The Facepalm Roundup: Devil, Thy Name Is Greed

First things first. I noticed Jim Sterling created something called "The Bullshit Roundup" recently, which is very similar to what I have been doing with "The Facepalm Roundup." If he drew any inspiration at all from this blog, I just want to say, you're welcome Jim.

A Payday That Is Overkill

Good-natured ribbing aside, let's jump right into it. From late September to early October, Overkill, the developers of Payday 2, ran an event called "The Road to Crimefest." It consisted of a series of in-game challenges for the community to complete, which would translate to free in-game content rewards once Crimefest actually began. Crimefest, for those that don't know, is Overkill's yearly celebration of the Payday 2 community, and their dedication to the game. Supposedly.

On day one of Crimefest, Overkill introduced micro-transactions to Payday 2, in the form of weapon skins that need to be obtained by receiving a "Safe" during the end of mission loot drops, and buying "Drills" for $2.50 in order to unlock them. SOME of the skins provide stat boosts to weapons. Weapons that you may not even own if you haven't purchased the appropriate DLC. In addition, Overkill released a "balance" patch which gimped a lot of the weapons so that they wouldn't be as effective without their skins. There are several issues with this. Two years ago, Almir, the producer for Overkill, on the official Steam forums, said the following: "We've made it clear that Payday 2 will have no micro-transactions whatsoever (shame on you if you thought otherwise!)" These micro-transactions are also added on top of a price tag for the base game and a two year supply of paid DLC. 

This infuriated the community. Throughout the rest of Crimefest, Overkill maintained near radio-silence on the matter, as Payday 2's score on both Steam and Metacritic dropped drastically. It currently sits at a 77% approval on Steam, down from 93% when the event began. That happened in just over a week, and there are over 150K reviews. On Metacritic, the user score sits at an abysmal 3.8. Overkill lazily attempted to appease the community by allowing drills to also drop as loot, although the community has suggested they are infamy level items, meaning they have an extraordinarily low drop chance (this is unconfirmed). Beyond that, they issued a message stating the matter would be addressed at the conclusion of Crimefest. 

The rest of Crimefest was sub-par. Changes that should be included in any standard patch were at the core of several of the "free content updates." The last day even included a freaking jump animation as one of its highlights. To be fair, they did also introduce new masks, achievements, a LMG with a bipod that works some of the time, and a new heist that is a remake from the original Payday. Still, everyone continued to be up in arms about the Micro-Transactions. So, illustrating a sense of poor judgement, Almir did an AMA two days ago, and did absolutely nothing to make this situation better (in my opinion). His explanations for the micro-transactions basically amounted to "We didn't plan to have them before, now we do. They're making us money, so I don't understand why everyone is upset." 

The disconnect between him and the community is astounding. He provided explanations for why a group is still "resisting" (yes he used that word) the micro-transactions. He blamed click-bait journalism. He said that the skins would not make the game pay to win, despite the fact that people were already known to kick squad members from heists if their equipment/skills weren't up to snuff. He even mentioned that the team has expanded over the past year and they needed extra income to pay everyone, despite the success of both Payday 2 and it's extensive collection of paid DLC. Basically, the backlash from this situation is everyone's fault but his. I uninstalled as soon as I finished reading the AMA. 

Waaaaaghhh...Wait, What?

My second piece of selfish decision-making resides with Sega and Creative Assembly. I love the Total War franchise. For years, I talked about how the Warhammer fantasy setting would make for a spectacular Total War game. Then, Total War: Warhammer was announced earlier this year and it seemed as though all my gaming dreams were coming true. I was ecstatic when I clicked on an article last week that was going to provide me with a release date for one of my most anticipated titles. I even rubbed my hands together gleefully when I saw that Chaos was going to be available as fifth playable faction upon launch, on top of the four previously announced factions. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the fifth faction, despite being available upon launch, will only be playable if you pre-order the game or buy the faction as DLC after launch. 

Despite arguments to the contrary, this is, by definition, cutting something out of the game in order to push pre-orders and day one DLC purchases. The content will be finished upon launch. They already released a trailer for this content, six months ahead of launch. They planned this. They didn't do this to surprise the community with something "extra." They are literally holding the playability of a core race ransom in order to push pre-orders, and that is disgusting. Some have pointed out that the player will still be able to encounter and battle Chaos, even if they do not own the DLC, but does that really make things better? All it is, is a reminder that you didn't pre-order, or haven't purchased the DLC yet. Angry Joe has railed against this situation, and Jim Sterling also wrote about it on his website. 

