Rein, CliffyB Weigh in on PC Gaming Alliance

What the fuck does CliffyB and the rest of Epic know about making games to run on laptops? Everything they've been involved in has been aimed at the hard core PC market (excluding console titles).

When are the big developers going to realise you can make games with low end graphics that still play the same as a game with high end gfx? I really couldnt give a flying fuck about all the effects, eye candy and high res textures that are in games these days, just give me something fun. Why and how is the "alliance" going to force this idea down devs throats? its up to the consumers to stop buying crap games (you could say this has already started with the downfall of UT3).

MTV... MTV...

Something struck me as a bit weird about this, so I did some Googling and then it came to me:

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/07/12/epics-mark-rein-intel-is-killing-pc-gaming/

They had a shot with the original UT if they took the time to solidify the engine and balance the gameplay. Sadly it went down hill pretty consistently. These guys weren't great when times were good for them, and settling into a console focused company probably would suit them better. This is one company that could actually benefit from the stability of a console IMO. It's not always a bad thing to refine and / or dumb down the gameplay for the console crowd, in their case it may actually make their stuff more fun.

Cliffy B must have been smacked down by his superiors, as he's singing a different tune than the other week.

I think Epic as a company made a major mistake with UT3. When they renamed the game from UT2K7 to UT3, there was an obvious shift in not just the name, but an overall direction with the UT series and their philosophy, at least that's how I read it looking back. First and foremost, they should have made the game feel like a PC game, not a console like interface for starters. There's no goddamn excuse whatsoever for having a decent sized community on PC only to release a game that's menu system is shit for a mouse/keyboard. They should have released UT as soon as it was done for PC, instead of delaying it to straddle a PS3/PC version within a month from each other. It's almost as if they were deliberately fucking up the PC version in order to dismiss it, it just makes no sense to me at all. They kept talking about only wanting to market the game once, but I didn't see any ads at all for PC UT3, maybe a few in PC Gamer or GFW. On the other hand, there are numerous commercials for the PS3 version, but that looks like they are supported by Sony, as they never mention the PC version, but I could be wrong.

Epic hit gold with MS, and that's fine, but at least on their way out the door, for the sake of memories, they could have put a bit more emphasis on UT as a PC game, instead, delay after delay only to get the worst version in franchise history. I mean, because a subpar game like UT3 didn't sell, that's a sign of PC Gaming in decline? That's what is supposed to happen to bad or below average games, poor sales. On console, games like 50 Cent Bulletproof might sell millions as an absolute turd, it just doesn't happen on PC, thankfully. I guess that's what Cliff was expecting.

I'm hoping they perhaps put a lot of effort into fixing UT3 (adding new modes, fixing issues, etc)...though I'm not sure if it can be saved at this point. Even if they fixed everything and made it an amazing game...a lot of people wouldn't go near it (and most would still bitch about it). I'm torn on whether they should put a lot of effort into fixing everything in patches and bonus packs and then release a version in stores with all the patches like the Editors Choice Editgion (ECE) with UT2k4. Or they might be better off just building a "new" game on top of it like they did with UT2k3->UT2k4 (2k3 was a disaster...and I'd say that even UT3 was a better game without patches than UT2k3...but UT2k4 really fixed my major gripes and made a much better game with Onslaught and Assault (especially Onslaught)).

Either way I'd love to see them add in Assault and Bombing Run...along with some new modes (imagine a space based gamea with capital ships and fighters and shuttles...sort of a battlefield meets XWing (but done right...not talking sw:b)...and you can board the ships with shuttles (hell...UT's mythos already has teleportation...so you could beam on them without having any serious pain in the ass coding/art to do since you wouldn't have to have docking points or breacher pods)...you could fight onboard trhe ships...hell control points would work well for trying to slowly capture a ship (have bonuses too...capture a sick bay and you get extra health bonuses when you spawn and maybe quicker spawn times at that point or something...at an armory/weapons locker place you could get ammo bonuses and there'd be plenty of guns to get). You could maybe some how destroy the ship's core from the inside to take it out or disable it. You could man guns on the ship or have them computer run (maybe control large groups of them by giving them general orders...have like a tactical officer or captain doing that). You could have someone piloting these large ships or have them flying to waypoints RTS style...maybe have upgrades that could be done to them that could be selected by the guy manning the captain seat or whatever (he'd sort of have an RTS thing going on and with multiple ships in the game its not like one guy could have that important role. Link guns could be used to repair things on the ship or to speed up upgrades...and you could maybe get more link gun plasma by firing at plasma conduits that would be running exposed in areas of the ship...that would be a great mode (or hell a mod...I was wanting to do something like that...but I don't think UT3 has the audience to support it (though it does have an engine ideal for that with its portal system (which you could use for windowsw and docking bays to launch from or whatever). The trick would be to have it scalable enough so it'd still be playable with smaller player numbers. Now I'm rambling I realise.

What I'm saying is that new modes, fixes, adding in some old lost modes, new maps, etc might be a good move for UT3 but I'm not sure if that could save it or if they'd be better off making a new "UT3.5" game (hell a mode as involved as what I'd described (and went on way too much about because I've though of such a mode for some time) would really entail a new game as it'd be way more than you'd expect in a patch...though a huge, invovled, ambitious, mode like that as a bonus pack would engender a lot of good will that seems to be lost with UT3). Sorry for rambling.

UT99 is probably the best shooter there is, the rest is crap and so are Epics programming skills obviously since they can't jail the evil pirates that only care about not paying money..

Mark Rein strikes me as the North America version of Ken Kutargi nowadays. What will Crazy Mark say next?

Or as Tycho put it:

Clifford makes a few personal observations about the PC as a gaming platform - namely, that it is schizophrenic in its focus. The industry itself apparently agrees, but it hasn't spared him any heat. Epic's Liar-King Mark Rein scuttled out from a rotting log to do some damage control, but no one on the Internet remembers anything for more than a week anyhow. It's wasted effort.
( http://www.penny-arcade.com/2008/02/27 )

Plus Epic's credibility in the PC gaming field isn't doing so well since UT3's release, when they basically did their very best to piss all over the PC platform. You reap what you sow.

i really dont get what epic is doing lately.. first it's "fuck pc gaming, we are console whores" now this.. wtf are they smoking, cause i want some..

Why do they let Mark Rein talk? And for that matter... why does he even hold such a position at that company?

george bush called and wants his sanity back.

I don't even know where to begin with Rein's quote...