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EVE Online Players Issued Letter of Apology by CCP CEO

Jensen Walker — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 20:45:15 +0000

CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson today issued a lengthy apology to the EVE Online community for the errors of the past few months, admitting that he had been humbled by the outcry.

Hilmar said:

“The estrangement from CCP that many of you have been feeling of late is my fault, and for that I am truly sorry. There are many contributing factors, but in the end it is I who must shoulder the responsibility for much of what has happened. In short, my zeal for pushing EVE to her true potential made me lose sight of doing the simple things right. I was impatient when I should have been cautious, defiant when I should have been conciliatory and arrogant when I should have been humble.

This soul searching took me back to when EVE was just an idea. Bringing her to life in 2003 was, in many people’s minds, impossible. But we found a way because EVE is something unique in the world. Getting her to 100,000 subscribers was an even more fantastical feat. Before long, we were launching in China, making DUST 514, merging with White Wolf to build World of Darkness, building Carbon, growing the company to 600 people, increasing our subscriber count beyond that of the population of Iceland and on and on, one resounding success after the next despite earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and even a world economic collapse.

Somewhere along the way, I began taking success for granted. As hubris set in, I became less inclined to listen to pleas for caution. Red flags raised by very smart people both at CCP and in the community went unheeded because of my stubborn refusal to allow adversity to gain purchase on our plans. Mistakes, even when they were acknowledged, often went unanalyzed, leaving the door open for them to be repeated.

You have spoken, loudly and clearly, with your words and with your actions. And there were definitely moments in recent history when I wish I would have listened more and taken a different path.

I was wrong and I admit it.”

The letter of apology tackles a number of issues which have angered EVE players, including single player Captain’s Quarters, flawed virtual goods rollout and the lackluster Incarna expansion, ending with a promise to restore the community’s trust. To facilitate this, CCP will be refocusing of all the EVE development teams on the core gameplay mechanic involving spaceships, with a winter expansion focusing on improvements to warfare and PvP, including hybrid weapons balancing, factional warfare, assault ships and capital ship balancing.

He also released this video:

The full apology can be read here, with the developer blog highlighting the winter 2011 expansion following closely on its heels.

Rockstar No Longer Publishing For Team Bondi

Chris Carlson — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:49:12 +0000

It appears Rockstar Games have made it very clear they will not be publishing Team Bondi’s next game.

Former staff members have stated that over the course of their working relationship with Team Bondi, things got progressively worse.

These former staff members stated:

I’ve heard a lot about Rockstar’s disdain for Team Bondi, and it has been made quite clear that they will not publish Team Bondi’s next game. Team Bondi are trying to find another publisher for their next title, but the relationship with Rockstar has been badly damaged – Brendan treats L.A. Noire like a success due to his vision but I think Rockstar are the ones who saved the project. They continued to sink money into L.A. Noire, and their marketing was fantastic. Without their continued support, Team Bondi would have gone under several years ago.

Just last week reports were coming in stating that Team Bondi was being investigated for brutal working conditions by the The International Game Developers Association. Staff at the studio have reported being asked to work 110-hour weeks, often without overtime pay. Studio boss Brendan McNamara himself was accused of being abusive to staff, while 130 developers have also complained of being left off the game’s credits.

The staffers continued to say:

Rockstar also made a huge contribution to the development; their producers were increasingly influential over the last two years of the game’s development, and overruled many of the insane decisions made by Team Bondi management. At a lower level, Rockstar also pitched in with programmers, animators, artists, QA, etc. Part of the conflict between Team Bondi and Rockstar was due to Rockstar’s frustration with Team Bondi’s direction, and eventually Team Bondi’s management in turn resented Rockstar for taking lots of creative control.

It’s also worth pointing out that Rockstar used to be very keen on making Team Bondi something like ‘Rockstar Sydney’ – the more they worked with Team Bondi management, the more they came to understand that this was a terrible idea.

Rockstar Games just recently published their first and now final game for Team Bondi, the critically acclaimed L.A. Noire which will be heading to PC this fall. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the game, be sure to read our review.

Via: [Eurogamer]

L.A. Noire Developer Being Investigated For Brutal Working Conditions

Chris Carlson — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 18:33:36 +0000

The International Game Developers Association is investigating L.A. Noire developer Team Bondi following reports of brutal working conditions at the Australian studio.

IGDA chair Brian Robbins stated that they intend to look into claims made earlier this month and wants to hear from any affected Team Bondi employees.

