Pot-Stirring Time

[kandrathe]

From the POV of a software designer and engineer:

I always want to make the best software and systems possible within the time frame allowed. Your control over a softwares features are highest at the time of conception, and diminish to nearly zero at implementation. Once a piece of software is published, the amount of effort allowed for maintenance is finite and is driven by cost. Not just the cost of making and testing the changes, but the lost opportunity cost of having the people work on the old stuff rather than work on the new stuff. I imagine it is the same for anyone who designs and builds any type of widget for a company that is interested in making a profit. In some ways writing game software is like being the cinematographer for Hollywood movies. You see your craft, blood, sweat and tears, get decimated in editing and rewrites to force it into a marketable 2 hour product. If it is successful, maybe your efforts may be mentioned, but it is the directors that get most of the glory and the producers who get most of the money.

However, opinions do matter. Some opinions matter more than others and will contribute to the mythos of the game and to the prestige of its legacy. Definately not to Ma and Pa Kettle who bought little Joey yet another FPS which he plops in his XBox or installs on his Mac who soon tires of it and tosses it aside for DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball. But, there is a community of people, like us, who discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of every aspect of every feature of every game. We would just as likely discuss opening moves in chess as strategies for CS_Italy, or the merits of Tron 2.0.

Alone anyones opinion is useless, but just like voting it does matter in the long run. If you write, and consistently write or produce stuff that is trash, that becomes your reputation. You know people, and I know people and if the grumbling becomes too widespread it becomes a thunder, and then an earthquake that can destroy a company like EA or Blizzard. That is why they cater to prominent industry voices to sway their opinions to promote their wares, or at least not blast them as hard. Back to voting; what matters more is activism with an example of that being the steady erosion by open source, and a fanatical Linux community against the Microsoft empire. Will it fall? I don't know, and I doubt it. Will it hurt, yes. Now, with Blizzard, it seems enough of the old guard have drifted away from the original Blizzard construct to form new constructs in the spirit of that original model; one that worked before and will likely work again.

I suspect that the reason that the founders of Blizzard started writing games was not primarily to get rich. I suspect they had some skills and decided to write the games they wanted to play. If they happened to be able to sell them, and make enough bucks to continue writing some more, all the better. In a way, for those with the skills, writing software is like printing money. It only gets difficult to control the presses once the machine is too big, and then the EA's, Universal's, et. al. step in and buy you out or crush you into dust.

But, I'm with you in general on software companies. I at least am trying to vote with my pocketbook. For instance, the last EA game I bought was FA-18 Incerceptor for my development Amiga 1000. It would take a miracle for them to ever win me as a loyal consumer. As for Blizzard, for me the jury is still out. I think SC:Ghost might be a good product -- although written by someone else. DII v1.10 may turn LOD into a game, rather than Monty's Haul but due to the extent of the changes it might also do more harm than good. Warcraft III was an average effort which extended old content and IMHO, falls a little short when compared to other games published at that time. As for WOW, who knows and it might just be a tired old concept by the time it is released. At least some parts of Blizzard do seem to try to make that connection to their fans, even if in the end (due to whatever powers that be) it just seems like more hype and marketing.

Edit: Fixed some spelling and added stuff, but I still ramble a bit.