Steam influenced Skyrim's quality?

[Fortunado3]

Not really. Morrowind and Oblivion wasn't this dumbed down, and both were on consoles.

 

And these games aren't getting dumbed down because of piracy. Its because of laziness, greed, and wanting to pander to the lowest common denominator.

 

 

A realist...we are becoming a small section in the demographic picture.

 

I was really tempted to just let this go because I absolutely realize no amount of discussion of economics is going to change your opinion, but I've just got to ask.

 

What are you talking about?

 

Pander to the lowest common denominator? Lazy?

 

Greed, absolutely. If by 'greed' you mean 'get paid and feed your family'. Do you think that everyone who works at Bethesda is knee deep in hookers and blow? All these insanely wealthy game developers, hanging around on their private islands and being escorted around in gold-plated limos?

 

But lazy? Skyrim has probably invested more time and money just into the motion capture animations than was spent in total on Morrowind. More time, more money, more people were invested in Skyrim than any TES game prior. How is that lazy? That one boggles me. Like somehow all these people who went into game design because they love in instead of taking a higher paying job in some soulless IT department just don't care about their work? Admittedly I know a few people in the game design industry. Nobody at Bethesda, but still.

 

Pandering.... not sure where 'lowest common denominator' comes in. The console market is over 80% of the business now. It wasn't at the time Morrowind or even Oblivion were being developed (around 2000 for Morrowind and 2003 for Oblivion) and thus the games were designed for PCs and ported for consoles. No question Skyrim was made for the console market - which is why it could be made in the first place. Skyrim sold more copies in the first two weeks than Oblivion did since 2006. Because of that TES VI is going to get made despite the rising cost of game development.

 

They are selling their product to the largest group of people who will pay them the most money for it. Are you saying they should feel guilty and ashamed for that?

 

That attitude is a great way to get your opinions and recommendations utterly written off and ignored. The reality is you want someone to go above and beyond what everyone else is paying them for (and happily so) and do something extra for you but all for the same price. The whole point of my post, from the start, is to say that if you want to do that you need to provide them an impetus to do so. Are you going to pay extra? I'm pretty sure 'I promise not to badmouth you on the forums anymore' isn't going to do it.

 

Again. PC gamers are now the minority. We want special treatment for the same CPU (cost per unit) as console gamers. Right now we add value by making mods and generating word of mouth advertisement. Our best angle would be to become the 'high return' market segment. Longer loyalty, higher return per consumer (more likely to buy DLC, etc). That's where piracy comes in as a negative. Everyone who pirates a game on the PC just cut their value of the copy of the game you actually bought in half. Literally. There is an inherent resistance to investing in a market that has a lot of loss due to fraud. If you sold TVs all over the country but in Flushing, NY 1 in 10 of the TVs you ship there got stolen when everywhere else in the country it was closer to 1 in 1,000, how tempted would you be to stop selling in Flushing? You're still going to make 90% of your sales, but still. What if it was 50%? You'd have to make everyone else in the country pay a little extra to offset your losses in Flushing. That is why piracy hurts PC gamers. It drives business decisions away from our market.

 

Or you can just believe that everyone else is just 'out to get you' and that businesses make their decisions based on some strange desire to do evil. Whatever floats your boat. Hope that works out for you, keep us updated on how it goes.

 

I'm going to stay focused on actually getting what I want based on economics and the realities of business and industry.

 

 

So many ill informed fallacies in your ramble, where to start?

 

More like, what are you talking about, newb?

 

First off, read next time. I'm talking about gamers, not console VS PC. The game was made for newbs, casuals, and the unreceptive. Which is the lowest common denominator (on any platform). Know more about Bethesda. Your post was nothing but fail. Skyrim is the most dumbed down ES since Arena. They made it for idiots and the pick up and play 'next best thing' crowd. It was made for graphics whores, and people that thought they were buying a Viking game with dragon head shots. Fact is, they could have kept all of the cut stuff, and not added all of the extra hand holding, and Skyrim would have sold the same. Its greed, laziness, and selling out. Hilarious how your whole rant missed the point and had nothing to do with what Ive been saying.

 

The fact that Morrowind, Daggerfall and Oblivion had less people working on them, and less resources, but still totally owns Skyrim in everything but graphics pretty much shits on your whole diatribe. Morrowind and Oblivion were on consoles too, and neither were as dumbed down as Skyrim (though Oblivion was close).

 

They can make an ES game on Wii, or Tiger handhelds, or an uber PC exclusive, still doesn't change the fact that they are getting dumbed down at an alarming rate.

 

So yeah, you should have let this one go, since you obviously have absolutely no idea what your talking about.

