Hey, look at this tiresome bullshit! Even BHC is already bored.

I have to admit I like the smudgy background of the teaser site more than I will the game.
 
Think of the hours of web design that guy didn't get paid for, man. At least he can have "EA Rain Thing" on his resume for applying to Coldstone Creamery.
 
That artwork is enough confirmation this game will have more desaturated blue filter. EA will try to push this series as a COD killer again. Which means more autistic gameplay than 3. Pass.
 
RAINY DECIMATED CITY, ENDLESS WARFARE. I get this odd feeling sometimes when I play my generic shooters that I have no idea why I'm shooting my opponents.

I do understand it's not logical and doesn't have to be. They have some basic setup that they're supposedly a mercenary group and I'm a United States Marine or something and mad because of oil or nukes or having their car privileges taken away so they can't drive mom's SUV - but what exactly, the ****, are we killing each other for in games these days?

I mean shit, EA/Activision/Ubi are still doing the angry Russians thing right? I enjoy when they touch on Sub-saharan Africa, because that cannot be done tastefully. But what the **** are we even killing each other for? Forever, war. Cities destroyed, etc. The "message" portrayed in the majority of the scant narratives is far more nihilistic than what is conveyed at a Michael Bay or James Bond film at the cinema. It's just not right.

Maybe this is just my mid-twenties crisis and I've FINALLY outgrown some of the more artificial elements. It just spooks me how little substance there is there.
 
I'm a United States Marine or something and mad because of oil or nukes or having their car privileges taken away so they can't drive mom's SUV
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My bad?

Edit for clarity: =D
 
Yes, your bad. That's clearly how my post was meant to be read. Lighten up, Jarhead.

I'm glad you understood that my post was discussing the nearly 1:1 mirroring of real life circumstances and digital arab shooting galleries. Solid analysis.
 
=D

Though on a serious note it's always amusing when people DO try to compare the two in anywhere close to an even (or even not so even) ratio.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say lightheartedly is:

Yes, your bad. That's clearly how my post was meant to be read. Lighten up, Civvie.

I'm glad you understood that my post was discussing the nearly 1:1 mirroring of real life circumstances and digital arab shooting galleries. Solid analysis.
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Willie is literally running the exact inversion of this conversation one thread over. Bahahaha
 
Forever, war. Until we lose track of why we fight. I actually base my entire critique of the military industrial complex on the likes of Howard Zin and the ham-fisted yet charming bullocks churned out by the beloved Hideo Kojima.
 
MFL said:
=D

Though on a serious note it's always amusing when people DO try to compare the two in anywhere close to an even (or even no so even) ratio.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say lightheartedly is:
Click to expand...

Did you really enlist believing in some sort of upright moral agenda being appropriated with the placement of the United States Armed Forces? I mean, shit, that's cool - but if you're educated you'd be a dime a dozen. Just being real here. It's all I can do.
 
Why did you enlist? If you don't mind me asking. I simply PONDERED my statements, I didn't apply them to you. No strawman... yet!
 
Oh and let me preface with the fact that I have a military legacy family and recognize their are countless reasons to join the services, I almost did myself. I'm just curious on a personal level.
 
Hate of oppression's arbitrary plan, The love of freedom, and the rights of man; A strong desire to save from slavery's chain The future millions of the western main, And hand down safe, from men's invention cleared, The sacred truths which all the just revered; For ends like these, I wish to draw my breath,' He bravely cried, 'or dare encounter death.' And when a cruel wretch pronounced his doom, Replied, 'Tis well, —for all is peace to come; The sacred cause for which I drew my sword Shall yet prevail, and peace shall be restored. I’ve served with zeal the land that gave me birth, Fulfilled my course, and done my work on earth; Have ever aimed to tread that shining road That leads a mortal to the blessed God. I die resigned, and quit life's empty stage, For brighter worlds my every wish engage; And while my body slumbers in the dust, My soul shall join the assemblies of the just.

Addendum: I have no religious affiliation. There are specific reasons that I chose that specific length of prose that I cannot elaborate on at this time or in this medium.
 
Also, battlecod sucks ****nuggets.
 
So they're still saying that the Russians are bad, eh?
 
To be fair Russians are still pretty shit. This just indicates that game villainy hasn't moved past cold war era entertainment tropes.
 