Closing Thoughts

I have no problem whatsoever buying post-launch DLC. I bought most of Payday 2's post-launch content until this most recent debacle. My issue is with exploitative and greedy practices that are designed to make people feel like second-class players in an attempt to to squeeze more money out of them. Micro-transactions, pre-order "bonuses," and all of these underhanded methods need to end. Stop giving me an incomplete experience. If I pay for a game, I expect that game. Not most of that game. Not the core experience of that game. I want that game.     

 

 

Activision Is Just The Worst

They say you don't know what you have until its gone. Or, in the case of Activision and EA, they don't know what they have when they buy up rights to intellectual properties. And then they continue not knowing what they have as they run those intellectual properties into the ground with no regard for anything besides how much money they can squeeze out of the very thing they are killing.  

The most recent example of this was with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. Activision is losing the rights to the Tony Hawk IP towards the end of the year. Word around the block is that the company, in a move that surprises me in no way, shape, or form, decided to shovel out one last title to make a few extra dollars off of the Tony Hawk name. This last title is a hot mess. It received almost no press. It is broken to the point of being unplayable. The day one patch was larger than the files on the disk itself. You can't make this stuff up.

Do you realize what this means? Activision has no trouble spitting on beloved IP's and their supporters if it means making one last small profit off of them. This is disgusting behavior, and it has to stop.

This is right on the heels of the announcement that Black Ops 3 will not have a campaign on last gen systems. As a get out of jail free card, they're offering a slap in the face to all of the last-gen buyers in the form of a $10 discount. What's funny about it, is that Activision knows they won't really lose any money, since they pilfer the majority of their COD cash by charging for everything under the sun relating to multiplayer. I'm sure they'll find something new to charge for this year, on top of the Season Pass, Loadout Slots, and heap of cosmetic DLC.

Yes, I did play the Black Ops 3 beta. I was impressed with how well the game ran, and how smooth the combat felt. But it was still just COD. The tacked on gimmicks of this year's entry appeared immediately visible to me as slightly re-worked Titanfall mechanics. I can't wait to see what Activision decides to charge for new "specialists," because you know they will. It is a very bad thing that their greed is becoming predictable. It means that the greed is becoming the norm, and that is bad for all of us.  

My Name Is Max: Part 1

I've really been enjoying the new Mad Max game. Runs great on PC too. That's why I recorded over an hour of gameplay footage this weekend, and I'll probably record more in the near future. I used LoiLo Game Recorder to capture the footage. It's a great and free program. Enjoy.

The Facepalm Roundup: Digital Homicide Is At It Again!

Not content to just spit in the face of its customers, reviewers, and of course, Jim Fucking Sterling Son, Digital Homicide is now trying to destroy any potential good will remaining between it and the community. Today, for the third time in about a week, they have thrown their latest abomination, "Temper Tantrum 2," onto Steam Greenlight. It is the third time because they keep getting destroyed every time they put it up. Pages of criticism telling them in no uncertain terms that their latest "game" is, like the others, a lazily thrown together smattering of pre-made Unity assets, barely functional gameplay, and shameless delusions of grandeur.

The members of Digital Homicide simply can't, or refuse to see that every decision they make hurts no one but themselves. Robert, who I guess is the one that runs the whole show, recently baited Jim Sterling into an "interview," in which Robert made accusations that bordered on the insane. Robert accused Jim of "stifling innovation." He claimed that he has written thousands of lines of code. It goes on and on. Outrageous claims. Insults towards the gaming community. I even had a minor Twitter "discussion" with him a few weeks ago in which he insulted me a few times after I said some of the same things I'm saying in this blog post.

