Battlefield 4

[Natty]

Do you have any source of facts or proof of this of +15 step evil and money-hungry plan? Or are you busting one "myth" to replace it with your own?

what are you, 13 years old? proof? Don't you know how companies work? You think it came as a surprise that all of a sudden all games were on Steam?... I don't even.... naaah, not worth it.

oh btw, I was wrong... 10 years since Steam release. Obviously a few years of planning before that, so I stand correct; somewhere between 10-15 years, not 15 exact. Sorry Joe. I just think it's most likely that plans and preparations for this started somewhere after the huge success of HalfLife1, so, end of 90's. Source engine development obviously were made simultaenously as both the digital distribution ramped up in both music and games industry, and it all came together very convienently with the release of HL2 But hey, Valve made HL2 just to be good guys, right? All the mod spin-offs on Source was also to please the growing "mod" community wasn't it? 

Also: Valve made 1 moddable engine 8 years ago... they still live on those credits? So did EA. Valve has milked the shit out of Source by now. The reason their games are moddable is not because they are "mod friendly" it's because they're still on Source! If DICE had stuck with BF2 engine for BC2, BF3, Bf1943 (and released it on PC) you could have had your BF3 modz by now. Also; you need to understand what it means to have a digital platform like Steam... EA didn't have that for none of their games until BF3. If EA would have forced you to use Origin since Bf1942 and had a decade of experience pushing all their content through that pipeline, and ALSO doing it all on the same engine, hell yes you would be able to "mod" all the games.

So the reason valve games are moddable is not because Gabe hearts modderz 4Ever, it's because they were first (and cleverly so) by drilling users in to using their platform, therefor making it much easier to distribute content.. Just look at SDK Source. You think people would have wanted to download that as .exe files and install etc? Then upload mods to FileFront like we do with BF mods? All relying on 3rd party sites and also relying on players to VISIT those sites and download?

No.. all the Steam sheep need to do is look in Steam and click install.

[FatJoe]

Do you have any source of facts or proof of this of +15 step evil and money-hungry plan? Or are you busting one "myth" to replace it with your own?

what are you, 13 years old? proof? Don't you know how companies work? You think it came as a surprise that all of a sudden all games were on Steam?... I don't even.... naaah, not worth it.

Exactly, I'm 13 years old because I'm not buying your bullshit version of a planned ultimate evil.. sure..

Instead of some ultimate evil bullshit, Steam was originally planned as an Auto Updater for their own games. To reduce the hassle of downloading and installing patches for hit games like Counter Strike. Looking at the increasing internet functionality in games and with more and more players having access to broadband internet, it made perfect sense to offer games through the same digital distribution.

It also makes perfect sense to allow other publishers and indies to sell their games on Steam. And it's not because they were hatching a 10 or 15 year old 15 step evil master plan to dominate the market or take over the world. It's a series of actions and decisions that consumers want and something that makes sense!

Your myth of Valve and Steam as ultimate evil is as bad as the hardcore EA haters myth that EA is the ultimate evil. Both are providing what consumers want, only Steam has a decade lead of development and growth over Origin, and isn't being developed by a company that has been struggling with it's public image..

Valve is generally well liked by the public and the industry. The only ones that are delusional are the ones that think that [insert company]/[insert platform] is evil..

[LuckyOne]

So how is Valve's "digital distribution platform accessible to everyone, commercial and indie developers alike, with a policy of bringing games to the masses by allowing everyone (even the cheapest twat that wouldn't spend more than 5$ on a decent product) to buy any game at some point (with developer's acceptance of course, if you don't want your game discounted, then it doesn't need to be... Valve doesn't form the prices on their own)" more evil than EA's former plan of "let's be the sole publisher that owns all the major developer studios"

Please, enlighten me...

Steam is widely accepted as a great tool to promote indie studio's games and bring them to a big pool of potential customers (even more with the recently added Greenlight feature), without requiring expensive marketing or absolute high quality... Even less desirable games will sell well during sales, especially if they are bundled with other, better parts of a particular franchise/other indie games/other publisher's games.

So the reason valve games are moddable is not because Gabe hearts modderz 4Ever, it's because they were first (and cleverly so) by drilling users in to using their platform, therefor making it much easier to distribute content.. Just look at SDK Source. You think people would have wanted to download that as .exe files and install etc? Then upload mods to FileFront like we do with BF mods? All relying on 3rd party sites and also relying on players to VISIT those sites and download?

No.. all the Steam sheep need to do is look in Steam and click install.

