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Sony Went "Back to the Drawing Board" with Driveclub

kyser73

Member
I've learned two things:

1. Don't read threads about Driveclub until I see OT in the title

2. Never, ever ever read IGN comments. 3rd one down was talking about how DX12 was going to unleash the XBone dGPU.
 

viveks86

Member
Source...? Don't remember this at all

They were planning multiple ways to expand the content for the PS+ version, probably as micro transactions (though it was never explicitly stated). AFAIK, there were no such hints for the retail/full version. But then this is the best opportunity for people to capitalize on the negativity and pass such random baseless commentary. You know how it works…
 
Thanks! I must admit that it is extremely hard. I can empathize with all this misery and despair. I've been so excited for this game that every piece of news that isn't a video, game info or release date makes me want to kick a puppy. And all this 'coming soon' nonsense is giving some serious blue balls. I hope Sony and Evo realize that.

What irks me most was all the "announcements" that a release date announcement would be made soon. And then even THAT never happened. The secrecy that this game has delved into makes me think that VR could be a possibility.

Please don't kick a puppy
 

kyser73

Member
They were planning multiple ways to expand the content for the PS+ version, probably as micro transactions (though it was never explicitly stated). AFAIK, there were no such hints for the retail/full version. But then this is the best opportunity for people to capitalize on the negativity and pass such random baseless commentary. You know how it works…

Especially the poster in question...
 

Llyrwenne

Unconfirmed Member
The only thing though, when it was delayed 5 months ago, they said it would be coming out early 2014. It's now March 10th, and we've heard nothing about any release date. I think that's part of the reason why people are worried as well.
Then by all means, post about your concern about the length of the delay and the long silence from Sony. That's fine. I'd like to have more clarity on when we'll see Driveclub too. Just don't go taking a quote out of context and then act as if it implicates that the project needed to be completely rebooted, when there is no solid evidence to support that.
 
No it doesn't.
'Going back to the drawing board' does not always mean 'to scrap a project in it's entirerty and rebuild it from scratch'. Going back to the drawing board can also mean going back to improve or change an element from a project because it wasn't working by changing that element without having to scrap the rest of the project.
There's no one place to get meanings for phrases so I'll use a few.

Starting over again because a plan failed to come together; going back to square one.

When a plan is unsuccessful, this phrase is sometimes used to describe the failure and
show that changes are needed for success.
http://www.knowyourphrase.com/phrase-meanings/Back-To-The-Drawing-Board.html

time to start from the start; it is time to plan something over again
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/back+to+the+drawing+board

If you have to go back to the drawing board, you have to go back to the beginning and start something again.
http://www.usingenglish.com/reference/idioms/back+to+the+drawing+board.html

to start planning something again because the first plan failed
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/british/go-back-to-the-drawing-board

And so on. 'Going back to the drawing board' does not mean the same thing as polishing and improving. It just doesn't.
 

Salex_

Member
[citation needed]

Citations should be required before tossing out bullshit like that. I'm tired of seeing comments like that on this site and the people who make those comments can never provide a source. Misconceptions spread way too fast, especially on here considering it's the central gaming forum.
 

viveks86

Member
What irks me most was all the "announcements" that a release date announcement would be made soon. And then even THAT never happened. The secrecy that this game has delved into makes me think that VR could be a possibility.

Please don't kick a puppy

Fingers crossed! :D
 
Then by all means, post about your concern about the length of the delay and the long silence from Sony. That's fine. I'd like to have more clarity on when we'll see Driveclub too. Just don't go taking a quote out of context and then act as if it implicates that the project needed to be completely rebooted, when there is no solid evidence to support that.
That's true, there is no solid evidence. However, the game seems to be shrouded in secrecy now, so people are going to speculate. I'm personally in the "could be VR" crowd, but when there's such a long radio silence and then someone says they had to go "back to the drawing board" when it got delayed, it raises a lot of questions. No one really knows to what extent they had to rework anything, so saying we've known this for months isn't exactly true either.
 

Amir0x

Banned
What game has been delay more than one time?

Only game that actually got delayed was Drive Club.

I meant delay after delay for DriveClub, which was supposed to come out shortly into the new year after its delay and now god knows when it's gonna fall.

