So EA put way too high of a sales target on the game, obviously held it back from becoming what it could be, and now are blaming the studio with layoffs, ensuring the next game will flop.
I don’t care what their “numbers” and “projections” were. The game was on the top 10 list in Steam. Even if it wasn’t an A+ game I’d say it looked like it at least hit Assassin’s Creed numbers, I’d hardly call that a failure. Sounds more like a failure to accurately predict, maybe they should fire their business analysts instead of the people who you know, make the games.
But the business analysts are the most profitable group, anywhere! If you don’t believe me just hire a business analyst to analyze things and they’ll prove it to you!
As a Data Analyst / Business Analyst, let me assure you: Not all of us are stupid (some are, for sure), but there’s only so much you can do about stupid managers. If they decide that a certain measure is key, it can be really hard to explain why it isn’t that important or where a certain distortion comes from. To compound this, some managers genuinely don’t understand their business processes and are unwilling to have it explained to them. They’ll make assumptions about how things work, then base their demands on those.
For an entirely made up example, consider a department manager looking to monitor a software development team’s workload. That workload, to them, consists of bug tickets and feature implementations. Not counted here are feature requests because, apparently, fielding them and discussing their feasibility isn’t actual development work. That’s management work, which is the Product Manager’s job… Except the Product Manager can’t unilaterally decide whether something is feasible without consulting those actually familiar with the code, taking up the developer’s time. On the other hand, since it’s an internally developed tool for other units, they can’t just say No to every request or else they risk people calling their team’s funding into question.
Now, you have the choice between frustrating yourself and annoying the manager by trying to explain all that, or gritting your teeth and just giving them the stupid chart on bugs closed and feature implementations completed over time. Guess which one is healthier for your employment prospects?
And we haven’t even started talking about the variance in effort of bug fixes or about non-feature work for code stability or QA. Eventually, we’ll reach the point where the measure becomes a target and you have to start reframing bug fixes as features and splitting features up into smaller features just to make the figures look nicer.
What I’m getting at is this: Sometimes, the analysts aren’t to blame, but the managers making decisions.
That’s not to say there aren’t absolutely shitty business analysts out there that will gladly figure out ways to polish the figures and then cash the check for making the figures look better.
Thank you for that perspective. It seems to be somewhat similar and thankless to when I get tasked with taking microbio samples from the machines to check for contamination and then get grumpy department leads because the analysis results show over and over again that their cleaning procedure is inefficient.
What, can’t you just… idk, check better to see how clean it actually is? That can’t be right, you probably got your samples contaminated. Were those really from that machine? Maybe you got them mixed up. Well you’re really itching to find contaminants, aren’t you? Of course you’ll find something if you look hard enough…
I don’t know how your business works, so I’m trying to project the managers I know onto it - am I so far off that I look like a manager?
Hahaha the production lead actually suggested that I might have been sick and coughed germs onto the sample sponge or that the sponges themselves were already contaminated during manufacturing, because every single sample showed high counts of pseudomonas.
Maybe instead she should start listening to us when we tell her that production equipment from 1970 might not be sufficient to run a food production with the hygiene requirements of today. But no, replacing that would cost more money than just taking samples over and over until the results are low enough (probably because by the 37th swab I cleaned the surface better than the production workers)
Couldn’t you just add up the germs found in successive swabs to the total and increase the total count with each test?
(I assume you have certain testing and evaluation standards you’re bound to, so that’s a “No”, but I like the idea of the results getting worse rather than better)
What would newer equipment do differently to make it less prone to hygiene issues?
If you follow the links, they refer to copy pasta’s of hatefull stuff including swastikas but no breakdown of what is counted, the use of the happy merchant (a meme with an antisemitic origin used to convey greed) and the use of pepe the frog in profile pics (pepe is a symbol of hate according to the ADL).
The issue I have with the whole here is that I don’t subscribe to the premise on which the analysis is based.
IF you assume pepe is a hate symbol, then each case it is used is an expression of hate and furtherance of that hate. I however reject the premise that pepe is a symbol of hate.
The use of the happy merchant is a bit more of a problem, because I see the antisemitic message it has. However I also see a lot of stupid people that don’t… and have seen the image used (probably in antisemitic context referring to greed) but people associate it with greed primarily… so this one is an issue, I think I refuse part of the premise, namely that the antisemitism part is a dominant factor when the image is used.
These are the 2 main examples, a lot more in the report that have similar caveats.
Pepe to me seems like the opposite of the Confederate flag.
Pepe is an internet meme that is in some cases used by racist and hateful people to carry their message, but the primary function is internet nonsense.
The Confederate flag is a symbol or hate and oppression that in some situations is used to express country & westerns ideals of freedom and roaming the country with not a care in the world… without the racist subtext… however you cannot deny the basis of its use and thus should not use it.
Some cases is an understatement. Ever since The_Donald and Kekistan, Pepe has become a hate symbol due to the wide adoption by far right trolls. Pepe might've never meant to be that, but neither was the Swastika or the roman salute, or other symbols that the Nazis adopted for themselves. The more pressing issue is that you should really not give people on Steam the benefit of the doubt of arguing in good faith. The whole gamergate movement is alive and well there.
