They say that if you say Peter Molyneux's name three times in a Fact Hunt video, you summon him and he promises to grant you a wish. But then what you get is only half of what he promised.
I can sort of see the point of trying to make the game close to the original. There was after all a very good reason for the decisions Carmack took when making Doom. But... He should have let Bagley do his job and optimized it for the new hardware. Good to hear that apologized to Bagley about it. I am for one very curious about how that version of doom look and ran.
Carmack was infamous for being a dick. Why do you think so much of the original ID team left ID to get away from him? Carmack has said he deeply regrets letting Romero leave because he thinks Romero was a huge part of why he was so successful and never quite got to those heights again without him.
I'm a game developer and I could relate to some of this. I don't like the games that I make because while making a game, you'd have to play your game over a billion times to make sure that everything works properly. It gets to the point where your game gets distasteful and you won't know whether the game that you made is good or not; especially while you are making it.
totally, its the same reason why some games playtested by the programmers are so rock hard. they spend so long getting good at them, they assume the game is too easy, so ramp up the difficulty. Robocop 3 on the SNES was one especially.
This is what beta testers are for. A developer needs new sets of eyes to look at the progress and see it from a different perspective. They're not just there to find glitches.
You want to know the most fucked up thing about the guy who did the 3 only pieces of music for Crescent Galaxy? He's most well known for the kick-ass title screen music for Klax on the Lynx, Alex (LX) Rudis!
+Man of Culture Duke Nukem 64 had a similar problem. With the N64 hardware they had to choose between the soundtrack or Duke's one-liners. Ofc they chose the thing that makes Duke stand out from other FPS protags of the time.
Creative Cat Productions I'm totally surprised that anybody who created Doom or Doom2 had ANY interest in gaming at all. I just don't understand how people can call it a 'masterpiece' when it so obviously is not. I guess it all boils down to personal taste OR if you shout loud enough about how 'great' something is - no matter how crap it really is - then you'll have a bunch of people who probably like you or the way you speak or your hair etc etc and agree that a pos is a 'masterpiece'. I played System Shock in 1999[ I think it was released in 1993] and was stunned at how I could go prone or crouch, jump, lean round corners and fully explore an area, whereas in Doom you are hindered by turn L/R, strafe L/R and moving backwards and firing. It was childlike. you never aimed, you simply had to point the gun in a generic direction and Bang! the bad guy was shot. Absurd. I think people can get VERY sentimental about 1990s 'games'. Actually, why DO i care? I don't. Apologies.
After hearing what he had to say on his projects and his mindset about how only the box office matters he seems like the type of guy who would have been the "perfect fit" for a upper management or ceo position of some publisher if he stayed in the industry.
Dava noncom Doom is considered great, by many people atleast, more due to it's legacy. It was the second or third FPS ever made and and is responsible for how common FPSes are today. At the time it came out it was pretty revolutionary. It hasn't aged well but most games from the early 90s haven't. It basically comes down to what you enjoy and when you started playing.
yes, doom is very limited. however, think about what games were in 1993. they were point and click adventures, 2d side scrollers, and jrpgs. one of the best looking games that had a 3d space was starfox. now look at doom. doom set the standard for what games like it would have to do in the future. yes, system shock is a fun game, but there would be no system shock without doom.
Working in microsoft games past 2000. If you're not in terminal reality, or microsoft studios - you're 2rd party studio redelegated for picking up scabs of former glory - like rare ltd.
At least in Atari the working enviroment was much more relaxing and less demanding (as evident in some of the more recent Arcade Attack interviews by Adrian with ex-Atari employees). Whereas at EA well...fuck...
i mean yeah but the amount of stories you hear of people not getting paid for stuff and atari expecting them to be fine with it - that's probably way worse than ea
As a cook i gotta say you must suck as a cook. Cooks are supposed to constantly try their food to make sure it actually meets expectations. Otherwise you could he throwing out garbage to paying customers...a cook you are not, you sound like the help to me. Or a dishwasher who jumps on the line in a rush, that doesnt make the dishwasher a cook
Wow. How in the world is Gary Stark NOT the CEO of EA Games?? "The sole measure of any game is it's sale numbers." Never has a more '80s yuppie statement been made in the field of games.
I have no trouble believing there are developers who hate games. I've known several people who got into the industry and it ruined games for them completely. They were gamers beforehand, but after seeing just how scummy the industry is they just didn't have the stomach for them any more. When they get home, the last thing they want to do is touch a videogame they know is benefitting the scum of the earth that are publishers. I'm honestly surprised the industry has gotten as big as it has without any of the big players getting seriously penalized for a lot of the illegal stuff they do. Like if you expect reasonable work hours, industry standard pay, or any of the sane treatment that is standard in all other parts of software development (not that its particularly good anywhere but that's a bigger topic), you get black-balled and they illegally trade information with other game publishers to make sure you can never work in the industry again. But its never amounted to anything big legally.
Nice points you made there, mate! I think the devs cop a lot of the blame but the devs are treated like shit. You know the number of unions there are for all kinds of industry but 'Gaming' seems to be one industry that is still locked in the pre-Union days. I guess people could argue that 'creating games' is a 'creative artform' rather than a normal 'job' but it cannot be denied the suspect and shonky backstabbing and unfair treatment of workers in Gaming exists and has become obscene with its more accepted popularity [compared to the days when your girlfriend would make fun of you with her friends, calling you a 'computer nerd' because the most they can do with their spare time is watch fkn TV and talk about shitty soap operas]. But publishers 'blacklisting' devs has often backfired upon them when some devs have found backing to create some great, classic games independent of publishers. Publishers are parasites. Administration for administration's sake. Eg, Look at the way Konami treat their employees! It's disgraceful.
I'm glad indie games do well nowadays. Hopefully they can shake up the corporations into realizing they'll lose their best people if they don't start treating them properly.
Indie games aren't doing well though. Making a profitable indie game is like winning the lottery. Very few actually make any money. I'm currently studying game development in university (programmer) and we have been asked multiple times if we would even consider going indie. Like 95% of us answers no. It's just not worth it, you'll most likely go bankrupt before you can even finish the damn game. Much better to search for smaller game studios and work for them. Salary will still be shit but at least you have steady income. I'll probably never work in the game industry and just go in to software development instead, just because of how bad the industry is.
