titsup
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Post by titsup on Jan 30, 2016 19:43:59 GMT
People laud the participation of the devs with the community. There's one notable name that tends to be a little less active than the rest though.
I decided to see how frequently RG, whose name is attached to this game, posts on the forums. To my surprise, it was less often than I thought. In the past year, he's posted just 24 times. He went four months without making a single post between September 11 and January 5.
What sorts of feedback is RG giving with his responses. Let's sample a few of the 24 posts he has made in the last year.
One third (8) of RG's posts were in response to a single thread. Here are a few of his valuable contributions:
What others insights does RG provide the community about the creation of his game spread across his other posts:
Well, there you have 15 of the 24 posts RG has made in the last year in their entirety. No posted thoughts on design ideas or interesting insight into world creation. No explaining why certain features are the way they are or how and why things have changed. No evidence of his own personal stamp being placed on the game other than the fact that his name is associated with the title.
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calico
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Post by calico on Jan 30, 2016 19:45:52 GMT
People laud the participation of the devs with the community. There's one notable name that tends to be a little less active than the rest though. I decided to see how frequently RG, whose name is attached to this game, posts on the forums. To my surprise, it was less often than I thought. In the past year, he's posted just 24 times. He went four months without making a single post between September 11 and January 5. What sorts of feedback is RG giving with his responses. Let's sample a few of the 24 posts he has made in the last year. One third (8) of RG's posts were in response to a single thread. Here are a few of his valuable contributions: What others insights does RG provide the community about the creation of his game spread across his other posts: Well, there you have 15 of the 24 posts RG has made in the last year in their entirety. No posted thoughts on design ideas or interesting insight into world creation. No explaining why certain features are the way they are or how and why things have changed. No evidence of his own personal stamp being placed on the game other than the fact that his name is associated with the title. Yes, where is he? A huge thread like final wipe and not a peep.
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Post by dewderonomy on Jan 30, 2016 20:01:25 GMT
I've seen Cleverbot give more insight and scintillating responses.
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Post by zincturtle on Jan 30, 2016 21:58:53 GMT
Honestly, I see it as his way of distancing himself from the project, given things are not going to be particularly positive from here on out.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 30, 2016 22:08:50 GMT
No evidence of his own personal stamp being placed on the game other than the fact that his name is associated with the title. Except that he owns Portalarium, hired the staff, is CEO and creative director.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 30, 2016 22:12:52 GMT
He can't exactly "distance himself" from the very project he created. If SotA tanks, Portalarium will go down with it. But he'll just start another company. <shrugs> "Garriott founded a new video game development company in 2009, called Portalarium. His current project is Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues where his primary role is as CEO and Creative Director." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garriott
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 30, 2016 22:17:49 GMT
The reason I'm picky about this distinction is, people will read this thread and say, "Ya, can't blame RG."
It's utterly impossible to be a CEO and let others completely railroad you and run the company from under you. It does not happen. And if it does, the company is a failure.
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Post by zincturtle on Jan 31, 2016 0:17:41 GMT
In light of the disparity between the Kickstarter goals, what RG preached in the 2012/2013, and what will be delivered on July 28th, I could see him being... hm, disappointed, philosophically?
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Jan 31, 2016 2:02:17 GMT
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Jan 31, 2016 2:10:06 GMT
It is possible to run a project, at any level like CEO or just a PM, and be totally lied to by your staff... Just a thought...
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dodgy
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Post by dodgy on Jan 31, 2016 2:19:23 GMT
It is possible to run a project, at any level like CEO or just a PM, and be totally lied to by your staff... Just a thought... Well on this scale you are assuming he is a retard Come on hes not invested Same as with Tabula Rasa. How invested could he of been if he spent a year in Russia and life threatening surgery to go into space? Hes a hack bud
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Jan 31, 2016 2:21:15 GMT
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Post by dewderonomy on Jan 31, 2016 2:31:46 GMT
It is possible to run a project, at any level like CEO or just a PM, and be totally lied to by your staff... Just a thought... That's just another level of incompetence, and more inexcusable than simply being bad at your job. Also, as Caliya pointed out, he is Creative Director. That means he's the fucking final word on any and every mechanic in the game. He might not design it. He might not develop it. He may not paint it or sculpt it or texture it or animate it. But you better believe his job description is to make sure it all makes sense and is fun in the end. All roads lead to the Creative Director; they might not stop there, but they definitely go through.
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Jan 31, 2016 2:52:33 GMT
I see. I was not aware that the title of Creadive Director entitled final say on all things, I'm not overly familiar with this game dev stuff. I just has opinions!
