To all the employees who work at gaming companies. I’m a baby boomer as well as a senior software engineer of 35+ years and hence appreciate solid work ethic combined with leading edge high tech.

I do not know how you people deal with the instant gratification demands of your customer base, which seems to be an expected birthright anymore, combined with a total lack of any understanding and/or appreciation of what is involved.

Sure, they paid their 60 bucks, so you own them the world.

Heck I cannot take my wife to dinner and a movie for 60 bucks. And people are crying because the game provides a measly 12-20 hours of first time through entertainment?

ID/Bethesda … my hat is off to all of you, before I’ve even cracked the seal on my PS3 version!

Thanks … I don’t fully comprehend all that has gone into this game alone, but I have a good idea.

I agree with you 100%, today was my first time ever on a games forum, and I didn't like what I saw. You can't wait ONE day for a patch to come out before declaring it terrible? The unwarranted sense of entitlement here is staggering. I hope I never get to have a giant userbase for my software if I have to deal with this crap, I bet Carmack is away on a delicious holiday right now and not worrying about any of this [censored], simply because by tomorrow everything will be fixed and the game already has stellar reviews.

I don't think it's a matter of instant gratification at all...it's more a matter of how could a game be released without someone noticing there were issues on the PC.

I also have to assume this is a troll thread (given you are talking about loading game on your PS3, which has none of the issues PCs have), so advise all people after to keep a cool head and not be led into this trolling attempt.

Someone clearly made a mistake at some point. It happens.

It's more than a tiny mistake. And testing the final build should happen over many months - it isn't like they just loaded game once on a PC and never went back again - surely someone noticed there were issues for the PC.

And if they noticed, they should've fixed it before releasing the game - it is unacceptable, without doubt.

lol, how in the world do you get a trolling attempt out of that? Love gamers and their forums. I do feel for you if you were effected with the PC issues, I do understand the anticipation as well: Hey, I’m an old school PC gamer. Here’s my old DIY/new egg – water cooled build that I put together around 2003.
[IMG]http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y192/Timpanogos/coolerOutside.png[/IMG]

I'm going to assume someone will be fixing this mess. Personally not affected at this point - my game is being posted from Amazon to NZ so won't be here for quite some time.

If the game isn't fixed by then for the PC there will be hell to pay.

Well lollie, I suppose, but you know what, it’s us, the gaming community who ultimately pays for knee jerk reactions and lack of any loyalty.

I also just recently bought Brink. I love the game play and the concept. Is the game perfect? Heck no. Will there be more patches, a DLC, a sequel? Well given a very short run – what 4 months, and a tiny remaining community base of hard cores, and a large majority of belly achers, I suppose not.

Heck, let’s just all hurry back to the big boys, we know how perfect and continually satisfying their releases are going to be. If we kill off the innovators in the process, so be it, right?

I have no intention of killing the innovators. They're my favourite people.

Further, I'm not cancelling my order - I do expect them to make it right however (and quickly). This is a reasonable position to take I believe.

One more thing - I do think they need to be more careful before releasing games in unfinished states, as a gamer I feel we see too much of that, and the industry really needs to fix up. Even the innovators.

Ahem, as an id fan since Commander Keen, through Wolf 3D, Doom 1 and 2, Quake 1, 2, 3, and Doom 3... and a diehard fan at that, who even read the Doom novels... and even saw the awful Doom movie...

I think I have every right to complain here. Their previous games came out either exclusively for PC, or primarily and first for PC with consoles done later. Now, I'm not standing here saying they shouldn't have done console versions of Rage. Absolutely, have at it. I'm not even saying they should've released them later than the PC version and done a port from the PC version after the fact (though it does seem that may have been wise honestly...)