You say this like this is a bad thing... How would the mods get the audience otherwise? FH 2 is struggling every day because it's hard to get new players interested with the lack of information and accesibility...

[Natty]

Exactly, I'm 13 years old because I'm not buying your bullshit version of a planned ultimate evil.. sure..

Planned market segmentation takeover. They planned, and executed to take over the digitally distributed games segment of the market, and succeeded. Not by good-will to the "community". They only made you think that
 you can continue to live in denial and think that Gabe (hearts) You 4Ever if you want. kthxbai.

Steam was originally planned as an Auto Updater for their own games.

So they made you believe 

It also makes perfect sense to allow other publishers and indies to sell their games on Steam. And it's not because they were hatching a 10 or 15 year old 15 step evil master plan to dominate the market or take over the world. It's a series of actions and decisions that consumers want and something that makes sense!

And you are living proof that they succeeded in making people believe that. Wake up. Gabe's a genious, he predicted the transformation from boxed to digital years before you even saw HL2 or Source... He knew what he was doing, and he knew what tools he needed to make everyone getting friendly with Steam. Allowing mods to the games (they sold) was just one, very small part og the overall plan.

Valve is generally well liked by the public and the industry.

"generally liked"? what is that.some? forum-lingo? only trolls on deep hidden forums "like" or "do not liek" game publishers. Are we in 6th grade again? "I dont like you" well... "boo-hooo", or?

Or are you talking about facebook Likes? Want to measure e-penis size on who gets most Likes, Valve or EA? 



EA 916,000 Likes https://www.facebook.com/EA?ref=ts&fref=ts
Valve 775,000 Likes https://www.facebook.com/Valve?ref=ts&fref=ts

Really... the "like" discussion has no place here. 

[LuckyOne]

^ Well since EA's promotions often include "like us on Facebook to get free stuffs plox" I don't think that the numbers can really be compared directly...

Besides, isn't EA here to save us from the distopian future of a single digital distribution network now? If only they could somehow attract users like Valve does by giving away free games and requiring Steam accounts to activate (oh wait...:rolleyes:)

[Musti]

Nutty pls, take off the tin foil hat.

[Natty]

I'll just leave this here

http://store.steampowered.com/app/730/

[Natty]

^ Well since EA's promotions often include "like us on Facebook to get free stuffs plox" I don't think that the numbers can really be compared directly...

well, Im the one that said the "like" discussion is ridiculous to begin with

[FatJoe]

Steam was originally planned as an Auto Updater for their own games.

So they made you believe 

Bwaaahahahahahahahahaha.. you did it!!
I didn't think you would actually say it, BUT YOU DID!

I'm actually laughing out loud here! (and getting funny looks from my co-workers)




hold on.. let me try and find the article..


here..

GamesIndustry.biz: When developing Steam, did you make a conscious decision to look at what Microsoft was developing with Live and try to match that?

Doug Lombardi: You know, we went around to Yahoo, Microsoft...Who else was around at that time? Probably Real Networks and anybody who seemed like a likely candidate to build something like Steam.

We basically had our feature list that we wanted. We wanted auto-updating, we wanted better anti-piracy, better anti-cheat, and selling the games over the wire was something we came up with later...

Yeah Of course!! He is blatantly lying to GamesIndustry.biz to cover up the horrible evil Valve master plan! Because it matters to Valve that we think that they originally wanted to make an auto updater for their games and then figured out that they could sell games with it as well, while their original intention was to make a platform where they could sell games all along. It all makes perfect sense..




.. in your head.. somehow..



hahaha, I love this cute little conspiracy theory!
But sure, feel free to live in this delusion

The rest of us in the sane world know that Gabe doesn't love us, and he's not an evil mastermind whose plan is to take over the world.

[McCloskey]

the brave little trooper that is Natty

I heart Natty. He's the reason I'm actually interested in psychology.

[Natty]

lol Joe, so you openly admit you hope believe that Valve is a company that made Steam "to be nice to players" and then went "oooh, hey we can totally sell gamez now on dis cuz it's working!"

I actually lol'd as well... Is this the first interview with a devel.... oh... wait.. he's not.. he's

Valve's VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi at a recent EA press event

Sure Joe, whatever you say... he's from Valve remember, of course he's giving you the full monty there, the marketing VP  he would totally say all the things I said at a press event. "Yeeaaa we like, totally wanted to take over digital distribution, so we figured our little distribution platform which we use to monitor player behaviour, patch our games with etc would be perfect, since we already have alot of users on it, we're sure we can convert them to customers of alot of other games also. We can then also easily patent other game's distribution and take a fair chunk of their revenues"

Is that what you would say if you had that job? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naivety

Naivety (or naïvety, naïveté, etc.), is the state of being naive—having or showing a lack of experience, understanding or sophistication, often in a context where one neglects pragmatism in favor of moral idealism. One who is naive may be called a naif.

