TheSpaceBetween
Member
Congratulations Randy. You're the biggest doushebag in the entire industry!
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Pitchford: Fans wrong to sue Gearbox over Aliens: Colonial Marines
- Thread starter BY2K
- Start date
TheSadRanger
Banned
Narrative reasons have nothing to do with why ACM sucked, Gearbox was allowed creative control to do whatever they want with the plot just like CA with Isolation. Gearbox was allowed to retcon Alien 3 and continue it's own storyline within the Alien universe.
As far as I can recall, the narrative for ACM was always supposed to revolve around a sequel to Aliens on lv426 in Hadley's Hope. So I don't see how Prometheus has anything to do with it.
Technical reasons were why Gearbox scraped worked multiple times because they kept going through different versions of UE 3 (supposedly). Which makes no sense as to why so many art assets are missing all of a sudden.
Gearbox got fucking dipshitty about it because they were paid to do the job as contractors and weren't given any back end monetary deals. So instead of doing the job they were paid up front to do they said "fuck it there's no money in it for us" and tried to complete the job as cheaply as possible.
While I don't particularly care for borderlands, they made the Opposing Force expansion for Half-Life and that was DOPE!
It's the publisher, as the sole or chief financier of the project, that has final say on marketing decisions, including but not limited to embargo dates. You could potentially blame Gearbox for putting the idea in Sega's head, but at the end of the day it still would have been Sega that approved of it. I doubt it comes as a surprise that a publisher opted for a release day embargo expiration date in a case where the final product came out of the metaphorical oven notably inferior to that shown in previously-released footage -- it had an investment to recoup, after all, and these days word spreads very quickly, so keeping as many pre-orders active as possible made for a wise business decision. An unfortunate move for those who had expressed with their wallet faith in what was shown, sure, but such is the nature of the beast.
SoulUnison
Banned
I love Borderlands 1 and 2, but even they have a hilarious lack of polish and completely fall apart after the first playthrough.
Especially in the DLC, there's a noticeable amount of ground geometry errors, clipping issues, invisible walls in the middle of nowhere, seam errors that let you peer into "the void," skybox problems...
And then there's how they lock content behind the THIRD playthrough but don't know how to do any real balancing besides "make the numbers bigger!"
Their idea of a "riveting boss battle" or even just "enemies in general" is to give an enemy an obscene amount of HP, disjointed hitboxes so large that any melee attack is basically guaranteed to land, and accuracy and damage scaled so ridiculously high that you can be one-shot sniped by an enemy with a SHOTGUN.
Do you want to fight enemies that down you in one or two hits through a full shield, use lunging melee attacks that don't match up to their animations and seemingly can't miss, and move faster than the player can move while sprinting, making trying to get any distance useless? Well, have I got a game for you!
And, again, the justification that "it's the third playthrough, it's supposed to be hard" doesn't work, because there's a decent amount of content/loot gated to that third playthrough with no other way to experience/acquire it.
A friend and I have been struggling through BL2's third playthrough for months now, and struggle is the right word because it's often just complete bullshit.
It doesn't even do the "crazy randomly generated guns" thing that the series is supposed to be built around. Instead of tons of guns with wildly differing properties you mostly just have guns with different accuracy and capacity modifiers and bullet spreads. For "E-Tech" which are supposed to be the "weird, exotic" guns, you pretty much just have dart guns, laser blasters (which really only differ from "normal" guns visually and through sound effects,) and that's...just about it. Even the whole "manufacturer quirk" system basically makes tons of guns functionally useless because of a complete lack of synergy between the gun and its "special trait."
It says something when the "freshest" game in the series and the one that actually delivers on a lot of the previous promise is one that's been handed off to a side team. (Pre-Sequel.)
Fuck sake, I'm blind as shit. I'll leave my shame there for all to see
Haha, we all have our off days.
Milly Osworth
Member
Pitchford is a con artist, a scammer, that happens to work in the videogame industry.
