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That was quite a distressing read, holy shit.

I had always kind of been rooting for SK, i don't know how to feel about this.

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Ugh, people like Dyack are incompetent bosses. Companies should be lead by team players, not middling egoists who run the place like their own show.

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It may sound like Hollywood, but business is run by ego. Video game business isn't different. In the previous 24 hours JP tweeted this K link: http://kotaku.com/59...s-x men-destiny

I'm going to buy Andrew McMillen a drink when I meet him. He does good work. (Presumably.)

Although it does worry me a bit that this is very similar to the article on Team Bondi he wrote. One hopes it's just because it's the same root problem, and honestly something's not right at studios with such high turnover.

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Although it does worry me a bit that this is very similar to the article on Team Bondi he wrote.

What's the insinuation here? (I know what you're insinuating, I'm just not sure why.)

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Well, the only evidence we've got in both cases are the articles themselves. The insinuation is that we can't be sure it's true, and it's possible that McMillen made the stories up, which is why they sound so similar. I guess I'm suspicious because I'm not used to actual journalism regarding games instead of what we usually call "games journalism". (This is how conspiracy theories start.)

You can see me backing off that statement when I realised that while we didn't get any independent confirmation of the Team Bondi story, we didn't get any denial either, and it was well-known in the Australian industry that Team Bondi had a high staff turnover, which is almost never a good sign for a company. That in itself is usually grounds for a story, and if it is just made up from whole cloth, it makes a lot more sense than Team Bondi having difficulty finding appropriate talent in Australia and Silicon Knights being a misunderstood company with a run of bad luck.

Don't get me wrong; I'm 99% sure they're both quality pieces of actual journalism. But I'm still going to be skeptical because it doesn't hurt any.

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Having worked for several companies under kind, talented, and well-adjusted people who just happened to border on psychopathy when it came to their management style, I'm having a lot more trouble retaining my skepticism.

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I hate that I have to say this, but kudos to Activision for pulling the trigger and following through with the publishing agreement. "You promised us this game within this time frame, we're letting people know because it's time for press." Denis Dyack - if the things in the article are true (and I see no reason why they aren't) - is a pretty huge tool. Even if the game turned out okay, the fact that he would remove names from the credits is childish. He's clearly a man who didn't get told "no" when growing up.

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I remember the Too Human NeoGAF debacle. It was already ridiculous at the time, but jeez, FOR or AGAINST? To recap, a portion of the NeoGAF community dog piled on top of Too Human for looking awful and Denis Dyack coming in to prove that his game wasn't shit. I looked it up and this was the challenge he presented: "When the game is released and everyone plays game all the speculation will be over. If I am wrong and gamers in general think the game is 'crap' then I am comfortable with getting tagged 'Owned by the GAF'." And on the other side, if the game did turn out to be good, everyone who claimed AGAINST would get the tag "Owned by Too Human." I think I remember that backfiring on him.

In the same week, he went on the 1Up Yours podcast, talking about that whole debacle and explaining himself (pulling the quotes from here):

"I went through all of this for two reasons.... If you're going to look at the NeoGAF forum as a non-profit organization, if it does not reform itself, it's eventually going to crumble. There's going to be a point where they step over the line where someone's going to shut them down. That would be a loss for everyone.... The question I have to ask the moderators of GAF: Are you going to follow your own rules? With people making GIFs of myself that are, I would say, attacking me.... Why haven't 180 people been banned now? If I wanted to move in and shut that place down, do I have grounds under their own forum policy?"

Supposedly the thread was like an experiment to "expose the lack of accountability in online forums", but in reality he was just butthurt that his game was getting panned by people who hadn't played it yet and had only seen videos.

"NeoGAF and other forums like this that don't have good management are not only hurting society and hurting the Video game industry, they're in decline, and they need to reform quickly before people stop listening to them.... If the moderators and people who run the site think they aren't doing any damage, they are sorely mistaken, and it's only a matter of time before something bad happens." -- Denis Dyack

What do you call that again? Iro... Ironastical?

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Ironasty. What a douche. How about just making a good game and being a friendly person? That'll get you much further in life.

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Oh man, oh man! I had completely forgotten about that whole thing.

That was an incredible internet tantrum.

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It may sound like Hollywood, but business is run by ego. Video game business isn't different. In the previous 24 hours JP tweeted this K link: http://kotaku.com/59...s-x men-destiny

I'm TRYING to get through this article, but I'm up to paragraph twelve and every single sentence so far has been about how this is a bad game. Which-- I'm reading Kotaku, so I already knew that. If this guy quotes one more Metacritic score then holy jeez.