Well, I guess you're right. I wonder why you were even asked though? I mean, take Hello Games. Granted, the lead programmer lied thru his teeth to sell something he wasn't capable of producing [you ask me? he should have made a galaxy with about 300-900 worlds, then he'd be capable of introducing a story and mini quests... after all, who REALLY wants to pretend they have access to 18 quintillion worlds? You must know the travelling screen from one universe to another is simply a loading screen, right?] but still, Sean Murray DID make money out of it. Shame he didn't put together a team of 100 instead of less than 15. Bloody idiot. But, like an artist, game devs often leave a great memory of wonderful fantasy worlds. I will always remember Ken Levine's System Shock, Thief and Bioshock games. Correct, he didn't make a lot of money out of it - apart from the budget for the game with which he would pay himself and the other devs and concept artists - but with those games he left a lasting impression on the world of not just gaming but storytelling and the concept is superb but more than that.. I will always go back to those games to play them all the way thru every year or so. The undersea city-world of Rapture or the skybound Columbia were fascinating and fantastic experiences, as were System Shock and the steampunk magic of Thief [not Thief 4 though, great graphics, superb visuals but the whole theme felt so miserably rushed.. a sure sign Levine had nothing to do with it]. I suppose it's the difference between being a 9-5 coder who never takes their work home with them or someone who actually wants to create vistas that blow your mind? Whatever you choose, good luck, mate.
"...and that's probably why Pit Fighter is a bit shit" Took the words right out of my mouth. That line about box office being the only valid measure of success for a game left me a bit aghast, despite already knowing how cynical and greedy coin-op makers could be.
A number of porting issues are less the system not being powerful enough and more about the system not being utilized well enough. Look at Earthworm Jim. Genesis game that later came on the SNES and yet it needed a level cut out to save space.
It's still bugging me how one guy manages to make it run flawless and all, and another one comes and says "NO, FUCK YOU" and tells to redo it crappily.
RippahRooJizah SNES CPU is less capable, so maybe it couldn’t keep up with the code required for that level, or it was too closely tied to Sega hardware. All non-Genesis versions of EWJ also lack a few other effects, such as underwater warp.
Valtis Tigrel Problem with Daikatana is that Romero was a great designer, but a bad manager and became too lazy to program. Programmers who did Daikatana were unfortunately not as good as Carmack, and the managers he hired were absolutely incompetent. Many competent devs left due to a scandal (this is a long story by itself) and the people who remained couldn’t finish the game properly.
The last one funnily enough was neither angry nor filled with hatred. He sounded reasonably accomplished with his work, and just viewed actually playing video games with indifference - being "not for him" more or less. A strange position, but not completely unheard of or anything.
Same story with John Carmack (of id Software and Doom fame). He has said many times throughout his career that he does not play video games, he is a programmer/coder.
the respect from me comes from the fact that he can both both admit he didn't care about games, but also intelligent enough to allow someone who does to direct him.
The line I hate about it is “The only true way to rate a game is by how much money it makes” that line is so soulless and money grubby, I’m glad he’s out of the industry.
Yeah, for someone who claims not to care, he likes to look it up quite a lot. I think secretly he was pretty affected by all the flak that he took over the game and is just being defensive. Personally, I don't think he did a bad job in technical terms (especially under the circumstances that he was given), but it's as if he made everything a priority except the actual gameplay.
@@Syklonus I mean, if you dont like games then you probably wouldnt even know how to make a game fun. It's like designing a car but not knowing how to drive
Almost makes me feel bad for Sega. Sounds like it would have been the best version of DOOM at the time which could have been a good selling point for the under-performing console.
"The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes" It seems the modern gaming industry has taken that statement & made it their motto. Which explains so many of it's current failings.
"The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes" I know it's only 8:34am, but I'm pretty confident that is going to be the most absurd comment I hear today.
I really wish there was a listing of what games had footage in the intros. Love seeing ones I recognize, and always frustrated when I see a neat-looking one I don't.
I could understand games programmers today who hate their games, at least if they work for a major publisher. Must be hell to gimp gameplay just because it does not fit some complacent designers "creative vision", instead having to add more cutscenes and qtes.
The worst part about Doom four the Saturn was that John Romero was away when the game needed approval. Carmack never had to deal with that aspect of direction and when it was presented, Carmack thought it was sacrilegious to run Doom on 3D hardware, even though it was the best version to date, according to Jim Bagley. Dick move on Carmack's part...if only John Romero had been working that day.
"The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes". There are plenty of examples in various media - games included - that didn't sell well, but are otherwise amazing products. Profit =/= quality, by any standards.
+Michael Rigs not really worthy to tell him to chill out, as he's relatively calm. I should know, i regularly yell and salt at people for funsies on here.
That last bloke...is just sad. Imagine working at a Candy factory, and being like 'Oh I make the sweets, but i just sell them". I'm not saying you can't, but if your going into something as specialized as games, at least try to enjoy yourself...
Some people just work to work. I've got no problem with it. If he's an all-around professional at the job, it really doesn't matter if he likes games or not
Nice video Larry, should’ve mentioned Phil Fish with Fez, Jordan Mechner hated Prince of Persia Warrior within, he left during development. Also John Romero hated Daikatana and apologized to his fans for the game.
I imagine the QA testers would tire of the games even more, since they are expected to do a lot of repetitive tasks to test the game's features, and know all the quirks inside out.. then the allure of playing the game is no longer there.
"The only way to tell if a game is successful is how much money it makes." Yeah, tell that to No Man's "Broke the lowest user score of all time out of all the thousands of games on Steam" Sky.
11:20 - Audio mishap. Repeated line. Y'know, I thought my last name was pretty odd and weird, but to see it pop up on this video of all things is a bit surreal. At least the guy didn't bring shame to the surname.