This man, his company, and everything they do makes it harder for true indie developers to make a living. They flood the market with some of the laziest attempts at game development I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing, and that offends me. I take it personally, because if I ever get a game up and running, games like theirs are only going to make it harder for me to distribute mine. They think the community is stupid, and for some reason, feel like it owes them something. They release garbage and then have the gall, the arrogance, to become filled with indignation when that garbage doesn't make them mountains of cash overnight. Most games take several years to make, even for experienced developers with a full crew and plenty of funding. What does it say about Digital Homicide that they've release five games in the past year and a half (Slaughtering Grounds, Deadly Profits, Temper Tantrum, Forsaken Uprising, and Medieval Mercs), in addition to having two more on Greenlight (Six Nights At Susie's and Temper Tantrum 2). Seven games in a year in a half. Let that sink in for a minute. That alone should tell you how much these people care about providing their customers with a quality product. 

I have a full time job. It's a good job. My employers are good people, and I enjoy the work that I do. However, I've never wanted anything more than to make video games, and to make a living doing that. It is something I wake up thinking about, and one of the last things I think about before I fall asleep. I may succeed, I may not. I may release a string of hits that win awards. I may release some games that crash and burn. Something I will never do, is lie to my customers, allow my ego to swat away good judgement and reasonable criticism, or bite the same hands I expect to feed me. 

No More COD For Me Until It Goes Through Rehab

COD has become a drug addict. A thin, weak shadow of its former self that is still trying to convince us that it has it's shit together even while it hits us up for some spare cash. It needs to be sent to rehab, and I won't let it set foot in my home again until it is.

Alright, enough with the metaphor. This is simply a list of things that would need to be removed or changed in order to get me to buy another COD title. I skipped Modern Warfare 3 and Ghosts, and was extremely let down/furious with Advanced Warfare.

*Activision's overall disdainful attitude towards the customer: Activision essentially sees its customers as wallets with feet, or as children nagging wallets with feet to buy them the latest release. Everything they do is geared towards providing an endless, nearly unimaginable revenue stream. And there's nothing wrong with that on its surface. Businesses exist to make money. Businesses making money off of Johnny and Jane consumer are how the economy stays afloat. But, the services rendered for our hard earned cash need to be worth the asking price, and need to not be shoved in our faces by corporate suits that barely hide their contempt for us. They need to, through their actions, essentially say "We know times are tough and you're spending some of your limited funds on our products. We respect you for that." Instead we're getting "You'll buy this because you always do, no matter what bullshit we try to pull, and you'll buy anything extra we tack on, because the product we've given you is gimped otherwise!"

*We need real dedicated servers: For several years, we've seen connectivity and matchmaking issues, trouble joining friend's parties, and inconsistencies with latency/host advantage/who shot first/etc. I recently saw a video where someone theorized that this has been done intentionally to keep the skill gap small (more on that later), and it wouldn't surprise me. However, I'm just going to roll with my initial assertion. Activision is too damned cheap to implement proper dedicated servers. Especially with the release of a COD title every year, that's a lot of servers to maintain. Heaven forbid something cut into their revenue stream that is for the good of the customer. This is the highest selling franchise in gaming history. They throw millions of dollars towards PR and marketing. But can they get up off their asses, and throw some money at some true dedicated servers? Not this hybrid garbage that they keep shoving down our throats. Real life dedicated servers. I don't care if there's a server browser or not, either. I just want consistent, reliable performance that doesn't cause me to question every kill I get.

*Outdated tech: This doesn't really bother me, as long as a game looks good, can support modern gameplay features, and performs well...so yeah, COD needs a new engine.

*The appeal to the LCD of gamers: COD is designed to make anyone a rockstar of first person shooters. Between the small map sizes, the lack of any real respawn delays, the random (and often completely ludicrous) spawn points, and the general approach to gameplay (sprint and spray), every COD player can rack up some kills. No one wants to play a game where they get destroyed constantly. But they've crushed the skill gap so much that there's virtually no learning curve. It boils down to using a lightweight, fully automatic weapon and shooting the other guy first. Weapons like shotguns, LMG's, and sniper rifles are considered weapons requiring skill to use instead of being weapons designed for different situations. Everything, including the sniper rifles, are used by the player base in fast paced, relatively close range combat. Maps and sniper rifles that prevent sniping by design, exist only to provide the illusion of variety and to, once again, keep that skill gap small.

