You know you are right over the target when you are receiving the most flak.
If I am so wrong, then why are you behaving like I hit a sensitive area? Why not just ignore me?
Which post did I melt down in again? Was it this one?
Or maybe it was this one:
Or maybe it was this one, where I praised IceFrog:
Or this one, where I defended him from comments made at WC3C?
Try actually looking at what you said in the thread I linked at.
This is melting down:
It's funny how the dude who actually made DotA doesn't get any credit, while two guys who can barely put together a coherent line of JASS and have no design skills whatsoever have been scooped up under the misguided belief that they will somehow duplicate a success that was never theirs to begin with.
Emphasis is yours.
Of course Valve picks up stuff like Counter-Strike and DotA at least halfway because of the publicity and good will it generates in the community, so they definitely resemble Hollywood in terms of their marketing emphasis. But maybe they genuinely don't know the history of DotA, either.
The thing that really annoys me, though, is that I've been playing Half-life 2 for the first time, and holy hell is this game overrated. The first half is an absolute trainwreck in terms of pacing. My faith in other people's opinions about games is waning.
What is being said here:
-is that Valve picks up mods only for the publicity and 'good will' from the community.
-Valve is so stupid, unlike the brilliant Cassiel, that they do not know the true history of DOTA.
-Half-Life 2 sucks (which is a roundabout way of saying Valve sucks)
What else to take from this but 'meltdown'? So you've posted cherry picked quotes where you praised Icefrog in somewhere else. All you are doing is reinforcing that you had a meltdown when news came out that Icefrog got hired at Valve.
My point in linking to the thread was not to point at the meltdown but to give an example of the 'Industry' hiring someone (Icefrog in this example) who Cassiel, himself, said could barely put together some lines in JASS.
I enjoy using Cassiel's own words against him.
You see, trying to peg someone as melting down is not an effective tactic to pursue in an argument. In this case, what you think is anger is actually confidence. I know I'm right, and because I know I'm right, I speak with authority. And authority is a nice thing to have. It keeps me as calm as a Hindu cow.
Confident people with 'authority' have no need to 'declare it' like you just did.
You, on the other hand, are attributing anger to your opponent in an argument, which is intellectually dishonest. It's a transparent attempt to discredit them by showing them to be unreasonable and of uneven temper.
Good God man! You talk here like you are running for Congress.
Using
exact quotes of yourself can be, in no shape or form, 'attributing anger' or trying to show you in a false light. You said what you said. So what?
I don't care about your little meltdowns. What I do care about is how you correctly attributed that Icefrog doesn't do much in the coding or in the originality yet he gets hired by the 'Industry' while you get to sit here on the Internet talking to my charming self.
What good did learning all the guts of Warcraft 3 do to you if you are left arguing in a message forum with a poster named Mr. Cheese? Even I'm embarrassed for you.
This indicates that you're the opposite of me: you lack authority, and you don't have confidence in what you're saying.
Then why argue with someone who clearly has no authority and no confidence? Why not just ignore them? Why are you so defensive?
What IceFrog is making will sell very well, actually.
I highly doubt this for the simple fact that IceFrog has no experience
selling a game. It is very different story of selling something versus giving it away for free. The art of any business is the art of selling.
A good question is whether or not anyone would have paid money for Warcraft 3 DOTA. Just putting a price tag completely changes the reaction of people.
Because he knows how to program. His knowledge is basic but he's competent, and that's all that matters.
Yes, I am so sure his 'mad' JASS programming skills are the reason why Valve hired him. There are some very good JASS programmers here on the HIVE. Why doesn't Valve hire them?
The answer is that programming is not the reason why Icefrog was hired. And everyone knows this. Even you.
But you are too arrogant to admit it. Life is not about being right or wrong, it is about winning and losing. If you try to be 'right' all the time, you will only end up losing. You will go through life "learning the guts" of things and watch rank amateurs like IceFrogs 'leap' over you.
Back to IceFrog: more importantly, he has a truly phenomenal record of community management, as I said in the original thread.
Here is what you said in that thread (which is another indicator of the melt-down):
Second, Guinsoo "just" supplied all the cool ideas? Really? The guy who did half the creative work, established the map's community and built a competitive scene around it--this guy was "just" twiddling his thumbs, while the guy who pushed some numbers around is some kind of hero? Are you joking?
