hmm . . .
comparisons . . . come on, gotta be little more fair . . .
Codemasters is a top British gaming company with 800 employees, that began in the 80's busting out games for commodores and amigas to today's PC and PS triple era.
Their games range from mmorpg's to action, FPS's, rpg's, sports, those restaurant style games etc . . . they have experience in making their sounds and music . . .
That's a hell of a resume
F1 series started in 09' and they've been improving it this year. They got the license when Sony didn't renew it . . . (remember Sony has its hand in Gran Turismo series another excellent driving sim)
F1 has had alot of history and there are more games on this series than plane types in all WW 2 sims in history.
F1 has a rich history and lots of features, codes to draw from. Also F1 from 2009, the data for the cars and racers, and everything is up to date. F1 2012 is rated 9's by IGN, and it its a simulation with a steep learning curve.
Plus as others said its a solid game engine. Plus F1 doesn't have to model as many physics properties as a WW2 sim ( such as damage from various sources, atmospheric weather, 3D planes etc).
With 800 ninjas coding, you can be sure of a solid game release. To put things into perspective, Blizzard has 4500 employees, while Infinity Ward (call of duty) has 100 . . .
Now compare this our situation. No 800 employees. An impressive gaming resume to be sure, but you have to remember flight sims are very complicated compared to other games. At least a good one that models almost every aspect of combat flying.
Like the F1 series, they had IL-2 1946 to draw from. That's impressive also.
But remember the heart and mind (Oleg) was taken out, and the soul (Luthier and his team) is left.
For some reason, the working game engine of the Oleg era Storm of War wasn't used or had to be modified for some reason and a broke one was put in place.
And then there was a major OS change for the PC (XP, then to vista / win 7). Codemasters has experience in entire hardware / software / os systems, not just an OS change.
They have much more to deal with than the world of F1. They have WW 2. Also the information they have to chase is 50+ years old, and not recent like the 2009 F1 and history of F1. There is much more complicated things in a flight sim than a racing sim.
they don't have tons of games to draw from, like popular F1 series.
And the game engine they are using is damaged goods. Codemasters has a working engine.
let's be fair, that isn't even a good comparison. First off the games are wildly different. Second, the companies have different philosophy, and history. 3rd, to the Clod devs after the set back they've been handed to them . . .we're lucky (and blessed) they've even came out with a game on the caliber as CLoD. 4th, the number of manpower is vastly different.
Look at the Football Americano team, the Saints. They were an impressive team last season. This season their head coach was taken out by the NFL, and they are the worst team . . . Even after a few games, they can't get their act together. This dev team had their head coach leave, and they aren't the worst. They've had a bad set back, but they know what they need to improve.
As for the trust issue . . . everyone falls on this. Remember Toyota had gained the trust of the world, but blew it when they tried to ol' coverup with the sticky gas pedal, and it was even more of a blow up when the domestic toyotas of the same model, year, type were found to be error free, but only their exports had the issue, and had to admit the practice that some Japanese companies favor domestic markets and make the best, while having a lesser model go out (but still quality) to the rest of the world.
Also lots of assumptions . .. usually lack of information causes the masses to fill in the blanks, shoot everyone likes a good speculation, heck sewing circles and rumors. There is even an entertainment industry based off of speculation on stars and popular people.
the devs maybe laughing at the craziness, but who knows if they are laughing at us.
I wouldn't be surprised thought. I dated a medical intern who worked in the ER, they'd joke about the patients, or the dying, and the dead. The families and those close would be aghast. But the medical personnel did that to keep sane. They saw and experience lots of things that would make the average person go nuts. The humor helped break up the tension, ease the stress.
the dev's don't have a passion for this. well maybe a possibility, call it later . . . but their dedication to getting the series back to its old days of glory even though its tanked from the start . . . its hard not to stick to something like without a slight belief or passion in what you are doing. Especially after several months.
the devs aren't ignoring bug posts, its been stated (several times) they have ways for us to let them know about bugs and issues . . .
granted though the devs are slow at answering questions or getting back to us. many people think its easy to answer questions. But remember companies that do get back to the fans / community often have a full time employee(S) dedicated to running the blogs, forums, twitter etc. And this is delicate, because answering a question will certainly be read the wrong way.
Also have to remember the east west thing, customer service may not be the best thing and they are learning. After all, remember when they didn't even have a rep or any updates about the game. At least now they get back to us every several weeks . . . that was better than before.
Take a look at here. Luthier and B6 have posted. Then not even a page later, someone posts information as gospel truth that is opposite of what the official original post is.
A strategical method is go for the end win. The devs know that if Bom is a working game, that will checkmate all the negative and bad blood of Clod and this botched first release of the new IL-2 series.
Rather than waste time dealing with us here and getting caught in speculation, they maybe just putting all resources into development. Luthier's post generated more questions than he answered. He's the lead guy, and I'd rather have him doing his work than taking 10+ minutes out of his day to answer questions that a year after a successful BOM release, no one won't really care to recall and won't really matter in the long run.
Because in the end, if they do turn this series around, most will forgive them.
|