*The small map sizes and limited game types: This all basically stems from my previous points. Game modes that emphasize team work, and maps that allow for some tactical freedom would pull away from the small skill gap and "make everyone feel like Rambo" approach. Changing this would also interrupt their brisk development cycle, thereby interrupting the revenue stream, and once again, Activision simply cannot allow that.

*Abusive DLC practices: How much money does someone need to spend before they realize they're being taken? Activision is clearly pushing hard to find out. For Advanced Warfare, we had the base game ($60), the season pass ($50), cosmetic DLC (roughly $1.99 each), and, wait for it, extra armory and loadout slots sold in packs ($1.99 per pack). This last item in particular infuriated me. We paid full price, and then some, for a full featured game. Why in the holy fuck are they charging us for extra loadout and armory slots, especially when the armory slots are tied to the best new feature Advanced Warfare possessed (the loot system)? I can picture Michael Condrey telling an Activision higher-up, "I don't think this will fly with the playerbase." I can also picture that same higher-up responding with "You must be new here. Every year, we push the boundaries of what we can get away with in terms of how we charge the players for a complete experience." It is absolutely insulting and disgusting that in order to earn (and keep) all of the content that came with the Advanced Warfare base game, I need to shell out extra money for slots that took Sledgehammer probably about fifteen minutes to add to the game, and should have been there in the first place. I uninstalled the same day that was announced. Not that I had gotten much playtime in anyway...

*PC players getting shafted: I realize that consoles are now the primary market for COD. But if you're going to put a half-baked, lazy ass port of a PC version together, don't bother at all in the future. Advanced Warfare's LAG and issues getting into games took weeks to be resolved, and by the time they were, the entire community had sort of given up from some of the other things I've mentioned and general franchise fatigue. When the game was finally stable and playable for me, all I could find was TDM and Domination matches. Wheee. I'm ready for this carnival ride to stop now.

It's simple. Activision is too greedy and proud to relent in any meaningful way to its customers. Especially now that Destiny is becoming their new cash cow. Mark my words. If they don't make some big changes in the coming years, they will run COD straight into the ground. A lot of talented people will be out of work. Everyone will lose in some way. Except for Activision. Who will continue to reign as one of the wealthiest, yet worst publishers in the business. I've already floated to shore. I'm just waiting for this leaky, rat infested ship to completely sink. Shit, another metaphor.

The Facepalm Roundup: Issue 3

I apologize for being away for so long. My wife and I have been prepping to buy a house, I recently gutted and rebuilt my gaming PC, I've been taking on more responsibility at work, and I'm trying to get my own game project off the ground before the end of the year. However, that is no excuse to allow a blog to stagnate, so I will try my hardest to be more diligent in the future. Some of my posts may be a bit shorter, but I'll be able to get more information and news to everyone a little bit more frequently.

In the past couple weeks I've become a fan of Jim Sterling. Until I stumbled upon his back and forth with Digital Homicide over their lazily copy/pasted shooter, The Slaughtering Grounds, I wasn't overly familiar with him. Even if his presentation can be (for some, I'm fine with it) a bit vulgar, bombastic, or downright silly, I usually end up cheering towards my phone when I watch his videos, as he frequently echoes sentiments that I have been feeling for some time.

I was both infuriated and gleefully excited when Jim recently put a disturbing trend on display. He called it "asset flipping." That is, buying asset/starter packs for game engines and either assembling them using the most minimal effort possible, or simply using the sample levels that often come with them, packaging them up, and trying to sell the end result as a "game." With Valve's virtually non-existent quality control on Steam Greenlight, along with the community's often painful ineptitude towards researching a product before spending their money, this has begun to spiral out of control.

We saw it with West Games and their Areal/Stalker Apocalypse/Everything They've Ever Had A Hand In scam. We saw it with Digital Homicide and The Slaughtering Grounds. Right now, we're seeing it with the developer simply known as "Kotach," as he buys Unity asset packs, imports them into the engine, compiles them, and sells them. He even uses the descriptions from the asset packs as the descriptions for his "games." Once a week, he clears the forums of any threads calling him out on his garbage, and then continues searching for the next way to exploit the community. And while most people know he's being a dishonest lazy greedy pompous scumbag, you see the occasional comment saying "this game looks great!" Even if there is only one comment like that, it is one comment too many.

