BF3 and DICE got bend over by EA...

Cuddlesworth

gizmo wrote: »

Well then unfortunately you have no idea how the development process works then. Pulling people off what they're working on to concentrate on DLC does cost money, simple as. Have you any idea how long it would take to model one of those weapons? Then skin it? Then animate it? Then get the appropriate sounds for them?

Do you? I would guess about a full weeks worth of working hours split between 5 people averaging out about 20k per weapon including licensing rights.

Winters

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Do you? I would guess about a full weeks worth of working hours split between 5 people averaging out about 20k per weapon including licensing rights.

SURE, it only takes like 5 minutes to record a gun sound and get it right anyway. And making 3D models, sure, 10 minutes with detail. No time at all for animation. And no need to QA it anyway, throw it all in.

johnny_ultimate

Pre-order DLC is fine as long as it's completely useless (extra costumes, non-overpowered weapons etc...). If people want to spend their hard earned money ordering it somewhere specific for some irrelevant extra, it's their money, let them. Obviously enough people are doing it *shrugs*

Only thing I'd have a major issue with is something like maps being tied to pre-orders, automatically splitting the multiplayer community. **** knows it's annoying enough booting up a game after a few months of release only to be met with suggestions to buy new maps.

Yes, it's a shame that the two extra LA Noire cases weren't included on disc. But given they're completely superfluous to the main game it doesn't really matter.

Again - vote with your wallet. People seem to forget that. People are buying, and this is the result. Clearly the publishers have something to do with it, but the problem is much more fundamental than that. People want extra crap. Look how much they were willing to pay for the war horse download code on ebay. And apparently horse armour is profitable. Publishers are smart business people, the public themselves are the idiots.

NTMK

Looks like they backtracked today
Link

A point of clarification for all of our Battlefield fans. We will unlock the contents of the Physical Warfare Pack to all Battlefield 3 players later this year – for free. Read on for more details on this and Back to Karkand.

So maybe this is stating the obvious, but all of us at DICE are here because of our passion for games and the passion to bring you the games we too love to play. I always knew our pre-order offers for Battlefield 3 would be open to misunderstandings. This post is an attempt by me to answer any questions you have.

I would like to start by clarifying that the Physical Warfare Pack is a time-based exclusive. If you do not pre-order Battlefield 3 at a retailer carrying the Physical Warfare Pack, don’t worry. We will unlock the contents of the Physical Warfare Pack for free to all Battlefield 3 players later this year.

The Physical Warfare Pack will be available as a pre-order bonus all over the globe. Right now, the UK is the only country where it has been announced, but stay tuned to get constant updates on where you can pick this up in your country. And remember, if you do not pre-order, you will still get access to this content at a later date, free of charge. If you do pre-order, you will get access to it from day one.

For Battlefield: Bad Company 2, many in the Battlefield community were very vocal about wanting additional, new maps to expand the multiplayer experience. With Battlefield 3, we want to make sure we can increase your library of maps quicker than we did for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. We also want to give you something special for pre-ordering, as pre-ordering is basically your way of saying you believe in DICE and Battlefield 3. When we announced that everybody who pre-orders Battlefield 3 would get an entire future expansion pack at no extra charge, I knew we had created a very generous pre-order offer.

Back to Karkand is a massive, themed expansion pack available a period of time after the base game, developed by a separate team here at DICE -- the same team that brought you Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam. If you played Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Vietnam, you have a pretty good idea about the scope and ambition of our expansion packs. This is so much more than just four remixed maps.

If you pre-order Battlefield 3, you will be able to play Back to Karkand at no extra charge as soon as it is released, but it is not day one DLC and it is not on the base game disc. We think it’s a sweet deal, and it’s available to everyone everywhere. If you do not pre-order Battlefield 3, you can still buy Back to Karkand separately and play it as soon as it is released, the very same date as anyone who pre-ordered. In other words, there is no segmentation of the community when we launch the base game.


There are more pre-order offers for Battlefield 3 out there, and in order to try and avoid any confusion we will return within the next couple of weeks to detail all of them as well.

As always, post any questions you have here, in our forums, on Facebook, or Twitter. We are listening and value your opinion.

Cheers,
Karl Magnus Troedsson
General Manager, DICE

gizmo

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

Do you? I would guess about a full weeks worth of working hours split between 5 people averaging out about 20k per weapon including licensing rights.

