Postby Major Cooke » Tue Jul 28, 2009 4:46 pm
No bullshit response:
Taking the time to make a brilliant game means usually game companies have the man power and have a lot of experience as a game company, let alone a company in itself. Running a company costs money. Time costs money. Time IS money. You can only truly expect corps such as Valve to come out with some of the best games ever generated from several hundred computers... If you would look at say... Zero Punctuation, you will see he has only praised a few games so far:
-Portal
-Silent Hill 2
-Painkiller
And a few others.
These games were made by people who had the ability, time, and money to do so. Motivation is usually one to come from sales rates, and how hard-core they can be with people such as Microsoft. Introversion wouldn't be here if they didn't know what their doing. So they had to cut the multiplayer from Darwinia... Okay. Doesn't make it bad, it just means it lacked it's partner, that's it. It got them loads, and it was an evolutionary product/master piece by a scant few developers in England, as the "last of the bedroom programmers". I myself have turned into a bedroom programmer, and I program when I have fun, and motivation.
If you lack one, your workflow may not be as good. Seeing the money crises undoubtedly caused a few staff members to break down, black hole, and nearly cave into quitting to find a better job. Their starting to slip into the pre-Darwinia hole according to their blog, but if they can make it in time, and if it's well designed, they should get as much, if not more, cash to support them just like the original Darwinia did.
The only true way to get good grips on having an outstanding company with great games is to start off with a bang so you can get better impressions. Otherwise, people will think "Eck, their the same company that developed this so-and-so crap" and it can turn nasty... unless someone actually steps into the spotlight and says "Hey, this is actually pretty good. Let's not be prejudice and show off the good sides of it all!"
Everyone has had their best days. John Romero for instance wouldn't be legendary with Zdoom if Doom didn't exist, nor would the many first person shooter games that exist. A simple 10-50 MB game evolutioned from Wolfenstein called Doom and Doom II has most undoubtedly made ID software extensively rich, even if Doom 3 lacks the finesse that Romero put into Doom to make it worth a damn.
That's what I think.