MFL said:
Hate of oppression's arbitrary plan, The love of freedom, and the rights of man; A strong desire to save from slavery's chain The future millions of the western main, And hand down safe, from men's invention cleared, The sacred truths which all the just revered; For ends like these, I wish to draw my breath,' He bravely cried, 'or dare encounter death.' And when a cruel wretch pronounced his doom, Replied, 'Tis well, —for all is peace to come; The sacred cause for which I drew my sword Shall yet prevail, and peace shall be restored. I’ve served with zeal the land that gave me birth, Fulfilled my course, and done my work on earth; Have ever aimed to tread that shining road That leads a mortal to the blessed God. I die resigned, and quit life's empty stage, For brighter worlds my every wish engage; And while my body slumbers in the dust, My soul shall join the assemblies of the just.

Addendum: I have no religious affiliation. There are specific reasons that I chose that specific length of prose that I cannot elaborate on at this time or in this medium.
Click to expand...

Well, cool man. Don't die, you're a bright dude. Stay frosty as they say, right?
 
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BabyHeadCrab said:
To be fair Russians are still pretty shit. This just indicates that game villainy hasn't moved past cold war era entertainment tropes.
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Nah, Russians are just used to it, and publishers know it's about the only nation that won't kick up a fuss if they're portrayed as the villain. Remember when that Red Dawn remake changed the villains from Chinese to North Korean because China wasn't cool with it? Completely implausible, yes, but what's NK gonna do about it?
 
MFL said:
Willie is literally running the exact inversion of this conversation one thread over. Bahahaha
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hahahaha, dude don't get me wrong

I love a good story. But I love a good story with actual good gameplay too, no pretentious simplistic artsy bullshit or cutscenes every second giving exposition to make up for the lack of good gameplay elements. Anyway. Yeah.

F*ck DICE and f*ck EA.
 
DICE was so cool. It stood for everything awesome. What are those ****ing Swedes doing, just letting their legs get shackled? They had a ****ing mod development kit and oh god I just can't handle the pain choke me to death. Love that spoiled kids start with every gun because pay to win.

I'm becoming old, and even if I wasn't, this whole thing would still be ****ish.

****.
 
Bad^Hat said:
Nah, Russians are just used to it, and publishers know it's about the only nation that won't kick up a fuss if they're portrayed as the villain. Remember when that Red Dawn remake changed the villains from Chinese to North Korean because China wasn't cool with it? Completely implausible, yes, but what's NK gonna do about it?
Click to expand...

I never implied anything different, I'm just bigoted. I'm "racist," against Russians. I find the culture humorless, frightening and backwards and oddly infused with first world elements while things like political assassination, horribly backwards views on rape, and an odd self-serving stoicism that seems encouraged by their upper class and politic. Again though, I'm admittedly a discriminatory person.

I'm also half Ashkenazi Jew, which makes me a large part Russian. I have the audacity hate that I once lived with that area and mingled with the natives.

That being said, I remember Red Dawn and the switch and I'm not sure if it would have been done in 2012/13. So perhaps shit's changing.

Can't emphasize enough, I'm not a fair person to talk to about any Russian appearance in multi-media, they creep me out and are mostly murderous, amoral sociopaths.

Shit, actually, the Balkans REALLY suck too. Collectively.
 
I just got BF3 and I actually really like it. No, these aren't the days of Desert Combat and other awesome mods but it is still a good game. I also really like BC2 and thought the Vietnam expansion was a step on the right direction. I wish they did WW2 or WW1 as well.

What they should really do is hold off on releasing the same game again and do what they did with the expansions for BC2, but for BF3.
 
Battlefield's decline since the launch of BF3 is one of the lowest points of MP pc FPS gaming. It's a bit of a heart-breaker for nerds like me. Here's why:

No TLDR you lazy turds. This is why FPS is dead:

Here's a few hundred on why action multiplayer FPS is just objectively bad since mid 2012. Bear in mind, I defended CoD up until MW3 and BLOPS 2 because Infinity Ward was playful and Treyarch took risks.

This is my skinny on growing up on the issue of "dumb fun" shooters. They don't exist anymore - absolutely nothing is being done by the big publishers to push these games into even slightly more interesting paths - more stagnant than the likes of Tactics games and Fighters. Things are just frozen. The kiss goodbye was sort of the waning and relative death of Unreal and the rigidness and limited capabilities for Source.