Actually that's pretty close! You're probably talking about a one man week split between those five people. Not allowing for any tweaking or alterations which need to be made at the end of course.

So, that's roughly a week for one weapon, multiplied by how many weapons in your DLC pack? As I said, it costs money.

SeantheMan

NTMK wrote: »

A point of clarification for all of our Battlefield fans. We will unlock the contents of the Physical Warfare Pack to all Battlefield 3 players later this year .............I would like to start by clarifying that the Physical Warfare Pack is a time-based exclusive. If you do not pre-order Battlefield 3 at a retailer carrying the Physical Warfare Pack, don’t worry. We will unlock the contents of the Physical Warfare Pack for free to all Battlefield 3 players later this year.

Not to say "I told you so" ...but in my original post earlier

SeantheMan wrote: »

Also, chances are down the line that content will be free, if you remember they gave away Special Forces, Armored and Euro for BF2 for free as part of an update. And the same with 2142.

Noone has any faith in any companies anymore.

calex71

Damn it I sharpened my knives for nothing, well I'm off to adverts.ie to try and get rid of all these pitchforks and torches I ordered, better cancel that lynchmob I booked too

Kiith

calex71 wrote: »

Damn it I sharpened my knives for nothing, well I'm off to adverts.ie to try and get rid of all these pitchforks and torches I ordered, better cancel that lynchmob I booked too

Save them for Activision/Bobby Kotick. I'm sure they'll do something even worse then Elite which will require a good deal of pitch forks.

SeantheMan

So given the above news, is everyone still jumping on the bann-wagon and still not gonna buy it ? or is "time specific -content" considered ok to the point where it can avoid your moral compass and you will buy the game :P

NTMK

SeantheMan wrote: »

So given the above news, is everyone still jumping on the bann-wagon and still not gonna buy it ? or is "time specific -content" considered ok to the point where it can avoid your moral compass and you will buy the game :P

I was never jumping on that wagon merely walking beside it with my 2 preorders on the game:P it there timed exclusives which will be released for free later in the year then its ok but to have content completely unavailable to users who dont shop at x store is rediculous

Cuddlesworth

Winters wrote: »

SURE, it only takes like 5 minutes to record a gun sound and get it right anyway. And making 3D models, sure, 10 minutes with detail. No time at all for animation. And no need to QA it anyway, throw it all in.

Lets be clear on this. While those interviews sound great and really show the great "conceptual" work and amazing "theory" behind what they are trying to do with the game, they are talking about the game and how the game was designed to look and feel. That takes real work, testing and vision. Creating a 3d model of a real gun, skinning it, putting minor animations on it, getting a sound bite for it and modeling its characteristics are quite small things in comparison in terms of man hours and cost to the overall game.

gizmo wrote: »

Actually that's pretty close! You're probably talking about a one man week split between those five people. Not allowing for any tweaking or alterations which need to be made at the end of course.

So, that's roughly a week for one weapon, multiplied by how many weapons in your DLC pack? As I said, it costs money.

I'm quite surprised by this. I really was guessing, its been a long time since I had to do any game design and things change so quickly.

merc.ie

The generic extra weapons from the Physical Warfare pack will probably have near identical equivalents available to everyone from the get go.

Think of the LMGs in BC2, most over them overlap in performance with each other.

gizmo

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

I'm quite surprised by this. I really was guessing, its been a long time since I had to do any game design and things change so quickly.

Personally I thought it'd take a little longer but I poked one of our animators and that's what he said. The big thing of course is that it takes so many people to do the work, modelers to texture artists to riggers and effects guys, it's definitely not a case of one guy just toiling away on it when he gets a chance. It also depends on having your art and animation pipelines set up beforehand but in this case, for DLC content, that's a given.

richymcdermott

http://gritbit.com/2011/06/anonymous-game-developer-comments-on-drm-piracy-and-ea-issues/

yammycat

gizmo wrote: »

So, that's roughly a week for one weapon, multiplied by how many weapons in your DLC pack? As I said, it costs money.

The people who make the gun would all be on the payroll, there wouldn't be any extra cost involved to make the gun that wouldn't have been spent anyway.

Profit on DLC far far greater that the game itself, it could generate 10% of revenue for less that 1% of the development time.

Xambo

Killing the Battlefield "aura" What a shame!

ShadowHearth

yammycat wrote: »

The people who make the gun would all be on the payroll, there wouldn't be any extra cost involved to make the gun that wouldn't have been spent anyway.

