Todd at DICE09, on Making Fallout 3

First of all, this is my post on NMA and Fallout was the very firs RPG I have ever played (that was a loooong time ago) so it holds a very special place in my heart.....bla bla bla.

Second In Todd’s defense well he knows exactly what he is doing and he is doing it very well.....MAKING MONEY of gamers. Anyway all the 26 minutes of the presentation underlines what is wrong with the gaming industry today and it basically is the same with what went on in the financial sector before the slump or with ENRON. Basically company culture=GOD (it's essence being dazzling the consumer with big words and selling him crap in a very nice package which is Pete’s specialty) implemented in a BORG-is way (resistance being futile) and any opposition to it, or the pulling of any alarms=firing. (This kind of approach being the nr.1 killer of creativity, ask any psychologist :mrgreen: ), but if you look behind the wall....you will se the rotten core. I just hope it will succumb up soon because we really need some kind of crisis in the gaming world that will put some companies out of business.

On the other hand it is no more the company’s fault than the gamers who let’s himself/herself fooled into buying it, and as long as they sell it means that this is what the public wants. The rest of us which I sadly say is a minority can watch from the sidelines and find comfort in remembering the good ol’ times, and hoping (as hope dies last)

Anyway in my humble opinion the Fallout Community should forget Fallout 3 as it did with Brotherhood of Steel, the only common thing between it and the old games being its name, and move on to better things, as Fallout 3 is nothing more than a Half Life 2 mode with dialog.
 
The issue is just that if the companies really go down (I mean some biger one), they will still learn nothing out from it and just blame it on the PC as gaming platform in general by saying "they are to demanding". Easy business.

Spore did not sold so bad cause it was indeed really crap and the DRM punished the honest consumer, but ... cause why? Exactly. Piracy. Pircay was it that made Spore sell bad ... similar to what one developer of Titan Quest said about his game. No not the product was mediocre Diablo clone crap ... it again was piracy.

A lot of companies always go out of buisness. The issue is just that people do not learn the right things out of it. And I believe neither did many now with all this bank crisis and what else. How could they when you read for example that people which caused some issues get out of buisness with compensations going in the millions.
 
Crni Vuk said:
The issue is just that if the companies really go down (I mean some biger one), they will still learn nothing out from it and just blame it on the PC as gaming platform in general by saying "they are to demanding". Easy business.

Sigh...your right, bah....i still would like to see Bethesda go down just for messing up the game that got me into RPG-s (and i was 15 at the time :mrgreen: talk about mature audience :mrgreen: ).

Then of course there is the problem of todays gamers who are all into "grapix" and "coolness" and "awesomeness", but then this is what happens to anything when it becomes a mass phenomenon and the word industry is added to it, Bethesda aiming precisely at them, mesmerizing them with a false complexity claim, which is not a bad thing in itself, I mean give the customer what it wants, to bad they have to desecrate the "venerable dead" in the process resurrecting them into game zombies.
 
nemo00 said:
On the other hand it is no more the company’s fault than the gamers who let’s himself/herself fooled into buying it, and as long as they sell it means that this is what the public wants.

That is the most frusterating part. We see the garbage bein passed off as, AWESOME! GROUND BREAKING! GRAPHICLY STUNNING! A NEW LEVEL OF IMMERSION!! etc etc ad nauseum. And when we cry out to the masses that the emperor has no clothes, we are ridiculed and mocked.
 
The long awaited part 2. I'm editing it into my early post aswell.

