Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

[djordan]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

Let's have some fun with logic for a second....

Pretend you are a lead producer on a video game.
You have an exclusive license and a fanbase of sheeples...

If you did not care, were lazy, decided to not innovate because of the lack of competition, which action would you be MOST likely to take?

1) Ignore all the bleating and braying of the livestock fanbase and release nothing at all until the actual marketing plan to sell the game kicks in around June...

OR

2) Push out blogs, answers posts, reply in PMs on forums to consumers, invite people down to your studio to play test and give feedback and post numerous explanations and videos of incomplete tech just to let the fans know what is happening....

I see posts in here that act like example #1 is what is happening and anyone with a functioning nervous system and a few live brain cells can tell that #2 is what Ian and Co. have committed to for Madden NFL 10...

Please, if you are an OS reader and a 2K fan or EA ***** or just bored, please stop with the "competition is the ONLY thing that can make this game better" meme...its played out and demonstrably FALSE already. Saying things like "gee isn't it funny that Backbreaker is releasing new videos and THAT makes EA release their 2-years-in-the-making PRO-TAK system now" does not make you sound profound, it makes you sound like Michelle Bachman. Now I don't know, maybe Representative Bachman is your political hero and you think she is awesome and on the money...but most people think she is bat-shyt insane.

Competition - or the lack thereof - is not the sole thing driving the EA team to develop PRO-TAK or tune the running animations or listen to the constant yammering here and at other forums. These guys have shown their love of the game and desire to make it as good a game as possible this year. Their actions speak to their intentions and its time to stop with the "EA will only care when the competition forces them to" chatter...

On another note entirely, I think that the PRO-TAK videos are alarming when the group hug animation triggers but I am willing to wait and see the final product before declaring it a success, a failure or a work in progress that misses the mark in 10 but could be the future...

GREAT F'N POST!!!!!

[spankdatazz22]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

I think we need to keep in mind that ProTak stands for Procedural Tackling, which means they can dynamically sculpt the tackle, basically transition the tacklers to participate in the ongoing tackle. As they point out in the blog, and Ian has not reiterated, they still have a lot of tuning and blending to finish before the ProTak works as advertised.

That's an excellent point. I think the idea behind ProTak sounds great; it's the execution that's still in question. Those short clips in the ProTak blog raised more questions than they answered for me. I wonder, if like the running animations, were they themselves impressed with [the video] only to be surprised by the muted reaction/people pointing out the perceived flaws in the approach. Because what was shown looks better than what was in previous next gen Maddens. But you take any 5sec clip from the video Entiel posted and it either compares favorably or flat-out looks better than any of the ProTak blog footage. It could be Tiburon is purposely holding back because it is a work in progress, and of course they don't want to show too much before the game's release. Or it could be that what we've seen is essentially more or less what we will get, with additional tweaks. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Competition - or the lack thereof - is not the sole thing driving the EA team to develop PRO-TAK or tune the running animations or listen to the constant yammering here and at other forums. These guys have shown their love of the game and desire to make it as good a game as possible this year. Their actions speak to their intentions and its time to stop with the "EA will only care when the competition forces them to" chatter...

I agree with your point regarding people saying the devs are lazy, etc. and that's the reason why game(s) don't improve. That term gets thrown around far too much on the boards. I've read horror stories of pretty much every dev house being forced to work damn-near around the clock when trying to churn a game out. So it's not laziness. I don't think the much-persecuted David Ortiz was lazy - I'm sure they were working hard in their own right back then. Imo most earlier Maddens weren't bad games because they were lazy/weren't trying to make the best game they could - I think most of the time it comes down to the skill of the developers, their focus, and the resources they're given to work with.

The lack of competition is an issue though. No matter how self-motivating you are, it's only human nature to not push yourself as hard as possible if you don't have to. You take any competitive industry and you'll see that the companies/entities are better because of competition. Competition breeds innovation. As long as it has competent developers Madden is going to improve on it's own. But it'll never improve as much as it could - or should - with legitimate competition. We probably wouldn't be having this discussion if it weren't for seeing tackling or running depicted better in other games. Without the motivating factor of competition, creativity is stifled.

[Valdarez]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

Backbreaker has been in developemnt for 2 years now and back then was hyping that "no two tackles will be the same". Doesn't anyone find it ironic that this team is pushing their new tackling system this year! I mean that is a no brainer to me and that is what competition will do for you. So no matter if backbreaker is good, fun, horrible or whatever, I think it made the madden team do something that they really were not planning on doing. Maybe they were going to add true 3 man tackles where you could join the tackle yourself but I doubt it was to the extreme they are advertising now.

A constant knock against Madden has been the lack of innovation. They seem to innovate after their competitors. Madden received weapons after APF2K8 and their Star/ability system was released, same goes for online leagues. They are now getting ProTak now that BackBreaker is giving us a unique tackling system. For a game that leads the pack in sales, the product lags seriously in core game play features, and that's a shame regardless of whether you are, or are not, a Madden fan.

[LBzrule]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

A constant knock against Madden has been the lack of innovation. They seem to innovate after their competitors. Madden received weapons after APF2K8 and their Star/ability system was released, same goes for online leagues. They are now getting ProTak now that BackBreaker is giving us a unique tackling system. For a game that leads the pack in sales, the product lags seriously in core game play features, and that's a shame regardless of whether you are, or are not, a Madden fan.

Actually they came out at the same time. Weapons were in Madden 08 and abilities were in 2k8. Same year.