Why even bring it up after all this time if you didn't change your mind or at least pretend you did? Is bad pr really desirable? What is to be gained O_O? I wish guys like these would educate them themselves on how you let something like this die after everything went down... but no that would require a bit common sense.
BumblebeeCody
Member
[bold red caps]I have no idea who Pitchford personally is, therefore I'm going to base his entire 20+ years on this one game and insult the fuck outta him. I could personally ask him via e-mail as a disgruntled fan who felt somewhat confused by a game they recently release that was misleading but no, fuck that! I'll still to articles in which he explains himself in around 20 lines. I am awesome[/bold red caps]
Yautja_Warrior
Member
Pitchford is just a lying git. I'm a huge Alien fan and I remember seeing interviews from him and Gearbox about how they were all massive Aliens fans yet in reality they took the money to help develop BL2 and farmed Aliens off to another development team, and showed off fake footage (target footage) as the real thing.
If they were really such huge fans they would have been working on Aliens themselves to create a brilliant product based on something they love, but instead shit all over us real Aliens fans. It's sad when the best thing about Aliens CM was the statue of the Loader that came with the Collectors Edition.
Thank God Creative Assembly was given control of Alien Isolation, you could tell they really loved the franchise and gave us fans a truly brilliant Alien game.
If they were really such huge fans they would have been working on Aliens themselves to create a brilliant product based on something they love, but instead shit all over us real Aliens fans. It's sad when the best thing about Aliens CM was the statue of the Loader that came with the Collectors Edition.
Thank God Creative Assembly was given control of Alien Isolation, you could tell they really loved the franchise and gave us fans a truly brilliant Alien game.
xDUMPWEEDx
Banned
This was one of my mostly anticipated games of last-gen. It was such a disappointment. I ended up picking it up a few months after release for about $9, which I felt was a fair price for it.
I did a write up about this game after it released. Check it out if you want.
http://www.gamerevolution.com/blog/...--my-biggest-letdown-of-this-generation-92881
I did a write up about this game after it released. Check it out if you want.
http://www.gamerevolution.com/blog/...--my-biggest-letdown-of-this-generation-92881
Lalalandia
Member
Well if you read the thread you'd know that Pitchford and Gearbox have form as far as sneaky behaviour goes. Given that he has refused to comment in any substantial form publically perhaps you can share what he says in e-mail? Of course if he is out there authoring long e-mail replies to fans what does it say about him that he's not willing to have his excuses tested in a public forum?
Sega should get their money back! This is far worse than the Silicon Knights / Activision X-men Destiny debacle.
Jim Sterling
Member
Hi, I'm somebody who has met Randy multiple times and had him spin bullshit at me. I'm also someone who has had communication with him blocked for asking him questions.
Now tell me, oh wise and superior being, how exactly should I behave in order to conform to your elegant ways?
Agent_Carnage
Member
Randy just admit your game was crap and it was misrepresented. I dont think he even played his own game.
Agent_Carnage
Member
Also I dident like the fact you had to pay to raise the level cap. In the other games that did that they did it for free.
Chû Totoro
Member
I didn't preorder anything (except Nintendo but people shouldn't make exceptions like I'm doing) since this year and I wait for reviews and impressions (mostly here). I've bought 1 game :'(
Wolfenstein : TOB... didn't like it
Gaming industry mostly gives us sh*t to buy. So yeah don't preorder people!
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
Sega isn't blameless? Oh come on Jim, I can see you have personal issues with Pitchford and the way he does business and I'm not faulting you for that.
What I do have an issue with is shifting the blame away from the serial bunglers at Sega, who lets not forget were in charge of the project from day #1.
If Gearbox weren't making progress, what was Sega's external producer in charge of the project doing? This is role that exists purely to protect the publisher's investment.
If Gearbox were misappropriating funds, why didn't they pull the project from them? Again, how staggering incompetent was Sega's production management if this was actually happening under their noses?