The fact is that DotA was already hugely popular when Guinsoo stepped aside. The creative work had already been done, so of course IceFrog polished it, refined it, tightened it up, and whatever other synonyms you can come up with to disguise the fact that he really hasn't done much, certainly no more than anybody else would have done. Because by that point all the important work was finished. IceFrog pushed numbers around because there was nothing else for him to do.
The emphasis is yours.
In your own exact words, you give credit for the 'community building' to Guinsoo. And you say IceFrog did little more than push numbers around.
But you say more in that post. Let us read it together:
Eul and Guinsoo were both tools. Personality-wise, IceFrog is easily the best of the people who have headed DotA. But that doesn't make him a good designer, and it doesn't mean he deserves any of what's coming his way--certainly not moreso than Eul. If you really don't understand that this is just marketing on Valve's part, there's not much more I can do for you here. As someone who's worked extensively on this kind of abstract propaganda, though, I find the thought that you don't resent being marketed to in this way fairly depressing.
I laugh at the end because Cassiel then claims to be the great expert on marketing.
Now, why am I quoting your posts? I am not defending or attacking Icefrog. I am only quoting these posts because they contradict what you just said.
Why do I care about contradictions? It is because you were lecturing me on 'intellectual honesty'. The argument, as it appears, is not between Cassiel and Mr. Cheese but between Cassiel and Cassiel. Which Cassiel will win? Which one will appear to reply to me? Take your bets. I should start a money pool.
The primary reason Valve hired IceFrog, of course, has nothing to do with this discussion. That reason is marketing. As far as most people know, IceFrog made DotA. The DotA name, and by extension the IceFrog name, are worth something, just like the Blizzard name is worth something. Brand recognition and brand loyalty are the salient concepts here. The name IceFrog will generate interest and sales for Valve, even if they stick him in a hole and he has no actual input into the project.
So says Cassiel, the Expert on Valve, and now Expert on Marketing. Please, Cassiel, let me bow to your expertise. I am not worthy!
Also, as a logical matter, your use of isolated cases isn't helping your cause. You can gesture toward a handful of people who supposedly got great jobs without knowing how to do anything (although Meier, Miyamoto and even IceFrog aren't among them), but those aren't meaningful data points. More people win the lottery than become high-powered game developers, yet you would be wrong to tell people to trust their financial futures to winning the lottery. The same holds true for this idea that all people have to do is start their own game company and they'll hit the jackpot. They won't.
I never said anyone would hit the 'jackpot' by making their own game company.
The fact is that you can become a game designer right now by using the computer in front of you. You don't have to go through any industry. You can make a game RIGHT NOW.
This is how the first game designers did it. They did it on their own. Many people are making games, today, without joining any company. And they are selling their games too.
So why don't you go make a game? Clearly, you have all the programming skills, game theory skills, marketing skills, and know everything else. By making a game and successfully selling it, that alone would put you WAY AHEAD of any of the sea of applicants of people trying to 'get into the Industry'.
Which doesn't contradict what I've said in the slightest. Because my point is that if you have no skills, you'll never create anything in the first place. Go to any modding site and try to put together a team where you're the designer and other people do all the art and coding for you. They'll laugh at you. You need these basic skills not because they're what matters most in game development, but because without them you won't be able to make anything on your own or with a team. Necessary, not sufficient conditions.
And this is why I brought up IceFrog. By your own admission, IceFrog lacks the programming skills. Yet, he got hired while you are sitting here talking to a guy named Mr. Cheese in some message forum.
Of course you need to understand how to operate and manipulate a computer in order to make a computer game. But programming and art are not the product. The product is the user experience the game does.
The person who becomes the designer is not the engineer but the one who knows how to maneuver people's emotions.
Saying 'you have to know programming' about making a game is as pointless as saying 'you have to know grammar' about writing a novel or 'you have to know how to play an instrument' in playing a song.
The values of the engineer are not going to create a successful game. They never do. This is why Miyamoto doesn't build engines and why people want John Carmack to just make engines (since his games tend to be not so good).
Ultimately, the most important skill is the
selling (which you are not mentioning at all). Most people do not know how to sell. This is why they forever work for someone else.
