There is no Santa.. or don't let the Advertising Department have Crystal Meth (Zenimax Online Studios and ESO)

Hi Guys

In my last post I wrote about Bethesda's release schedule & Development for future Devs but I also mentioned their sister studio Zenimax Online in the notes.. this reminded me of a pet hate I have, that I have not had to think about for many many years.. advertising campaigns; ones that are so far from the reality of the playing experiance it ruins the game. ..seriously.

To let the corps know.. give your ad dept half a chance and they will ruin your game.. full stop. It is widely known in the advertising industry, biggest liar wins if they fool their corp heads. for games the biggest liars are the renderers.. they render a cartoon of something, because they do not feel the game is strong enough for 'in-game footage only' or they are inexperienced in the particular industry they are promoting the product to.

I am not going to be unkind to those guys.. they are just doing a job, but if you watch the movie 'crazy people' there was a revolution in the advertising industry around 25 years ago. This movie is a parody of the quite real revolution.. which was started by the people who advertised 'Ronseal', this was the first advert to tell customers the truth, and they responded in droves. Ronseal is a wood and metal sealer, to protect your outside structures from the weather.

'does exactly what is says on the tin'

Very famous lines, and a practicality that meant people knew they were not lied to.

Zenimax Online's ESO advert, was appalling compared to the actual in game event, which from what I have seen was nothing more than a small place with a few NPC's fighting.

To Zenimax Online, you are a new studio, so mistakes will be made, that's just life, but I'm sure you know and accept this. However, you need to keep a very tight rein on your ad department from now on.. it's a little like, the 'cock of the walk' biggest liar wins works in many industries, they are taught this..but not in the games industry.. and ESPECIALLY in sub-based MMO's as you have now found out regarding all the hate fans poured out for you. 'cagey'.. is not even a sufficient word for a new MMO advert.. you will make already dedicated fans into crazy fans quite easily with even a small shift change in the format of the game..RENDERING a advert is suicide. Blizzard/WoW Valve/DoTA get away with slight rendering because their fans already know what to expect, you were launching a new game, oh man!

please keep in mind, for MMO's, the ad dept is like a seagull and you have a sandwich.. the seagull wants the sandwich and if you let your guard down, it will take it from you, and all you're left with is a mess on the ground. Finding Nemo; 'MINE!'.

Of course, you can do mixes of rendering and in-game footage for single player games.. gamers in-general HATE it, but yeah it can be done..we ONLY like in game footage.. it makes us happy.

Gearbox/2k advertised 'A BAZILLION GUNS' all with in-game footage.. were we disappointed? no! fans still flock to that game. that was smart. that was truthful.

Sony did an excellent job controlling the hype of DCUO, at first its just a render cartoon, and while you are watching you're thinking 'ohw man it's never going to be *this* good.. they probably won't including flying, the powers will be limited and the girls much less sexy'.. well.. that was, wrong, wrong and wrong. And while it sounds hypocritical, once you can fly around the TWO full cities at leisure, you start to see the beauty of what they were doing, but not just any cities, these are ones I have known since childhood, Metropolis and Gotham... rem DCUO is Free2Play too, and only a £5 purchase means you get a slight upgrade to membership permanently, without subscription.

But what Sony really did correctly is how they structured your involvement in said cartoon, you were the answer to their (the Justice League's) problem, I'm finding this hard to explain this without you knowing the specifics, but you were the answer and in this they DID NOT lie. and they didn't gimp the powers either, neither for free or premium or Sub-based (Legendary).. you have access to all Superman's powers right from the start, to Batman's, to Wonder Womans.

So you are about to tell a child there is no Santa.. how can you be so cruel to formally tell them they are about to receive their true wish, 'if you good and are on the good list and buy our game'; knowing all along it is a lie.

YOU just can't do that with MMO's. the hate will haunt Zenimax and the employees for a few years yet. And that's a shame coz for *some* moronic reason, the ad dept did NOT focus on the truly awesome size of ESO, which in itself is a HUGE selling point for fans. whyyy?? just be honest..there was no reason to render a lie when you have already a MASSIVE selling point.. ESO is a continent.. Tamriel. showing this in adverts( again in-game only), at least would have controlled the hype, and not lead to disappointment, and much nerd-rage..tbh WELL deserved nerd-rage.

