Ah yeah - 800msp - it's Spelunky which came in at the silly 1200msp pricepoint and switched-off my interest in it instantly!!
Ah yeah - 800msp - it's Spelunky which came in at the silly 1200msp pricepoint and switched-off my interest in it instantly!!
Well, it's not as if you can't play that game for free on a PC.
On the one hand, the developer should be very, very careful when entering into that kind of a contract. Boo on him. On the other hand ... it sounds like a rather bizarre and potentially crappy contract. Boo on MS.
I think of [the Internet] as a grisly raw steak laid out on a porcelain benchtop in the sun, covered in chocolate hazelnut sauce. In the background plays Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You. There’s lots of fog. --tomeoftom
Microsoft's policy regarding patches may suck, but this is Polytron's shit show and they deserve all the scorn they'll get.
They knew about Live Arcade's "only one free patch" policy before they signed the contract (Hell, even I knew that and I don't even work in the gaming industry) and yet still decided to release the game exclusively on the 360 and now they try to play the pity card while fucking over the people who bought their game? They knew the rules, released a broken game, released a broken patch, refuse to pay to fix it because "only" 1% of their player will be affected and have the nerve to act like they're the victims here.
A save erasing bug is one of the biggest game-breakers I can think of and should instantly make the player eligible for a refund.
Yeah, cert will just check it doesn't nuke the xbox or expose Live to anything dodgy. It's not QA so it's not MS' job to catch that in cert.
It's a messy choice though, either pay $thousands and hope that the next patch is the cure all patch and nothing else happens or cut your losses and call bullshit on the whole system. To be fair to Phil in this instance, he's not the only developer to have abandoned an XBLA title after 1 patch, there are *many* who've had to walk away or refused to bankrupt themselves having to resubmit to MS constantly. The difference is, Phil's gone public and vocally so. Most just don't mention it and shuffle off into the distance. There's so many games on there abandoned because of just one of MS clusterfuck collection of truly dumb policies, it's unbelievable.
Yeah, this is all stuff most people know up front but when you're chasing a one year project or whatever Fez was originally planned at, it probably didn't seem like too bad a thing at the time. 5 years down the line and lord knows how much money thrown away and a partner/publisher in the shape of Trapdoor later... things probably don't look quite so simple anymore.
When Fez signed, XBLA was seen as THE thing. THE way to make money. And for a lot of people it was (and for some, it broke them but no-one tells that story, really) But either way, XBLA then was a bigger thing than XBLA now where most games cruise in selling shit of worth and the service is propped up by a few massive sellers, MS policies were different and so on... 2009 was a long, long time ago in console terms and Steam had an incredibly slender catalogue also, PC wasn't seen as the place to go and make money. Sure, a year later and the story is different but once contracts have been signed, it's a bit late.
I think they should have patched it once more for the road and put out a disclaimer saying "sorry, but if this fucks, we can do no more because MS policy will have our money down an infinity hole" or whatever but I can understand why things turned out why they did and why they'd be reticent to patch things.
There's no manifesto. There's no formal plan.
Steam
You have no idea about how game development works, do you?Originally Posted by Finicky
He has a point - there's only one platform to worry about, effectively one set of hardware to develop for, with no other software surprises. If it was adequately tested on one console, theoretically it should exhibit the same behaviour on any other console (of that same type eg xbox 360) unless the console in question is faulty. That's very different to the PC where you've got a complex interplay of hardware differences, software in the background, operating systems, all sorts of different drivers, etc...
The standard expected of games on consoles in terms of bugs is much higher, as it should be. That's not to say that absolutely zero bugs should be present in the first release, but they should be promptly fixed, and show-stoppers like corrupting savegames certainly shouldn't make it through. Obviously, it wasn't adequately tested, and 'testing' involves only one machine (a 360).
Then they turned around and said "Well screw it we're not paying to fix it" as if it's Microsoft's fault that they've introduced a major bug with their patch, despite the fact that they would have been well aware of the contract they were entering into.
Honestly, they deserve that kind of treatment. Especially Phil Fish.
Consoles PWN!
Diablo3 is not PvE or PvP, it is PvAH. -- Tei
The XBLA deal isn't shit. In fact, there are still tons of gamers that pay to have no cross-platform play and to be subjected to ads. Plus, the deal probably allowed for free marketing, which is a HUGE plus to any independent developer that even has a semblance of interest in targeting the 360.
What is shit is Phil Fish's attitude towards damned near everything since Fez won at IGF the second time.
EDIT: On top of that, I don't think he'll be porting it to PC when the exclusivity deal runs out, which is a damned shame.
I was just reading that blog post from him with a look of scorn and amusement on my face. His attitude is disingenuous at best, saying how they should have released on Steam after saying how terrible PC's were for gaming.
I'm a programmer and I know how difficult it can be to get things working on lots of different configurations, it can be an utter nightmare. That's not really the problem, the problem is his attitude and how many bridges he burns with it.
Anyway, if they can't get it working on the relatively small amount of different Xbox configurations, I'm not sure I'd trust them to release it bug-free on PC if they ever do!
In 3 years when Fez is in an indie bundle as a "match the average" bonus I might bother to buy it... Or not.
I'm failing to writing a blog, specifically about playing games the wrong way
http://playingitwrong.wordpress.com/
I don't see why everyone hates this guy so much. At first glance his only fault seems to be his hilarious overreaction to being trolled.
Phil Fish is the kind of guy who apologizes for his intentionally inflammatory statements by making more of them. It's called the Christoforo Effect.
I need a like button. Or a rep button. That made my day.
LOL /10char
Bah! My blog is fulla bollox! What? Don't believe me?Here! Just look at it!
The guy is an arsehole.
Fans of the game and others warned him about the problems with XBLA.
The game's been in the works for years. Long enough to win at the IGF twice.
But not long enough, apparently, to iron out bugs in a system where the major problem of possible hardware and software configurations numbering the billions does not exist.
The guy is that worse kind of an arsehole; an arsehole and an idiot.
Why should he have to? Plenty of other games on XBLA work fine without the issues plaguing Fez, not even needing such fixes. It's not like Fez does anything crazy new or different in terms of pushing the console. So there's no good reason for it not to work.
And whoever said XBLA is a tough platform right now, with one or two big-hitters propping up the rest, that's true. But Fez was one of those big-hitters.
after watching indie game: the movie, i have appreciation for the work, this guy and others portrayed in the movie, have done. one thing i realized though, most of the problems devs were having in the movie, coudlve been solved, if they were developing for pc instead of consoles in the first place.
What a gigantic tosser. The "I just won the IGF tonight. Choke on my dick" etc. quote is just horrible. If he's sold that much he absolutely has to pay for the patch. If you're selling 100K copies choosing not to pay for some QA testers is nothing but greed.
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