 

I always find tools like you hilarious, since you'd rather be junior amateur PR accountants for big gaming, than be pro gamer and tell it like it is. Or maybe you don't know how it is, because this is your first ES, yeah that's probably it. So hell yes they should be ashamed, they totally pissed on the faces of the one who brought 'em.

 

It has nothing to do with Steam, and everything to do with this gen console limitations, and Beth's prerogative to dumb down the series so any ADD riddled twitch kiddie can pick up and play it. Any successor is going to sell more. The next ES can be more complex than Daggerfall and Morrowind combined, and it will still sell more than Skyrim. It can also be the most dumbed down ES ever and sell the most. Sheep are stupid and will buy anything whether they'll like it or not.

 

Seriously, who wants to play a dumbed down ES that's a shell of its predecessors? Not the vets.

 

 

That attitude is a great way to get your opinions and recommendations utterly written off and ignored. The reality is you want someone to go above and beyond what everyone else is paying them for (and happily so) and do something extra for you but all for the same price. The whole point of my post, from the start, is to say that if you want to do that you need to provide them an impetus to do so. Are you going to pay extra? I'm pretty sure 'I promise not to badmouth you on the forums anymore' isn't going to do it.

 

This part is so stupid it gets its own reply, then you'll be written off and ignored. The reality is I want an ES game, not some linear POS dressed up as one. We've been paying the same, or more, for less since Oblivion. More like, if Bethesda wants to keep dumbing down the series, do we get a discount? As said before, the sheep will buy anything. If you advertise it, they will come. But its the vets that matter. We're the ones that know the difference between an ES game, and a joke money grab before the next gen hits. Obviously the whole point of your post from the start was to fail and come off as a complete neophyte.

 

 

 

Perhaps harsh, but you earned it.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Fortunado3

[Glhadiator]

@Fortunado3

 

Couldn't help but notice that you didn't use 10% of 1 in 10 people that make 500,000 versus 1,000,00 in the global market of most gamers of the 10 to 20 deomgraphic to validate your statements :smile:

[Fortunado3]

@Fortunado3

 

Couldn't help but notice that you didn't use 10% of 1 in 10 people that make 500,000 versus 1,000,00 in the global market of most gamers of the 10 to 20 deomgraphic to validate your statements :smile:

Numbers do not matter whether for or against really. Sheep will buy anything. They'll buy a game as complex as Mythus Dangerous Journeys, and out sell Skyrim, if you market it right.

 

Like I said previously. The PR was lowest common denominator, but the actual game didn't have to be.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Fortunado3

[Brandy1123]

a problem I see and just cannot comprehend is where do they think all the game box technology came from? Its from discrete part junkies, mixing and matching hardware, software and cabling. "WE" had many problems getting our hard purchased gear to work, but we slaved over it until it started to shine. Game box designers took a common set of hardware/software and made it easier for software producers to create a working program on. Here's the problem. Game companies no longer have to be brilliant as well as imaginative. The flow chart of a game gives options. You as the gamer pick an option through your action and you move until another option comes along. When you reach a certain point in your selected options, you get a chocolate cookie , i mean power up. The ES5 game is perfectly linear. There is not a single dungeon, crawl hole or crevass which spawns to a "dungeon" that is not perfectly linear. There is no way to deviate, get side tracked or lost. You even get a cute little arrow to tell you what way to go on your 1 way path.

 

I love skyrim. I like it for the artwork mostly, It's not to say a lot of 2D overlays were used, reduced graphic depth and extremely untested code. But I know a lot of effort went into the graphic design. That is the only thing I would rave. We PC gamers paid for a Porsche and got a Prius. It was advertised deceptively and was given to us in a beta stage. The ammount of errors, flaws, unfinished areas/quests and limited dialog is only a start. The vanilla cookie cutter EVERYthing is a sad thing. I have been playing since 7.25 hours after release of my purhcased DVD. It took me 30 minutes to get home and 6.75 hours to download my game from STEAMypile. From the start, there were download issues, game update problems, STEAMypile going offline, the list goes on.

 

With all the BIG $$ invested by the true and original gamers, you would think there would be a push by the hardware companies to the game industry. Someway to entice them to go beyond the tripe that seems to be in an endless supply when it comes to PC games. I love graphics, but what is an artists talent really worth if the casual gamer never even notices it. If the game play is so riddled with flaws, substandard coding and just plain broken, everything else is just a waste. I feel sorry for the briliant artist who created a masterpiece only to have the wonder dumbed down to a paint by numbers. That in effect is what we were given.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Brandy_123

[Calamachus]

@handofbane

 

Sales can be viewed as the 'score' in this game and that makes it a tough thing to ignore. Games like CoD, even though there not in the same genre, showed how much money was on the table so to speak. The money behind the business and the investment side of things is going to look for what it can quantify to gauge success and return. That and plain old competition. If you're a game developer aren't you going to feel the drive to be the best? How do you gauge that? The guy writing your check is probably going to gauge it by how many copies you sell.