And so, we circle back around to something I'm constantly saying. We as consumers have to educate ourselves on a product before making a purchase. Uncrowded, one of Kotach's "games," uses the Unity UnitZ asset pack. So do many other games, several of which have been hastily thrown together as a scummy cash-grab, just like Uncrowded. However, if I am a casual gamer, and I am not even aware of the existence of pre-made asset packs or Greenlight's awful filtering system, or I am seeing this asset pack in action for the first time, I can see how someone might feel a twinge of excitement. You should be able to walk down a dark alleyway without fear. You also should be able to support an "indie developer" to promote the release of solid, feature complete games without being worried about being scammed. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, if you choose to walk down a dangerous alley and get mugged, its partially your fault. Additionally, if you choose to give money to someone before researching whether or not they just want to take your money and run, it is also partially your fault.

These types of "developers" are particularly infuriating for me, because I'm trying to break into the indie development scene. Guess what? We're making all of our assets from scratch. We're writing all of our code and blueprints ourselves. And, even after we have a solid gameplay demonstration put together, I know that I will still need to campaign like hell on Steam Greenlight, Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or wherever we go, in order to make any headway and gain any exposure. You know why? Because those places are now being flooded with lazy, half-assed attempts to sell "games" that barely pass for a playable tech demo. These people are dragging the rest of the indie community down, and the indie community is, if we're being honest, the only future the gaming industry has left. Indie games are all we have to turn to after we've gotten fed up with being squeezed for every last penny by large publishers. There are a few exceptions to this, but its not like these exceptions can cover every genre and corner of the industry.

In this situation, there's something to be said for being an elitist, I think. With accessibility, comes the masses of assholes who want to exploit the entire system for a profit with the laziest efforts possible. It seems we have reached that stage with game development. The only way to stop it, is to do a few paragraphs of reading on a product before buying it (suck it up and do it, you'll be fine), and for Steam, Kickstarter, and other indie developer outlets to start policing what get's approved and what doesn't through carefully altered policies/restrictions. The refund policy was a step in the right direction for the most part, but we need to stand together to prevent this type of garbage from taking over the entire indie community. Its only going to hurt all of us in the long run.

Strafe Tech Demo Footage

So I recorded this last week during the end of Pixel Titan's Kickstarter campaign for Strafe. They hit their goal, thankfully. We need more games like this. Check it out.

The Facepalm Roundup: Issue 2

Let me start this off with a simple, direct statement. I hate people that intentionally try to take advantage of or scam others. I find it to be one of the lowest forms of ugly behavior. With that in mind, I've spent the past two weeks piecing bits of information together, forming a mosaic of scamming and shady behavior that makes me cross-eyed when I try to understand all of it. And, while much of this information has become common knowledge amongst the community over the past six months, I have made an attempt to add the smaller bits that may have gone unnoticed.

I don't know who Max Kovtun is, but I don't like him. Based on what I've seen, he's been at the core of several of the scam projects that this post will discuss. The first one that he tried of which I am aware, was an indiegogo campaign for a "Nuclear Energy Space Station." The pitch is filled with a bunch of buzz words. It was also complete bullshit. Check it out here.

His second project was a game called "Space Pioneer." Its Kickstarter campaign claimed to have cosmonauts and scientists involved in its development. Based on what I've seen, they dropped a bunch of names and posted pictures of people that are part of the scientific community and can be found through a Google search, but their actual involvement was questionable at best. At any rate, this project was clearly another scam from the get go. The Kickstarter contained stolen concept art. It once again, used a bunch of buzz words. The video had nothing to do with the game itself. The Kickstarter campaign failed. When that happened, Kovtun took to encouraging people to donate directly through Space Pioneer's website. The site seems functional on the main page, and I'm quite sure the Paypal donation links work, but clicking on the forums, or anything that would actually be relevant to the game itself, lead to nowhere or provide no real information whatsoever.