--Alright I'm halfway through it. Bblleuurrggh this is like a celeb gossip piece. I'm sure it's very true, and Denis Dyack isn't up to par for his role at Silicon Knights, but how necessary is it to say those good games before were only good because Nintendo helped? Do we need to completely shit on this whole company and rip em apart WHILE we tell sleepover stories about how much of a cartoon villain Denis Dyack is?

-Okay now I'm done, the article got more focused. That was a very scary story; bumbling bosses and company failures are terrifying. He sounds like a boss I had once, but with much more at stake... and y'know what, I'm sure if someone handed me a company that big I'd fuck up aswel if I'm honest!

I don't think we'll ever see Denis Dyack in an interview again, talking about this or anything else. Less than FIVE EMPLOYEES? welp...

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I had heard about a Denis Dyack meltdown regarding NeoGAF but I never bothered to investigate the specifics. So this is the first I'm seeing of that and man is that guy silly as shit. It is funny to see a guy say that a community is going to collapse because... he's the target of negativity from that community. That actually sounds like unity to me. But yeah, the guy is just butthurt and... ugh. His ego is just screaming all over the place and that Kotaku article just ups its ante on how true it actually is with its sources.

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In different business news, Ubisoft is volunteering to be the first company to apply freemium models to single player games. Only you still have to buy the game in the first place. I know that EA has sold cheat codes before, but do note the difference here is that you pay for store points, which are spent on... well, read on. It's silly and dumb.

At the end of last month, VentureBeat reported on a Ubisoft investor conference call where the company's executives talked about the profitability of microtransactions. Free-to-play was identified as a viable business model for microtransactions, as were traditional retail games.

According to VentureBeat, Ubisoft's chief financial officer Alain Martinez said, "But in the future, with games like Watch Dogs, we could see more opportunity for $60 games to learn from the free-to-play model. The next generation will offer more and more item-based content. This will benefit our games' profitability."

If this week's XBLA and PSN store updates for Assassin's Creed III are any indication, you won't have to wait until Watch Dogs for microtransactions to appear in your Ubisoft games. They should be ready and waiting for you in Assassin's Creed III, which is hitting store shelves this week.

Both console storefronts are offering "Erudito Credit" packs for sale for Assassin's Creed III.

The packs are available in the following denominations:

20 Erudito Pack = 80 MSP ($1 USD)

50 Erudito Pack = 160 MSP ($2 USD)

155 Erudito Pack = 400 MSP ($5 USD)

380 Erudito Pack = 800 MSP ($10 USD)

925 Erudito Pack = 1600 MSP ($20 USD)

The description states that the credits will allow you "to acquire some game items, disregarding your current level."

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Ubisoft has had "U-Play points" in it's games before; they are points earned by completing Splinter Cell (for example), stored on a Ubisoft server, and then spent on a new costume in Assassin's Creed 2.

So it's surprising they came up with a whole new name for this.

...It's very silly that dollars converts to microsoft points WHICH THEN converts to Erudito points, and they all have different rates.

Oh and EA did this in Mass Effect 3. You could pay to unlock items in the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer- and a lot of people did it, sadly. I'd guess that this is like that.

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Oh and EA did this in Mass Effect 3. You could pay to unlock items in the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer- and a lot of people did it, sadly. I'd guess that this is like that.

You know, I see the stats saying that tens of thousands of people would rather buy than unlock in-game items, but I've never met a single person who actually sees that as a viable option. It makes me wonder who they all are.

I love the dollars to points to different points, too. It seems like a great money-laundering scheme.

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Oh and EA did this in Mass Effect 3. You could pay to unlock items in the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer- and a lot of people did it, sadly. I'd guess that this is like that.

When you paid into that system you were paying for a -chance- at item unlocks, you just as easily could end up with an expendable one-use medkit.

I thought it was pretty offensive and gross.

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Yea that's what freemium is, I'm sure Ubisoft will carry the NOBLE TRADITION of paying $5 to plant super-turnips.

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Look who decided to stoke the flames of an issue behind a closed Twitter account.

vWuLD.jpg

Well gee, suddenly the concept of someone lying about the threat of lawsuit narrows down.

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Hooray, I've waited such a long before I could finally be bothered about micro-transactions inside a single player game! Hey, you know, perhaps there's a futuristic option where I can just pay an amount up front, say 50 euros, and get rid of the peddling.

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What's funny is that that's probably where this will end up. After putting micro-transactions everywhere in single-player games, some genius designer will suggest to instead have the player pay a single, larger amount for the game, and have all the micro-purchases included with that initial purchase, and it will be a huge success, and its name will be macro-transactions.

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