Who was signing off on builds and making milestone payments throughout the multiple years of development? Santa Claus? These are things that Sega alone could ever be responsible for. They were the license holder, and the ones bankrolling the entire enterprise, they had total control fiscally from start to finish!
Lastly, who was in charge of marketing the title across multiple territories and distribution platforms? And if what you say is true who still hasn't rectified the use of outdated and misleading promotional materials on Steam many months after release.
Yeah Jim, that really sounds like a company that's "learned".
Most of all though, with a track-record of incompetence like that, you really have to wonder whether a similarly dismal performance on the creative management side, wasn't at the root of CM's problems from day #1. I think its interesting that Gearbox managed to be able to do a decent job when they weren't working for Sega, so why suddenly did they shit the bed so hard when they were?
I suspect if you look at Sega's output -particularly that licensed out to western external dev studios- over the last few years, a fairly obvious pattern will emerge.
Publisher incompetence is a major issue both within the industry and for the general public. Its very easy and convenient to blame the developers when they are the ones with their names attached to shitty product. However what needs to be understood is that its oftentimes hard to get something decent out the door when you are constantly hamstrung by clueless serial-meddling corporate direction.
For smaller studios the disparity in power between them and their publisher typically results in a situation where when the goon-squad of external producers has its "brain-wave du-jour", they feel obligated to go along with the edict no matter how knuckle-headed creatively or disruptive to scheduling it actually is. Over time this has a progressively deleterious effect on the whole enterprise as good ideas get cut in order to accommodate the latest round of bullshit notes whilst hitting the milestone dates.
Now in this instance, Gearbox have enough "juice" to actually stand up to the shifting of the blame, but were this to have been the case with a less well-known developer - they would have been thrown unceremoniously under the bus by Sega shirking their part in the fiasco and probably gone bust as a result.
This is why placing blame where it belongs matters. You stop the rot at its source or it keeps happening, over and over again.
Lalalandia
Member
The dichotomy between this paragraph and all the preceding ones is hilarious. Your prior points seem to boil down to 'Why wasn't Sega more involved' and then a long rant on interference from corporate that sounds like you're blaming Sega for both not being on top of things and simultaneously blaming them for interfering too much.
Yes Sega is at fault for failing to advertise the game Honestly but so is Gearbox and one of these company has acknowledged that. The other has it's fingers in it's ears going 'No we did nothing wrong'. Moreover Sega has released a subsequent Alien title that shows that they are willing to take risks with the brand so blaming them for the generic A:CM is very odd.
Also what has Gearbox released since A:CM? DN:F which was wholly promoted by Gearbox was a buggy pos they released at full price and also had press tantrums over. The Borderlands Collection that didn't perform in any way like they should have given that they were last gen releases.
Gearbox are far from traduced innocents so stop blame shifting.
Someone clearly hasn't actually read a single post in this thread.
/thread shitting
Sega isn't blameless? Oh come on Jim, I can see you have personal issues with Pitchford and the way he does business and I'm not faulting you for that.
What I do have an issue with is shifting the blame away from the serial bunglers at Sega, who lets not forget were in charge of the project from day #1.
If Gearbox weren't making progress, what was Sega's external producer in charge of the project doing? This is role that exists purely to protect the publisher's investment.
If Gearbox were misappropriating funds, why didn't they pull the project from them? Again, how staggering incompetent was Sega's production management if this was actually happening under their noses?
Who was signing off on builds and making milestone payments throughout the multiple years of development? Santa Claus? These are things that Sega alone could ever be responsible for. They were the license holder, and the ones bankrolling the entire enterprise, they had total control fiscally from start to finish!
Lastly, who was in charge of marketing the title across multiple territories and distribution platforms? And if what you say is true who still hasn't rectified the use of outdated and misleading promotional materials on Steam many months after release.
Yeah Jim, that really sounds like a company that's "learned".