I remember when mod tools were being discussed as an option for BF3. Haha. Kill me.

Yeah, it's fun - but the novelty runs out quickly when you realize the sameness and what I consider largely utterly directionless art design and a terrible DLC and microtrans model which makes me feel like I'm playing a cheapened F2P game. Not to mention the maps are smaller, squads and team playing is harder, and it's 2013 and the only voip they have is the Origin rubbish.

It took a couple surefire steps forward and a backwards hike away from the elements that were definitely battlefield. The Land Sea Air experience that didn't take itself too seriously, oozed atmosphere and maps that embarrass the likes of something like Caspian See for BF3.

I feel like Bad Company 2 was at least more honest about the transition, so it plays a little more "fun" - I find it more stomach-able. I just get this feeling of loneliness while playing. A feeling that they didn't really have any design direction for flavor besides make sure it looks pretty and lets you play a modern soldier. Maybe it's some dada avant garde attempt at making people feel oddly depressed by the lack of anything particularly notable in the settings.

Even CoD's locale, flavor and art direction is far superior. BF3 just glows a lot.

On a somewhat unrelated note the thing I miss about titles like this are popular community mods. The sheer amount of total conversions for early DICE titles nearly rivals GldSrc/Half-Life's community. (not source, source has aged very, very poorly.) This shift in the paradigm of multiplayer FPS sort of tore apart a lot of gaming communities I was quite close to. Sounds silly, being a discussion about video games, but it sucks when a cancerous corporate model takes a toll on fun and friends.

I've kind of finally come around. I'm resentful of these new titles, I didn't enjoy Black Ops 2 and BF3 is waring on me with its overpriced DLC which practically mirrors the Activision model only lacks Steamworks so it's frustrating as hell with the worst kind of guerrilla marketing.

Mostly, though, I'm just tired of the "perks" "streak rewards" and excessive meta these games have to try to get their claws in. The first few times I unlocked a gun and heard a guitar riff it was pretty neat and campy and kind of Michael Bay-like. the charm is all gone now and I ****ing hate being pigeon holed into a gun, role or game type to unlock items and weapons which are genuinely upgrades on certain maps and scenarios. Erased entirely from the erosion of IP protection and maximizing profit. I hate it when bad things make sense in capitalism.

Thank goodness for things like Natural-Selection 2 and Chivalry. But alas, a select few indie titles doesn't supplement for the glory days of modding.
 
I actually really liked BF3, logged over 260 hours. I've gotten bored of it though, I haven't even played End Game which was released like last week or something. Last battlereport is from 2 months ago. I can't say I'm excited for this, but even if I was I won't buy it because EA. I bought BF3 before I knew EA were pieces of shit.
 
If it weren't for Valve, Unknown Worlds, and uh........ hm....... I wouldn't play any new videogames ever. Part of it is a symptom of "public" ownership, a.k.a. let's-enslave-our-company-to-the-whims-of-people-who-don't-understand-the-industry-and-only-want-to-make-a-buck-on-stocks, which lends itself to an addiction to instant profit as manifested through endless DLC (both cosmetic and gameplay-related) and balance-broken F2P models, misguided anti-piracy efforts, and an increasing need to CONTROL the player's experience with drip-feed micro-progression and a collapse of the space between skill ceiling and skill floor. I haven't, since about late 2004 (Hl2's release), been truly entertained by a game even approaching AAA status aside from Dota 2, Natural Selection 2, TF2, Portal 1 (not 2), and Mark of the Ninja. Saints Row 3 was abysmal, Sleeping Dogs was underwhelming, COD is forever broken past 4, GTA4 lost sight of everything that made the series actually fun to play, Nintendo is nearly worse than ActiBlizzEArd in terms of rehashing, Ubisoft is ****ing retarded, Gearbox is dead, DICE is dead, Blizzard is dead, Bioware is dead, Bethesda is dead, EA and Activision have cannibalised basically every developer that made a worthwhile game during the 90's and early 2000's... I could go on, but I won't, and I shouldn't need to.
 
Valve has actually become less interesting in FPS MP development. Reboots and the bloated and childish TF2. rip video games.

Portal 2, to me, only sort of counts if we're going to talk about Valve and Single Player experience. I play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive because my friends do. Otherwise I don't touch Valve games anymore. Keeping in mind, DotA 2 hasn't launched yet, but it won't instantly get people past the volatile community, chunkiness of Source and ridiculous amount of competition in battle arenas.

