Dungeon Master Forum

Back on topic, EA announced Madden 15 and released a trailer. Unsurprisingly, the trailer doesn't tell us much about what the game is actually going to be about, probably because everyone knows that the game is about football and Madden games are just basically the same content recycled year after year anyway. And, of course, their internet multiplayer support always cuts off at the end of the next season, just in case you and your friends were happy playing the old game.

Lest anyone think that the situation is going to improve anytime soon, apparently EA's still got its exclusive NFL license for the forseeable future. So if you want a NFL football game, there's no competition, which is hardly any incentive at all for them to make it any better.

It's a shame, I actually used to like Madden games...

That sort of situation seems to be a recurring theme with the sports games EA is involved in. I can't find any other officially licensed NHL games then EA's. I don't like the EA hockey games and never have. I played NHL 94 on my Genesis and didn't like it and never saw any sign that they'd improved the series in any way since then, except for better graphics. It's the same story for their MLB series, which had piss-poor controls when I played it and I've again never seen any signs of improvement. Their NBA game was okay, but still not great.

My favorite part of sports is the management, and with the EA dominance of this genre, it's hard to find good management sims that still do include a decent way to also play the games whenever I want to.

I'm a bit late to this party, but I just found out about what EA did to the Dungeon Keeper franchise.

Of course, it isn't good. But don't take my word for it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpdoBwezFVA

(Short version: the game is basically not playable at all without microtransactions, unless you only want to play it a few seconds at a time)

Yeah, looks like EA really butchered the game with that one. It's a good thing Rasmus is doing his own take on the Dungeon Keeper theme, Dwelvers won't be messed up by EA, I'd say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_eyGJHf-r8

Ahh yeah I remember hearing about this version of DK when it came out a few months ago. The really sad thing is people are actually faling for it. I bet if you told those people that game is a "remake" of a game which came out in the mid-90s (or thereabouts) and in which you can build an entire room in a few seconds and then immediately move onto the next one, they'd think you were joking or something .
I think I mainly heard about this game via the Godus forums (for Kickstarter backers), which I've been occasionally visiting (but have never posted on) for the past several months. I dunno if anyone here has been following the, er "progress" of Godus (or even backed it themselves) but...yeah...it looks like ol' Peter Molyneux has really dug himself a hole with this one...
I'm debating whether to back the Universim Kickstarter - it finishes in about four days and it's nearly at its goal...it looks pretty good but I have so many games...then again, this one wouldn't be released for another couple of years so maaaybe...

I can't believe that ...I really can't believe that. Had not seen this before, it is a new low. £1.50 to dig out *one* tile? A £70 microtransaction?

Another of my favorite franchises ruined by EA.

check out the link i provided above. EA can ruin the name "dungeon keeper" all they want, but in this case we're all lucky that our own member, rasmus, is comming to the rescue with his own game, completely free of any 70 euro "microtransactions." But really?! I mean Really?! EA, a "microtrasnaction" that costs more then most entire games, just to get a few more minutes of playable action? Are you serious?. The most unbelievable thing is how many people actually like that! I just can't understand how anyone could actually like having all their money forked over to a huge multibillion dollar corporation just to get a few more minutes of a crappy game? I can only guess that these people are masochists who want to have no money and huge debts to complain about.

I have the Dungeon Keeper CD, in case you are interested. Unfortunately, about Dungeon Keeper 2, I have all, but I lost the CD. Forgotten in a discarted out of service CD drive, I presume.

I see both , DK and DK2 are available on the net.

That's too bad. I guess the moral of that story is, look in those out of service drives before discarding them, you may find something in there you don't want to discard.

I read, a place where theives know to look at is the CD Rom drive tray. This is the favorite place, many people use to hide passwords.

I'm pretty sure both the DK games can be found on GoG, and probably other similar websites as well. You can probably still buy disk copies on Amazon or whatever - DK2 should certainly still be available, I'm sure.

Part of the reason that so many people seemingly like it is that trying to rate the game inside of the game jumps through some rather shady hoops.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014- ... ar-reviews

So sneaky. They must have numerous people twirling mustaches, coming up with this constant flow of nasty ideas.

Seriously Unserious wrote:check out the link i provided above.

Yeah, that does look good. Will check it out when it arrives!

EA used to make such great NBA Live games....then it all went downhill after Live 10.