Most of all though, with a track-record of incompetence like that, you really have to wonder whether a similarly dismal performance on the creative management side, wasn't at the root of CM's problems from day #1. I think its interesting that Gearbox managed to be able to do a decent job when they weren't working for Sega, so why suddenly did they shit the bed so hard when they were?
I suspect if you look at Sega's output -particularly that licensed out to western external dev studios- over the last few years, a fairly obvious pattern will emerge.
Publisher incompetence is a major issue both within the industry and for the general public. Its very easy and convenient to blame the developers when they are the ones with their names attached to shitty product. However what needs to be understood is that its oftentimes hard to get something decent out the door when you are constantly hamstrung by clueless serial-meddling corporate direction.
For smaller studios the disparity in power between them and their publisher typically results in a situation where when the goon-squad of external producers has its "brain-wave du-jour", they feel obligated to go along with the edict no matter how knuckle-headed creatively or disruptive to scheduling it actually is. Over time this has a progressively deleterious effect on the whole enterprise as good ideas get cut in order to accommodate the latest round of bullshit notes whilst hitting the milestone dates.
Now in this instance, Gearbox have enough "juice" to actually stand up to the shifting of the blame, but were this to have been the case with a less well-known developer - they would have been thrown unceremoniously under the bus by Sega shirking their part in the fiasco and probably gone bust as a result.
This is why placing blame where it belongs matters. You stop the rot at its source or it keeps happening, over and over again.
I don't really feel anyone is excusing Sega. Clearly their guy that was supposed to make sure this garbage didn't happen... didn't do a good job. There is a language barrier of course and it's entirely possible the guy who was supposed to make sure completely bought into the lies. I mean, it's possible, is it not? Because the next aliens game was pretty good - so why is that that when Gearbox wasn't in charge, suddenly the game is good? Why was Gearbox themselves not even developing the game, yet still receiving all the money to do so?
There was some crappy practices happening all around. Sega's lack of competence in the situation doesn't magically excuse what Randy and Gearbox did. Period. Sega has made numerous mistakes over the years and have a long track record - but they bought into Gearbox's bullshit because hey, Gearbox made Borderlands - and gamers like borderlands. They failed in their own processing of the whole ordeal, but ultimately, gearbox is #1 at fault, because they could have done better and chose not too.
I'm not even upset anymore. Do I feel a bit bad for sega? Sure. It would be like Nintendo hiring Bethesda, and then having them produce a game that completely destroys their IP and being lied to about it. The big difference between Nintendo and Sega is that Nintendo simply wouldn't let the game get released, because they have these super high standards before a game goes out. Sega was trying to recover some investment. Nintendo would have simply ate the loss - just like they did with Project Hammer (and there was a lot of fishy stuff from all corners on that game).
Mors_Verigo
Banned
Always always always wait for reviews before buying. If there isn't a review score to be found by the time the game is out, don't do it!
Jim Sterling
Member
I said Sega ISN'T blameless. A lot of the responsibility is on the publisher, absolutely. It was incompetent and stupid with Colonial Marines, and if the rumors are true, it allowed Gearbox to run rings around it.Sega isn't blameless? Oh come on Jim, I can see you have personal issues with Pitchford and the way he does business and I'm not faulting you for that.
What I do have an issue with is shifting the blame away from the serial bunglers at Sega, who lets not forget were in charge of the project from day #1.
If Gearbox weren't making progress, what was Sega's external producer in charge of the project doing? This is role that exists purely to protect the publisher's investment.
If Gearbox were misappropriating funds, why didn't they pull the project from them? Again, how staggering incompetent was Sega's production management if this was actually happening under their noses?
Who was signing off on builds and making milestone payments throughout the multiple years of development? Santa Claus? These are things that Sega alone could ever be responsible for. They were the license holder, and the ones bankrolling the entire enterprise, they had total control fiscally from start to finish!
Lastly, who was in charge of marketing the title across multiple territories and distribution platforms? And if what you say is true who still hasn't rectified the use of outdated and misleading promotional materials on Steam many months after release.
Yeah Jim, that really sounds like a company that's "learned".
Most of all though, with a track-record of incompetence like that, you really have to wonder whether a similarly dismal performance on the creative management side, wasn't at the root of CM's problems from day #1. I think its interesting that Gearbox managed to be able to do a decent job when they weren't working for Sega, so why suddenly did they shit the bed so hard when they were?
I suspect if you look at Sega's output -particularly that licensed out to western external dev studios- over the last few years, a fairly obvious pattern will emerge.
Publisher incompetence is a major issue both within the industry and for the general public. Its very easy and convenient to blame the developers when they are the ones with their names attached to shitty product. However what needs to be understood is that its oftentimes hard to get something decent out the door when you are constantly hamstrung by clueless serial-meddling corporate direction.
For smaller studios the disparity in power between them and their publisher typically results in a situation where when the goon-squad of external producers has its "brain-wave du-jour", they feel obligated to go along with the edict no matter how knuckle-headed creatively or disruptive to scheduling it actually is. Over time this has a progressively deleterious effect on the whole enterprise as good ideas get cut in order to accommodate the latest round of bullshit notes whilst hitting the milestone dates.
Now in this instance, Gearbox have enough "juice" to actually stand up to the shifting of the blame, but were this to have been the case with a less well-known developer - they would have been thrown unceremoniously under the bus by Sega shirking their part in the fiasco and probably gone bust as a result.
This is why placing blame where it belongs matters. You stop the rot at its source or it keeps happening, over and over again.
But unlike Gearbox, it's not tried to play the historical revisionist, and its handling of Isolation was a direct response to the way Colonial Marines went down. In that way, it actually acknowledged that A:CM did not do right by customers, which is more than Pitchford has ever done.
Wickerbasket
Member
You'll never hear an admission of guilt from Pitchford because it'll open him up to all sorts of legal trouble.
What I personally found the most disgusting was Pitchford talking up the game on his twitter account, interacting with fans and posting fake gameplay all the way up until launch.
He knew what he was doing, he knew the state of the game, and it was disgusting. Zero respect for his fans.
What I personally found the most disgusting was Pitchford talking up the game on his twitter account, interacting with fans and posting fake gameplay all the way up until launch.
He knew what he was doing, he knew the state of the game, and it was disgusting. Zero respect for his fans.
spacemonkeynation
Member
Thank goodness Gearbox has learned from their mistakes and now only makes hobby-grade titles.
Tye The Czar
Member
Anyone else here discouraged from playing Battleborn?
Sega are to blame for allowing Gearbox's terrible game to be sold.
Gearbox are to blame for making the terrible game.
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
I'm discouraged by anything they are involved with. I loved Borderlands 1&2 but didn't bother with the pre-sequel after the Colonial Marines fiasco.
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
I actually didn't know about that until I read this thread. What a bunch of total scumbags.
March of the Crabs
Member
Pitchford's a dick but he's right about the lawsuit part. Pretty lame way to go about things. Also that whole "putting production money towards Borderlands instead" thing is also false to be fair. Still an asshole though.
not_so_special
Banned
they did the same with the brothers in arms 360,i saw a live demo who was fake as hell
Pitchford is reminding me of Dyack here. Just incapable of admitting his own errors. And like with Dyack, there's little reason to assume that he won't continue to screw up again considering how he refuses to acknowledge that he screwed up in the first place.
It's bizarre that he's claiming that fans wanting the product to be what it was advertised as is extortion. Maybe he means blackmail. I don't think that two people should get a million dollars out of this when they paid fifty bucks for the game, but if it still had its class action status, then it would be more appropriate.
It's bizarre that he's claiming that fans wanting the product to be what it was advertised as is extortion. Maybe he means blackmail. I don't think that two people should get a million dollars out of this when they paid fifty bucks for the game, but if it still had its class action status, then it would be more appropriate.
Eighty Deuce
Banned
I'll never get over this
SolidChamp
Banned
Admit the game was crap? This is the guy who genuinely believes that Duke Nukem Forever is a good game (and in the same breath mentioned how he didn't think The Last of Us was all that great and couldn't be bothered to play it past the first two hours).
The man is delusional and incapable of admitting that any Gearbox game could have turned out "less than stellar".
This is the person we're talking about, folks. None of this should come as a surprise. Fuck that guy, straight up. He is such a douche bag.
Battlesmurf
Member
I'm not touching a single thing that Randy Pitchford or his company has had a hand in unless he figures out a way to make good on this mess. I can't see that happening- he'd either have to "finish" ACM and publicly apologize and admit that the company made mistakes.
I was looking forward to a good Aliens game for so long. The way this guy roped a bunch of us in "I'm a true fan and I'm doing it justice- check out this footage" was crap. I generally don't pre-order at all- but the footage looked so good and I had a good time with Borderlands, I took a chance with this one. On the plus side, Amazon took it back no problem.
I wonder when/if we'll ever see a good new Aliens game :/
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
Jim Sterling
Member
Haha, I actually make the same (albeit brief) comparison in my upcoming video on this nonsense.
Clear
CliffyB's Cock Holster
My point is that especially when it comes to licensed titles, the blame (should it need to be placed) always falls 100% at the feet of the publisher/licensor.
Big IP's like Aliens or Batman represent a substantial sunken cost in exchange for a degree of confidence that any product bearing their brand will shift a certain volume of units. Simply put, a turd in a box marked "Batman", is going to sell more than a turd in a box marked with a less appealing name.
That upfront investment and the understanding of why that upfront investment is good business, is why no publisher can be excused should things go awry.
There's a term in the commercial arts (movies, games, etc) called "execution dependence". Essentially what it means is -and its generally applied as an argument against greenlighting something- that it boils down to how well the creative team can execute on a project. As in, the studio/publisher asking themselves can we really place a big bet on these guys doing an exceptional enough job to elevate its earning potential based on its intrinsic quality as a work.
Its a hard barrier to pass, no matter how well respected the director or creative team, especially when attaching a brand-name with real "juice" takes the argument out of the equation.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that as soon as a big license is involved, the value of the people actually making the thing drops as far as the publisher/licensor is concerned. They are just the method by which the commercial value of the license is actualised.
This is why I (funnily enough) have slightly more respect for WBIE over the Batman:AA fiasco on PC, because at least here you see the publisher/licensor stepping up and accepting that THEY are the ones who let the audience down, rather than trying to blame the people THEY hired to do the job.
Battlesmurf
Member
I didn't like acm. It wasn't what I wanted-and bringing up pitchford-he really pushed the game hard. I was certain it'd be a good thing after his talks and videos. I find it really hard to believe he didn't know what was going on with that title
I think isolation was one of the best things to happen to the franchise in years. It'd be nice to see aliens get the same treatment
I think isolation was one of the best things to happen to the franchise in years. It'd be nice to see aliens get the same treatment
Fredrik
Member
I'm not defending Pitchford for his blatant lies on A:CM but the BL art theft is probably just one of Gearbox artists stealing or taking inspiration from the art/style from Codehunters instead of creating it himself, possibly without Pitchford knowing about it considering the twitter respone about there being consequences.
Markitron
Is currently staging a hunger strike outside Gearbox HQ while trying to hate them to death
I don't know much about the situation, but from watching that video it's very difficult to excuse. Whether anyone knew about it or not is pretty much irrelevant.
cyberheater
PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
The updated PC version we eventually ended up with was solid. Looked great and the single player campaign was pretty good.
I still wonder what PC version they showed in the E3 trailers and I would love to see footage of the WiiU version.
I still wonder what PC version they showed in the E3 trailers and I would love to see footage of the WiiU version.