Certainly reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole. We encourage any Team Bondi employee and/or family member to email qol@igda.org with comments about the recent past and current situation – positive or negative.”

Staff at the studio have reported being asked to work 110-hour weeks, often without overtime pay. Studio boss Brendan McNamara was accused of being abusive to staff, while 130 developers have complained of being left off the game’s credits.

McNamara says these allegations are untrue and his studio’s working conditions are not unfair.

Tim Schafer Receiving Lifetime Achievement Award at IndieCade

Dylan Duarte — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 21:42:01 +0000

At this year’s IndieCade awards, which is a part of the larger International Festival of Independent Games, game developer Tim Schafer will receive a lifetime achievement award.

Schafer is well known to gamers for crafting funny, creative games, such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and more. Schafer was chosen, in part, because he is the “risk-taking, boundary pushing spirit at the heart of the independent gaming community.”

Schafer will be given the award by fellow developer Ron Gilbert. The festival will take place from October 8th to 10th in Culver City, California.

Not that Schafer doesn’t deserve it, but am I the only one who finds it odd when someone who’s not on the brink of death receives a lifetime achievement award?

Age of Conan Interview: Nipples, Religion, and Fanboy Arguments

Jonathan Zungre — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:17:15 +0000

When I got the chance to ask Jorgen Tharaldsen, the man in charge of the massive Age of Conan MMO (massively massive), I went straight to the heart of importance: sex, God, and why it was developed for the Xbox 360 and not the PS3. Check it out!

Zungre: I’ve seen a lot of the violence in the game, but what are the sexual aspects of Age of Conan? Can you get married or do you just go around getting freaky…

Tharaldsen: Yeah you can, of course you can get married. We haven’t put a system to it, but there is no sexual aspect to the game.

Zungre: There is none?

Tharaldsen: No, there is no sexual aspect to the game. And that’s the thing. And a lot of people will say “Conan, it’s a mature game.” You can get undressed, you know, you can see your nipples. You can be completely naked. And there are certain quests, like you speak to a brothel mama, you rescue a prostitute, stuff like that, but you can’t actually have sex in the game, and we’ve been very careful in avoiding any of that.

When we [originally] said there would be no nipples in the US, there was, like, an uproar. “What?! No nipples in the US! It’s a major crisis!” We had, like, comics being made about it and thousands of forum posts.

Nipples are in… and by that I mean they are out.

And there was a leak that we were reportedly having mini sex games like in God of War in the game and the Internet went crazy. “Whoa, will this mean rape?” and will this mean this and that. People just went off and we’ve never had it.

Zungre: Are there any type of religious aspects to the game? Can you worship Crom?

Tharaldsen: Definitely, all of that. All the different cultures have their own gods, and you’ll see all the cities and all the cultures being made with that in mind. You can see how [our created character] is a Stygian guy. You know that Stygians worship Set, the snake god. And you can see [how he has Set and pictures of snakes in his clothing].

The red lights in the hotel room make Jorgen look like he was born of fire and brimstone.

And you can get the avatars of the gods. There’s some demi-gods you can interact with. And, of course, there’s demons. Like [our created character] could shape into his demon form.

[The gods] aren’t coming down, with the finger from the sky, kind of Monte Pythonist approach, but they’re really there. Close. And people worship them.

Zungre: Did you learn anything from the release of the Conan game that came out last October? It was kind of greeted very luke-warmly. Did you learn anything from that?

Tharaldsen: No, not really. (Zungre laugh!) No, we didn’t learn anything valuable. I think we have chosen a very different focus for our game. And we spent a great many years on building an MMO world, where they built a single player world. So we have gone for a very different approach.

There you could play Conan, where in our game Conan is a more distant character as a king. So, we have had a very different focus for our game.

Don’t worry — Age of Conan’s “different focus” still involves lots of violence.

Zungre: What about the interaction with the people on Xbox Live? Do you have any hopes for that?

Tharaldsen: Yes, but first we’re coming with a complete community focus. And we’re going to reveal that once we’re done with the PC version, simply because we are faced with a large set of challenges which single player games simply aren’t met with in the same way. What about Achievement Points for a game that never ends? That kind of stuff, you know. How do people chat, how do they interact outside the game? Can PC gamers and Xbox gamers play together? Yes, we would like them to. We’ll see how it eventually winds up and what Microsoft wants as well. So we’re guinea pigging our way into this. It’s an interesting challenge.