No I'm saying something far, far more reasonable... and this is also what I see my fellow "complainers" saying, almost to a man: The PC version should have been given at least *as much* consideration, attention, testing, and polish as the other 2 versions. That's all we're saying. It should have been tested to the same standard Doom 3 was, or any other major title on PC is... do a lot of PC games come out with some issues at first? Oh hell yes, we all know that. But I think at this point it's clear that the number of different systems, graphics cards, etc that these problems span across, and the SEVERITY of these problems is something in another league entirely. And if you aren't prepared to admit that these problems are common and serious enough that they absolutely should've been caught and corrected during the QA process then you are either unaware of how bad they are, how common they are, or you are being dishonest.

Nobody expects perfection, nobody expects every single bug to be squashed in the release version. We just expect it to be playable and at a reasonable level of polish, patches should be for touching up a game, ironing out little kinks, not for getting it PLAYABLE AT ALL, on the MAJORITY of PC's. Capiche?

Think of a patch like a tune up for your car, changing the oil, new wiper blades perhaps... and think of Rage PC's issues at launch like the car company forgetting to put the engine under the hood.

As for lack of loyalty? I'd say I'm pretty loyal when I ended up getting both the PC and XBox 360 version last night, paying $130 all told for this game. When I really can't throw money like that around, mind you. Yea I think that qualifies me as loyal to id. So I don't appreciate people implying that those of us who are prepared to face reality and call out a company that maybe we love and have loved for years are disloyal, entitled, ungrateful, or whatever else people may want to accuse us of. If loyal means BLINDLY loyal then I'm sorry you can't expect that from me any time soon. My loyalty was EARNED by id's performance in the past and the level of polish they put into their games. I would be failing them as a longterm fan if I did NOT call them out when they are slipping and losing track of their roots.

So just to be clear, let me see if I understand and can summarize your position:

You do not have any of the platform releases, nor have you personally played any of them yet. You are expecting a console platform release very soon. Early reviews/reports of the console versions seem to be error free and people are rating it high.

A stranger gives kudos’s to the hard work done to all the contributors, based on his also following the reviews today. You find it necessary to accuse this stranger of trolling and encourage all to ignore his message (one of the need for appreciation and loyalty) .

You make ultimatum demands for some immediate fix, of which at least some portion of the problem is totally out of ID’s hands (3r party video hardware drivers), for a platform release that does not even affect you personally.

Any yet you claim to have no intention of hurting the innovators.

Do I understand this correctly?

Nuuuup. You have it all wrong - I am expecting a PC version of game.

Equation;

I feel for you, really I do. Unfortunately the facts of business reality come into play here.

How many hardcoe gamers build gaming pc’s like my water cooled one pictured above? Or how many Lap top owners buy the expensive gaming version of the hardware, or have the 1000 dollar dual graphics cards in their towers?

Compare this to the number of 300 dollar xbox or ps3 consumers, and add to that the contracts to Sony and Microsoft to release on this given Tuesday or default on your contracts.

There are multi-million dollar payrolls and production costs behind these games. I would suggest that NO gaming company can/will survive in this highly competitive market without first focusing on where their largest community base is going to be coming from. I assume that the days of this base being PC’s is over.

Are you suggesting they happily sold many people a PC version knowing only the console versions were of any use?

This is criminal.

Props to equation, I thought I had put it well in another post, but you really hit the mark with your point.

@mrsTimpanogos - All i can say to you to make you see it the way most of us do is this. What if the xbox and PC versions were released with no major bugs and we were all playing the game happily knowing our money was well spent, meanwhile you got your ps3 version and that release was botched, leaving you unable to so much as load the menu? Wether you would write on a forum, or not, about your bad experience or ill investment, wouldnt you still feel like you got a bad deal? Wouldnt you feel that if 90% of ps3 versions released did not work well enough to play, that ID or Bethesda owed you an explanation, refund, or at least an acknowledgement of the problem and a promise to fix it asap? If you provided a service to someone wouldnt you feel it was your responsibility to earn there money and live up to their expectation?

Thats the point most of us have. Simply that an oversight THIS big to effect THIS many people on the PC to the point that the game is unplayable, well, is unacceptable in terms of fair trade.

Let me suggest a possible scenario. This is only one of a 1000 possible ones. Now I don’t know, nor does anyone else outside of ID, what the actual story is, but consider this scenario:

ID QA tester: date 6 months back – boss, this list of ATI boards, with these versions of the drivers have a serious problem.