As I said before I reject your premise about pepe and it’s use. And the swatsticka is a false equivalence.
I have seen zero substantiation of this overly broad statement except for some ADL fundametalists making claims and the alt-right whacos making claims. I consider both camps equally fringe.
Also keep telling all these people they are racist loonatics… at some point they might start to believe you are make it a self fulfilling prophecy. The alt right does the same… we co-opt the meme and tell people they are one of us… because we meme the same we must be the same… or something…
I have seen zero substantiation of this overly broad statement except for some ADL fundametalists making claims and the alt-right whacos making claims.
I don't care for American institutions, I simply speak out of personal experience on that matter of what I experienced and seen firsthand in many places.
Also keep telling all these people they are racist loonatics.. at some point they might start to believe you are make it a self fulfilling prophecy.
Ah, yes. They're only racist because I called them racist. That's the typical bullshit excuse racists use, claiming that the other side pushed them to become racist.
Here we see that you are also arguing in bad faith, and not just out of ignorance.
Could the first point on anecdotal evidence be that you see very specific instances. And/or confirmation bias? I’m not saying your observations are invalid… Just maybe not representative for the bulk of use cases… pepe is in reaction emojis on discord… in gifs on keyboards… and he is just silly. Does that mean all people that use them are aware of what the dogwistle to some might be… I’d argue … they are not.
And I think that in regards to calling people racist for doing innocuous things does have the potential to alienate people from your stance and that void is something the alt right gladly fills. And I think that is a danger that should be acknowledged. And I don’t mean be kind to open Nazis… I more mean “don’t ascribe to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence”.
Discord is equally full of racist gamergate incels. Not sure what keyboards you're referring to that have any sort of gifs, but I also fail to see how any of that is prove of it not being used by those people.
And if you think crying about black NPCs in video games, or other anti-woke shit, is not being racist / hateful, then you're just part of the same problem.
There you go again… creating this distance and making me out as a bad guy… I’m wondering what your end game is?
So is discord a Nazi bar? Is that what you are saying? Because I’ve found myself in plenty of discords of games that have fun low key communities with an image of peppe holding a cool sign amongst all the other game and internet nonsense…
And yes the radicalization pipeline is freaking scary. But keep in mind that constantly alienating people like what you seem to be doing… creates the vacuum to be filled.
Years ago when Rogan was still a rube interviewing deer hunters, taxidermists, astronauts and other real people… I Nopee out when the peterson, Jones lineup became common… I saw the swing happening… it was vicious… and I’ll bet they took a whole swath of his audience with them.
The left needs to provide a narrative, something that people can latch on to and aspire to… to pull them in, because the policies and goals are what we all need. At this moment screetching, calling everyone a Nazi and alienating people is not helping anyone…
I don't alienate anyone other than those who clearly are hateful and toxic in nature, including trolls arguing in bad faith, such as you who loves to put words into my mouth. And I'm not a "screeching" libtard or whatever your US centric green hair memes are.
Rogan has always been a far right pundit btw. That's kinda the point I'm trying to make here. Radicalization happens not by telling people to swing the Nazi flag, but subtly through stupid memes and how woke culture is going to ruin their lives.
That’s why these conversations are so cool. It helps all of us give words to some of the things we cannot express properly. Why I also enjoy reading co tributuins by others… especially if they challenge my preconceptions.
Iirc, when the ADP put out their guidance on Pepe, it was during the 2016 election when Pepe was being actively coopted by alt-rightera and neo Nazis. One of those "take something innocuous and poison it by using it as a pseudo secret signal to other bigots.
I vaguely recall them saying that Pepe was a hate symbol only insofar as it was being used for that purpose. I wonder if that changed, or if this investigation is ignoring that nuance to hamfist a “hate speech” argument.
I fear it is the latter. Nuance seems to get lost over time. It’s maybe the opposite of black people in the US using the N word amongst themselves in an attempt to take it back… I don’t think that this was successful by any measure as it just caused the racist to point at it and say… see they even say it about themselves because only hoodlums (what a word) use it…
If you look at the same section of the ADL website that Pepe is in, you’ll see the first page is just full of simple numbers (symbols are listed alphabetically). I don’t see anyone doing a similar study to the one posted here, but with “100%” instead of Pepe.
Also, side note, ADL lists “ACAB” as a hate symbol because some skinheads are racist and use the phrase. They have a similar disclaimer in the Pepe listing that context is an important consideration.
I didn’t follow everything he’s been doing but I don’t understand the negative sentiment. Populous and Black & White were fantastic games IMO. But these games are old so maybe this view of him as a liar is more recent development.
Also many decades ago now. He went on to make massive promises for the Fable series - and while I enjoyed them, they absolutely did not meet what he had described. Hence his reputation these days of over promising and under delivering
He definitely got worse over time. It’s sad, really. Despite always exaggerating and overpromising he still used to reliably put out good, fun games. I remember Bullfrog used to be a venerable company, the first Fable was a solid game (despite not being what he promised it would be) and Dungeon Keeper was a classic. And yeah, Black & White were great.