Your job will never be to make the best made game. Your job will always be to make the
best selling game. You'll go further in life knowing the business elements than the programming elements. This is why the Infinity Ward guys get fired and Kotick gets the last laugh (and the cash).
(Keep in mind I am using 'you' as rhetorical. You claim you do not want to make games for a living. Fine. But the process you are engaging would not lead you to success in making and selling a game.)
This is clear all the way back in my original post, where I mentioned not only programming--which you've fixated on to the exclusion of all else--but art, game design and game theory. No, the audience gasps! Did he? Why yes, he did! Let's go to the instant replay...
So start learning C++, start learning 3ds Max and Photoshop or their equivalents, start learning the fundamentals of game design and game theory, and stop daydreaming about that amazing map you're going to make that somehow won't involve any hard work.
You are pushing the engineer's context as the supreme context. It is not. The 'game design' and 'game theory' garbage is the same engineer context.
What might these fundamentals of game design be, you ask? Could they be...the very same rudimentary insights into games and psychology that you have trotted up and down this thread? Why, yes! But so much more than that. So, so much more. Psychology is only one component of marketing, and it's marketing that ultimately determines whether a game succeeds or fails. Nota bene: that's marketing, not advertising. They aren't the same thing.
'Game theory' is not the same as 'user experience'. 'Game theory' is nothing more than some academics or some out of work developer trying to make a living off of talking about gaming. Only tools believe in that stuff.
Why live in theory? Why not live in reality? Make a game right now and put it out.
Now, as this thread is about, you can create a map to test out user experience without needing to know all the programming or to make one's art assets. And sorry to bring up the example again, but DOTA is a good example of little to no programming (except perhaps in some spells) and absolutely no art. Yet, it created a user experience.
The destination is not 'game theory' or 'programming language' or 'art assets'. The destination is the user experience.
How do you get to the user experience? It certainly isn't through the engineering context you keep spouting.
You gave a link to a talk that has nothing to do with what I've been saying, other than the extent to which it falls under the heading of "fundamentals of game design," which I included in the original post and which you have conveniently ignored.
You
know Sid Meir contradicted everything you have been saying, but you are playing a game where you 'have to be right about everything'. Sid Meir did not talk about 'theory'. He did not talk about 'programming language'. He talked about one thing: the user experience and how the user experience forced him to totally throw away his engineering context.
The reason why I mentioned Meir's speech was because it was more of an 'in your face' that the typical assumptions (which you are spouting) are wrong. Rob Pardo says the same thing.
Both Pardo and Meir talk about where they went wrong. They did not say, "We should have read more 'game theory' books." They know they did something wrong because the user experience was not good. Everything that they are saying is revolving around 'user experience'. Not programming language. Not art assets. And not even 'psychology' in the way you mean it.
Oh dear. No, you really aren't. As in not even a little bit. As in not at all. Even with skills and funding, no. For every project that succeeds in this way there are thousands that fail. Just because one guy was in the right place at the right time and this worked for him doesn't mean it will work for you or me. We are not that guy.
You haven't caught on how to think like a businessman. Yes, you will fail. And that is good. The rub is that you only have to succeed
once.
Most of the reasons why people fail is because they think like you in that "programming language skills" and their overpriced books on "game theory" will lead them to be making great games on the iPhone or some other platform. They never thought to learn about, say, skills in sales.
What you're better off doing is making games for fun, with no expectation of acclaim or profit. But that isn't the topic of this thread. Blizzard has expertly planted the seed in people's minds that they are going to get rich selling SC2 maps. It's part of SC2's marketing, and this thread is a result of that.
The reason why Blizzard is allowing people to sell their maps is because they don't want custom made games to leave the Blizzard platform. Tower Defense was made in Warcraft 3 and it is gone to other platforms. DOTA is gone. There is no reason to stay on the Blizzard platform since there is no financial incentive. Blizzard is offering a financial incentive.
It isn't about 'marketing'. It is about keeping content made in the Galaxy Editor on Blizzard's platform.
If you make something that sells, you'll have made something. If you don't have the skills, you won't make anything. Ergo, if you make something, you have the skills. Otherwise you couldn't have made it. But if you have the skills, you won't necessarily make something that sells. Necessary and sufficient conditions, remember?
Why stop there?
You have to know how to turn on a computer to make a game, right?
You have to know how to use a keyboard, right?