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titsup
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Post by titsup on Jan 31, 2016 2:56:22 GMT
why do people lie about shit like this? He made posts January 4th. It makes people look like fools when they make claims that can be proven false in all of 25 seconds. Guy last logged in on Thursday when I originally checked and made this post.
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Jan 31, 2016 3:09:09 GMT
why do people lie about shit like this? He made posts January 4th. It makes people look like fools when they make claims that can be proven false in all of 25 seconds. Guy last logged in on Thursday when I originally checked and made this post. SoL explained the error. SoL was looking at the "Lord British" Forum account not the "Richard Garriott" forum account. One would expect that Port would have barred certain account names like "Lord British" too haha. But your opening post shows, posting or not, the interactivity with him seems to be lagging. Unfortunately I think the Whales that show up in person, get most of his time.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 31, 2016 13:26:41 GMT
It is possible to run a project, at any level like CEO or just a PM, and be totally lied to by your staff... Just a thought... I understand that when someone is highly creative, that doesn't necessarily mean they are capable of running a company. All roads still point to incompetence on his part. <shrugs>
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Post by Membrane_on_Vacation on Jan 31, 2016 13:53:32 GMT
I don't know guys. "No man is an island" and all that shit. I'm just gonna get in all your faces for a moment because it wasn't long ago you said Richard couldn't code. So if he can't code, he cannot solely be blamed for the entire thing for the simple fact that he absolutely must rely on others. I'm not saying anyone has lied to him for certain, I'm not saying they've omitted details, or that he doesn't know how unhappy his community is. Just that it is a possibility based on my own experiences in life. Sometimes a single strong person in a role of leadership can make a difference, but everyone needs help none the less. Everyone relies on someone. I got my first job in Sydney from my ex's father, second job from her uncle, third from a worker who I roomed with on the 2nd job, and so on. That has something to do with me, of course, but I had help. I didn't learn everything I know by myself for myself, help was certainly required. I work in IT. At one of the jobs I worked in the past, the general manager knew nothing about IT. He was only business, so an easy mark for internal and external project managers and was burnt by them repeatedly. When he discovered he had an issue with his staff telling the truth, then that staff was asked to leave. Not him. Again I know this is different, because Richard has worked with these same people for years and he himself has basically always been doing something similar. So I'm not saying he has no blame in any of this at all but from my personal experience, buck stopping with him as a creative director or not, you can't just pass the buck up to him and say he is the sole or even largest reason. I can only apply the experiences I've had personally with a guestimate here, clearly. I don't work at Port, and I truly don't have any great insight into their processes. Like all of you I can only absorb what is happening around me and try to extrapolate from that data. Data where TEK attends a Duke roundtable, hears nothing about POTs, then suddenly POTs are a thing and everything talked about there technically still unfinished. Data where you can clearly see that Portalarium is engaging with the community, but which community members, are they the right ones, and why that person to begin with??? I would really really like to know what kind of process they have internally that allows them to drive those sorts of decisions, but I don't think that we ever will. Let me hold up one example, Argyle posted about it today kind of, which would be the music. A lot of Richard's comments were in replies to music submissions. Richard made the decision to personally review and approve all of the music in the game. I haven't heard a lot of people running around saying the music sucks Some of it is very nice. It is hard to put into words, I'm not the best writer or thinker around here lol. But too long didn't read version; I can't see a case yet where I would place the blame squarely on one person's shoulders. Though I also cannot see a case where you couldn't place some blame on them.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 31, 2016 14:18:01 GMT
If what you say is the case, he's inept to hire the right people, which makes him a bad manager, which makes him someone who never should be a CEO.
Grunts can never be blamed. Lying or not. He logs into the game and sees its progress. If he doesn't keep up with his own industry, what does that say about him as a game developer?
He's just a regular guy who once had some luck, and when his luck changed to reality, he sued a lot of people and blamed them.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 31, 2016 14:30:48 GMT
RG happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was in the gaming industry at a time that it was very new and not many demands. That was his "luck" part.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 31, 2016 15:34:33 GMT
Re: decentralized vs. centralized (massive vs not) Over a very late lunch, we discussed this topic. I found it pretty interesting, and maybe others might too. I don't have anything personal against RG. I mostly look at his career from the business perspective, because the gaming perspective is highly subjective. Some of these points may not be fully accurate, but from the outside looking in, it's difficult to be accurate. Joviex may have much better knowledge about this. 1. Choice of using Unity - the decision for which game engine to use is not left up to the grunts. It requires a team effort to evaluate. Unity was a poor choice unless they hired people with the skill-set to make the game decentralized. Unity was not suitable unless a skilled programmer made a lot of modifications to the back end. This may not have been cost effective. But they needed something to make a game demo and it was easy to do with Unity. 2. A decentralized system would have been prone to hacking the infrastructure. 3.The management seems to consist of control freaks. When people want to create their own content, Portalarium wants full control. A decentralized system would prohibit Portalarium from keeping tabs on player content. 4. It appears as if they didn't think it through well enough, that it was too late because they already started using Unity. Thus, why they went to "massive" multiplayer. Of course, the game may not be able to be called massive because there aren't enough players at any one time to call it that.