One of his first gigs was when a software company mistakenly contacted his business to make a program of sorts, and rather than explaining the situation, he was like “Who? Oh yeah, sure, we are definitely that company you were looking for, we totally know the thing you’re talking about, we’ll do it!”. He was a liar from the very start, it just took some time, and a handful of overhyped (by him) games for people to catch on. If I had to point to an specific event for the decline in his public image, it’d be the Project Milo presentation for the Kinect (just revealed as Project Natal).
Since nobody has mentioned it yet, the other game that ruined his reputation for me is Godus. He funded it with a kickstarter with the promise it would be a successor to the God-Sim genre like Populous. It turned out to have all of the dark patterns of mobile games (time-gating with micro-transactions), but in a PC game.
The title is wrong. It’s not about proving that the owner is dead (which is easy, you get a death certificate when a relative dies).
It’s about proving that the person requesting access of the dead person account is actually the person legally receiving the dead person’s possessions (or GOG account specifically).
He told his friend about the game. I don’t think he would have done so if he copied or felt he had “stolen” anything. If he remade the game with this own code and assets then he put a lot of work into it and he can be proud of that (and telling his friend shows that he was). Comparing the game, i do think the clone is better made / more polished. So he really like the game and made a better version of it. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. IP has to be respected (can’t just copy assets or code) but if that’s the case then anything goes and that’s a good thing, it gives us better games.
Think PalWorld, for example, Nintendo, one of the most copyright abusing companies in the world, doesn’t sue them and it’s arguably a better game than anything Nintendo has come up with recently (no new / modern / good / 3D Pokemon games).
I don’t respect the way IP is abused by large companies. I support short-term IP as I think it does help individuals in a net-positive way for everyone.
I could be convinced that short-term IP is bad too, but regardless I think long-term is the the big problem. Games from the 80s should all be public domain by now.
If you have any interest in playing a good Pokemon game, Pokemon Legends Arceus is excellent. Palword may be just a bit better, but if you have a lingering nostalgia and a desire for some fresh and well executed mechanics in the Pokemon universe, PLA slaps.
This looks much more egregious than palworld/pokemon. Palword has very distinct gameplay from pokemon and adds many features and gameplay elements that nintendo has never done. It’s much more similar to Ark if anything in terms of gameplay. The only thing it takes from pokemon is the fact that it’s a creature collector game and a couple of the pals look like they were generated by ai trained on a database of creatures from other games, but even that isnt conclusive. It definitely takes inspiration from Zelda, but again thats a few gameplay elements, not the whole game.
I mean, this game has a meta war that determines all available planets, mission types and rolls out content based on community involvement. It would be nice to have an offline mode, too, but this game is not completely decoupled from being online, unlike Hitman or something.
Its just an arbitrary mechanic added to justify an always online requirement. Helldivers had an offline option. There's still a game there without the need for "community involvement", the missions etc could be completely random or seeded for people who dont want to connect to a server.
Its always sad to see potential great games ruined by greed.
Did the first one really have offline? I played the shit out of it, but I was always connected. Sure, they should implement something similar here, too, but it is genuine work they need to put in to get it there, I'm sure they had to invest that for the first game especially since it was on the Vita.
It isn't arbitrary, though, go on any of the communities that care about the meta war and you'll see people really do keep up with it and enjoy it, they work with each other to focus on the major orders and do a bit of roleplaying at the same time.
I know that you're very anti always online, and I understand and agree that it should be optional, but to say that nothing comes out of it would also be disingenuous.
You are right, it does provide something. I just personally don't value it over a more typical online co-op setup. I just wish options weren't scary and implemented more.
Me too. I know it's a bit of work to set up an alternate mode and method to get to different planets and missions, and I'm sure ships are run really tightly on what gets worked on or not due to paying for whole teams to work, but I do wish they did what they could to future proof it.
A lot of always online games are awesome, have artistic merit, and can be looked back upon later as gaming history, and if they don't preserve these "art pieces" then a huge chunk of gaming history will likely disappear into the ether in 10 or 20 years. It seems a little silly to me that we can go back and play Mario 64, or even Helldivers 1 and see what that was like, but Helldivers 2 will become an inaccessible splash screen, it's a waste of all of the time and work, and even the money that went into making this happen in the first place.
How the digital ownership normalized the fact that any service, game can disappear easily. The full digital future empowered the corporations, and that issue is here clearly shown by Ubisoft.
Idk about you guys, but I will wait until they’ve patched out the game breaking bugs and system compatibility issues. And then I’ll pay them 17$ for 1 month of their game service, beat the game, and cancel the sub.
IMO worker-owned businesses should be the future. There should also be a forced role-switch or shadowing for managers and workers, so that both understand better what each others respective jobs look like. Managers often think they should be earning their money because their work is more important and set the salaries as such: “Without me, you wouldn’t know what to do, so my job is more important should be compensated more”. They are out of touch with their workers and their realities.
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