Global Agenda's new map and interface design was outsourced and ported by Hidden Path anyways. So I'm moreso playing their game anyways. Leaving me just ****ing bored with the lovely company our website carries the name of.

So, yeah, Valve and general game development is a tinnny bit stronger. Portal 2's short and was a linear Pixar film narrative where you are often able to open holes in the walls. I'm a massive pessimist about it all. I think the only guys breaking ground are in the indie section of things and are fiercely struggling to stay alive.

The next bit is in defense of Valve, because, you know, conversely, they're still awesome and honest.

I feel like I should mention how they (Valve) have never created a brand new multiplayer IP, they've just hired in mod squads or developed upon existing projects. The new focus on digital property and attempts at capturing a piece of e-sports has scattered the only memorable ashes of absorbed mod material.

I dig Steam, I think Steam and Steamworks are the coolest thing Valve has done since hiring the CS and DoD teams. That's primarily because it gives access to developers who use more reasonable technology than the engine they offer and it's horrible toolset to utilize a simple unified PC framework. Steam paved the road for uPlay, Origin, Beamdog, GFWL and Rockstar Social Network.

This sort of stratification indicates Steam will lose a significant slice of the market when people see the profit marigin in direct digital sales. I only hope that something keeps Valve relevant, because as it stands I just don't see the company and all of the two billion dollars Gabe is worth being particularly successful in the forthcoming era. I needn't mention the hardware shit and GO being poorly placed on the stores of PSN and XBL. Those sort of sleeper slop-jobs are the poisonous leaks of Valve's stagnant game design philosophies.

rip Valve, rip DICE, rip FPS, rip BHC for writing a piece that could be an outline of master's thesis.

It's been nice knowing you video games, can't see I'm sad to see you go. Oh well, back to Chess.
 
That said, I'd rather Valve has a strong stake in e-sports than Riot or KeSPA/ActiBlizz. As plodding and cherry-picking as their development process is, they understand how to a) not piss off their customers with profiteering, b) empower content creators and competitive players with something more than simple/worthless/ethereal "fame", and c) actually support competitive gameplay beyond using the phrase "competitive gameplay" and the word "balanced" in PR statements. I think the Dota Store is a tad overpriced, on the order of 20-30%, but nothing you can buy affects Dota's gameplay. I honestly see great things in Dota's future, and if Blizzard were handling Dota 2 the results would be horrifying to witness.

That said, I still find myself somewhat conflicted with their sort of co-optive style of development. Half-Life is the only truly "original" IP that they've created, what with CS/L4D/Portal/TF/Dota being community creations first and Valve products second, but I can't fault them for actually involving the people who made the originals in the first place. And while they profit rather abjectly from each project, they give so much more back to the community than nearly any other developer on the entire planet, and I can't help but respect them for their overall fairness and, dare I say it, rational business sense.

If they can successfully follow up HL1/2 with something worth the name, then I can honestly say they've done nothing wrong.
 
Don't forget Ubisoft... They are definitely following the whole "Activision-model" release the rest of the game for more money after it's been released. They at least still make really great games. FarCry 3 really lived up to my expectations. Even if AC3 wasn't quite all there.


I think the real issue at hand is "How do you compare a game where you are playing the same character that is in countless other games (the grunt) when you have games like Half-Life 2 where you are this unique, semi-relatable protagonist who is experiencing the story rather than having the experience (the war) create the story?"

Too much repetition going on... Just look at the WW2 genre in the early 2000s. Everyone was all excited when these games finally went modern and now the same thing is happening again.

Edit; I also really hated Sierra back in the day... Boy do I miss them.


... Also. I think the future of gaming is dynamic stories. The next company to acknowledge this is gonna be WoW status. Imagine if NS2 had dynamic missions that you had to carry out each match. Like get the power going for the drill or fight the aliens back with only one CC and the rest hives (with some kind of perk of course). I mean the problem is that team deathmatch, conquest, CTF, Search and destroy, etc... are all relics of Unreal days. The future of this genre has to involve less repetition and more varied experiences.

They tried to do this with to a small extent with "Brink" (ugh... I kno really...) but the game was rushed and ended up being glitchy and terrible.