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Post by zincturtle on Jan 31, 2016 15:53:37 GMT
If he wrote Ultima III, which I think the claim is that he did, then at one point in his life, he did know how to code. I mean, sure, he hasn't released the source, but there's evidence he probably has it? gallery.ultimacodex.com/hand-written-assembly-language-for-ultima-3/Sure, that was on the 6502, it's an 8 bit processor, it can only address 64k, (32k RAM, 32k ROM). You could literally write out more than 64k in a single day, if you were just typing text, but that's not how writing and troubleshooting assembly works, and IIRC, there were no compilers for the Apple ][ series at that time, but I was young, so I could be wrong. I think it's fair to say at one point, he had something going on inside his melon that was creative and profitable. U4 is pretty impressive, especially in a pre-Internet age where you couldn't ask Uncle Google for all the answers. But less than 2 posts per month, on his own official forums, in an entire year? Sorry, that's unforgivable. Even the zealots can't excuse that level of disinterest.
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Post by dewderonomy on Jan 31, 2016 17:32:58 GMT
I'm just gonna get in all your faces for a moment because it wasn't long ago you said Richard couldn't code. So if he can't code, he cannot solely be blamed for the entire thing for the simple fact that he absolutely must rely on others. Sometimes a single strong person in a role of leadership can make a difference, but everyone needs help none the less. Everyone relies on someone. I got my first job in Sydney from my ex's father, second job from her uncle, third from a worker who I roomed with on the 2nd job, and so on. That has something to do with me, of course, but I had help. I didn't learn everything I know by myself for myself, help was certainly required. So I'm not saying he has no blame in any of this at all but from my personal experience, buck stopping with him as a creative director or not, you can't just pass the buck up to him and say he is the sole or even largest reason. So I'm the supervisor of a web optimization team at an online marketing company (it sounds a lot more illustrious than it is, I promise). While I don't directly talk to the clients (mostly), I am responsible for training, coaching, answering questions, positioning, and keeping up to date on our products so that I can pass that onto my team. Y'see, if my team fucks up, if they do stupid shit, I'm held accountable; I have to monitor that and ensure they aren't screwing up and, if so, I have to fix it. That is the expectation held for me and my job description, it is my responsibility and why I get paid more than them. Being what I am, I am also responsible for knowing what's coming down the pipeline as my department gives walkthroughs and provides tech support, so new updates, bug fixes, glitches, failures with our product or third party products we use and so on are all pertinent to my team's jobs and, therefore, my job to service my team. That means knowing what the fuck other departments are doing: sales, fulfillment, development, etc. I'm not saying I don't need help, nor are we saying that Garriott doesn't have to rely on others; I do every single day at my job. I don't know the programming or the coding; I don't know the backends of the marketing and advertising platforms. I do, however, know how it all works client-side, because that's my fucking job. I do, however, know that when a client doesn't like something or there's a failure in the way the product functions, it's my responsibility to make sure it gets unfucked. I'm not a creative director there (arguably I am in my crew that's making a video game), but all roads between development and client usage run through me. I won't go into details of how I had to make sure that happened (basically make a lot of friends and bend the rules because my bosses are fucking retarded), but with someone like the "Creative Director and CEO", he doesn't need to play politics to make sure the trains run on time. He holds the fucking key to the paychest. It's his goddamn company. So as far as practicality goes, at best he is an incompetent leader and a shitty manager who cannot hire, train, monitor and direct his staff. I would also say that as Creative Director, he is failing miserably in quality control and ensuring that the " creation" he's fucking " directing", supposedly, isn't a pile of shit. And lastly, as far as coding goes, I don't particularly care if he's getting elbows-deep in the programming of SotA; his job is to make sure a particular vision is accurately manufactured per his direction, and he's fucking sitting around on his own dick in that department. I get it, you want to be "fair", but you have to hold people accountable. His failing is that he hasn't been doing that, he hasn't been holding his team accountable for the shit they're turning out, and it's his job to. And this is, of course, all assuming that these crappy mechanics and overall design of the game is not his doing. Guys, this whole post is about Garriott being innocent in this, and he's still guilty of being dogshit. Being that he is responsible for how all of this shapes up, it's quite likely he is apathetic, or worse, actively encouraging these designs. But either way you cut it, this guy isn't the gun manufacturer you may want to paint him as; he's the triggerman.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 31, 2016 18:24:48 GMT
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calico
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Post by calico on Jan 31, 2016 18:30:37 GMT
RG happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was in the gaming industry at a time that it was very new and not many demands. That was his "luck" part. no, I don't agree with this. JRPG's would not have copied the ultima style if it was just luck...his games at the time were revolutionary. It's unfair to say well you compare them to games today, no, you have to compare them to games at the time and they were way beyond them.
