las cosas se regulan por esa extraña
>> fuerza cósmica de la Oferta y la Demanda? Pues míralos tú cómo
>> recurren desconsolados a Papá Estado pidiendo protección...
> 
>> En fin, cosas.

nota: este es un mail largo (contiene opiniones de terceros en forma de
post de slashdot) si no te apetece leer tanto ahora, por favor no sigas
leyendo. 


Lo cual no es ni mas ni menos "utopico" que soñar en la inevitabilidad
historica del triunfo de las clases productivas. 

Actualmente la gente da por echo que el comunismo es un error y que su
puesta en practica se ha demostrado que conduce a totalitarismos.

Vamos a ver que tan bien funciona el capitalismo con el arte, la crisis de
los videojuegos,..¿como consigue microsoft algo bueno?.. lo compra fuera,
las grandes compañias impiden la creacion artistica dentro de ellas, la
anulan, asi que la compran fuera:


Large corps buying independent studios... (Score:5, Interesting) 
by SvnLyrBrto (62138) on Sunday March 02,  en 04:07PM (#5420252)  
What is wrong with game development?

Microsoft, and even moreso: Electronic Arts.

Both are large corperations that don't practice much innovation
(Honestly... Madden 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003???), but since the mid to late
'90s have been running around buying out smaller developers, milking
whatever profits they can out of the franchises, and letting the studios
wither on the vine.

It was only a few weeks ago that it was announced that Westwood (now a
subsidiary of EA) was closeing up it's Las Vegas development offices. When
WAS the last time anything good came out of the C&C series? I bet it
predates Westwood's fall to EA.

Westwood in particular stings ME hard, because, before EA, they used to do
some REALLY cool games outside C&C. Remember the Blade Runner "adventure"
game? That was one of my faves. Do you think that, under EA's flag, we'll
EVER see anything from Westwood but more played-out C&C's?

Or take microsoft's assimilation of one of my other previously-favroite
game developers: Bungie. I STILL dig out Marathon and Myth every so often.
And who else remembers all the previews of what Halo was going to be before
gates had it stripped down to become the Xbox's flagship
yet-another-generic-FPS.

Back to EA... Remember Origin? Remember Autoduel and Ogre? What about the
Wing Commander series? Crusader? BioForge? Remember the excellent
storytelling in the old Ultima series? I sure do. What is Origin all about
NOW though, under the stewardship of EA? Ultima Online, Ultima Online
expansions, and a sequel to... Ultima Online!

Remember "Jane's"? Remember the excellent military simulations of the '90s.
688i, in particular, STILL has quite a following. Quite an achievement for
a game released in 1997! Where is Jane's now? Electronic arts. What has
Jane's done recently? Nothing since 2000.

Remember when Maxis had a sence of humor? Remember when they released some
really WIERD sims? Remember Sim Ant, Sim Earth, and Sim Tower? NOW what
does Maxis do? Well, they just released another Sim City... one which I'm
told is STILL not as fun as Sim City 2000 was. Oh, and they do expansion
packs for The Sims. Quick check of EA's site to be sure.... yup.

I'm sure there are MORE game studios that others could name that have been
assimilated by microsoft or EA. The above are mostly my pet peeves in the
"large corperations buying and destroying small game studios" world. But I
think THAT is the problem with game development. In my experience as a
gamer, studios have been so much more creative, and... well... FUN when
they were independent. The big corperations seem to forget that games are
supposed to be FUN. They just see a trend (FPS, RTS, MMRPG, etc.), and want
to milk it dry.

cya,
john  

-----------------


¿Que razones puede tener esto?:

 
Problems with Game Development (Score:5, Insightful) 
by podperson (592944) on Sunday March 02,  en 02:39PM (#5419770) 
(http://www.zip.com.au/~tonio)  
I found Seamus Blakely's remarks interesting but hardly exhaustive. It
seems to me that the simplest way of describing the problem with the games
industry is this: "Hollywood".

