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Steve Gibson, Gearbox's head of marketing, wants Microsoft and Valve to "Play Nice."
- Thread starter crimsonheadGCN
- Start date
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Ditto. As nice as it is always ending up on the same team in MW2, it's not hard getting our group into a server in TF2 and with a little effort, all ending up on the same team.Boonoo said:
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
Same. I did my part.Boonoo said:
To be honest, I would get more out of html links to live matches on servers than an elaborate party or matchmaking system, especially for a game with a smaller community.
I liked Borderlands quite a bit. Or at least I liked what Borderlands showed me Diablo style games could become.
Personally I think Diablo should stay isometric view, but I want to see more games that try to be first-person Diablo now that Borderlands has laid the foundation of the way such a game would work. Hopefully future iterations of Borderlands expand on the types of loot you can acquire, implement a gambling system to sink money into like with Diablo, and provide more types of environments and enemies to keep things from getting bland. I have high hopes for Borderlands 2, hoping that it copies as much from Diablo as it can. I only played Borderlands on 360 but if Borderlands 2 has a superior Steamworks PC version I'd prefer that.
Personally I think Diablo should stay isometric view, but I want to see more games that try to be first-person Diablo now that Borderlands has laid the foundation of the way such a game would work. Hopefully future iterations of Borderlands expand on the types of loot you can acquire, implement a gambling system to sink money into like with Diablo, and provide more types of environments and enemies to keep things from getting bland. I have high hopes for Borderlands 2, hoping that it copies as much from Diablo as it can. I only played Borderlands on 360 but if Borderlands 2 has a superior Steamworks PC version I'd prefer that.
Stallion Free said:
Plus with things like TF2 people can layer on community-built matchmaking. Tf2lobby.com is an example of a streamlined system--it's pretty much a copy of the L4D matchmaking. You can either use your own server or one of Valve's, and you fill up the lobby then it launches you into TF2. Or something a little less streamlined like finding scrims, etc on irc. Having that strong server based community really is key for general public games, though.
jim-jam bongs
Member
Felix Lighter said:
At launch Borderlands co-op was utterly broken on PC. This was after Big Randy repeatedly claimed that the game was made for PC and ported to consoles, which made myself and a lot of other PC gamers pretty excited to grab it. I picked up the 4 pack on Steam and gifted it to some friends, and by the time the multiplayer was actually playable we had moved on to other games.
I probably devoted about 10 hours to the spectacularly mediocre singleplayer game before I turned it off in disgust. A shooter with sub-par shooting and a looter with shitty loot is neither a good FPS or RPG. And Big Randy deciding to sink the slipper into Valve at the launch of the game made me even less inclined to give him or Gearbox the benefit of the doubt considering the significant contribution which Valve have made to PC gaming and gaming in general.
And now this. Gearbox launched a game with the shittiest, broken online I have encountered for a very long time and now they're criticising two companies who are considerably closer to getting it right. Gibson's point about friend lists doesn't even ring true since a GFWL title can connect to Live, so even if I buy it on Steam I can still play with friends on that friend list.
So yeah, lol Gearbox.
Stallion Free
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I vote fire. It seems like it would be more slow and painful.Stop It said:
Dr. Zoidberg
Member
clip said:
Ah, well. Then I don't care what this Steve Gibson has to say. Nevermind.
IoCaster
Member
Damn, I didn't even know that sCary was working at Gearbox. "Head of marketing"...eh...no shit.
Hey Steve, I guess you sold off the Shack or something and I completely missed the news. I'll never forget the Quakeholio and Shugashack era of funtime deathmatch and smacktalk. Hope you made a bundle and best of luck to you.