Profit on DLC far far greater that the game itself, it could generate 10% of revenue for less that 1% of the development time.

the way i see it they allways make a full game and then take a knife to chop of dlc parts for it. dlcs which come out way later would be different, not all thought.

I just dont believe they got separate budget for prerelease dlcs, sorry, but thats just bull****.

example: l.a. noire. i got that slip of a tongue prerelease dlc from gamestop. i allways try to leave dlcs for later, but not in this case... as i got that case when i finished 3 or 4 cases and i was like WTF?! why dlc is in the middle of the game?!

i can see where did they came with vip code for bad company 2, which was fair enought. you buy second hand, but a 10 quid code, but with that code, you got all the content that was released! ( maps )

shortcuts for weopons -fair play too. personally for me - unlocking weopons and bits is part of the experience, having them all unlock at beggining wuld be a bit boring.

gizmo

yammycat wrote: »

The people who make the gun would all be on the payroll, there wouldn't be any extra cost involved to make the gun that wouldn't have been spent anyway.

Except if the gun wasn't made in the first place which is the entire point.

ShadowHearth wrote: »

the way i see it they allways make a full game and then take a knife to chop of dlc parts for it. dlcs which come out way later would be different, not all thought.

Generally speaking that's not what they would do. It may happen in some studios but to do so would be an example of awful project management. It's much more beneficial to them to set out the content to be created at the beginning of the project and include the DLC content in that rather than turning around half way through development and shaving off existing content for that purpose.

ShadowHearth wrote: »

I just dont believe they got separate budget for prerelease dlcs, sorry, but thats just bull****.

It's not a separate budget in that case, it's part of the main budget.

The post on reddit is pretty much bang on the money by the way although I would have preferred if he had explicitly said to avoid the second hand market in his advice given what he had said in the rest of the article. That being said, I can't imagine he'd be awfully popular if he did.

yammycat

gizmo wrote: »

Except if the gun wasn't made in the first place which is the entire point.

No, the people who make the gun are on a salary, whether they make the gun or drink coffee and do the crossword the cost is the same.

gizmo

yammycat wrote: »

No, the people who make the gun are on a salary, whether they make the gun or drink coffee and do the crossword the cost is the same.

That's not quite how it works, see my earlier post here.

yammycat

gizmo wrote: »

That's not quite how it works, see my earlier post here.

I've worked in major software development and there is an awful lot of thumb twiddling, of course it may differ from company to company but I have worked for a few and in all of them there was a lot of chilling out and drinking coffee and long lunch breaks etc with the work done as it needed to be, you are always waiting on somebody else, localizers, build engineers, bug fixing, testing, there is always slack as nobody can complete a job by themselves, it always goes onto the next guy.

Cuddlesworth

yammycat wrote: »

I've worked in major software development and there is an awful lot of thumb twiddling, of course it may differ from company to company but I have worked for a few and in all of them there was a lot of chilling out and drinking coffee and long lunch breaks etc with the work done as it needed to be, you are always waiting on somebody else, localizers, build engineers, bug fixing, testing, there is always slack as nobody can complete a job by themselves, it always goes onto the next guy.

You worked for a badly managed company. Its not often I would say that but its a clear example of one. The games industry is very very competitive, you can't afford to have people sitting around doing nothing. So games are done in phases through development cycles, when you finished your bit on one game you move onto the next game to start again. Its really like a over-sized assemble line.

KilOit

yammycat wrote: »

I've worked in major software development and there is an awful lot of thumb twiddling, of course it may differ from company to company but I have worked for a few and in all of them there was a lot of chilling out and drinking coffee and long lunch breaks etc with the work done as it needed to be, you are always waiting on somebody else, localizers, build engineers, bug fixing, testing, there is always slack as nobody can complete a job by themselves, it always goes onto the next guy.

Really can't see a huge title like this being like that, maybe games like this would.

gizmo

yammycat wrote: »

I've worked in major software development and there is an awful lot of thumb twiddling, of course it may differ from company to company but I have worked for a few and in all of them there was a lot of chilling out and drinking coffee and long lunch breaks etc with the work done as it needed to be, you are always waiting on somebody else, localizers, build engineers, bug fixing, testing, there is always slack as nobody can complete a job by themselves, it always goes onto the next guy.

And when you work in the games industry you realise it's not like the general software development industry, for mostly the wrong reasons.