Slide 35: "We did the same thing with the Pipboy"
Concept art of Pipboy 3000 ["Big believer that whatever you're doing in a game, for us, with role playing, you look at your stats a lot"]

Slide 36: "To make something that's repetitive... So the player's going to look at his stats all the time, right? So you wanna make that entertaining."
More convept art of Pipboy 3000

Slide 37: "So we knew we had to spend a lot of time on the Pipboy"
And more

Slide 38: "(mumbled) That's close to the final design (refering to art)"
And more

Slide 39: "And then VATS. Another thing you're going to do a lot in any of these games, that we do, you're going to kill guys a lot, right?"
Picture of Fast Shot trait Vault Boy with "V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System)" written above and unreadable text below, looks like a scan from some document ["So we wanted to do something that new there"]

Slide 40: "And make the repetitive action of shooting people, this is one of our early designs for VATS (crowd laughs)."
Picture of 50's style art of a little girl pointing a gun at a little boy who has the VATS % hit markers ["You got the humor, you got violence. We don't let kids kill eachother though (trails off into mumbling, sounds like "that's"). You know, to make it fun every time, make that simple activity of killing enjoyable."]

Slide 41: "This is... These were two of the inspirations aswell."
Picture of car crashing (Burnout?) on the left and a boxer (CGI) getting punched ["You know, we'd sit around like... 'It's like crash mode,' and then like finding the guy's head's blown up"]

Slide 42: "This is concept art from 2004."
Concept art of two Super Mutants in the DC ruins ["How many people... have you all played Fallout? (crowd cheers and claps) Okay, has anybody not? Come on, yeah there we go, your it (mumbled sounds more like "yerit"). Truth teller."]

Slide 43: "So we did this, this concept art"
Closeup of one of the mutant's head in same concept art with VATS box around it

Slide 44: "in 2004 "
Closeup of one of the other mutant's head in same concept art with VATS box around it

Slide 45: "This is what VATS is going to feel like."
Picture of female vault dweller shooting a (rifle? energy weapon? from behind her head?) [""]

Slide 46: "You know, what is the experience of VATS, it's not like a heavy design, it's like 'You target the stuff thing, then it goes and fun"
Concept art of a Super Mutant getting a hole shot through his head with his buddy running next to him

Slide 47: "and people, their heads blow off."
Concept art of a guy charging with an axe next to his buddy with a burning skull for a head (continued from the last)

Slide 48: "Everybody claps, yay."
Concept art of the charging guy geting one of his arms blown off with the vault dweller visable and shooting

Slide 49: "Okay, rule number 2, so that was define the experience, rule number 2 is 'keep it simple'."
Reads "2. Keep it Simple"
"Internal: Doing something really well takes time, more time than you probably have." ["Internal reason for doing this," reads starting after 'internal']
"External: The player won't appreciate or understand your complicated idea." [reads "One of our rules internally too is"]
"We can do anything, we just can't do everything." [reads "This works well with team members who are like (in a mocking voice) 'Why don't you like my idea?' 'It's not that I don't like your idea.'"]

Slide 50: "Another thing to do with keeping it simple is"
Slide reads "Make marketing part of your process." [reads]
Picture of Pete Hines ["This is Pete Hines whose the product manager on Fallout 3, where's Pete? The best in the business at this. (mumbles) There in the back he's waving. So Pete's really, really part of the team and he's a good guy. He has a great since of 'How will the consumer react to this?' so I'll go to him with features and 'Okay, it's like this, what do ya think?'"]

Slide 51: "(in a voice) 'Oh no, that's bad,' and then you keep 'Okay well, how about this what do ya think about this?'"
Slide reads "Make marketing part of your process."
Different picture of Pete

Slide 52: "and Pete's excited that people will think this."
Slide reads "Make marketing part of your process."
Different picture of Pete, this time is an animated gif
Picture of cover of GameInformer with Fallout 3 cover ["And the other thing with marketing to realize is that everything you do from the begining is part of the player experience, that's how we view it. So the ma- you know, when you run your first cover story, that's the first experience of Fallout 3"]
Picture of Bethesda's Fallout website ["and then your website"]
Screenshot from teaser trailer ["and then the teaser trailer"]
Screenshot from X-Play or Attack of the Show interview ["and demos you give"]
Picture of XBox 360 cover of Fallout 3 ["and then they see the box on the shelf. You know, that's an experience- that's experiencing Fallout, what does the box look like?"]
Picture of XBox 360 cover of Fallout 3 instruction manual ["What does the manual look like? Is it in the tone of the world?"]
Picture of XBox 360 Fallout 3 play disc ["What does the actual disc look like? So by the time the player has put your game in, they have already experienced all of this stuff, they have an expectation, they've already learned things if they're savy enough, and most of them are. So you kind of have to work all of that into your process. And again, keep it simple."]

Slide 53: "Alright, so the big one."
Reads "1. Great Games are Played, not Made." [reads "Again this is... it sounds fairly easy, right? You play your game and then you change it to the parts you don't like, I mean everybody does that to some level. We do it alot so for the last five months of Fallout, the entire art team doesn't make art, they're playing the game. Everybody plays the game a lot, internally, 'cause it's the game we want to make and play. So finding things that are wrong and agreeing on them is the hard part"]
Picture of "REALITY CHECK AHEAD" caution roadsign ["that you have to look for the signs, okay? And they'll come up and you'll want to ignore them"]
Pictuer of Gandaulf cautuin roadsign that reads "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" ["'cause you like your ideas, they get less subtle"]

Slide 54: "and eventually just bad things happen if you ignore all that."
Screenshot of Oregon Trail game (I think, I've only played the Mac version of the original) [crowd laughs "You wanna sort of solve it before you get to that point, one of the great examples in Fallout was"]

Slide 55: "we had built a lot of Washington DC, I mean a lot, and we went to play it and it was just too much space, we had done all of this work and we took about half of the downtown DC out of the game."
Picture of a bulding being demolished in four parts on the left
Pictuer of a kid crying on the right ["Removed work that all of these people had done and it makes people upset, right? So you gotta watch your team members, we're from Maryland so we like pictures of Duke Fans crying, make us happy. (crowd laughs) And again, you got- these are big moments, you're going to delete, from the game, 'Hey the last six months? Click.'"]

Slide 56: "You have to treat people with respect okay, you can't go around just take it, we know what we're doin', we'll do what we want. Okay?"
Picture on the left of soldier with "HOW ABOUT A NICE BIG CUP OF SHUT THE FUCK UP"
Gorrila/shark high five picture ["Sharks, gorrilas high fivin', respect your team, be nice."]

Slide 57: "You got to admit your mistakes, like look, this was a bad call, okay?"
Reads "Admitting your mistakes is essential."
Pictuer of newspaper clipping that reads "Correction - A headline on an item in the Fb. 5 edition of the Enquirer Bulletin incorrectly stated 'Stolen groceries.' It should have read 'Homicide.'" ["You have to be very open with your mistakes." pauses while crowd laughs "I actually think this is my favorite slide. And this is really hard to do, believe it or not, okay? It sounds easy but when it comes to your stuff it's hard to do."]