I <3 Memes
Member
Dr. Zoidberg said:
And your contribution to society is ... what?
jim-jam bongs
Member
Also, this issue pretty much exclusively applies to GFWL vs Steamworks, since other DD stores offer titles with both systems. If I were a suspicious person I'd be thinking that Gearbox wants to release a GFWL title to leverage the marketing dollars and support of having Microsoft as a partner, but doesn't want to be stuck with Live for multiplayer since it's something of a ghost town on PC.
poppabk
Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
This doesn't ring true. We are talking about bundling what amounts to a webpage. I have games on Steam, Impulse, D2D, EAStore, gamersgate, GFWL and will continue to buy from those services (except for GFWL). What someone should be doing is creating a UI that unifies game launching from these services. The only reason steam is approaching monopoly is because they provide the best service and UI (although its still pretty bad) - not because they bundle a webpage link with games. Provide a XBMC movie browser type interface for games with a wide range of sorting and categorizing tools which looks for games from all services and you can attach your own store front to that. Comrade, already looks for a bunch of steam games and allows you to launch from within its game browser, however its UI is terrible and uncustomizable.Scott Kevill said:
jim-jam bongs said:
The benefit of being GFW Live is being in the ghetto GFW booth in the back corner of Gamestop's increasingly irrelevent PC section. The benefit of being Steamworks is getting the attention of the largest community of PC gamers that buy a lot of PC games. The choice should be clear.
MmmSkyscraper
Unconfirmed Member
Boonoo said:
Server browser FTW.
Stallion Free
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Hopefully they remember that server browsers need to work well with friends lists so that you can easily join, see what map, and how many people are in the server, and auto-join! like you can on Steam.
It was weird going back to play Call of Duty 4 with a buddy without X-fire, trying to find the same server together.
It was weird going back to play Call of Duty 4 with a buddy without X-fire, trying to find the same server together.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
The games in his imagination, I guess.Fredescu said:
brain_stew
Member
Scott Kevill said:
Tough shit. If their store is so horrible that the slightest glimpse of a competitor's offering would make their customers jump ship then its on them to improve their service and prevent that from happening. If their store doesn't offer something that can rival Steamworks to developers and consumers for free (and none do) then again that's their problem for not matching their competitor's offerings. DD that are much worse than their competition aren't improving the market. Valve have set the bar and its upto them to match or surpass it if they can't do that then they've got a finite existence anyway, whether Steamworks exists or not.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
Some countries don't support GFWL, so they removed it for retail and replaced it with another DRM. I remember this being the case for Dead Rising 2. I haven't heard of that being a problem with steamworks games though. They wouldn't be able to play the game at all, in that case. In fact, there is a steamworks game that hasn't been announced for Steam. It's currently only been announced for another DD service.Fredescu said:
Stallion Free
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What game?SapientWolf said:
crimsonheadGCN
Banned
Stallion Free said:
I think he's talking about "Bloody Good Time," which is available for preorders through Ubisoft's online store and Direct2Drive.
brain_stew
Member
SapientWolf said:
Region locked online modes is a completely separate issue though and only applies to GFWL. It affects retail copies just the same as it does DD copies.
Stallion Free
Cock Encumbered
Oh. Well The Ship is on the Steam store so it's probably only a matter of time before Bloody Good Time is added.crimsonheadGCN said:
jim-jam bongs
Member
The choice is definitely clear from our perspective, but what if Microsoft funds print and TV advertising on GFWL titles (for example)? All idle speculation on my part as I have no idea whether they do, just pointing out that these bizarre comments from Gibson would have more context if Gearbox wanted to get benefits from both platforms but were being prevented from doing so by MS.Zzoram said:
And 1-D I know that, my post was a bit unclear. I own Bioshock 2 and RE5 on Steam. My point was that it's specifically an issue for GFWL vs Steamworks because both platforms are combined DD and online service providers.
Wait, Bloody good time is region blocked in the US? (That's where you guys are from, right?)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2450/
Anyway, this is its store page and it's available for preorder here in Europe.
EDIT: actually, scratch that last part. It's still not available for pre-purchase despite saying so in the title :/
It's definitely getting released though.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2450/
Anyway, this is its store page and it's available for preorder here in Europe.
EDIT: actually, scratch that last part. It's still not available for pre-purchase despite saying so in the title :/
It's definitely getting released though.
SapientWolf
Trucker Sexologist
Stallion Free said:
That just illustrates that developers are free to use Steamworks whether the title is available on Steam or not.
It's not a region locked online issue so much as it is that region not allowing for any GFWL support at all, for whatever reason. SK may have a similar problem if they block Steam over the whole ratings thing. That issue is only tangentially related to the current topic though, which is... unified friends lists? I don't even know, to be honest.brain_stew said: