An Open Letter To Everyone In The Game Industry

Clayton as a Usability Consultant expresses his outrage over everything that has happened with Aliens: Colonial Marines and how we need changes before others force the changes on us.

[HULKGAMECRIT]

Please spread this one around, I'd like to get as many people in on the conversation as possible.

[MestreRothN4G]

Agreed.

This conversation should have been done a lot of time ago, but people didn't realize the "evil schemes" until they have come to this ridiculous points.

What the article points to is happening over and over again. Gearbox/Alien/Sega brings just another example to it.

Games are being advertised as magic, excellent, innovative. Mostly they have subpar performance, no creativity at all, below standard controls, ridiculous challenge.

AC3.
Diablo 3.
Mass Effect 3.
Dragon Age 2.
I dare to say Skyrim (with its awful combat).
Dead Space 3.
Rage.
Homefront.
Brink.

All these games were advertised as top notch. Actually, most of them were limited by the "codualization" that is infecting all the games, specially the successful franchises.

lol at us.

Once again...

Marketing >>>>>>>&g t;>>> Quality/creativity.

[antz1104]

Im not really sure how you can lump ME3, Skyrim, and DS3 in with Brink. Thats generalizing a little too much.

$20 says that most of the people complaining about A:CM haven't even played it and are going off what they read in the media. Is it a great game? No, but its sure not as horrible as the media is portraying it to be. Maybe we can't trust companies anymore re a finished product, but we sure shouldnt start trusting random ppl on the internet that could be talking out of their a$$.

[MestreRothN4G]

I never said they had the same quality standard, never said they were in the same level.

If you read carefully, you'll understand which point I said they have in common.

And yes, when it comes to this point, I really believe they are in the same bag.

[antz1104]

And I never said anything about standard quality or level. I said you lumped them in together. And you did when you said "Mostly they have subpar performance, no creativity at all, below standard controls, ridiculous challenge." Then you listed off several games, some Im sure could fall under that heading. The ones I mentioned I don't think belong in that category at all. That's where the generalization comes in, and why I think ppl should judge for themselves other than trusting someones opinion.

[PopRocks359]

Very interesting analysis. It truly is amazing how one game has generated so much buzz, negative or otherwise. I still want to try it out to get my own impression of it, so I don't know how bad it really is but people seem to be pretty irked by this title for a number of reasons and it's a shame given its hype. At least some people have managed to enjoy it for what it was I suppose.

[Irishguy95]

Agree

This is why gamers should simply not buy bad games. Gearbox have gotten away with this when the really don't deserve too. They literally ****ed over everyone including Sega/

[BanBrother]

Yeah it sucks. I thought of Gearbox in a positive light, as I loved Borderlands and Randy seemed like a cool guy. But this game is a travesty. Gearbox should have said NO, as they were working on Borderlands 2 but still tried to make Aliens at the same time. Obviously, they put all their work into Borderlands 2 and neglected Aliens CM.
A serious smack in the face to Aliens fans. All along Gearbox just wanted the money. They even outsourced the Borderlands 2 DLC.

Very, very piss poor ethical standatds from Gearbox. If I were SEGA I'd sue their asses. Not buying ANY game from Gearbox from now on. I do not support their filthy business. They just lost a customer.

To anyone defending them, you just can't. Even if you like the game, you have to see between the lines and take a look at all the deception and dirty lies benknd this hellish developmemt cycle, if you can even call it that.

[MestreRothN4G]

Gearbox is an awful developer and Borderlands is the exception.

Also... They made the same thing with Duke Nukem.

[Godmars290]

This pretty much been the industry this whole generation if not before.

I mean come on people, from ET on the Atari 2600 to poor side-quest management in ME3 - nevermind the ending! - to this, this is just history repeating itself.

[Myx23]

people seem not to be able to see the bigger picture here. every industry on the planet jumped the downward spiral when globalization came up. outsourcing stuff was the magic phrase. now we got soulless products. only children with their "santa does exist, mommy, yes?"-point of view would write open letters to an industry that couldn't care less. yes, we are all upset now the state the industries are in, but please do remember: we all let it happen.

[ApolloTheBoss]

This guy is awesome. He makes several excellent points that people should really get in on.

Gearbox is ruining their reputation (Though honestly that was just built on Borderlands' success, so they aren't very credible when you think about it.) and I think that they've had enough excuses. Don't make promises you can't keep. Especially when you know you've already got too much on your plate anyway. And this outsourcing Gearbox likes to do has got to stop. I honestly didn't even know you could do this in the industry. They're basically using other people's work and adding it to their own, making changes they think are necessary and fitting it to their liking. This is how you make a crap game. If they really had other priorities they should have just refused to make it. Like when Activision asked them to make a COD game. That just shows that they wanted to work on Borderlands, not because they loathed Activision and their practices. Gearbox can redeem themselves by 1.) Not ever outsourcing a game again. 2.) Build ALL their games from the ground up. 3.) Focus on one game at a time. If they can do that then they might earn back my respect as well my business, but I won't be getting my hopes up.

[FaSCoRP]

When I saw yesterday a video comparision between the demo and the final product I could not believe it. How down can something go that way ? The animation from the enemies reminded me a bit to those in "Unreal II: The Awakening" from the original xbox. They were not even modelated in 3D, they were like sprites pre rendered in different angles, and that was 2003, and it looked very old at that time. Cannot find a decent video in youtube showing this, they kind of hide the aliens animation in the trailers and gameplay (shame on you developer)

[aliengmr]

I really think the first step is for gamers to be more careful with their money. Stop buying the "hype" and buy the games themselves.

A f*** ton of money is probably going spent hyping and marketing GTAV. What is the point? I mean beyond a small ad telling people its available and some videos laying out the synopsis, what else is really needed to sell GTAV? Same with CoD.

The industry should stop trying to sell the "idea" of a game, but we gamers need to stop buying it too. Gamers get blamed for a lot, but its our gullibility that's really the only one that we gamers deserve to be blamed for.

When EA shames gamers for not buying a game, something is clearly wrong. Gamers just don't try to look past hype. We freak out at how amazing the SW:1313 or Watch Dogs demo looks without remotely considering what the final product will end up being. We scream "DAY 1!!!!!!" without realizing that what we saw of SW:1313 was not representative of the final product AT ALL. It was LA's "idea" of the game. A small, highly polish, demo built specifically for E3. (and possibly helping in the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney, IMO). I didn't represent at what point they were at in development, it was still in pre-production. They could have started a pre-order right then and I would bet 1000's of gamer would be suckered into throwing money at it.

TL;DR Gamers need to stop buying hype. The industry needs to stop selling hype.