Programming dynamic scenarios isn't as hard as it seems and for some teams would be easier than trying to create one perfect scenario. There could be 20 different aspects of the game map that could be randomized to create an exponential amount of possibilities. I could go into serious depth hear but I don;t want to lose anyone. Basically what I'm saying is that it is very possible and will be happening sooner or later. Err... And that there is a lot of room for development. I'm aware that it has already happened in many games.
 
Not yet edited for grammar so certain words autocorrected improperly.

The resurrection of the PC games market as presented by a Pragmatist BHC:

Ubisoft has more original IPs, functional ports and a now more solid than early Steam client and has thus far been much more fair to its developers. I enjoy them more and more. Yearly releases are great if the content is substantial. It's reminiscent of a mini-series. uPlay now has an offline mode and is great about cloud saves and achievement fun. They don't quite yet have the vader chokehold on their developers yet.

The surprisingly largely left unmentioned publisher powerhouse is 2K, I think they're all over the place and Social Club is a joke. They're just in an odd position that suggests heading towards more extensive DLC paths yet lack a cohesive and global publishing tool despite being a major contender. Blessing in disguise for me when it comes to Bioshock infinite. They allow Irrational and Ken to do whatever the **** they want within reason. What they do is make full use of the Steam tools to make sure they please PC fans without hassle.

Oh wait, secu-rom and GFWL entered the picture, awkward! They played with fire and oddly, escaped. Enigmatic company. Resembles Ubi's model of developer freedom but lacks the unified toolset. Of course to stay afloat as a giant right now in the public sector you have to stagger up small, direct digital purchases that cost the company little more than server rental.

The last guy to talk about is ZeniMax, which you probably know as Bethesda. If I liked any of their games, I would be more proud of them than any other publishing and developing house out there. They are a mod haven and support it, utilize open digital delivery platforms and have begun taking advantage of awesome Steam apis, etc. The Elder Scrolls online, however, looks to be the only thing more terrible than the current Elder Scrolls games. It's also a worrisome step given the volatility of the mmorpg market. It won't succeed and eventually they'll be pained into f2p micro for any revenue from it whatsoever.

Gaming ain't really dead, but the stratification of delivery and DRM methods is becoming absurd. Something's gotta give, and my best guess is that you're going to have to remember a shit load of passwords to play AAA games. Single Player, as recently controversially quoted by someone in the industry, is dead in mainstream gaming because it makes no money (for these large companies) without connectivity. Accounts aren't optional anymore, seeing ads for additional content in a game breaking fashion is everywhere. Reminds me of film product placement only more inclusive. Consumers have spoken though and this is technically what majority of gamers with stable income want. Money speaks loud as hell and we'll see the big guys start to collect properties like Mirimax and News Corp and Conde Naste have with TV/Mags and Movies.

This just means finding what's worth your time will become obfuscated. That we'll become more snobbish.

Their transaction models will block out the sun!

Then we shall fight in the obscure and indie in the aspie caves.

That was sarcasm, we're all going to keep spend the majority of or gaming budgets on these companies because they hire up MAJOR talent. So get in line for the extinction of offline from those folks, it's the future.

A future that sucks and considers Facebook a gaming platform.

I forgot to mention Epic as a major dev and pub house. They're awesome with their tools but similar to Valve don't make fun games anymore. Fortnite is in dev hell, Gears put at now auxiliary studio Human Head and huge amounts of money for what may be the most versitile and well running / rounded development pipelines available for indies and biggies. I think Epic will probably gradually snuff out their mediocre game production and just fully embrace what they do better than most anyone else, providing accessible tools. Valve outright failed in syndicating Source engine, so much so that their loyalists even halted development and often switched technologies.

This is the most transitional period in gaming since the leap to console boxes

The future will be a more prolific yet superficial type of scene. Like pay channels, pay-per-view and the evaporation of the last bit of market neutrality (not to be confused with net neutrality.) The worst thought I have is being pigeon holed into choosing one publisher over the other because as they collect IPs and we only have time for so many games, things will become more manageable to just do the ol' grab HBO and skip the other movie channels move. This is already exemplified in the countless methods of popular digital delivery springing up offering exclusive deals for customer loyalty. Impulse, Origin, uPlay, Amazon, Steam - they all have slightly different offers in terms of pre-purchase bonuses, additional content and occasionally delivery methods.