Slide 58: "Now we're gonna go through the four levels of player experience. So what do you looking for when making these changes."
In reverse order reads: "1 Learn" ["The first level, a player is starting your game the first thing they're doing is learning it."]
Picture of a cat with a 360 controller with text that reads "I played your guy and he died." ["How do you make that fun. When people play your game, they... there's this anxiousness when you play, right? So you have these moments when you buy a game, when do actually start having fun? You put the game in well it's like 'I don't quite get it yet,' 'I'm learning the controls.' This is a big thing that the industry has to tackle, how to let people have fun while they're learning."]
Picture disappears, arrow appears above learn pointing to "2 Play" and a picture appears on the right of Mario and Luigi from a game ["And then they get to actually playing. So now they're playing your game, alright?"]
Picture is replaced by a snowman with a sign reading "I'll be dead soon" ["They aren't neccessarily worried yet about dieing. They just wanna play and have fun."]
Arrow appears above play pointing to "3 Challenge" ["Once you're into this stage you move up and then you can start challenging them. It gets harder in some way, they've mastered these skills."]
Picture is replaced by a toddler holding up a pen having written all over a baby's face reading "OWNED!" ["It's not 'till your through that- people wanna win. I love this," crowd laughing "So people like to win, right? So even though they're being challenged, one of our rules is that 'Challenge the player but give him all the tools to win.' A lot of players if you give them stuff, in Fallout we give you this, you know, nuclear (he pronounces it nu-cu-lar) bomb launcher and these shells where people go 'Cool!' as they try it once and then they hold onto the nukes, we know they're gonna do this, and then they run into something hard and they're like 'Well I don't wanna be a wussy, I'm not going to use my nukes yet.' They have a way out, they just don't wanna use it yet, they finish the game with pile of nuclear (same pronunciation) bombs, but that's a good device to always give the player a way out. He can always win."]
Picture disappears, arrow appears above challenge pointing to "4 Surprise" and a picture of a fortune cookie with a fortune reading "Now you know what a cat tastes like." ["It's not till you get through that that you can then surprise them with something new." crowd laughs "I think that's my second favorite one."]
Picture is replaced with a picture of an arrow from 4 back to 1["So now you've shown them something new and the whole thing repeats. Now they're learning the new thing. Too many of us focus on number 3 and 4, 'cause we're trying to impress our coworkers who understand the game. The really good game makers, Nintendo is the best at 1 and 2, okay? So you can take a que from them. Games that do this cycle really well, if you look at Half-Life 2, does this cycle really well, 'Here's a new enemy, here's a new weapon.'"]

END PART 2
 
I just read some news about Blizzard creating a new patch for Diablo 2... Guess who Beth will put on their death list.
 
Morbus said:
I kind of worry more about the industry's health when I see this. Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain. And Todd's the EP of a game made by a company with no decent game designers (otherwise they'd be able to conceive an RPG without dungeons/grinding, right?), that doesn't innovate (seriously, when you play Oblivion right next to daggerfall, you can see how much of a clone it actually is, only without the best things about it... Even the fucking jump key!!!), like, AT ALL, that communicates through constant combat and crappy writting and hole-filled plotlines, and that produces games that can only entertain the most braindead of gamers, because, seriously, SERIOUSLY!|!!! Who the hell has the time and patience to ENDURE countless hours of mindless boring combat throught nearly similar dungeons against nearly similar and equally soulless enemies that give you the same loot over and over again, that you only need to replace the ammo and weapons you spent while killing them, ammo and weapons you wouldn't need IN THE FIRST PLACE if you didn't go in shooting! Seriously, what kind of life does the average gamer lead?! Where do they find the strength to find Fallout 3 entertaining (let alone all the other things DICE's about).

the sad true is that the kids and the casual gamers can be easily brainwashed by graphics, HDR and a bit of blood no wonder Fallout succeeded since they arent many RPGS in europe or the UE there mostly in japan.
i rented the game though its good it isnt a fallout game most of the story is moronic like the button robot for example and the gigant robot called prime, most of the weapons looks like trash massed together.
 
Casual gamers care less about graphics than you think, most of the truly graphically obsessed gamers are this generation's "hardcore" gamers who base their purchases on which title provides the best technological showcase and the most glamor.
The classification "casual gamer" is applied to those who just buy whatever looks fun, why do you think the Wii did so well? It looks fun, the games are simple and enjoyable and at the end of the day no one is going to berate you for playing Halo 3 when you could be playing Gears of War 2 because the online community is larger and the game looks better.
 
Since when was Bethesda really making "graphic" blenders?

Must have missed something. I mean really neither Morrowind, Oblivion or Fallout 3 are absolute top products when it comes to graphic. Maybe I have high standarts, but in my book all of their games have a standart look for the time of their release mind you! Quite a few games that have been released at the same time with any Bethesda titles has surpased it when it comes to the visuals.

I think really that its more of hype and "still" good reputations caused by Daggerfall and Morrowind that makes people buy Bethesda games. Eve I thought they would release a improved Morrowind with better RPG elements and updated visuals, and the promotions they did definetly have been promising. But god was I wrong ... and lucky to have a mind that doesnt tell me to buy games the first day they hit the shelves.
 
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