Zungre: Why did you make the decision to go Microsoft (Windows and Xbox) instead of Sony?

Tharaldsen: Because it’s a very similar code. Xbox and PC are very similar in terms of the code base. And at the time when we started the development of Conan there was only one company with an online strategy, and that was Microsoft.

Zungre: Because this was five years ago.

Tharaldsen: Yes, exactly. They’ve done a fantastic job at bringing online to the consoles, and it was simply easier for us. A Wii version would have been impossible. Playstation 3 would mean putting it up as a completely different game with its own code base. There’s quite a lot of code run in this game. It’s a lot larger than any of the normal single player games.

Video and Pics from the event soon! I held the Conan Sword!

Ratchet and Clank HD Pixelation Issue? Insomniac Responds

Patrick Steen — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:53:14 +0000

There has been some discussion about the recently released demo of Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction for the Playstation 3 on the well known gaming forum Neogaf. A very select few have been having some visual troubles with the game, resulting in a pixelated mess on their HDTVs. This is surprising, since most who have experienced the beauty of Insomniac’s game can see that it is very sharp and pretty damn special to say the least. So what is going on here?

On some 1080p HDTV’s Ratchet and Clank appears to be pixelated, or in the best possible words – a garbled mess. Now reports of this have been few and far between, but it seems that although being a 720p game, when 720p is selected on the display options for the Playstation 3 the game does not appear as it should on some HDTV’s (a 52inch 1080p Sony Bravia is one of the mentioned televisions). When 720p is unchecked, leaving only 1080i and 1080p the picture in fact clears up but at the bottom-right of the screen is a block of broken up, fuzziness.

What could be the problem? Well some research has been done at the Beyond3d forums, suggesting that Ratchet and Clank is 704p or 704by1280 pixels instead of the regular 720by1280. This is unlike the Halo 3 problem of being a 640p image (or even Conan at 576p) being upscaled to 720p (and higher) since Ratchet and Clank is not upscaled by the Playstation3.

Upscaling from 640p to 720p would cause some strange exaggeration of aliasing, and other minor problems with picture quality. Instead, Ratchet and Clank cuts off 8pixels above and below, meaning the remaining image will still be rendered at 720p but with small black bars above and below, such as you would see when you watch an HD film on your television. A 1080p film will have black borders above and below, thus not using all the pixels, but the quality that is displayed still means it is 1080p. Ratchet and Clank is even less extreme than this, since the black borders would be almost unnoticeable if your HDTV didn’t use overscan to remove them completely. This image is sent from the Playstation to your television, and then the overscan of your television will make the final picture fit the screen, thus not showing the black bars.

Ratchet and Clank being 704p is thus a clever way to save some pixels without impacting visual quality, for Ratchet and Clank is so gorgeous to experience, especially at 60fps, that you will double check to make sure you are not playing through a Pixar film. But could this be a problem for some 1080i/p HDTV’s? It’s not clear if it is, but it could be due to these televisions upscaling from 704p without overscan.

Whatever the problem is, Insomniac seems to be keen to get it fixed for every HDTV out there. ~~While we have yet to confirm that the following is indeed from an employee of Insomniac, it appears that one~~ One of the Insomniac team members has personally posted on the Neogaf forum asking exactly what the trouble is. ~~If it is a member of Insomniac, it would be~~ This is proof of just how down to earth the developer is.

“Hey guys,

Can you send me any brand/model numbers of TVs you have if you are having issues and what the issue is, plus what settings you are running (screen caps are helpful too).

We believe the lower right corner garbling issue appears to only be happening with 1080i/p output forced and with no-overscan. The vast majority of people shouldn’t experience it, and we highly recommend ensuring your PS3 has 720p output enabled as RCF will look best at that resolution and it should correct the issue.

If you’re having the strange pixelation issues, we want to try to replicate that here. We’ve never seen it in-house on all of our various HD sets, and knowing what TVs we need to track down would be helpful.

Appreciate your help
JS”

So let’s hope Insomniac gets this fixed for those that have the problem, otherwise some sorry sods will be missing out on one of the best looking games the Playstation 3 has to offer.

(Note: Insomniac has not confirmed that the game is rendered at 704p.)

Sources: Neogaf, Beyond3d

Update – 10/16 7:36 PM EST
The poster on the Neogaf board has been confirmed as an actual employee of Insomniac. Well known to the board, and featured in several of Insomniac’s Podcasts.