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Post by dewderonomy on Jan 31, 2016 19:10:24 GMT
JRPG's would not have copied the ultima style if it was just luck...his games at the time were revolutionary. That's a bit of a stretch. Temple of Apshai was also a similar game that came out around the same time as Akalabeth. Not to say that they didn't borrow from Garriott, either, but then again nearly everything early Ultima was taken directly from LotR and D&D. That being said, while Garriott did create a very advanced game for the era it was in, he was still in a time and place that had zero expectations for games and therefore almost no standards for what a game should be. I think that's what Caliya was referring to as "luck"; it's easy to impress when the competition is using @ symbols and hashtags for orcs and skeletons.
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 31, 2016 20:25:27 GMT
RG happened to be in the right place at the right time. He was in the gaming industry at a time that it was very new and not many demands. That was his "luck" part. no, I don't agree with this. JRPG's would not have copied the ultima style if it was just luck...his games at the time were revolutionary. It's unfair to say well you compare them to games today, no, you have to compare them to games at the time and they were way beyond them. Maybe I had a different perspective. I never liked any of the Ultima series (thought the storylines were cheesy) but played a host of innovative games during the same time period. If you look at games that were developed at the same time, and before, RG appears to have copied many ideas from them, use an unoriginal title of "Lord British" and country of "Britannia", and like dewderonomy said, used stories essentially borrowed from LotR & D&D. I had loads more fun playing King's Quest, for example. I couldn't bear Ultima 8, couldn't even bring myself to complete it. Or 9 for that matter. I don't understand what was legendary. Name an example and we can research the history. It's not my intent to flame RG or take him down. I'm just giving my perspective on him as a businessman.
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calico
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Post by calico on Jan 31, 2016 20:32:40 GMT
no, I don't agree with this. JRPG's would not have copied the ultima style if it was just luck...his games at the time were revolutionary. It's unfair to say well you compare them to games today, no, you have to compare them to games at the time and they were way beyond them. Maybe I had a different perspective. I never liked any of the Ultima series (thought the storylines were cheesy) but played a host of innovative games during the same time period. If you look at games that were developed at the same time, and before, RG appears to have copied many ideas from them, use an unoriginal title of "Lord British" and country of "Britannia", and like dewderonomy said, used stories essentially borrowed from LotR & D&D. I had loads more fun playing King's Quest, for example. I couldn't bear Ultima 8, couldn't even bring myself to complete it. Or 9 for that matter. I don't understand what was legendary. Name an example and we can research the history. It's not my intent to flame RG or take him down. I'm just giving my perspective on him as a businessman. Ultima 4 and the virtue system....
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Caliya
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Post by Caliya on Jan 31, 2016 20:48:07 GMT
Ultima 4 and the virtue system.... I wasn't familiar with the ultima series until around Ultima VI. Can you explain how the virtue system was legendary? In UO, because I could avoid it entirely, I never learned about it. The basic concept of it doesn't appeal to me, from what I know of it. But I'd like to understand what was new about it, and why you liked it so well.
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calico
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Post by calico on Jan 31, 2016 21:12:50 GMT
Ultima 4 and the virtue system.... I wasn't familiar with the ultima series until around Ultima VI. Can you explain how the virtue system was legendary? In UO, because I could avoid it entirely, I never learned about it. The basic concept of it doesn't appeal to me, from what I know of it. But I'd like to understand what was new about it, and why you liked it so well. There was no beat the bad guy in the game, instead it was learn if the virtues and live by their tenants...wasn't done by anyone at the time, it was all about defeating the big bad guys in all the other games. I played most of them. ultima7 as well, the world felt alive and NPC's had schedules...
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