Now, we come to the project that brought all of this to the public eye and brought all of this garbage to my attention. Early last year, a team calling themselves West Games, who claimed to be made up of "core developers of the STALKER franchise," began a Kickstarter campaign for Areal, a spiritual successor to STALKER. The team/project was lead by Eugene Kim, a Ukrainian, yet the Kickstarter page said that it was based in Las Vegas. Interestingly enough, the campaign money was supposed to go to a man named Leonid Kovtun. That is just the tip of the iceberg. In order to make this go faster for you, the reader, allow me to quick-list off the veritable litany of bullshit that they pushed onto people. They are in no particular order.  
*Their involvement in the STALKER series turned out to be greatly exaggerated.
*The initial version of the campaign page contained alpha footage of Stalker, although it was implied that it was footage of Areal. 
*They set the goal at a measly 50k, despite the fact that they were supposedly creating a custom engine, and planned on releasing Areal on consoles.
*Once they were called on the fact that they hadn't shown anything original, they posted an update with screens of the Areal "prototype." Those screens turned out to be comprised of store-bought Unity assets. A whole map, in fact, from the Unity Apocalypse pack. All they did was make the billboard on the map say "Areal." That's all.
*Their first "gameplay footage" was, once again, store bought Unity assets. 
*When the word "scam" started to circulate, West Games (Eugene Kim specifically), accused the press of being dishonest, posted personal information of Kickstarter backers in public areas, created fake Kickstaer accounts that spammed the comments section of their campaign (in order to troll or bury those that knew what was happening), and even claimed to receive a letter of support from Vladimir Putin.
*Eugene Kim performed a reddit AMA that was a complete disaster. Kim refused to answer basic questions about the project and the company, and the whole thing only reinforced the notion that something sketchy was happening. Several accounts that had been created that day seemed to be the majority of the positive feedback being directed at Kim. 
*It didn't look like they were going to hit their goal, but at the last minute, a couple of backers contributed several thousand to push them over the edge.
*Thankfully, Kickstarter suspended the project, but West Games tried the same "fund us directly through our site" crap that was attempted with Space Pioneer.
*I'm sure I have forgotten a couple things.

Have you read enough yet? Is your skin crawling? Its not over yet. Late last year, a website was privately registered through Godaddy. World Wide Funder claims to be a crowd funding website similar to Kickstarter. And wouldn't you know it, Areal (now rebranded as STALKER: Apocalypse) and Space Pioneer (rebranded as Project Tool) are both on the site. Any money donated goes straight to the project owners. They don't need to meet their goals. Most of the links on the project pages, predictably, lead nowhere. At least one of the very limited assets shown on the STALKER: Apocalypse age comes standard with Unreal 4. Project Tool's campaign video is actually a video stolen from an indie film creator, which can be found here. The rest of the projects on the site are clearly scams. All written in the same broken English, one of the projects is for Counter-Strike 1.6 for Pete sake. Stolen Youtube videos, generic images found on the web, and complete nonsense make up the majority of the content on the site. They even keep pushing back the end dates of the funding campaigns on the projects.

So, let's piece it all together. The Kovtuns, Eugene Kim, and the people that are involved with them are scamming people out of their money by claiming to be working on projects that members of the gaming community would love to see. Everything they display as part of their projects is either stolen, or thrown together with the laziest of efforts possible. Every time one of their scams fails, they come up with something new. They are heartlessly preying on people's gullibility and passion for certain genres and intellectual properties. They are bad people. They are scumbags. And it makes me sick that there are people out there damaging the gaming community in such a way. To be fair, this entire situation has basically become a joke amongst most members of the gaming community, because almost everyone sees this for what it is. However, if even one dollar goes to these charlatans, then we have failed in stopping them. This points back to the importance of being an informed consumer. Now, people shouldn't NEED to lock their car doors, carry mace, or make sure they aren't being scammed when donating to a crowd-funded project, but the reality of the world we live in is that it is often necessary to take precautions in order to protect ourselves.

Hopefully the gaming community can come together and get their scam site (and all future scams of theirs) shut down. Until that time, spread the word. We need to stick together and protect each other. The members of the community are often at odds with one another. "This platform is better. This game sucks. You're a fanboy." However, we should be able to put all of our differences aside in these situations and work together to put a stop to this sort of thing. This behavior goes beyond gaming. Scams are something that threaten to affect everyone, every day. Whether its the old "Nigerian Prince" e-mail scam, or credit card fraud, we have to put a stop to it. The first step in halting this sort of behavior is paying attention, and noticing the little indicators that something is amiss. So, in the words of a great man, "Stay frosty and alert."