Well, I can understand why many game programmers didn't like their gigs back then... Digipen and the like wouldn't have gamedev programs in a good while, so many just seemed to have been comp-sci types that happened to fall in that job as opposed of the minority of hobbyist guys that learned programming making games in their home computers.
Being a programmer myself, I can say there have been some jobs that siphon all your pride away from you. But other times, some people just aren't a good fit in their role. Regardless of reason, the result is usually a half-hearted effort and lower quality.
Honestly I don't find it that strange that a company would hire a few programmers/software engineers with little or no interest in actually playing games. A lot of game development (at least the implementation side) still just boils down to writing algorithms and optimising the performance of the code for the hardware.
Dead Space 2 for me. Granted, even without the myriad of issues EA had caused I was never super into the company itself. I do not hate EA. I simply do not care about them enough to like them as a company.
On the subject of Final Fight, the worst conversion was the SNES port. It was missing a level, a playable character, and the two player feature. The hell of it is that Capcom made that one.
Yes, Shad was commissioned to make it. You should check out the backgrounds of old flash animations that Shad used to make for people. I've always been a fan of Shadman's background artistry.
7.62 x39mm I remember seeing it in one of his more recent posts on his site. I thought nothing of it. I mostly frequent the shadbase because I work with a fucker that had a sfw shad doodle as his phone background and I use it to bother him.
I develop games for a living. Once the technical challenges are over, it all gets just monotonous .. and then testing / quality control kicks and and your re-working minor details - you can easily end up hating the current project !
Just to clarify about Doom, Bagley's version used a method of doing the textures that caused the graphics to warp. It wasn't just Carmack decided to intentionally mess up the Saturn version of Doom, he just considered the warping textures unacceptable for the game. Carmack even admitted on twitter that he maybe should have let Bagley's version progress.
Gary Stark disgusts me, how can you have so little passion for what you do? you should not only have love for your creations, but you should have passion, and he obviously lacks in that respect as well, i just need to confirm this with one of his ex's. lol
The combination of showing Sarge from Doom firing a shotgun, while referencing the Doom movie, but using a voice line from "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", a movie about a pair of shotguns, is FUCKING BRILLIANT!
I don't mind the last guy, in fact he sounds kind of nice (even though I completely disagree with some of his statements). Imagine if you were trying to make a game, but all the programmers had their own idea of how the game should be. Pretty much everyone would be more or less pissed it didn't turn out the way they intended it to. But with that guy it's probably smooth sailing for the most part.
Well, your last example looks wrong to me. Being 20+ years in System administrations and network storage I think that he did a good work as an engineer - that's why he was hired and working. He had not been hating games - that seemed for him not his scope of activity. HE JUST F-G DID HIS JOB. And did it well, apparently.
Yeah, I found the last example as an odd choice too. All I really got from his talk was that he didn't love games, and that isn't a crime! Not everyone is going to get their dream job.
He was even very respectful in what he said. On that note I personally didn't see anything these programmers said as outlandish. Though it was still a interesting video.
Pit-Fighter was my first experience hating a video game. Even as adult I can hardly think about it for more than three seconds without getting nauseous.
I can relate to the guy that never plays his games. After staring at them for sometimes years, it just isn't fun and you only see the mistakes you've made. Spending your career like that, why would you ever want to revisit it when you're not working. That's how I feel while programming.
Larry could ask Carmack for his side of the story at least, or at least quote from his interviews. He had his reasons, which Larry didn’t mention. Basically, he was stubbornly demanding the level of image quality sufficiently close to pc original and Saturn’s 3d is shit, which he hated. “ was proud of Doom's subpixel accurate perspective mapping, and thought integral affine quads were ugly.” console gpus couldn’t do perspective correction and this made Carmack cringe. Later Hexen worked very well on Saturn, despite still not using its hardware rendering. Oh, and Bagley’s prototype only rendered walls. Nothing else. Probably no decorations, lighting, transparencies, background, monsters and weapons etc. And no floors/ceilings, of course. No wonder it ran at 60 fps, he didn’t even start to work on hard parts yet. (can’t find now, but I swear I’ve seen him saying this somewhere).
Oda Swifteye he answered someone on twitter about this port at least twice. I quoted from his reply. In my opinion, he made himself clear. He wanted texturing quality more representative of the original game (where it was superb) and believed it was possible to do that by not employing Saturn’s crappy VDP1. He wanted faithful port done quick, not a remake on a new engine. Bagley failed. I’m not implying Carmack was completely right, but Larry’s video obviously demonizes him.
Someone could probably mock up one from Bagley's description of how he used the hardware (specifically, *what* hardware he used and why). Hell, ask @GameHut for tips.
14:07 - 14:16 I... don't think I like Gary Stark very much. Seriously, people like him should stay the hell away from video game development. The further, the better.
To be fair, Final Fight for the Amiga wasn't too bad a port comparatively, especially given the time he had to do it and the tools at the time.. I think he's right about that. On a technical level, in 6 months, to do multiple ports at the same time, and have it work on a 512k Amiga... It could have been MUCH worse... ;-)
Bloxed You're saying that as if it's completely unfathomable, have you seriously never created something and not think what you created was bad? Hating your own game isn't any different from hating a drawing you've created...
Make one and you'll see. Hate might be a strong word; but at the very least you'll grind your teeth remembering hours of sleep deprived coding and highly repetitive testing to even get *one* thing precisely how you want it. ... and that's for one person making their passion project(s), much less some poor schlub tasked with porting someone else's technically extravagant game work on weaker hardware with very limited time and money. Hate is easier to imagine in those cases.
Jesus Zamora Saturn Duke3D is basically a remake on another engine, unable to reproduce the original properly, and with significant amount of warping textures. Where are the rotating spotlights in the game room in e1m1, why Duke is a midget? Yes, Carmack did not want to pay someone to butcher his game. unfortunately, that someone simply failed to do his job well as result.
My problem with Amiga final fight isn't that it's a bad conversion, but that it doesn't boot properly on my Amiga 500 +, just hangs after crack intro (it's not the crack because other people have this problem with official copies I think). It'd be interesting to see the original Saturn doom. So when using the SH2s he was still using "custom chips"? Is he just repeating himself there?
Great video! Keep 'em coming. I love that new drawing you made of yourself (the one with the thumb pointing while talking to us). Use it in your future Fact Hunts.
Very good video, though I don't think the number one spot is completely fair. From that interview, it seems more that the programmer didn't really care about playing games, rather than outright despise them. It's a bit like a guitar maker who doesn't like playing guitar. In a way, I suppose that makes it worse. The opposite of love isn't hate, but indifference, as they say...
A lot of 3D artist myself included, have this to say it isn't done til you hate it. Guess that is the case with some developers only their hate lasted longer than 3 days. (Albeit for 3D artist after a while, all we see is nothing but flaws and not the actual final model. Hence the 3 day bit if we walk away for a while and come back we are like hey this isn't so bad after all. )
They say that if you say Peter Molyneux's name three times in a Fact Hunt video, you summon him and he promises to grant you a wish. But then what you get is only half of what he promised.
With the other half being the complete opposite of what he promised.
So he's the Wish Granter from STALKER?
Not even half, more like a quarter
I wish I had a puppy
OH GOD, OH GOD
Episodic wishes, unfulfilled.
Even *I* got mad at John Carmack with that Doom one. What the hell?! The guy was just doing his job!
Thankfully, he seems to have regretted it; as he apologized to Bagley on Twitter recently.
Truly a WTF moment in gaming history.
If only John Romero weren't on vacation that week...
I can sort of see the point of trying to make the game close to the original. There was after all a very good reason for the decisions Carmack took when making Doom. But... He should have let Bagley do his job and optimized it for the new hardware. Good to hear that apologized to Bagley about it.
I am for one very curious about how that version of doom look and ran.
Carmack was infamous for being a dick. Why do you think so much of the original ID team left ID to get away from him?
Carmack has said he deeply regrets letting Romero leave because he thinks Romero was a huge part of why he was so successful and never quite got to those heights again without him.
I'm a game developer and I could relate to some of this. I don't like the games that I make because while making a game, you'd have to play your game over a billion times to make sure that everything works properly. It gets to the point where your game gets distasteful and you won't know whether the game that you made is good or not; especially while you are making it.
totally, its the same reason why some games playtested by the programmers are so rock hard. they spend so long getting good at them, they assume the game is too easy, so ramp up the difficulty.
Robocop 3 on the SNES was one especially.
This is what beta testers are for. A developer needs new sets of eyes to look at the progress and see it from a different perspective. They're not just there to find glitches.
Not putting music in to save on cart size? That's a big nope from someone who loves video game osts
You want to know the most fucked up thing about the guy who did the 3 only pieces of music for Crescent Galaxy? He's most well known for the kick-ass title screen music for Klax on the Lynx, Alex (LX) Rudis!
+Man of Culture Duke Nukem 64 had a similar problem. With the N64 hardware they had to choose between the soundtrack or Duke's one-liners. Ofc they chose the thing that makes Duke stand out from other FPS protags of the time.
I couldn't be a game programmer, things like this or the Doom port would make me quit on the spot.
I’m not at all surprised to hear that a programmer behind Pit Fighter doesn’t like to play video games
same. even larry is being too kind. it's not a bit shit. it's a lot shit.
Creative Cat Productions
I'm totally surprised that anybody who created Doom or Doom2 had ANY interest in gaming at all. I just don't understand how people can call it a 'masterpiece' when it so obviously is not. I guess it all boils down to personal taste OR if you shout loud enough about how 'great' something is - no matter how crap it really is - then you'll have a bunch of people who probably like you or the way you speak or your hair etc etc and agree that a pos is a 'masterpiece'.
I played System Shock in 1999[ I think it was released in 1993] and was stunned at how I could go prone or crouch, jump, lean round corners and fully explore an area, whereas in Doom you are hindered by turn L/R, strafe L/R and moving backwards and firing. It was childlike. you never aimed, you simply had to point the gun in a generic direction and Bang! the bad guy was shot. Absurd.
I think people can get VERY sentimental about 1990s 'games'.
Actually, why DO i care? I don't. Apologies.
After hearing what he had to say on his projects and his mindset about how only the box office matters he seems like the type of guy who would have been the "perfect fit" for a upper management or ceo position of some publisher if he stayed in the industry.
Dava noncom Doom is considered great, by many people atleast, more due to it's legacy. It was the second or third FPS ever made and and is responsible for how common FPSes are today. At the time it came out it was pretty revolutionary. It hasn't aged well but most games from the early 90s haven't. It basically comes down to what you enjoy and when you started playing.
yes, doom is very limited. however, think about what games were in 1993. they were point and click adventures, 2d side scrollers, and jrpgs. one of the best looking games that had a 3d space was starfox. now look at doom.
doom set the standard for what games like it would have to do in the future. yes, system shock is a fun game, but there would be no system shock without doom.
I... honestly can't tell which is worse: working for 90's Atari or 2000's onward EA?
Shade Knight probably working for EA
Working in microsoft games past 2000. If you're not in terminal reality, or microsoft studios - you're 2rd party studio redelegated for picking up scabs of former glory - like rare ltd.
At least in Atari the working enviroment was much more relaxing and less demanding (as evident in some of the more recent Arcade Attack interviews by Adrian with ex-Atari employees). Whereas at EA well...fuck...
i mean yeah but the amount of stories you hear of people not getting paid for stuff and atari expecting them to be fine with it - that's probably way worse than ea
How about both?
The last one:
I'm a cook but I never try out my dishes. I just hate food.
eh its not quite the same, I'm getting into the programming field and you can apply that skill into an incredibly wide variety of fields.
Im in outerspace and i can tell you're a bad cook.
I actually don't exist in spacetime and here to tell you food as a concept isn't reality.
As a cook i gotta say you must suck as a cook. Cooks are supposed to constantly try their food to make sure it actually meets expectations. Otherwise you could he throwing out garbage to paying customers...a cook you are not, you sound like the help to me. Or a dishwasher who jumps on the line in a rush, that doesnt make the dishwasher a cook
You're a dish
Wow. How in the world is Gary Stark NOT the CEO of EA Games??