Here is games reviewer Angry Joe's vid on ESO.

I heartily agree with him on many many points.

You can't milk a long term investment without hurting your long-term credibility as a company.
MMO's are 'drip-drip' not 'cash-cash'.

peace.

Dava

Silence on the Hill.. or Bethesda portfolio expansion, but still no Fallout..

Hi Guys!

So yesterday I saw a mention of Tango & Bethesda's 'The Evil Within' instantly I knew it was a remake of Silent Hill, looks well done after watching the vid. yes, Capcom* will be mad haha.

What they are doing is smart business.. they are expanding their portfolio..they are a big hitter now, and have both a weight on their shoulders, and great opportunities. But with that comes 'Great Expectations'...

I am a huge Fallout fan.. having around 3000 hours play*..  I am waiting for Fallout 4, but I realise they are milking while waiting, but like I said that's smart business practice.. what I don't appreciate is the schedule.

Here is hopefully peacefully*, a schedule that I feel is fair to both devs and players.

Dev's have 4 years to make a main game, with a 2 year schedule for a second tier, second tier doesn't mean 'second rate' it is the experimental branch of the main series given to a similar studio, with similar ideas for a release 2 years after the main title*, this alleviates the gamers desires. boosts profits, and builds the series into a franchise.   also I feel, just smart business practise.

As a company if you get a lot of 'Shut up and take my money' from fans, then they have unsated desires, and you have business opportunity*, Beth is amazing with fans, really, the GECK with an all out stoke of genius, shows a kind side in a business where that is hard to do without putting work into something and giving it away for free, the exception being the kit itself, but then the ten's of thousands of mods users get mods for free from ModDevs.. who Beth are again being the leader of the industry in encouraging the new talent to code and texture from grass roots.. again genius, beneficent.

I want a new Fallout.. flip I think there are people in the arctic who want a new fallout..its been too long, the GECK takes the pressure off for now, and we have Skyrim to play with and pretend its Fallout..but I can't help feeling Beth could have asked Obsidian to put out another Fallout in the meantime.. even approaching Dev Teams* and suggesting funding and direction, seeing the skill and sharing the skill between both. Dev Teams have real-life jobs, OB could provide a future to such teams..saying if you're in, then we will re-hire you for our second tier. And while the project was being finished, hire & pay them for the duration. that's good stuff on your resume.. hired by Obsidian..wow.

tbh I'd have paid for Project Brazil.. around £5 sounds fair. mini-quel three-parter easy money, why? because the devs love what they are doing.. you really think they clock off at 5?* haha.

Skyrim's engine supports HDT physics, this makes me think that if these engines are/were in some way modular, why not all engines, why do we need multiple engines.. couldn't the industry as a whole come together in a initiative, and make ONE game engine, that is FULLY modular, like browsers are these days, when skyrim came out, there was no physics, now with a simple* plug-in and the coding of the game from the ground up.. it's possible.. ANYTHING is possible, textures can always be added, so as long as the engine can handle what is going on, it won't crash, so a *highly* stable engine under a myriad of conditional plug-ins. We Beth fans oft joke about Beth's coding (well for fallout hehe)..but they have improved drastically in the last ten years..

Fallout was 2007 but like the weather 'feels like 2004'.
but they have improved drastically in the last 7 years. :))

Is this a trite whine for Fallout 4..?..?... YOU BET!
You are amazing but now you are disparaging people who obviously believe in you. myself included. .. 7 years is not good enough and no amount of Silent Hill's will make that to a professional release standard.

here's some music I was listening to while writing.. I found it apt.

 yes she has boobs.. but shhh.. she might not notice.

peace.

