Genesis Knight said:
At the same time, this isn't the 16-bit days anymore and these sort of AAA games require so many people to get off the ground that it's probably impossible to get an entire staff that is talented AND interested in MP games.
Yeah this. Plus doing the work these guys do takes up a lot of time and effort. I don't know about guys in the graphics/animations area, but many programmers come home and keep coding since its what they love. Add a family into the mix and they probably don't even have time after work. This isn't exactly true though because
Evil Otto has a huge family, but probably plays the most Halo out of anyone at Bungie. Nearly 1500 games. He's not a "pro" but he's played enough to know what's up.
After working on a game every day for 2-3 years probably makes it hard to want to play it. Reach is only about a year old for us, but for these guys its going on 4-5. So really, all the more props to Candland.
Its probably unrealistic for game devs to play their games as much as we do, but I can't help but wonder what Halo could be like if they could.
HiredN00bs said:
It's almost like they spend all their time working hard and spending time with their families, the miscreants!
I kind of addressed this above. I'm not really accusing them of anything, just wondering out loud.
Shake Appeal said:
Bungie are a large company with a lot of different employees. I think it is safe to say that people who make high-level design decisions about how the game actually plays actually do, uh, play the game.
What's up Shake? You used to post much more and I liked your input. Your Reach Beta write up was really useful for me too.
Read my paragraph above in this post. I know they play it, but gauging by the stream, they don't play it a lot. I know everyone plays at different skill levels too, itt just makes me wonder is all I guess. I'm not expecting them to be awesome at it (I'm not), but know when to crouch, throw grenade, hide, run, what weapon to use should be something they'd know don't you think?
Also, yes I'm sure the dudes balancing things actually do play the game quite a fair share, and we know they do internal playtesting. I also took into consideration that these guys not playing great are not those same ones making the high level decisions.
Anyway, just some thoughts is all.