"The sole measure of any game is it's sale numbers."
Never has a more '80s yuppie statement been made in the field of games.
I could swear he's somehow possessing the minds of all of EA.
I have no trouble believing there are developers who hate games. I've known several people who got into the industry and it ruined games for them completely. They were gamers beforehand, but after seeing just how scummy the industry is they just didn't have the stomach for them any more. When they get home, the last thing they want to do is touch a videogame they know is benefitting the scum of the earth that are publishers. I'm honestly surprised the industry has gotten as big as it has without any of the big players getting seriously penalized for a lot of the illegal stuff they do. Like if you expect reasonable work hours, industry standard pay, or any of the sane treatment that is standard in all other parts of software development (not that its particularly good anywhere but that's a bigger topic), you get black-balled and they illegally trade information with other game publishers to make sure you can never work in the industry again. But its never amounted to anything big legally.
Nice points you made there, mate! I think the devs cop a lot of the blame but the devs are treated like shit. You know the number of unions there are for all kinds of industry but 'Gaming' seems to be one industry that is still locked in the pre-Union days.
I guess people could argue that 'creating games' is a 'creative artform' rather than a normal 'job' but it cannot be denied the suspect and shonky backstabbing and unfair treatment of workers in Gaming exists and has become obscene with its more accepted popularity [compared to the days when your girlfriend would make fun of you with her friends, calling you a 'computer nerd' because the most they can do with their spare time is watch fkn TV and talk about shitty soap operas].
But publishers 'blacklisting' devs has often backfired upon them when some devs have found backing to create some great, classic games independent of publishers. Publishers are parasites. Administration for administration's sake.
Eg, Look at the way Konami treat their employees! It's disgraceful.
I'm glad indie games do well nowadays. Hopefully they can shake up the corporations into realizing they'll lose their best people if they don't start treating them properly.
Let's hope Indie games prove the publishers are just spineless greedy corporate parasites!
Indie games aren't doing well though. Making a profitable indie game is like winning the lottery. Very few actually make any money. I'm currently studying game development in university (programmer) and we have been asked multiple times if we would even consider going indie. Like 95% of us answers no. It's just not worth it, you'll most likely go bankrupt before you can even finish the damn game.
Much better to search for smaller game studios and work for them. Salary will still be shit but at least you have steady income. I'll probably never work in the game industry and just go in to software development instead, just because of how bad the industry is.
Well, I guess you're right. I wonder why you were even asked though? I mean, take Hello Games. Granted, the lead programmer lied thru his teeth to sell something he wasn't capable of producing [you ask me? he should have made a galaxy with about 300-900 worlds, then he'd be capable of introducing a story and mini quests... after all, who REALLY wants to pretend they have access to 18 quintillion worlds? You must know the travelling screen from one universe to another is simply a loading screen, right?] but still, Sean Murray DID make money out of it. Shame he didn't put together a team of 100 instead of less than 15. Bloody idiot.
But, like an artist, game devs often leave a great memory of wonderful fantasy worlds. I will always remember Ken Levine's System Shock, Thief and Bioshock games. Correct, he didn't make a lot of money out of it - apart from the budget for the game with which he would pay himself and the other devs and concept artists - but with those games he left a lasting impression on the world of not just gaming but storytelling and the concept is superb but more than that.. I will always go back to those games to play them all the way thru every year or so. The undersea city-world of Rapture or the skybound Columbia were fascinating and fantastic experiences, as were System Shock and the steampunk magic of Thief [not Thief 4 though, great graphics, superb visuals but the whole theme felt so miserably rushed.. a sure sign Levine had nothing to do with it].
I suppose it's the difference between being a 9-5 coder who never takes their work home with them or someone who actually wants to create vistas that blow your mind?
Whatever you choose, good luck, mate.
"...and that's probably why Pit Fighter is a bit shit"
Took the words right out of my mouth. That line about box office being the only valid measure of success for a game left me a bit aghast, despite already knowing how cynical and greedy coin-op makers could be.
Ohhhhh that explains why Doom didn't run well on the Sega Saturn they should have used the hardware better.
At least we know that Carmack is the one to blame for the games poor quality.
A number of porting issues are less the system not being powerful enough and more about the system not being utilized well enough.
Look at Earthworm Jim. Genesis game that later came on the SNES and yet it needed a level cut out to save space.
It's still bugging me how one guy manages to make it run flawless and all, and another one comes and says "NO, FUCK YOU" and tells to redo it crappily.
RippahRooJizah SNES CPU is less capable, so maybe it couldn’t keep up with the code required for that level, or it was too closely tied to Sega hardware. All non-Genesis versions of EWJ also lack a few other effects, such as underwater warp.
Valtis Tigrel Problem with Daikatana is that Romero was a great designer, but a bad manager and became too lazy to program. Programmers who did Daikatana were unfortunately not as good as Carmack, and the managers he hired were absolutely incompetent. Many competent devs left due to a scandal (this is a long story by itself) and the people who remained couldn’t finish the game properly.
The last one funnily enough was neither angry nor filled with hatred. He sounded reasonably accomplished with his work, and just viewed actually playing video games with indifference - being "not for him" more or less.
A strange position, but not completely unheard of or anything.
MGlBlaze Just about. It was a job to him. I can kinda respect that.
One can respect his honesty about it.
Same story with John Carmack (of id Software and Doom fame). He has said many times throughout his career that he does not play video games, he is a programmer/coder.
the respect from me comes from the fact that he can both both admit he didn't care about games, but also intelligent enough to allow someone who does to direct him.
The line I hate about it is “The only true way to rate a game is by how much money it makes” that line is so soulless and money grubby, I’m glad he’s out of the industry.
"I don't really care" says the guy who looks up his own work on the internet and complains about people complaining about him
Reminds me of a curtain "Fish" that likes to curse a lot.
Wonder if the whole "not liking Final Fight" thing is just an excuse for how shit the Amiga game is...
Yeah, for someone who claims not to care, he likes to look it up quite a lot. I think secretly he was pretty affected by all the flak that he took over the game and is just being defensive. Personally, I don't think he did a bad job in technical terms (especially under the circumstances that he was given), but it's as if he made everything a priority except the actual gameplay.