But Sony has had bad luck with its partners. Since its first party output is taking a long time to come to fruition (we're now going to be looking toward maybe four or five months after MLB and inFamous with nothing from them), they have to rely on their partners. And Watch Dogs also got that delay, so did The Crew, so did the Sony exclusive Deep Down, Octodad got delayed until April.

Sony doesn't need them early on thank God because of how fast they're selling their PS4's, but eventually it's going to catch up to them if they don't start getting a reliable release list going :p

They need to come out hard with what's coming out later this year. They need to really execute for their Summer and Holiday titles.
 

Gestault

Member
Then by all means, post about your concern about the length of the delay and the long silence from Sony. That's fine. I'd like to have more clarity on when we'll see Driveclub too. Just don't go taking a quote out of context and then act as if it implicates that the project needed to be completely rebooted, when there is no solid evidence to support that.

If close to release, a game is described as having gone back to the drawing board before a sizable delay and limited communication from the publisher, I think that's an reasonable (and substantiated, based on the quote) conclusion to arrive at.
 
Is this VR only now? I really would not want to buy Sony's VR device when its support will likely be lacking. Making Drive Club exclusive to VR would piss a lot of people right off
 

Amir0x

Banned
Is this VR only now? I really would not want to buy Sony's VR device when its support will likely be lacking. Making Drive Club exclusive to VR would piss a lot of people right off

Why would they need to make it EXCLUSIVE to VR? They could just have a VR option and that'd be a lot cheaper and a better investment since most PS4 owners will never own a VR solution given the prices it'll come in at at first.
 

viveks86

Member
Is this VR only now? I really would not want to buy Sony's VR device when its support will likely be lacking. Making Drive Club exclusive to VR would piss a lot of people right off

No way. I highly doubt any big budget game would be like that for the first few years after VR goes mainstream, if ever.
 

Llyrwenne

Unconfirmed Member
Or you could just read the rest of my post...
No it doesn't.
'Going back to the drawing board' does not always mean 'to scrap a project in it's entirerty and rebuild it from scratch'. Going back to the drawing board can also mean going back to improve or change an element from a project because it wasn't working by changing that element without having to scrap the rest of the project. Driveclub was delayed because of problems with the social features, which were supposed to be a huge part of the game. They are reworking this social element because it wasn't working like they wanted on a technical level. They went 'back to the drawing board' for the social features. We've known that for a while now.

From the context in which this quote was placed (a short article on why Driveclub was delayed), there is no reason to believe that it references anything other than what we've already known for months.
I didn't say the delay was exclusively for just polishing and improving, nor did Sony. Also, you know you can use phrases figuratively, right? That's even what that third quote of yours says; "When a plan is unsuccessful, this phrase is sometimes used to describe the failure and show that changes are needed for success.". It does not always have to mean literally going back to square one and starting over, it is just a phrase used to describe the failure of a plan to show that changes are needed. The implementation of social features in Driveclub didn't work as Evolution wanted, so changes were needed. That's most likely what Rohde refers to by using the phrase, especially given the context in which he gave it.

You people are making this quote into more than it is.
 
I think I can hear some buzzing under your bonnet Sir, you might want to see if you've got a bee in it or something.

I think we all know what 'back to the drawing board' means, but it doesn't mean the entire project has gone back to the drawing board.

You seem to be acting as if they'd done what I sarcastically posted earlier in that they'd deleted all the code, deleted all their assets and went File -> New and started literally all over again. Remember, a game has several core aspects. You have the graphics and art style and direction, you have gameplay mechanics and you have other things like narrative and also things like Second Screen, social interactions like this game has.

It can be perfectly true that your game has excellent graphics with a delightful art direction as well as having great mechanics but your narrative could suck bananas. And if it did, and you felt it was beyond repair what do you do?

You go back to the drawing board. But you don't then re-do all your graphical things, you don't get yourself a new art direction. All you do is look at your narrative and transform it into something that works well.

And so the same applies here. When they delayed they talked about the social side and the 'vision', it became quite clear that the graphics were great, we could see that. But when you re-watch the reveal the guy listed off loads of things you could do socially, but we never saw any of that.

It was also after the PS4 launched that Rushy tweeted a picture of a whole bunch of tablets and phones in a suitcase saying he was headed off to London. Clearly he was going there to show the Second Screen experiences, adding further credence to the idea that all of that ancillary stuff just simply was not ready for launch.
 