As computer games have become big business, the process of creating one
bears a striking resemblance to the process of developing a film idea:
no-one (as William Goldman famously said) knows anything, and they're all
terrified of risk.

1) Avoid Technical Risk -- don't develop new game engines. Use an existing
engine and plug new content into it.

2) Avoid Financial Risk -- sequels do better than new titles, so invest in
sequels.

3) Aim for the lowest common denominator -- dialog needs to be localised,
so avoid too much of it. Everyone understands explosions -- so do lots of
them.

4) Spend as much on promotion as development. The key is to sell a lot of
copies at full price really soon after release, because if you don't,
people will figure out how unoriginal your game really is and you'll be
selling at a tiny margin.

And as in the film industry, most of the interesting stuff is done by small
independent developers on shoestring budgets. Of course, once they have a
hit they get converted into a commodity product that spawns huge budget low
innovation sequels 
 
---


Otra opcion, la total incompetencia de los directivos (esto en españa es
especialmente cierto porque tenemos mas de los que necesitamos cobrando mas
de lo que deben y diciendoles lo que hay que hacer a quienes entiende del
tema... SIN TENER NI PUTA IDEA!!!.. luego lo del prestige, lo del ave y
demas cosas nos estrañan) 

A sick industry (Score:5, Insightful) 
by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 02,  en 07:09PM (#5421114)  
The biggest problem with the game industry is that it harbors many phonies,
who in turn hire other phonies. By "phonies", I mean people who are
unqualified for their job titles. Because game's sucesses and failures are
essentially unpredictable, when a game becomes successful through a
combination of luck and hard work, the politically aggressive people are
the first to take credit and get promoted into positions of higher power by
executives who are not quite sure why the product was successful and are
too lazy to dig into the details. Once you get into the "senior executive"
title, it seems like no amount of your own incompetence can dislodge you.

A case in point is Sega's former executive, Peter Moore. Moore was a former
professional soccer player from the UK who got an MBA and worked at the
athletic shoe company Reebok. When Bernie Stolar was CEO at Sega, he hired
Moore as the vp of marketing. In a political fight just before the
Dreamcast launch, Stolar got thrown out for insisting on the inclusion of a
56K modem with the console. With Bernie fired, Sega filled in his position
with a "temporary" executive from headquarters in Japan. All eyes were on
the advertising campaign Moore had put together up for the launch date
called "Inside the Box". Dreamcast sold very well in its first few months
after the initial launch -- thanks to the groundwork that Stolar had laid
down before. Flush with the huge sales, Sega promoted Moore to President.

This was the moment where higher executives demonstrated that they had no
idea why the initial Dreamcast sales were successful, and promoted the
wrong guy.

As the year went on, the Dreamcast sales flagged. Despite Moore's best
marketing attempts, which were ill aimed and ineffectual, the numbers grew
bleaker and bleaker. Moore spent money like water, creating elaborate sets
at E3 where professional roller skaters did tricks on ramps to promote "Jet
Set Radio", renting out the entire Great America amusement park for one day
for the Game Developers Converence attendees, and getting Sega to sponsor
the MTV Music Video Awards to promote "Space Channel 5".

All for naught. Within a year, sales were so bad that Dreamcast was
discontinued. Despite all of the failures, Sega allowed Moore (clearly out
of his element) to stay on as CEO, as Sega branched out to support other
platforms.

But look what happened: Last Christmas, Moore thought that Sega's football
game could beat EA's football game if Sega continued to throw money into
advertising. It was once again Moore's theory of spending money like water.

How much money? Almost all of the entire allocated budget for the year
2003! Moore's plan failed badly, which punched a huge hole in Sega, a hole
so large that the company began looking for a buyer. Eventually Sega wound
up with Sammy, the Korean pachinko manufacturer, which was posted on
Slashdot a few weeks ago. Moore announced his departure from Sega, and
three days later, he resurfaced again...

...as a VICE PRESIDENT for XBox marketing at Microsoft!

If this story doesn't illustrate the illness of the game industry, I don't
know what does. 






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