 

As to DRM, I really hate it. I was a latecomer to Steam and still dislike it in principle. Piracy is always going to happen. The problem is that it's not really even about how much money is legitimately lost, it's about the feeling of being stolen from. If you tell someone 'I realize that there are a lot of people stealing your product, effectively crapping all over the value of the time and money you've put into making and producing it but it's not like it's really costing you a lot in the end' they're still not going to be happy about it. The only people who really suffer from piracy are the legitimate game consumers. We get stuck with the DRM crap and the negative stigma of the PC market it creates. Fixing piracy isn't going to make a big difference in what size of the financial pie PC game consumers generate. Right now our big cards are modding and we tend to buy a lot more DLC. Fortunately the next generation of consoles should help us, bringing the new standard for consoles closer to the average hardware in a gaming PC.

 

@Fortunado3

 

So, I talk about the economic aspects of game design, development and sales today as opposed to 12 years ago and the market factors that drive the shift from a PC-focused industry to a console-focused industry, you respond with some personal opinions, condescending generalizations like 'the sheep', some ad hominem and some entitlement driven 'its the vets that matter' stuff. Strange, since I've been playing TES titles since Arena, though I did skip Redguard. None of which has anything at all to due with what goes into game development, what drives game development and what if any leverage PC gamers have in the industry. We are clearly not having the same conversation.

 

You and I are also just as clearly not going to agree so I'm just going to say 'hope your approach works out for you. Best of luck.'

[Dan3345]

Not really. Morrowind and Oblivion wasn't this dumbed down, and both were on consoles.

 

And these games aren't getting dumbed down because of piracy. Its because of laziness, greed, and wanting to pander to the lowest common denominator.

 

 

A realist...we are becoming a small section in the demographic picture.

 

I was really tempted to just let this go because I absolutely realize no amount of discussion of economics is going to change your opinion, but I've just got to ask.

 

What are you talking about?

 

Pander to the lowest common denominator? Lazy?

 

Greed, absolutely. If by 'greed' you mean 'get paid and feed your family'. Do you think that everyone who works at Bethesda is knee deep in hookers and blow? All these insanely wealthy game developers, hanging around on their private islands and being escorted around in gold-plated limos?

 

But lazy? Skyrim has probably invested more time and money just into the motion capture animations than was spent in total on Morrowind. More time, more money, more people were invested in Skyrim than any TES game prior. How is that lazy? That one boggles me. Like somehow all these people who went into game design because they love in instead of taking a higher paying job in some soulless IT department just don't care about their work? Admittedly I know a few people in the game design industry. Nobody at Bethesda, but still.

 

Pandering.... not sure where 'lowest common denominator' comes in. The console market is over 80% of the business now. It wasn't at the time Morrowind or even Oblivion were being developed (around 2000 for Morrowind and 2003 for Oblivion) and thus the games were designed for PCs and ported for consoles. No question Skyrim was made for the console market - which is why it could be made in the first place. Skyrim sold more copies in the first two weeks than Oblivion did since 2006. Because of that TES VI is going to get made despite the rising cost of game development.

 

They are selling their product to the largest group of people who will pay them the most money for it. Are you saying they should feel guilty and ashamed for that?

 

That attitude is a great way to get your opinions and recommendations utterly written off and ignored. The reality is you want someone to go above and beyond what everyone else is paying them for (and happily so) and do something extra for you but all for the same price. The whole point of my post, from the start, is to say that if you want to do that you need to provide them an impetus to do so. Are you going to pay extra? I'm pretty sure 'I promise not to badmouth you on the forums anymore' isn't going to do it.

 

Again. PC gamers are now the minority. We want special treatment for the same CPU (cost per unit) as console gamers. Right now we add value by making mods and generating word of mouth advertisement. Our best angle would be to become the 'high return' market segment. Longer loyalty, higher return per consumer (more likely to buy DLC, etc). That's where piracy comes in as a negative. Everyone who pirates a game on the PC just cut their value of the copy of the game you actually bought in half. Literally. There is an inherent resistance to investing in a market that has a lot of loss due to fraud. If you sold TVs all over the country but in Flushing, NY 1 in 10 of the TVs you ship there got stolen when everywhere else in the country it was closer to 1 in 1,000, how tempted would you be to stop selling in Flushing? You're still going to make 90% of your sales, but still. What if it was 50%? You'd have to make everyone else in the country pay a little extra to offset your losses in Flushing. That is why piracy hurts PC gamers. It drives business decisions away from our market.

