Gothic 3 - JoWooD Comments on Patch Rumors

Something like that, yeah. Sounds like Jowood didn't want to fund the patch alongside whatever "next project" they wanted PB to work on, and PB felt unable to do a patch of the scale they felt necessary without such additional funding. Which means that Jowood considers the Gothic brand damaged goods now after G3.

This will be a difficult situation for PB, and will at the very least delay the patch considerably - until they can secure funding from a new Publisher. What a mess.

Well, around X-mas 2006 (after patch 1.12) they more or less promised to pull off the patch all by themselves. There was no "if"... like "if we can raise enough money" or anything like that.

In fact, KaiRo from PB said in an interview back then...

There are always anxious people in the community asking if we have abandoned the development of patches for Gothic III. That is naturally not the case and we would betray ourselves and our past company policy if we would leave you with an unfinished game. The majority of the team is still busy working on Gothic III while only a few of us are looking into new future projects and are discussing ideas and feasibility which is already a very important thing to do since it wouldn't be good if all of the other team members would end up idling as soon as work on Gothic III has finally been completed.

Note to PB: Not only have you flat out lied in this statement but you guys have betrayed yourselves and your company policy.
 
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Knew something didn't sound right. What a shame. We can only hope they don't flush all that work down the toilet, but instead find a way to get it out the door. Good luck, PB.
 
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O.k, so the storm has broken but which route will Piranha Bytes take now....what are the options...could a ray of sunshine emerge from behind those big dark clouds?
 
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Add this to the list of reasons why it's bad business to release software early. At this point somebody's going to have to do the right thing just because it's the right thing to do. Maybe that press release will prod someone into action.
 
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As for AoD and TBH, I don't get why you'd give them a free pass (assuming you'd have to when the time comes). You want to draw a line on quality -- so draw it.
I'm willing to make an exeption for indie devs because they represent a development I want to support. (And I expect them to be less buggy than RPGs from big companys. Maybe thats wishful thinking, time will tell, but the only almost bugfree RPGs I've played in the last years are from Spiderweb. Indies are not depending on publishers so they have less pressure to release an unfinished product.)

I think there are some trends in the genre (= RPGs but not action RPGs or MMORPGs) - a few single player RPGs from big devs like Bioware and Bethesda now and then and a rise of indie devs, while developers of medium size demise. (I hope that the Witcher will be an exeption because CD Project are self financed and therefore independent from publishers like JoWood or Atari.)

The line on quality I draw is not only about how polished a game is but also about the game by itself. The big houses want to sell millions of copies and hence they have to meet the expectations of the mass market. That means shiny graphics, extensive voice acting and to avoid everything that may frustrate some potential customers. The result are streamlined games like Oblivion and these are not my kind of games. (Heh, I feel like part of a minority, someone should save us. ;)) After all I've heard/read G3 wasn't that bad in this regard (from my point of view), but maybe thats part of their problem, at least for the US market?
 
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Well, around X-mas 2006 (after patch 1.12) they more or less promised to pull off the patch all by themselves. There was no "if"... like "if we can raise enough money" or anything like that.

In fact, KaiRo from PB said in an interview back then...

There are always anxious people in the community asking if we have abandoned the development of patches for Gothic III. That is naturally not the case and we would betray ourselves and our past company policy if we would leave you with an unfinished game. The majority of the team is still busy working on Gothic III while only a few of us are looking into new future projects and are discussing ideas and feasibility which is already a very important thing to do since it wouldn't be good if all of the other team members would end up idling as soon as work on Gothic III has finally been completed.


Note to PB: Not only have you flat out lied in this statement but you guys have betrayed yourselves and your company policy.


Sorry mate - but now you´re going a bit overboard.

There´s really nothing evident in the accompanying statement you posted for the kind of bold claim you make here.

It´s easy to pull out such a judgement with the hindsight we just gained today, however (regardless of what your gut feeling might have told you beforehand already for weeks, it was not accertained knowledge).
To insinuate that PB would have had any kind of foreknowledge on how things now finally have turned out back then already when they made this statement is wild guessing and ill-spirited speculation.

If you want to accuse them of anything, you can probably bash their naivety
(s.th. in the theme of a young company with too early success, misleading them to not re-adjust in time to the bigger challenges that were to come with that, aka G3 and it's quite screwed development).

There can be no talk of "flat out lies" from side of PB in any case, though.
If anything, they probably "betrayed" themselves before anybody else.

Come on, Moe you know better than that.
Re-invoke your ambition for some more decent journalism again (at least that´s how i always received the way RPGDot/RPGWatch positioned themselves compared to other free gaming media), please.


Save of that this is of course no verdict on who´s to blame for the "G3 misery" as we have it know.
In my eyes they both screwed it up big time, each of them in their own department
(PB in the dev and their ill-fated approach to create a brandnew, untested and feature-laden engine while vastly expanding the content scale at the same time backed with an understaffed team; Jowood in the marketing and the dishonest PR when it came to handle the no longer to hide shortcomings of the release - threatening game mags into not publishing reviews that were not in their favour - brrrr!).


Ragon, der Magier
 
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Come on, Moe you know better than that.
Re-invoke your ambition for some more decent journalism again (at least that´s how i always received the way RPGDot/RPGWatch positioned themselves compared to other free gaming media), please.

Mo left our team 1.5 years ago. Whatever opinion he expressed is his own.
 