The good news is this means the exclusivity to single publishing platforms won't make it as far as some think. The bad part is this is the equivalent of preferring gamestop because of having a preferred member card. Similarly Live and psPlus also have this battle going and right now the consumer is rewarded with immensely more product value with Plus, but you can't beat the market penetration of Microsoft. Xbox is the mainstay, Live is the service people know. For this reason people prefer places like Kinkos as opposed to independent copy shops. Or Kleenex to Puffs or generic facial tissue. A false sense of legitimacy and reward provided by the company along with a consistency in atmosphere and employers.

Valve and Blizzard probably own the most loyalty in the PC gaming business. This, like Gabe mentioned, may actually be detrimental to the industry. First and foremost because competition breeds creativity, particularly in our era of fierce capitalism. Origin already took a great stride Valve has remained shy about and done business to integrate free livestreaming. Origin loyalists are probably limited to the CEOs of the company itself, but when more killer apps require Origin accounts on our increasing connected consoles a unique loyalty for the service will appear. Just like the childish and often unworking Steam was successful almost entirely on the bearings of Half-Life's brand power.

I won't get into comparisons with brick and mortar or services like Gamefly or OnLive right now because they remain a minority option, relatively speaking.

Wracked up a shit load of achievements on uPlay to access exclusive content? Run the independent client that's being released, the console achievements carry over. EA has accomplished this too. The PC realm is merely becoming a lot more like the console realm - only software delivery platforms replace branded console loyalty.

GMG, Amazon, Origin, uPlay and to a lesser extent Impulse are the early and vulnerable options. The market will eventually experience a miniature collapse as consumers demand more simplicity and stop spending as much. In the end, for all we know, in twenty years, Games for Windows and GMG's capsule may be the PS and Xbox of PC delivery. Valve would retain a market for middle-ware and community tools, but just not have the staying power in the market to survive the bubble pop. I chose those at random because I'm not an economist or magician. Small boutiques like GoG and Beamdog will still survive because they don't make a lot of risk investments.

Let's say, hypothetically, EA started Origin delivery with Battlefield 1942. I think then, even given the same sort of functionality, loyalists would exist. Folks who just know and appreciate the brand and would ask a likely willing Valve Software to consider publishing Half-Life 2 on Origin. Just like Valve's brick and mortar publisher was already EA in the past for a lot of important titles for a decent portion of time.

EA just needs a killer app that doesn't get universally panned for outright customer exploitation to become the first real competitor. It really is damn close - because the PC market loves Battlefield. Newcomers love Battlefield. EA owns IPs that breed extreme prejudice and loyalty; properties like Mass Effect, Command & Conquer, The Sims, Dragon Age, FIFA/Madden and games with the prefix "Sim" will budge Origin loyalty once console synergy and quality control occurs internally. They're currently restructuring for just that reason.

I think the mistake most industry analyst make is assuming the future will breed more unification in the console and PC world. That's an odd misconception that economists would shake their heads at. First is the elation of options and competitive pricing then comes the slightest bit of brand preference (probably due to IPs) and the market will collapse into two or three delivery methods with smaller "stores" available, but not for the intensely popular, prolific and public of games. Those will be reserved for whomever survives.

This is why Valve will have a hard time staying competitive. They're privately owned, and Gabe is relatively and understandably stubborn about this. Unraveling that goes something like this: market leverage and advertising available from diverse agencies employed by publicly traded companies like EA can snatch up IPs from wildly popular (like their Tetris mobile rights and Bioware/DICE/Maxis) to obscure and promising, like Mirror's Edge or Dead Space' creators. So while both may be able to bid, the publicly traded company will always have more outreach to disposable income and more transparent sales data. Thus, IP acquisition, in order for developers to maximize profits, will go to the non-privates.

Valve's unshakable stubborn tendency to deny buyouts or going for the IPO is actually ****ing incredible. Much like pre-public Google. I'm afraid that for a U.S. based company things start to get grim if you're not listed and thoroughly tested for sales assurance to folks on the business end of these dev houses. So either to go more niche and cut software, focus on APIs and middle-ware and don't spend too much on keeping properties that will drift away to the big boys Steam and Valve could potentially stay private for ten more years of industry maturity before having to significantly restructure.

So basically what I'm saying is achievement whores will cry years of sweet nerd tears.
 