@@Syklonus I mean, if you dont like games then you probably wouldnt even know how to make a game fun. It's like designing a car but not knowing how to drive
Wow, what the hell crawled up Carmack's ass there? Why didn't he want the game to work well on the saturn?
It downright sounds like jealousy, not wanting the Saturn version to be better than his "baby", the PC version.
Maybe paid off by someone wanting to boost pc sales?
PC sales had already peaked years before Saturn release
dentistguba What if I told you that there is no actual competition in the gaming world?
Almost makes me feel bad for Sega. Sounds like it would have been the best version of DOOM at the time which could have been a good selling point for the under-performing console.
"Hello you"
"Peter Mollyneaux reference"
Well, it is definitely a fact hunt video.
That's like saying a movie Is only good if it makes a profit!
it's the modern game industry in a nutshell.
Well, he viewed it as a job. Explains why nothing he was in charge of stood the test of time.
Business is business.
The american viewing audience would agree.
Illuminations?
"The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes" It seems the modern gaming industry has taken that statement & made it their motto. Which explains so many of it's current failings.
"The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes"
I know it's only 8:34am, but I'm pretty confident that is going to be the most absurd comment I hear today.
I want to see Larry and Peter run into each other at a games convention
rwdplz1 Larry would be all, “hello youuuu!”
Oh hi, Takumi.
Peter would be like. Wanna throw hands ? Lol
The amount of likes..... Nice
I would pay good money to see Larry interview Molyneux for 30 minutes.
BETTER WATCH IT BEFORE LARRY TAKES IT DOWN AGAIN
Robert G. Mitchell he did
Robert G. Mitchell Larry took this down before?
I am ready
Glad I’m not the only one. Swore I was imagining things then... XD
I really wish there was a listing of what games had footage in the intros. Love seeing ones I recognize, and always frustrated when I see a neat-looking one I don't.
They all seem to be PC-Engine CD games this time around.
@Juganawt
Not really.
I’m glad I found this channel. There’s just something about these Fact Hunt videos I really love.
Thanks dude :)
Agreed my man.
I could understand games programmers today who hate their games, at least if they work for a major publisher. Must be hell to gimp gameplay just because it does not fit some complacent designers "creative vision", instead having to add more cutscenes and qtes.
Qte's and cutscenes? It's all about predatory lootbox systems and gimping on gameplay to make buying pay to win shit the only viable way to play.
The worst part about Doom four the Saturn was that John Romero was away when the game needed approval. Carmack never had to deal with that aspect of direction and when it was presented, Carmack thought it was sacrilegious to run Doom on 3D hardware, even though it was the best version to date, according to Jim Bagley. Dick move on Carmack's part...if only John Romero had been working that day.
Carmack should have called Romero.
@@PiroKUSS From the sound of things, the only thing that exceeded Carmack's talent was his ego. Agreed. He should have called.
@@AtariBorn At least he learned from it and acknowledged his fuck-up.
OH MY GOD, THE SHADMAN PIC.
HE ACTUALLY USED IT, THE MADMAN.
What do you me--- Oh, I remember. Skeleton Nazi man drew a Larry pic.
Good thing that Nazi didn't made it in his usual shit. Oh god, have mercy on me.
Hahaha!!!!
Wait so that pic of Larry pointing behind him is from a shadman pic? I knew there was a reason I was being aroused more by that Larry pic.
"The only way to truly judge a game is by how much money it makes"
You work for EA, don't you?
"The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes". There are plenty of examples in various media - games included - that didn't sell well, but are otherwise amazing products. Profit =/= quality, by any standards.
11:20 the voice actor reads the same section twice.
Was looking for someone else who noticed!
It happens quite a bit in yt videos honestly. Due to the editing process.
When I edit, I am so anal about that stuff.
Well, then pull the stick out of your ass and chill out! ;)
+Michael Rigs not really worthy to tell him to chill out, as he's relatively calm.
I should know, i regularly yell and salt at people for funsies on here.
14:29 "The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes." Coughpsychonauts.
1:16 Why do I find that drawing oddly adorable?
If only you knew.
>shadman
Ah, if only you knew who drew it
You really don't want to know who drew it
Brotmeister Nah, I'll pass on that
That last bloke...is just sad. Imagine working at a Candy factory, and being like 'Oh I make the sweets, but i just sell them".
I'm not saying you can't, but if your going into something as specialized as games, at least try to enjoy yourself...
Dr. Badguy Reviews yeah and the sweets taste terrible, and the sweet designer says "i don't care how they taste I've never eaten a sweet in my life "
He's not the only one. Yu Suzuki has said he loves making games but has no desire to play them.
Some people just work to work. I've got no problem with it. If he's an all-around professional at the job, it really doesn't matter if he likes games or not
I sure wouldn't decide to work for EA after leaving from another company, it's possibly a fate worse than death.
Nice video Larry, should’ve mentioned Phil Fish with Fez, Jordan Mechner hated Prince of Persia Warrior within, he left during development. Also John Romero hated Daikatana and apologized to his fans for the game.
+Lawliet31101979
and thus we have the reason why Fez 2 never happened.
Phil Fish hates gamers, he’s a disgrace.
Phil Fish is one of the worst people in gaming
Phil fish doesn't hate fez, he hates gamers
Phil Fish is a fish, even his facial expressions are fish
That John Carmack story just makes me think of him more and more as that game developer parody of him/romero from Grandmas Boy
6:29 Is Peter Molyneux like Beetlejuice but with two mentions instead of three?
I actually agree to some degree with that rant on Final Fight; I’ve never really found beat-em-ups to have the depth of fighters.
That last guy was silly, you judge a game by its gameplay, art, sound and impact, how much money it makes is low on that list.
>S H A D M A N
I figured it would pop up eventually, still giggled
Never stopping.
>Gets out
>>>>>>>> *_greentexting_*
>dissing the comedy chevron
shiggy
who are we quoting?
amazing reading at 11:14. Reads the same line twice.