You have to know how to get electricity in order to power that computer, right?
All these skills you are neglecting are necessary to make a video game. Why don't you mention them?
You know I was dead on right when I said user experience is the key. Now you are trying to change what you said to mean a 'utilitarian argument' meaning if you can't program, there is no game! That is not what you were saying and you know it. You were on your coding pedestal telling the 'underlings' that they need to be like you and know the programming. Programming might help create the user experience, but programming skills are only one tool to this end.
The reason why I am responding to you in the first place is because I despise arrogant condescension and you are dripping with it.
You act like one has to go through the industry to make a game. Haha. No, you actually don't. And it is probably better for someone not to.
You act like purple dachshunds from Titan have taken over Earth after a centuries-long conspiracy culminating in New York City's Gay Pride Parade.
Actually no, I made that up. Which is what you're doing every time you attempt to restate what you think I've said. Stop making things up.
But you were acting like you had to go through the industry to make a game. That is why you said you had to do X or Y in order to get hired. That is acting like you have to go through the industry to make a game. =)
The guy (Sid Meir) knows more about how gaming works than you do.
I know a lot more about psychology than Sid Meier, actually. My two graduate degrees include interdisciplinary work in psychology. So you can see why I'm baffled that you think I want to make video games for a living. Games are a nice diversion, but some of us do lead bigger lives.
A graduate degree in psychology!? No wonder you sound like you are pissed off at life!
Sid Meir does know a hell more about psychology than you do. Your degrees are nonsense. It is not real world type stuff.
At this point I'd say Lady Gaga knows more psychology than you do.
Popularity is not a function of quality. Ask Britney Spears. Even when Tides of Blood was more popular than DotA, it was not because of the quality of the map. It was because of how we released it and because of how we built up the community. That community was so strong, by the way, that despite 6 years without an update we still get more traffic than any map-specific site other than DotA's.
Considering that there is only one Tides of Blood place and a zillion different DOTA places, I don't see why you consider that an achievement.
And once again, I have no idea why you're harping on programming.
Perhaps because you keep harping on it?
I'm not a programmer. I do not study computer science or any other science, unless you count cognitive science.
Computer science and 'studying' doesn't have anything to do with programming. If you program, you are a programmer. Period. Computer science degrees doesn't automatically make one a programmer.
I study topics in literature, philosophy, rhetoric, history, Latin, Greek--all kinds of things. But not programming. Not ever. I just happen to be able to program, too, and I learned to do it because that's how games get made. You can't depend on other people to realize your vision for you.
Judging from our conversation, you are not that good at rhetoric, your history concerning entertainment mediums is bad, I can see why you seem pissed off in life if you studied Latin, and so on.
But I am beginning to notice that you are not really talking to me or talking about any subject at all. You are, essentially, talking about yourself and only about yourself. It is as if the world revolves around Cassiel.
Which was my original advice. Learn to do everything yourself or you will fail. I never said programming or art are the most important things. They're just the necessary things, the things that, if you can't do them, you will not see your project through to completion. They are means to an end, not ends in themselves.
You got owned, and now you are backtracking.
Here is what you said in this very thread:
The myth of the game designer whose only job is to have great ideas is just that: a myth. In reality, if you don't know how to code, your map will fail. If you don't know how to create or manipulate graphical elements like special effects, character models and UI widgets, your map will fail. In general, if you don't know how to do everything that is necessary to see your map through to completion by yourself, your map will fail. And of course, if you proceed as though you're going to create some brilliant premium map and make a million dollars, your map will fail. You're not the creative genius you think you are, and your game idea sucks. So start learning C++, start learning 3ds Max and Photoshop or their equivalents, start learning the fundamentals of game design and game theory, and stop daydreaming about that amazing map you're going to make that somehow won't involve any hard work.
Emphasis is yours.
Again, I bring up DOTA. IceFrog didn't do most of DOTA by himself. IceFrog did not program all the spells, did not make the art assets, and didn't even make the general design of the map! Yet, DOTA succeeded. But your post, with all its 'confidence' and 'authority', declared that unless you know how to do everything, it will fail.
You might want to look up the concept of leverage. Drop your Latin, your Greek, your philosophy, your psychology, and your literature and start picking up some business books. Not cliche marketing nonsense. Business. And you will learn why you were incorrect in your original post.