Dava


-----------
* update: (oops Konami.. Capcom was Res. Evil)
*3 Xbox plays inc. my brothers + PC
* (even though I'm pretty nerd-raged haha)
*with each main title come an updated/upgraded engine/graphics & physics scheme, and the main game can contain the choicest picks from the second tier ideas that were liked, and ditch the unpopular ones. it's win win!
* (Project Brazil unfinished )
* I hear on youtube, many are displeased with Zenimax Studios/ ESO, while they are a new studio, they broke the cardinal rule: never overhype.
if a online MMO doesn't do hype well.. believe me it gets talked about coz of the subscription based nature.. this is something I feel Sony avoided with DCUO, they did exactly what it said on the tin..keeps the crazy fans calm..you are telling a child there is no Santa, try it again without the crystal meth. that comment is aimed at the advert Zenimax Online had; that 'Angry Joe' a games reviewer, so succinctly demonstrated, was not only far from advertised, was poor for inde devs, nevermind a company with funding. ..much funding. rem to keep a tight leash on the ad dept, they will ruin your game given half a chance. IF your game is NOT good enough for 'in game footage only' then there is something wrong with the game. period.
* ease of use for end users
*I DO NOT endorse overworking though, as with the legend of Bondi studios.. what was revealed, was truly shocking, and I commend R* for stepping in and being merciful to those workers.

An Open Letter to AMD.. or hold on, my change wasn't correct, I'm a few cores short.. :(

To AMD

Recently, I had a problem, my rig died in a water incident, since then I have been searching for a way to build a rig while still saving for my OH to come to this country, we are applying for her VISA soon and it costs enough that I do not have cash to spare.

I have the remaining parts from the original rig, but don't know which is faulty and have no way to test, I also have a C2Q 6600 and could buy a board that took DDR3, but alas! only 2gb modules are supported.. I have 4x4GB. My first reaction is ..to build one of your fine APU offerings, best IGP money can buy, can even game at 720 properly ..or partially at 1080.. this is some feat and I congratulate you on such a task undertook.

But now to what I discovered.. it boggles the mind.. WHY if I buy a 7850k and a R7 250 are the extra shader cores disabled??

The 7850k has 512 shader cores and the highest Dual Graphics Radeon supported card has.. 384.. crossfire NEEDS these to be equal or it shuts off shader cores!! why why why?? .. was this just an oversight..please tell me this was just an oversight.. please DON'T WRECK your plan for system on chip, by thinking marketing ploys will still work for APU's.. for APU's it doesn't work the same way it did in the past..

For example.. a motherboard manufacturer wants a price cap, they say, this is our low end motherboard its marketings responsibility to price it accordingly..they come back the R&D and say, we want to limit the features... to justify the price..*usually* they limit the RAM speed..but Homer Simpson DOH! APU's relies so heavily on RAM speed.. you are gimping your product.. and so the whole platform. the LOWEST RAM speed for APU mobos, at the poor end should be 1866 here.. the high end enthusiast being 2666mhz. supported and QVL'd.

In a more complicated way you are doing a similar thing, by thinking you can have different specs for cards and APU's. you can't..well, you can but you destroy the idea of apu's being a platform.

your highest APU the 7850k has 512 shaders, 32 texture, 8 rendering cores.. so you needed only ONE card in the Radeon line up to match this EXACTLY for YOUR idea to work..you spent.. xxxxx dollars already developing and marketing the idea to your customers and fans, spending money to create a building structure for PC builders to find easy to understand. but.. POOF.. gone!! when marketing decided.. 'erm lets put the cores at 384'. And if you wait for the next hardware refresh to fix this.. it will be even worse in the mind of consumers.. why? because the gamers & builders..like myself you have now screwed, with no performance upgrade path, by ending the 990FX chipset chain.

please just for once.. be sensible and respond to a glaring oversight. release a R7 255 Dual Graphics card. matched exactly to your top apu.

You can't price cap these things in the traditional way.. it works differently. you can cap the CPU side yes, and it slows ..everything.. down..but capping the gpu or cards slowly 'chips away' at the work you have already done building the idea of what a apu should be. YOU AMD are the leader in this field..you can't make such gaffs and hope to fix it later.. fix it now, people will respect your honesty and forgive.. fix it later and you look like goofs.

I have been using AMD since I started in 2006, I have blogged many times about your products, and all this passionate writing comes not from a position of opposition but from one of your own fans.

Yours Sincerly

David Shaw

aka Dava