Gothic 3 G3 and game development in general (split from news thread)

^^ ^^ ^^

Bill and Squeek
- you really rock! :thumbsup:

So, now you will be the guys like getting rid of the "original sin" of program development... our biggest hope.
Here you have 0 bucks! :deal:
Solve it! NOW!
:devilish:

No, seriously, true words of wisdom from you.
So, if you have more insights like these on coming occasions (and you can bet just a body part of your choice on it, there will be more of them - this thread is like a guarantee of life for that! *lol* )
... just waste it away.


Kind Regards,
Ragon
 
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Software development will always be more of an art than a science, therefore the relationship between creator and financer will always be touch-and-go. Just the nature of the beast. However, I think 2 related things would really help the oh-too-common scenario Bill laid out above:

1) Project Management Discipline: bring in seasoned, software development project management professionals. They are worth their weight in gold. Having been an SD PM for going on 10 years, I find it common for organizations to be very resistant to this, for various reasons. Often, they balk at what they think will be too much bureaucracy, analysis and documentation that will slow the project down too much. Ironically, it's often due to the absence of true PM'ing that SD projects suffer delays and overruns. Business, by it's nature, is very short-sighted. People want stuff now! It's hard to get people to understand that the extra investment in PM methodologies up front pays off hugely down the line.

2) Scope control and management - focus on setting good boundaries on the project so that something really fun gets built, but it’s not so much work that there isn’t the time and resources to do it really well and by the deadline. It's all too easy to add a little here, expand a bit there, and so on over the course of the project always thinking (short-sighted again) that it's just a little change and can't be that hard to do. All the while, the scope is creeping larger and larger until there's that "oh shit!" moment when it dawns on the team that they're way behind. Of course, if they had a professional PM, there wouldn't be any "oh shit!" moments, as the PM would have headed that crap off at the pass way earlier. But, I digress. This point is related to the first as Scope Management is a key function of the PM.

So, there you have it. Game Industry! Grow up and hire some professional, certified PM's for your damn projects! :)
 
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Who cares about what JooWood did, the bottom line is that they just left their game and their fans with a buggy game, and the only real patch they wanted do was the expansion pack, simply because they are too much of assholes to fix the game for free. Hell, I remember Wizards&Warriors, I got it the first day it came out, buggy as hell, Activision wouldn't pay for any patches, so D.W Bradley and team, made an unoficall patch from their own time and pocket. PB has no excuse what so ever.
 
Gryniaris
"1. PB was working in Milestones..."
Maybe it was milestones, but your summation, can't be right Dev's under the control of a pub don't decide release dates.

Moriendor
"nothing personal, folks, you keep believing and reading what you want to read/believe... no problem"
Well I didn't take it personally, nor are my comments intended as personal, just friendly banter. :)

"Of course, these are all subject to change and can only be considered as "facts" in a very loose sense but here goes:"

Lots of really good info there and as always, thanks for your efforts. :)


"I think I've posted and translated those like about 116 times by now"
Well, Morie since I have been playing Vanguard for the last 2 or 3 months having a blast and since this happened during that time, I wouldn't know about your facts. . :)
I really don’t feel like reading 3 months worth of threads to try to find it, however if you would provide a link, I would be glad to learn the (your?) facts.

""I guess some people are just facts-resistant (like where did you get that crap about the engine from, Ace?"
For the most part I didn't claim facts, I did point to statically accuracies such as PB IS capable of making the title they envisioned, as I recall.
Now if your claiming facts, that PB is NOT skilled enough to make the game they almost has finished, I would like to see a link. :)
Btw, at least at this point my retention seems fine, it's just your info (facts?) are unknown to me.

Also, never claimed, poor PB, but they clearly are capable of a quality title, if the former publisher doesn't have a clue as to what it takes to make State of the Art, Innovation and Quality they should get the Hell Out of Making State of the Art Games.
Oh, wait they, just did, now they are working as mostly B publisher. :)

The question isn't, did PB make mistakes or not, No One is claiming such nonsense, the fact is the former publisher wanted to be a Player but they did NOT have the funds or the ability to see the Vision nor the Hard Work necessary to see the project through.