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Exactly. I can say anything I want just like any other old troll out there :biggrin: .
Besides, Ragon, please... read the interview (all of it) and pay attention to what KaiRo from PB said. He said that they no longer want to make empty/false promises. And then he said right after that what I quoted above. He lied. Whichever way you put it or want to twist and turn it. Even the blindest PB fanboy would have to acknowledge that KaiRo flat out lied and that they have "betrayed themselves and their company policy". Those are his words, not mine. It's not my fault that he was stupid enough to (once again) make promises that they could not keep.
 
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It´s only a lie if he had reasons to assume the negotations wouldn´t come to a positive conclusion. They had made 3 projects with JoWooD. If a 4th was in danger it´s hard to believe somebody outside of the management was aware of it.
 
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It´s only a lie if he had reasons to assume the negotations wouldn´t come to a positive conclusion. They had made 3 projects with JoWooD. If a 4th was in danger it´s hard to believe somebody outside of the management was aware of it.

A lie is a lie :) . He didn't have to say what he said. It was his choice to say what he did say in that interview and if he chose to say things (especially during a "hot phase" which it undoubtedly was back then) that were not backed up by management, then he must be either incredibly crazy or incredibly retarded. He must have fully well known after all the post-release disaster that anything he says is going to be examined very carefully.
To say that they no longer want to make false promises and then to say what I quoted above means that all he said in that interview were promises that they were planning to keep for a change. Just read the interview. He even promised in the next paragraph after the one I quoted that the patch would address the balancing and fix all the engine bugs.
So... where is that patch? Did I miss that they posted the link in the meantime? ;)
No. I didn't. It's all one fat lie until they deliver that patch. And don't even get me started on all the pre-release hype and all of the unkept promises that were made by KaiRo & co back then. I'm extremely disappointed in PB. Amateurs. All of them. Good riddance! :biggrin:
 
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There we go again. Anger aside, it's not helping to just blame baseless things on PB. It's business and it went sour. No one wanted things to go that way and they probably did not expect it (or had false hope). Nobody (as far as I can tell) maliciously lied and tried to deceive the community when they made such statements in interviews. Really, what good does it do to think that? I've never understood the trolls. What makes you so sure that they did not intend to keep their promises, even if they could have known it would be hard (or even impossible)? Especially if they really care for the franchise and community. That'll blind you easily.

("Company X doesn't care about Y!" "Company X just wants our money!" "I'll never buy another product from company X or publisher Y!")

Get a life. :rolleyes:
 
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Not Ralf. Remember how he got the public opinion on PBs side. ;)
 
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I think this will end in a long drawn out legal fight that could easily destroy both companies!! That would be a pity.
 
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Despite all the anger towards PB over Gothic 3, don't forget the fact that they created 2 of the best rpg's in pc history with Gothic's 1&2. I'm sure it wasn't their intention to create the turd that Gothic 3 ended up being.
 
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I don't think of G3 as a turd!! I LIKE the game, despite its flaws; many of which have been addressed!!
 
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I think the best thing Piranha Bytes could do, is releasing the patch if there is one according to the rumors I read on the official jowood forum and here in some other thread.

Now that JW and PB are split, PB is probably looking for a new publisher. But they also said that they can’t release a patch under these circumstances. I think that’s wrong. NOW is actually the best time to release the patch if of course the patch fixes the engine-related problems and bugs and add the missing content to the game, essentially fixing the game to the state where it should have been in the first place.

Now I think PB doesn’t want to release a patch because in a short-term period they gain nothing, no money or funds. They will only strengthen the “enemy” and maybe they don’t want to do that. And keep the patch as leverage over JW. Personally I don’t like if the patch was used in that manner during negotiations. We, as paying customers, deserve a patch so that we can play the game, they promised to deliver.

But if PB can indeed launch a patch then they are in much better negotiating strength then now. In negotiations I think companies will look for the things the other company can do best and assess the talent of the people working for the company and use it to see if it’s interesting for them to invest in that company. The latest project which they are going to analyze for PB is G3. At the moment it still isn’t what it should have been. Skills are missing (like masterthief, firemage, make poison, …), there are still some enginebugs and other problems.
The engine of Gothic 3 is a decent one given enough energy and PB actually build it themselves. If PB can fix all problems with the engine then they can say that the problems that haunt G3 were the fault of JW pushing them to release an unfinished product. But that they managed to fix all the bugs with the last patch (like the one they can’t release at the moment, I don’t mean patch 1.12). Then they can show off with a finished G3, stable and fun to play.

And I also like to give an idea of a possible future publisher. Maybe PB should contact Gamecock Media Group. They are a publisher who gives developers a chance to build the game that they want to build. And developers keep the rights of all their intellectual property (IP). The only thing they ask is if a developer wants to do a sequel then that sequel has to be done with Gamecock Media Group unless they don’t want to publish a sequel then the developer can go to another publisher. But the decision to make a sequel rests solely with the developers. Gamecock doesn’t decide to make sequels. I think such a publisher is something PB really needs to make games like Gothic.

And maybe someone with connections to PB could translate and relay the info to PB.

Bleh
 
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It's a turd when compared to Gothic's 1&2

I still wouldn't call it a turd - a lesser game, certainly, but not a turd. I *like* Gothic 3, but I LOVE Gothic 1 &2.
 
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