John Carmack singlehandedly killed the Saturn. I just realized this.
I imagine the QA testers would tire of the games even more, since they are expected to do a lot of repetitive tasks to test the game's features, and know all the quirks inside out.. then the allure of playing the game is no longer there.
2:46 I guess this explains why doom on the atari jaguar had no music.
Ed_ward Yeah i was wondering no music after being reminded by it during the jaguar episode of angry video gamr nerd.
It wasn't just that; the DSP used for the music on the Jaguar was instead being used for 3D calculations.
Carmack used all the power for graphics. None left for music.
"The only way to tell if a game is successful is how much money it makes." Yeah, tell that to No Man's "Broke the lowest user score of all time out of all the thousands of games on Steam" Sky.
11:20 - Audio mishap. Repeated line.
Y'know, I thought my last name was pretty odd and weird, but to see it pop up on this video of all things is a bit surreal. At least the guy didn't bring shame to the surname.
Oliver Harper!
Am I the only one who is not surprised that creating fun and games is definitely not fun and games?
Well, I can understand why many game programmers didn't like their gigs back then... Digipen and the like wouldn't have gamedev programs in a good while, so many just seemed to have been comp-sci types that happened to fall in that job as opposed of the minority of hobbyist guys that learned programming making games in their home computers.
What glitch in the Matrix happens at around 11:20-11:30 in the video?
I heard a line and then another that sounded just like it.
Being a programmer myself, I can say there have been some jobs that siphon all your pride away from you. But other times, some people just aren't a good fit in their role. Regardless of reason, the result is usually a half-hearted effort and lower quality.
... I'm still judging Pit Fighter.
Honestly I don't find it that strange that a company would hire a few programmers/software engineers with little or no interest in actually playing games. A lot of game development (at least the implementation side) still just boils down to writing algorithms and optimising the performance of the code for the hardware.
I haven't touched an EA game since The Sims 2.
2011 star wars old republic mmo was the last one, before that it was 2008.
Good choice
Dead space for me
BF4 and before that BF3.
I have a rather typical Origin account I guess. :P
Dead Space 2 for me.
Granted, even without the myriad of issues EA had caused I was never super into the company itself. I do not hate EA. I simply do not care about them enough to like them as a company.
On the subject of Final Fight, the worst conversion was the SNES port. It was missing a level, a playable character, and the two player feature. The hell of it is that Capcom made that one.
1:17 isn't that a Shadman made doodle?
Yes, Shad was commissioned to make it. You should check out the backgrounds of old flash animations that Shad used to make for people. I've always been a fan of Shadman's background artistry.
7.62 x39mm I remember seeing it in one of his more recent posts on his site. I thought nothing of it. I mostly frequent the shadbase because I work with a fucker that had a sfw shad doodle as his phone background and I use it to bother him.
Anyone that wants to know. Music that plays when TrevorMcFurry game is talked about is the main theme song of Raiden
If they ever made a movie about him, Gary Stark could be played by Christoph Waltz.
Did I hear the voice of Oliver Harper reading the doom part? Big fan.
I thought that was him too!
Doom would of been the best on sega and sold more systems if they did it the first way. Things sure would be different
The most awaited moment of the weekend is here, ladies and gents! Another Fact Hunt episode. Long live Larry!
Aplin hating Final Fight doesn't surprise me since he's absolutely crazy
I develop games for a living. Once the technical challenges are over, it all gets just monotonous .. and then testing / quality control kicks and and your re-working minor details - you can easily end up hating the current project !
>shadman
expected it saw your Twitter
Just to clarify about Doom, Bagley's version used a method of doing the textures that caused the graphics to warp. It wasn't just Carmack decided to intentionally mess up the Saturn version of Doom, he just considered the warping textures unacceptable for the game. Carmack even admitted on twitter that he maybe should have let Bagley's version progress.
Gary Stark disgusts me, how can you have so little passion for what you do? you should not only have love for your creations, but you should have passion, and he obviously lacks in that respect as well, i just need to confirm this with one of his ex's. lol
That Saturn DOOM story was utterly fascinating. I wish I was able to witness what he had achieved back when. I wonder what Carmack was thinking?
Apparently Mr. Carmack did not like afine texture warping.
It snowballed from there.
YOU ACTUALLY USED SHADS PIC O_O
The combination of showing Sarge from Doom firing a shotgun, while referencing the Doom movie, but using a voice line from "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", a movie about a pair of shotguns, is FUCKING BRILLIANT!
I love your fact hunt videos. Who else love them too?
i agree that you love his fact hunt videos
I agree you love his fact hunt videos, i mean someone has to believe you right?
I do I do!!!
If I didn't why would I be here?
I don't agree that you like them. I mean it's all opinion after all.... Blimey.
I don't mind the last guy, in fact he sounds kind of nice (even though I completely disagree with some of his statements).
Imagine if you were trying to make a game, but all the programmers had their own idea of how the game should be. Pretty much everyone would be more or less pissed it didn't turn out the way they intended it to.
But with that guy it's probably smooth sailing for the most part.
Well, your last example looks wrong to me. Being 20+ years in System administrations and network storage I think that he did a good work as an engineer - that's why he was hired and working. He had not been hating games - that seemed for him not his scope of activity. HE JUST F-G DID HIS JOB. And did it well, apparently.
Yeah, I found the last example as an odd choice too. All I really got from his talk was that he didn't love games, and that isn't a crime! Not everyone is going to get their dream job.
He was even very respectful in what he said. On that note I personally didn't see anything these programmers said as outlandish. Though it was still a interesting video.
Vladimir Agreed. This seems less like hatred and more like simple disinterest.
if his responsibility was to program gameplay, he did his job poorly.
He programmed the game, and the game was terrible. He had no love for it, so he never cared if it was any good.
Pit-Fighter was my first experience hating a video game.
Even as adult I can hardly think about it for more than three seconds without getting nauseous.
Gary sounds like he would have been a perfect fit for EA.
"I judge it by how much money it made me and atari."
man we need a top 5 dedicated solely to "Mad as a Hater" Richard Aplin. With him as a special guest if possible.