Until I see your facts, at this point your point seem to be intentionally claiming my argument it based on the "poor PB syndrome" which it wasn't clearly..

Now if stating accuracies about PB capabilities makes you think, poor PB, well that could be because it would be like the Catholic church hiring Da vinci to make the greatest painting ever painted, then when he wasn't finished after 3 years, to kick him out before it was completed, because they couldn't afford the greatest.

It would seem obvious who the want is to be, in this equation, we know PB can and former publisher can’t..
So if you have some info about PB saying, "OMG we are teh Suck, cause we couldn't do what we wanted to, we are NOT skilled enough", I would love to see, it. :)
Or possible how the former publisher has published AAA title after title with amazing success, cause then you would have a case.

Addtionally even if my obvious attemps as humor and retorical devies, failed doesnt really mean the point is inaacurate.

It won't matter to me of PB makes a Sic Fi or Fantasy, thier ablities at character and world development surpass most developers.
 
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Well, Morie since I have been playing Vanguard for the last 2 or 3 months having a blast and since this happened during that time, I wouldn't know about your facts.
I really don’t feel like reading 3 months worth of threads to try to find it, however if you would provide a link, I would be glad to learn the (your?) facts.

*Sigh*.... here we go again, this time exclusively for you :) ...

Note: The people are... WoG = World of Gothic; Stefan = Stefan Berger, Marketing, JoWooD; Johann = Johann "Ivan Ertlov" Ertl, Community Management, JoWooD and Kai = Kai Rosenkranz, Piranha Bytes.


WoG: Time and again one can read in the forums that you put pressure on the Piranhas due to financial reasons and that you did not let them finish development in peace. Could you make a statement regarding the relationship between JoWooD and the Piranhas?
Johann: I'll leave it to Stefan or else KaiRo to say more about this but I think anyone who has ever talked to the Piranhas on this subject knows what blatant nonsense that is.


Stefan: A release date is always decided upon in mutual agreement. Anything else would just not make any sense...


Kai: JoWooD has certainly not put any pressure on us. After all we decided to work with JoWooD for specific reasons. It was specifically due to this close relationship and the short ways of communication that we were at all able to accomplish such a project. One of the big and prominent publishers would have put a lot more pressure on us. An extension would have been barely possible in that case. Let me put it this way, we had the exact right kind of publisher that we needed to accomplish such a game. Together, we managed to build this game stone by stone (I'm talking about the milestones) and stone no. 56 was the goldmaster.
Goldmaster Interview, September 27, 2006


...and from Mike Hoge, Piranha Bytes...




At this point I got to back up JoWooD for once [note: the exact expression for "back up" used by Mike is translated like this according to the LEO web dictionary: to take up the cudgels for someone]. It does not meet my approval that people in this forum are picking on our publisher. It is not only due to the market strategy of our publisher that Gothic 3 was released with bugs. I've already said it in my first post and I don't mind repeating it once more: We've had three years of time and we would have had to come up with a more bug-free result. We are working on patches and a restructuring of the company to improve upon this in the future ("avoid" would be utopian).
Answers of Piranha Bytes Forums Thread, October 27, 2006​
For the most part I didn't claim facts, I did point to statically accuracies such as PB IS capable of making the title they envisioned, as I recall.
Now if your claiming facts, that PB is NOT skilled enough to make the game they almost has finished, I would like to see a link

I once again got to wonder what the hell you are talking about as I did not claim such things ;) . I was just questioning what you wrote in your first post (which wasn't the most comprehensible one if I may say so). What you basically said was that PB had to rewrite the entire game from scratch because JoWooD could not afford to buy PB the engine licence that PB wanted, right? Sorry, but that's so wrong it's almost comical.
In reality, PB licenced GameBryo very early on and played around with it for a while before deciding that it was not suitable for them. Then they dumped GameBryo and decided to create their own engine (called Genome). The reasons given by PB for creating their own engine were that they wanted an engine with no loading zones at all and secondly that they wanted an engine that would allow them to auto-generate content (like putting a quest together via a few simple mouse clicks) in order to save time.

