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FINALLY....a voice of reason! Very nice to see someone actually speak from experience and reason rather than ill-informed opinion and petulence.
I respect OS for many of its well-thought out posts and frequent contributors; in fact, as a percentage of total postings, I think OS is near the top of the list of having the most readable and worthwhile posts compared to waste-of-time tripe of anything on the internet...BUT...
It is getting to be a broken record already with the whole "why don't the developers care?" angle. Whether it is people savaging 2K or attacking EA, its all the same....."waaaahh.....they didn't do "x", why don't they care???" or "they are just greedy". It sounds like a bunch of 8-year olds who think the only way to communicate to their parents is to yell "Well, you just don't love me...." and stomp off to slam their door...
Seriously, I respect the stuff Tomb posted because it speaks the truth and has perspective - two things frequently lacking from all the knee-jerk, fan-boyish "I won't buy it then..." posts I have seen in the last 3 weeks. Programming is an art as much as a science. To do something really WELL requires patience (
often in short supply from the corporate types - who really DON'T care about the game as long as someone buys it) and time (
which is usually in even shorter supply than patience due to compressed deadlines and release dates set in stone for sports titles) and money - lots and lots of money (
a lot more than just about any of us posting in these forums could imagine, yet alone afford).
To do something GREAT usually requires all of the above in exponentially greater quantities. We are not talking about things like if 2 developers is good than 4 would be twice as good, instead to make that next leap forward would require 8 or 16 people instead of 2 or 4. Like it or not, games are made for aa reason - PROFIT. No one is out there making these things on an unlimited budget of time, patience and money!
This is reality - creativity and art require different things than commerce and industry, yet time and again I come here (and in fairness it is better here than some other places) and continually see people posting the same tripe that they have for years. The same recrimminations of their least favorite developer or publisher. The same allegations of malfescence and indifference to their plight. The same mindless chattle and lemming-like devotion to one game or another. Its just sad and ultimately counterproductive.
Personally, I dislike Burger King fries compared to McDonald's fries. However, I never think that bashing the fry-guy at Burger King or telling every person I ever encounter how terrible the fries are at BK or telling them that BK just doesn't care is going to help. I just buy the McDonald's fries. I guess if I were actually unhappy with both kinds of fries I would start trying to make my own. Of course, peeling potatoes, slicing them and frying them in different oils is a lot easier than hammering out a few million lines of code...
I do not fault the moderators of OS, because from what I have seen they do a great job around here, I fault all of us who frequent this place and tolerate the idiocy. I challenege the members of OS who actually DO care about getting real information, and carrying on substantive discussions to rise up against the low-brow crowd who like to wallow in the mire. Bring your "A-game" to the forums and make these peons ashamed to fire off their empty-headed missives...I know there are a lot of people on OS who would appreciate the efforts.