Boss: ok, we will get with ATI asap to seek for fixes.

ID QA tester: date 6 months back – boss, we have this issue with the xbox console

Boss: ok, we will get with Microsoft to seek answers.

The xbox contract is a two way street, there is likely no contract with ATI

ATI: yes, we know what the problem is and we will get you a fix for that
Microsoft: same

Time goes by, MS contractually responds quickly
ATI: keeps promising “two more weeks”, but never comes through.

Ethically ID will not bash/blame ATI, but takes the heat when they do not deliver (this is what is criminal).

ID, locks itself even tighter into the console contracts because it takes them out of this third party, sitting duck position.

Having ground up built and over clocked several multi-core CPU and multi GPU systems, I know how finicky gaming systems can be. I cannot imagine any gaming company punishing their self with trying to support the infinite variables involved in the individual machines.

As far as ID being criminal, no --- I’ve read as many PC’ers being successful today, as the very vocal ones unfortunate enough to have ATI boards, or other PC issues.

Why do you think I gave up on my custom gaming machines and went with a PS3? Might as well consider jumping on the bandwagon ... it ain't going back to PC but will continue to move forward with console ... strickly based on business sense.

Sounds like they won't be pushing console gaming any more in the future, which is a wise move. Consoles are pretty much holding back the development of games.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsarticle.asp?searchid=23760



Also seems soon PC gaming will overtake console gaming in terms of profitability.

http://au.pc.gamespy.com/articles/119/1196429p1.html

@mrsTimpanogos - I agree with you about possibilities, and I will hold off now on my speaking out becuase of the light you shed. I honestly hope that a fix will be released soon and that the issue gets resolved. I also know exactly where you coming from in terms of the wide range of equipment PC games need to takle. I build PC's for a living and they can be quit the pain. I also though have a money back guarantee, and offer 6 months free maintenance for both hardware and software issues. Rarely do I have to return to a customer within that time period as I am very much a perfectionist. Although when I do make a mistake and must make good on my service standard I do not hesitate. If you treat your customers right then you have a customer for life. I just hope that ID is aware of the issue, at least by now, and is working hard to resolve it, and I will assume they are.

Lollie

John Carmack reference:

Yea, sure, I read that early today.

“John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is an American game programmer and the co-founder of id Software. Carmack was the lead programmer of the id computer games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage and their sequels.”

Note closely the “lead programmer” title. Do any of you know/have experience with a software engineer, or a software development house? There is an age old battle, in a development house, between marketing and engineering. Do the engineers build what they want or what marketing tells them to build? I have yet to meet a top notch programmer that had any business, marketing or sales sense. Smart companies do what they can to balance this, but everyone realizes this division/distinction.

For example, I worked for one of the Dot com startup companies before the big dot com crash. The investors dumped 5 million dollars into the 3 year software development cycle (engineering budget) and 20 million dollars into sales and marketing.

Guess who wins these battles when a push comes to a shove?

I predict, if ID has a strong marketing/sells department that ID will continue to prioritize consoles, even though he personally sees it as a mistake.

Also realize that there are rumors of Sony putting out a new generation of console.

As for Nvidia’s prediction – hello, what are they going to say, hey, pc gaming is going downhill?

I well may be wrong, but I just cannot see the numbers in PC based gamers, verses the console markets.

Good call! And who knows, if the PC version is truely flawed, with no possible fix, ID well may make good on it.

It's possible they are aware (being one of the guys who make graphics cards for PCs) that some innovation is coming up that'll make it easier for developers to code for PC games.

Pure speculation of course.

Also apparently profits on PC vs console weren't taking into consideration the downloaded portion of the games market - they were only counting box sales - so all previous data on PC vs console is incorrect.

Yes, pure speculation ... I do love to lounge chair quarterback. It will be very interesting to see where this all goes.

Hey Lollie, I just might be around here a bit ... hope I did not offend

No worries