That's all. JoWooD certainly did not play a role in PB's decision on which engine to use. Nor were they constantly on the verge of bankruptcy as you claim. They made a deal with Koch Media near the beginning of Gothic 3's development which secured the financing of Gothic 3's development and also averted any immediate danger of going bankrupt.

Also, never claimed, poor PB, but they clearly are capable of a quality title, if the former publisher doesn't have a clue as to what it takes to make State of the Art, Innovation and Quality they should get the Hell Out of Making State of the Art Games.

You do know that G2: NotR was published by JoWooD, right? Besides, JoWooD really only needs (needed) to know PB's bank account number. They do not have to have a clue how to make games. They are only the publisher.

Oh, wait they, just did, now they are working as mostly B publisher.

They are and always have been just a B publisher. They might currently be slipping to C class but they've never ever played in the A league so far.

The question isn't, did PB make mistakes or not, No One is claiming such nonsense, the fact is the former publisher wanted to be a Player but they did NOT have the funds or the ability to see the Vision nor the Hard Work necessary to see the project through.

They didn't? Am I just imagining the existence of my Gothic 3 copy then? Weird...

It would seem obvious who the want is to be, in this equation, we know PB can and former publisher can’t..

They can't "what?" exactly? I still don't get it...

So if you have some info about PB saying, "OMG we are teh Suck, cause we couldn't do what we wanted to, we are NOT skilled enough", I would love to see, it.
Or possible how the former publisher has published AAA title after title with amazing success, cause then you would have a case.

Again... what the hell are you talking about? Please point to where I made such assumptions or claims. Please quote.
 
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Surely one thing I have to admit to PB. They've got the balls to tell that they made mistakes.
 
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you guys should calm down...:-/... there's no point in this... it is over.. it has been said before... no need to repeat and comment the same things! They won't make patches... and PB will make a new game! Enjoy Gothic 3 as it was meant to...
(unofficial patches will come :D)

Cheers!
 
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I don't think I have said that PB wasn't at least partly to blame for the unfinished state that G3 was released in when it was released in oct/nov. 2006. PB did enter into the contract with Jowood, expecting to be paid at Milestones in their development, so of course, they also had an (economic) reason for releasing the gamem, G3, when they did. However, Jowood must at least partly be to blame fort his as Jowood signed the Milestones slips (or papers) during the development of
G3.

Between the 1.06 and the 1.12 patch, I know, Mike and other PB's at WoG did say that at least some of the patches were paid for by PB themselves out of their own pocket. And it seems that Jowood wanted PB to fix the flaws in G3, without them getting paid at all. It also seems that Jowood wanted PB to make patches for G3 with the same engine they had uses for G3, and didn't want to listen to PB's objections to this. PB adviced, according to WoG, that it would be better to develop an add-on for G3, and then incorporate the changes into the existing G3's .exe file.
Or that it would better to start developing for G4, and then decompile, reverse engineer, or dissamble the game's .exe file, and then assemble it again. Then taking what they have learned form this, and applying this to the existing .exe file for G3. However, Jowood, wouldn't hear of this, even if it seems to be smartest move tech wise. They apparently, (and by they, I mean Jowood) wanted to make it so that PB would make the 1.1 GB patch without getting paid at all. And I don't know any professional people, who will work without getting paid for their work.
 
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Surely one thing I have to admit to PB. They've got the balls to tell that they made mistakes.

I'd say "decency" is the more appropriate term, not "balls" :) .
 
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Yeah, showing your balls isn't decent!! :)
 
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