[FatJoe]

hahaha.. you're like one of the Lone Gunmen characters from X-Files.. Tin foil hats and everything

Cute

But now I'm going to leave the crazy sandbox for a while and let you play alone with all your other friends. Remember to play nice!

And if you need me, I'll be with the other adults

[Natty]

there are no other adults on this forum  your feeble attempts to call my explanations "cute" etc arent working Joe. You still haven't been able to weasle your way out of the facts about valve and steam I revealed to you, instead you just call it "tin foil"?... lol? You should have deeper insights than that. Resorting to trolling when arguments run out? yup, matur-ey of ya.

No, the flat out truth here is simple: gamers - like all people - want to feel special. Want to feel as if they are "important". When someone makes claims that Valve isnt this holy-cow that worships the ground that modders walk (which is the public image they cleverly managed to build over 15 years), they get all tear-filled in the eyes.... "but...but... they care about ME!"

that, is the definition of cute

[HadrianBT]

Yeah, you damn Valve fuckers, you just want to let those damn gamers buy all your games.

On a sale..

Usually at 75% discount...

For new games as well as for old ones (which are already pretty cheap by then)...

You so suck, Valve. Let us do it the nice EA way, let us have our sale!.. Nah, screw this, those stupid fans (ohh, the real fans Natty was talking about) will buy our games/DLCs at full price, just to stay competitive. And yes, I noticed they offered to sell games at 50% discount each. Buy Modern Warfighter and BF3 together and save 50% on each. I wonder how many ppl actually did that. But at least you tried. Keep moving in that direction, EA, you might eventually get to where Valve is now (and that will benefit you just as much as it did to Valve, I'm confident in that).

It is not that EA is doing wrong things like trying to innovate by introducing a new social feature like battlelog (which was an interesting idea) or come up with a competitive distribution engine such as Origin (and competetion is supposedly good for the customer). It is that they are doing these interesting thing worng...

I am diappointed that EA wants to squeeze the very last dollar of everything and FAILING at it. DRM, first-day DLC, nasty Origin, sack of small development teams everybody loved, and more. Just do a quick check at Yahoo Finance (or any other engine) and compare EA (former ERTS), ATVI (Activision-Blizzard), TTWO (Take-Two Interactive) and ^IXIC (NASDAQ, it does not correlate well with Dow Jones for some reason) for the last 5 years. You will be all scared. Well, the shares do not reflect the fans. They reflect how the company is percieved by "everybody". Apparently "everybody" don't think things are run perfectly well.

You know why I'm disappointed? Because if EA really fails, DICE will too and there will be no good BF games then. What we fans here want is for DICE to succeed. And doing that comes from listening closely to the fans and doing what you are good at, using your own own great ideas, which brought us some of the great games to enjoy. But then again, EA is the boss, and I'm afraid this is not going to happen Not just chasing the MW game series or Steam distribution.

Disclaimer:
1) I am a BF fan and I own BF1942, BF2 and BF3
2) Steam is decent IMO, although there are a few qualms here and there
3) I had to cope with Origin to be able to play BF3 and ME3

P.S. Not your problem, Natty, really, and I'm not adressing it to you, mostly my big sigh at how things are run now at EA.

EDIT: going to the last Natty's post "When someone makes claims that Valve isnt this holy-cow that worships the ground that modders walk (which is the public image they cleverly managed to build over 15 years), they get all tear-filled in the eyes"
When something looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, swims like a duck. Well, chances are - it is a duck. And even if it is not - do we care? It is a duck for us, for all intents and purposes. Even if we all live in a Matrix.

[Cheesus Krighst]

Valve: How should we attract more players to the fold?
Valve Employee: Lets do a 75% off (Insert Game Name Here) for a week! Throw in a free play weekend to that also!
Valve: Great idea!

EA: How should we attract more players to the fold?
EA Employee: Lets make players pay 15 bucks for a few maps and weapon skins!
EA:Great Idea, but lets keep how much content players get in the single digit number category please.


Nice Tin-foil hat party we're having today (Put's tin-foil hat on)
EA is not good at attracting players, Valve is. Don't see why Natty views Valve's marketing prowess as a Evil Genius Plot to monopolize the gaming distribution industry.