EA actually ends up on the right side of an issue...?
http://venturebeat.com/2015/05/28/ea-ex ... n-fifa-16/

Granted, the two sides are "the right side" and "complete morons" but for EA it's still an accomplishment.

(That said, EA and FIFA seem like they're made for each other, so maybe it's no surprise it's where they'd finally get one right...)

My opinion of the worst company is very likely clouded by a possibly undeserved emotion, and by national pride for my country and her companies, but I think the worst in the continent is Apple, whom I suspect of intentionally overloading RIM's very secure and otherwise reliable messaging services.

Again, I do have a grudge, whether deserved or not, toward any company that gained following RIM's loss in market share.

I did a bit of searching and I couldn't find anything related to this. What happened?

When Blackberry's (Back then known as Research In Motion) servers collapsed in September 2011, when Apple was preparing to launch the iPhone 4S. It's only an unfounded personal suspicion, and I do have it in for the competitors of Blackberry, but looking back, I think that one (or more) of the competition in the smartphone and tablet market may have rigged the game.

Again, only an unfounded opinion and noir-tined glasses is what I have in the matter. In other words, I have no evidence to back my suspicion up.

JETENGINE wrote:I have no evidence to back my suspicion up

I agree completely with this.

But anyway, since we were talking about stuff that happened in September 2011 I'll just leave this here.

Ah happy days... my life in the mobile biz:

Apple? Oh the irony: while working for EA Mobile back in 2007, we were working on game-ports to Nokia mobile, being subsidised by Nokia, millions of dollars into EA.

Now RIM and Blackberry were kicking butt throughout the noughties. But in 2007, several interesting things happened: Apple, extending its iTunes music distribution platform, decided to get themselves into the App Market business. Same year, Android did this too - but they were a fresh-faced OS and Google had not established its to-market model as Apple iTunes had done.

Now Blackberry, they were all 'enterprise' - selling lock-in contracts to companies, all businesses owned them: so their to-market app business was secondary. They had devices setup perfectly for business, but were a nightmare to get games onto.

So lets step back a bit further: before Apple got into the iTunes distribution, and the whole 'there's an app for it' started - do you remember how people with phones got their apps? We advertised SMS codes in the back of magazines! That was the to-market model! Apple's distribution method absolutely stormed it.

So, back to me, and in 2007, Nokia also relaunched N-Gage and the Symbian store was also launched. Symbian was a truly great idea, a cross-platform OS that had a chance. But Apple had already taken the limelight... and only companies the size of Google and Microsoft had the funds to keep on fighting. Nokia and Blackberry bled to death over the next few years.

Few years on, Apple and Android continue to flourish, thanks to distribution. Blackberry really messed it up: market-leaders who let things get too old too fast, they failed to properly invest in a decent distribution model, and their OS was just not as well maintained. Nokia were market-leaders in feature-phones but royally messed-up the leap into smartphones, instead having to throw in the towel and try and bail out Windows a few years later...


Apple are not evil: they had a mature distribution model and a charismatic CEO to drive the way forward.
RIM was far too cocky fro far too long: having worked with their UK team in 2012, those guys seemed exasperated by then (before all being fired)- despite them all carrying their Playbooks proudly. BB OS 10? Flop. By then, Apple did not even worry about them.

Now, if you were to highlight the working conditions of those guys making Apple phones, or how boring their latest releases have got - then maybe I'll bite, .


Meanwhile, EA was a truly soul-less experience in the four years I was with them: full of egos and dead-end projects - right up to the day they just laid us all off. Sadly, it's a trend that other companies are adopting in such an industry.

It'll all end us as Time-Warner-Disney anyway,

You worked for EA? I don't know whether to be impressed or furious with you! If I hear that you designed the Dungeon Keeper app I will hunt you down

oh_brother wrote: ↑Thu Sep 21, 2017 4:34 pm You worked for EA? I don't know whether to be impressed or furious with you! If I hear that you designed the Dungeon Keeper app I will hunt you down

Oh I wish... EA had many many studios... it would buy and absorb others. So I was in EA mobile, which in itself was mainly an old mobile-phone game company called JAMDAT. We made ok games and am proud of some of them. You can come and beat me up for helping write the special effects on a previous EA collaboration (when I was with Argonaut) - Catwoman, a game that proudly boasts a slightly higher review rating than the film. Oooh man, yes I was 10 years in the games industry and I doubt you ever saw a thing I made - Niche, but not by choice.