I'll be shocked if Phil Fish isn't on this list at least as a (dis)honorable mention.
ZAP!
He doesn't hate fez
He just hates everyone else.
Fez is actually a good game, it's the man who designed it that I have an issue with
Why give him attention, though?
Well I guess I can take a 15-minute break from packing my stuff...
Larry smashing it as always! Last time I was eating Doritos, this time just a small chocolate cake bar.
I can relate to the guy that never plays his games. After staring at them for sometimes years, it just isn't fun and you only see the mistakes you've made. Spending your career like that, why would you ever want to revisit it when you're not working. That's how I feel while programming.
Larry could ask Carmack for his side of the story at least, or at least quote from his interviews. He had his reasons, which Larry didn’t mention. Basically, he was stubbornly demanding the level of image quality sufficiently close to pc original and Saturn’s 3d is shit, which he hated.
“ was proud of Doom's subpixel accurate perspective mapping, and thought integral affine quads were ugly.” console gpus couldn’t do perspective correction and this made Carmack cringe. Later Hexen worked very well on Saturn, despite still not using its hardware rendering.
Oh, and Bagley’s prototype only rendered walls. Nothing else. Probably no decorations, lighting, transparencies, background, monsters and weapons etc. And no floors/ceilings, of course. No wonder it ran at 60 fps, he didn’t even start to work on hard parts yet. (can’t find now, but I swear I’ve seen him saying this somewhere).
You reckon Carmack would have accepted the request for comment?
Oda Swifteye he answered someone on twitter about this port at least twice. I quoted from his reply. In my opinion, he made himself clear. He wanted texturing quality more representative of the original game (where it was superb) and believed it was possible to do that by not employing Saturn’s crappy VDP1. He wanted faithful port done quick, not a remake on a new engine. Bagley failed. I’m not implying Carmack was completely right, but Larry’s video obviously demonizes him.
"The only way you can truly judge a game is by how much money it makes."
The Red Wedding hit the wrong Stark.
Would love to see this Sega Saturn Doom that Carmack shut down
Octavio Guzman my thoughts exactly.
Someone could probably mock up one from Bagley's description of how he used the hardware (specifically, *what* hardware he used and why).
Hell, ask @GameHut for tips.
"The only way to really judge a game is based on how much money it makes" , no wonder this guy quit the industry. Sounds like a hack.
14:07 - 14:16 I... don't think I like Gary Stark very much. Seriously, people like him should stay the hell away from video game development. The further, the better.
To be fair, Final Fight for the Amiga wasn't too bad a port comparatively, especially given the time he had to do it and the tools at the time.. I think he's right about that. On a technical level, in 6 months, to do multiple ports at the same time, and have it work on a 512k Amiga... It could have been MUCH worse... ;-)
This is harsh! Who knew people would hate their own games!
Bloxed That's like an director saying that they hate their own movie.
For various reasons
Bloxed You're saying that as if it's completely unfathomable, have you seriously never created something and not think what you created was bad? Hating your own game isn't any different from hating a drawing you've created...
Make one and you'll see. Hate might be a strong word; but at the very least you'll grind your teeth remembering hours of sleep deprived coding and highly repetitive testing to even get *one* thing precisely how you want it.
... and that's for one person making their passion project(s), much less some poor schlub tasked with porting someone else's technically extravagant game work on weaker hardware with very limited time and money. Hate is easier to imagine in those cases.
You'd be surprised.
Poor Jim Bagley...one can only imagine what it would have been like to play the not assed up version of DOOM? Id love to have got a crack at it.
so gary is the old-school version of modern publishers, no love for the products they pump out but have there eye firmly on the bank account.
3 Peter references in one video?
You certainly spoil us, Larry!
Now I'm really curious about what John Carmack's problem with the original programming on Saturn's Doom was.
Shoddy Workmanship massive ego. Couldn't handle someone doing better.
Also, he didn't like afine texture warping.
Also explains why Duke Nukem 3D was so much better. The diva there wasn't a programmer.
immense amount of texture warping which he hated as PC Doom is completely free of this crap.
Jesus Zamora Saturn Duke3D is basically a remake on another engine, unable to reproduce the original properly, and with significant amount of warping textures. Where are the rotating spotlights in the game room in e1m1, why Duke is a midget?
Yes, Carmack did not want to pay someone to butcher his game. unfortunately, that someone simply failed to do his job well as result.
15 years, six studios and I have never played a game I helped develop. No programming. I'm an asset monkey.
Talk about the people behind metal gear survive in the next one.
That last guy sounds like he would be perfect to work at EA
My problem with Amiga final fight isn't that it's a bad conversion, but that it doesn't boot properly on my Amiga 500 +, just hangs after crack intro (it's not the crack because other people have this problem with official copies I think).
It'd be interesting to see the original Saturn doom. So when using the SH2s he was still using "custom chips"? Is he just repeating himself there?
Looks good to me.
Great video! Keep 'em coming. I love that new drawing you made of yourself (the one with the thumb pointing while talking to us). Use it in your future Fact Hunts.
Number 1: Me, any time I work on anything
Nah, I kid. Probably. ;)
Very good video, though I don't think the number one spot is completely fair. From that interview, it seems more that the programmer didn't really care about playing games, rather than outright despise them. It's a bit like a guitar maker who doesn't like playing guitar.
In a way, I suppose that makes it worse. The opposite of love isn't hate, but indifference, as they say...
OLIVER HARPER!
Sounds like Gary Stark would love working for EA, if all he cared about was money.
You never disappoint, my friend. Great video as usual, Larry!
If I worked on Pitfighter, I'd never play another videogame either.
A lot of 3D artist myself included, have this to say it isn't done til you hate it. Guess that is the case with some developers only their hate lasted longer than 3 days.
(Albeit for 3D artist after a while, all we see is nothing but flaws and not the actual final model. Hence the 3 day bit if we walk away for a while and come back we are like hey this isn't so bad after all. )
Comedians have a similar thing with jokes. They rehearse the gags so much that when it's time to tell the joke live they no longer find it funny.
Okay that last one was definitely a huge surprise. Programming games but never playing games