BabyHeadCrab said:
So while both may be able to bid, the publicly traded company will always have more outreach to disposable income and more transparent sales data. Thus, IP acquisition, in order for developers to maximize profits, will go to the non-privates.
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I agree with most of what you say, but I have to take enormous issue with this. Being a publicly-traded company means sating your shareholders, which means providing acceptable ROIs at the end of every financial year, which means you ultimately have very little leeway in how you spend your company's capital. It's arguable that EA's public ownership is the primary driving factor behind everything to do with the SimCity reboot, as EA's current financial quarter ends on March 31st. It neatly explains the lack of features, the obviously-culled features such as the all-but-necessary terraforming functionality, and the DRM- and social-gaming-centric design philosophy.

I see Valve's stubborn independence as a rare light in an industry of darkness, of anti-competitive and anti-creative capitalist profiteering. I'm exaggerating this to make a point of course, but the essence of the point is, as far as I can see, undeniably true when you compare Valve's output to that of any publicly-traded company. Valve can take all the time they need to reach a level of quality that they feel is acceptable, and can spend as much or as little of their capital as they deem necessary in order to reach that artistic goal, while public companies are all but required to release on a reliable schedule based around effectively arbitrary financial quarters and consequently hamstring any and every artistic ideal they strive for in the things they produce.
 
Think of the explosive cashflow of a Valve IPO, or better yet the ocean of sheer cash holdings they'd get if they went for a simple buyout from a company like Vivendi or Intel.

If nothing else the exposure would create enough public interest to at least momentarily excite share holders for a decent time frame. Then the minor dip followed by stability and finally securing a place on the DAQ which is nearly objectively an easier way to acquire properties just due to how connected with the guys that own the companies who publish games.

The money trail is important here, Valve is a company that would please owners equally if not moreso than the ActiBlizz conversion or XM/Sirius merger. You pique the interest of people who can and will give space to a proven capable developer (Take Irrational Games or Blizzard for example) - yes, the pet stores and micros were all actually greenlighted by Blizz themselves.

Valve's staying power will depend on them, eventually, actually owning dev houses and powerful IPs.

...and actually Maxis was responsible for the high level of connectivity in Sim City with a design doc that included a lot of city-to-city interaction similar to ideas they spurred with Spore and some of the "Sims" titles. Maxis is notoriously allowed to operate nearly entirely autonomously for an EA studio.
 
But you're forgetting the vague "trust" factor inherent in all public holdings. We, as long-standing customers and general fans of Valve and the things they do, understand that the business they run is positively insular - and I mean that in the best way possible. But to Regular Business Folk™, their protracted and perfectionist development processes and schedules are scary and foreign and enormously risky to invest in, if such a thing were possible right now. They understand stock markets and the financial quarter. They don't truly understand what it takes to be creative, to make a product that consumers love rather than one they'll simply buy. Valve do more than well enough on their own as a private enterprise, with $1.5 billion in revenue per year building at roughly 50% per year, compounding. They know what to do, how to do it, and more importantly why they do it. Outside investors would do nothing but muddy the process with opinions and perspectives that are wholly alien to the processes and ethics Valve has established.

Granted, this is all a product of Valve's unique position in the market, in terms of their services and their corporate structure, but there's no indication that they are anything less than a decade of ridiculous failure away from needing a cash infusion from investors. Even if every one of their in-house IPs fails over the next ten years, they're making money hand over fist through Steam sales and distribution, all while pleasing everyone from indie developers, to third-party publishers, to modders, to people looking to play some cool games for free.

And it's worth noting Maxis has been an EA branding label since post-Spore. They're wholly-owned and wholly-controlled. Maxis is EA. Bioware is EA. Dice is EA. The actual people who made the games we used to love are either far removed from anything EA puts out these days, or subject to demands from those people who don't know what gaming is actually about.
 
BabyHeadCrab said:
Keeping in mind, DotA 2 hasn't launched yet, but it won't instantly get people past the volatile community, chunkiness of Source and ridiculous amount of competition in battle arenas.
Click to expand...

Dota2 is already very big and continuing to grow fast. The ASSFAGGOTS genre is still quite small and the major titles are fairly distinct. "Chunkiness of Source" is irrelevant, the genre isn't really about modding and as far as it is Source is more mod-friendly than it's competitors.

I think your jade-tinted glasses are getting a bit too influential in your sad-posting.
 
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