[Valdarez]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

That's an excellent point. I think the idea behind ProTak sounds great; it's the execution that's still in question. Those short clips in the ProTak blog raised more questions than they answered for me. I wonder, if like the running animations, were they themselves impressed with [the video] only to be surprised by the muted reaction/people pointing out the perceived flaws in the approach. Because what was shown looks better than what was in previous next gen Maddens. But you take any 5sec clip from the video Entiel posted and it either compares favorably or flat-out looks better than any of the ProTak blog footage. It could be Tiburon is purposely holding back because it is a work in progress, and of course they don't want to show too much before the game's release. Or it could be that what we've seen is essentially more or less what we will get, with additional tweaks. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

My quote should have read 'now that Ian has reiterated', the 'not' was a typo. Funny how one little character can change the meaning.

I completely agree about raising more questions. I want to get information as early as possible, but I think the EA team is doing themselves a disservice by releasing real game footage of works in progress on those blogs. Animation sequences that are captured but are not yet in the game are fine, but when you see real game footage that doesn't look right (or even good), then people are going to jump all over it.

It's hard for us, as consumers, to see the end goal when we don't have the the design documentation, haven't participated in the white boarding sessions, and all we have to go by is what they post. As they saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. I guarantee you that people took more away from those videos than they did from the entire writeup/blog that accompanied them. I know that I myself missed the the work in progress statement (which IMHO should be bounded in a read shaded box any time incomplete game footage is released).

[Valdarez]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

Actually they came out at the same time. Weapons were in Madden 08 and abilities were in 2k8. Same year.

Yes, but the APF2K8 Star / Ability system information was released first, and the Madden abilities appeared to be tacked on at the end so it looked somewhat like what APF2K8 offered. No way they would have been there if not for APF2K8.

[LBzrule]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

Yes, but the APF2K8 Star / Ability system information was released first, and the Madden abilities appeared to be tacked on at the end so it looked somewhat like what APF2K8 offered. No way they would have been there if not for APF2K8.

I disagree actually because the functionality was not even the same. All EA was doing was labeling players. 2k on the other had not only labeled players but they assigned specific animations to each ability. Secondly, the abilities were layers. EA had nothing like that and it was never their intent to do anything like that.

Like it or not alot of times they have similar ideas but how they implement them is completely different. The same argument can be presented around big hits. People always argue EA came out with big hits first when they introduced the hit stick. But 2k had big hits in their game the same year (2k5) but the interface and functionality were different, and it was not a selling point of their game.

[Valdarez]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

I disagree actually because the functionality was not even the same. All EA was doing was labeling players. 2k on the other had not only labeled players but they assigned specific animations to each ability. Secondly, the abilities were layers. EA had nothing like that and it was never their intent to do anything like that.

We can agree to disagree then. I was following both games, and I never saw even a single reference to the 'weapons' (which have been removed this year, because they added no value what so ever) until after info on 2K8 was released. Looked like a ploy to take away a selling point from APF2K8, looks even more like that now that it's been removed and APF2K8 is not a threat.

[GAMEC0CK2002]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

Let's have some fun with logic for a second....

Pretend you are a lead producer on a video game.
You have an exclusive license and a fanbase of sheeples...

If you did not care, were lazy, decided to not innovate because of the lack of competition, which action would you be MOST likely to take?

1) Ignore all the bleating and braying of the livestock fanbase and release nothing at all until the actual marketing plan to sell the game kicks in around June...

OR

2) Push out blogs, answers posts, reply in PMs on forums to consumers, invite people down to your studio to play test and give feedback and post numerous explanations and videos of incomplete tech just to let the fans know what is happening....

I see posts in here that act like example #1 is what is happening and anyone with a functioning nervous system and a few live brain cells can tell that #2 is what Ian and Co. have committed to for Madden NFL 10...

Please, if you are an OS reader and a 2K fan or EA ***** or just bored, please stop with the "competition is the ONLY thing that can make this game better" meme...its played out and demonstrably FALSE already. Saying things like "gee isn't it funny that Backbreaker is releasing new videos and THAT makes EA release their 2-years-in-the-making PRO-TAK system now" does not make you sound profound, it makes you sound like Michelle Bachman. Now I don't know, maybe Representative Bachman is your political hero and you think she is awesome and on the money...but most people think she is bat-shyt insane.

Competition - or the lack thereof - is not the sole thing driving the EA team to develop PRO-TAK or tune the running animations or listen to the constant yammering here and at other forums. These guys have shown their love of the game and desire to make it as good a game as possible this year. Their actions speak to their intentions and its time to stop with the "EA will only care when the competition forces them to" chatter...

On another note entirely, I think that the PRO-TAK videos are alarming when the group hug animation triggers but I am willing to wait and see the final product before declaring it a success, a failure or a work in progress that misses the mark in 10 but could be the future...

I don't think most are saying they aren't trying...just that we would DEFINITELY be further along in the process if there was heavy competition breathing down their neck each and every year.

Competition and self-preservation are excellent motivators.

[Blitzburgh]

Re: Lets Dialouge - Ian's gangtackling challenge revisited

Yes that was my point.... Ian and company have been amazing on these boards and I would NEVER call anyone who goes to work for a living 5-7 days a week to try and put out the best product that has their name on it, lazy. That is down right rude and unacceptable to me. I'm just concerned that competition forced them to over due a feature that if was kept more simple would have worked much better by release time. I said I'm only speculating but nonetheless, I'm really looking forward to giving 10 a good run. I appreciate all the efforts Ian...