 

Or you can just believe that everyone else is just 'out to get you' and that businesses make their decisions based on some strange desire to do evil. Whatever floats your boat. Hope that works out for you, keep us updated on how it goes.

 

I'm going to stay focused on actually getting what I want based on economics and the realities of business and industry.

 

are you a girl? lets go make babies.

 

Jokes aside, this is so true.

 

Its a sad state when people demand so much for so little. Where is Todd Howard? Is he uber rich? Maybe he is upper class but he isn't super wealthy. And even if he was, would this be a problem for you? His wealth and success is intimidating, is that it?

 

Or is it that you feel you deserve a better game simply because you live and breath? That these people should leave their families and lives behind and spend all their time on your game.

 

I seriously do not understand this logic. I am no fanboy, I can see the flaws in skyrim, but I simply write it off to the developers trying to reach a larger more casual audience. I don't think its a huge problem. Occasionally a great game comes along and then theirs the OK ones.

 

I urge you, if you think skyrim is so bad and the developers were so lazy, to go make your own game. Go invest your own money and pander before the producers, see how far you can even get.

 

And you know, I played Morrowind and Oblivion, and I didn't think they were very good. At least I can play vanilla skyrim without getting bored to tears...

[Handofbane]

@handofbane

 

Sales can be viewed as the 'score' in this game and that makes it a tough thing to ignore. Games like CoD, even though there not in the same genre, showed how much money was on the table so to speak. The money behind the business and the investment side of things is going to look for what it can quantify to gauge success and return. That and plain old competition. If you're a game developer aren't you going to feel the drive to be the best? How do you gauge that? The guy writing your check is probably going to gauge it by how many copies you sell.

Or by making a game you as a developer feel was what you wanted it to be, rather than just what is popular at the moment. Such an attitude can be seen in smaller developers and publishers like Paradox Interactive, who are best known for the grand strategy niche of PC-only gaming, but spread into many other genres as well as publishing multiple other developers' games like Sword of the Stars (Kerberos), Magicka (Arrowhead), and Salem (Seatribe - literally a two-man developer). They may not be raking in hundreds of millions of dollars each year, but they also are not forking over hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing at the expense of making better games.

As to DRM, I really hate it. I was a latecomer to Steam and still dislike it in principle.

Well, we are starting to see some developers kick against the DRM flooding now, too. inXile is planning to make Wasteland 2 completely DRM free, beyond a Steam-accessible closed beta period.

The only people who really suffer from piracy are the legitimate game consumers.

Absolutely agree there.

Fortunately the next generation of consoles should help us, bringing the new standard for consoles closer to the average hardware in a gaming PC. '

Don't count on it anytime soon, both Sony and Microsoft have said they are not expecting to put out a new console anytime this year, and it's not looking too good for next year either. Of course, they (or at least Sony for certain) are also trying to figure out ways to push their "no used games" bit and not lose a huge chunk of their customer base because of it.

[MorwynKelm]

This is only in response to the OP, I didn't read all 5+ wall-of-text pages. I don't have to.

 

The only thing that is certain is that you know nothing about business.

 

You can be certain that Valve/Steam lobbied hard to have a title like Skyrim come to their platform. The money Steam was going to make as distributors was and is substantial. They aren't going to bicker over a silly issue like bandwidth. When you're running an operation like Steam, you're dealing with OC12/48 lines in major data centers around the world, we're talking industrial strength bandwidth - this ain't your daddy's modem.

 

What is also certain is that the only thing that dictated Skyrim's "quality" (or lack thereof) is that it was ported to consoles. That fact alone meant that is was developed for the lowest common denominator.

 

Skyrim could have been epic but Bethesda dumbed it down for consoles and they blew it. That has ZERO to do with Steam.

[gurgelstock]

Personally I don' t think Skyrim would have looked that much better had it been programmed for PC only. Look at the HD texture pack - they could have added some really nice textures with that, instead the changes are minimal. I like it, but still, it's far from why I consider 'HD'. So what makes you think, Skyrim would like like Crysis 2 if it wasn't for consoles? Things like the shoddy animations and bulky character models are just Beth's style.

[Thoreai]

Yeah, steam, consoles w/e, the quality would be all the same, maybe graphicaly better, but not in gameplay, i also agree with people saying its business, we cant really blame them for wanting more money, anyone would.

 

All we can do is decide if we put our money in to their games or not.