Man, right your development ship Sony. Or announce some new projects that we may actually see sometime this century, shit is getting old. I'm glad they're not releasing a terrible product but they need games to come to completion already, delay after delay.
Yeah, and I'm gonna pin a lot of this on the restructuring. I did not think the restructuring would affect their gaming depts. all that much, and I guess relatively speaking (compared to, say, shutting down ranges of studios) it hasn't.

Still tho, unfortunately timed all this.

EDIT: Might be speaking too early if this stuff w/ DC is due to that restructuring, even if the game's been delayed again. I remember them saying it could be a June release a couple months ago, so there isn't a lot to on atm.
 

Theecliff

Banned
Back when it was first unveiled I remember reading some interviews with the development studio talking about how the game would have a heavy focus on DLC or microtranscations for cars, tracks, etc and that's why there would be a free PS+ version.

I could be wrong but I swear I remember reading about that about a year ago. I guess I'll try and dig something up.
They said if you have the free PS+ edition you could buy the rest of the game's content for a discounted price or you could buy individual tracks or cars instead. The full game (retail or the digital version that wasn't the PS+ edition) presumably came with all the content. Since the base PS+ edition was never meant to have all the content from the other versions, it was a way to allow players to commit to the game as much or as little as they wanted.

They were planning multiple ways to expand the content for the PS+ version, probably as micro transactions (though it was never explicitly stated). AFAIK, there were no such hints for the retail/full version. But then this is the best opportunity for people to capitalize on the negativity and pass such random baseless commentary. You know how it works…
This, basically.
 

Gestault

Member
I think I can hear some buzzing under your bonnet Sir, you might want to see if you've got a bee in it or something.

I think we all know what 'back to the drawing board' means, but it doesn't mean the entire project has gone back to the drawing board.

Someone pointing out the meaning of a phrase when someone else denies it without substantiation doesn't mean that's person is upset, it means they're correct.

No, there's not a reason to think it's the simplified, hyperbolic scenario of having all assets deleted, but we have reason to assume the fundamentals of the project required heavy retooling, based on both statements about the initial delay, and the continued delay without updates.
 
Maybe you guys are right. I still think it was a poor choice of words and a poorly written article. Probably nothing has changed other than development of this game somehow got fucked and we'll probably never know the real reasons behind it. It's incredibly disappointing to me as I've been looking forward to this game since the reveal of it over a year ago. =(
 

Linkenski

Banned
They made awesome car models and graphics but forgot to make any game mechanics. When they implemented it they realised the PS4 couldn't run it. That would be very funny.
 

boeso

Member

This is why GAF scares me
sometimes
 
Translation: "We saw that ridiculous DLC and F2P coins bullshit didn't really affect Forza's sales, so we're going back to the drawing board to see how we can incorporate that crap into our game."
 
They made awesome car models and graphics but forgot to make any game mechanics. When they implemented it they realised the PS4 couldn't run it. That would be very funny.
Yeah, Evolution ain't no rookie developer. That's something you do at a rec center in summer school for college credit, not after you've already made a few big retail games for real consoles.
 

Metallix87

Member
I don't know why people would rather have a crap game instead.

I don't think that's it, exactly. I think people are frustrated because this was supposed to be a launch title, and one of the premier PS4 experiences at launch, and from the sound of it, could now potentially slip into 2015.
 

Dusky

Member
Maybe you guys are right. I still think it was a poor choice of words and a poorly written article. Probably nothing has changed other than development of this game somehow got fucked and we'll probably never know the real reasons behind it. It's incredibly disappointing to me as I've been looking forward to this game since the reveal of it over a year ago. =(

Yup, the words chosen were poor, the article/quotes were pretty ambiguous.
 
No, there's not a reason to think it's the simplified, hyperbolic scenario of having all assets deleted, but we have reason to assume the fundamentals of the project required heavy retooling, based on both statements about the initial delay, and the continued delay without updates.
Exactly. Going back to the drawing board means at the very least a significant issue that required going back to the early design phase on something, and then redeveloping based upon that new design.
 
Rebuilt for 60 FPS mind blowing VR, believe. :p
Actually, yes. It's perfect for vr with all the first person 'car looking' and cockpit mode. I actually thought ps4 was going to be all vr from the initial unveiling. Driveclub, the witness, and other games typically third person were being shown in first person. Plus the whole auditorium was a huge wrap around screen.

I honestly feel the delay was to make this a show piece vr game. Expect it at E3 now.
 
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