No publisher is "good". All they always do is pump money to get more money. It kills creativity and stifles innovation. Devs have no choice because games today don't cost 20K like they were 20 years ago. Thank God for Kickstarters.

u should know that more than half of the cost of the games are actually NOT the cost from developing the game itself. for example quite a large portion goes to the advertising. Marketing the game is important, but u see a lot of AAA titles are putting excessive money to advertisers that doesnt seems to help/directly help them.

None of the major publishers are good, including Paradox because they always have interesting ideas, but their games are incredibly buggy at launch.

I prefer developers to be independent if possible as i believe it is possible to make an AAA game without a major publisher backing you financially with luck and expertise. For instance, Valve and CD Projekt Red are probably the best example. Every developers have their own vision on a game they truly wants to build, however, publishers tend to get in a way of the game design because they want to cater for the casual audience too. Publishers tend to prefer to dumb down the game mechanics, wants every content to be able to be experienced by a casual player and ignores what the hardcore players wants. I believe you do not run a business where you throw your loyal customers away for new customers. This is what most major publishers are doing these days which is disgusting.

Grim Dawn is the vision that Iron Lore/Crate wanted to develop in Titan Quest, but THQ do not let them design it the way they want, like THQ doesnt want to have hidden monsters that yield good drops, hidden bosses and even a darker and grim setting in Titan Quest. Iron Lore didnt really have the control over the IP as THQ put a leash on them.Then, once they finished Titan Quest, Iron Lore did not get enough funding from THQ to develop future games because of the whole royalty crap that give them peanuts. The worst thing is, THQ will not fund anymore ARPG because they think ARPG is a dead genre that is confined to PC.

Seriously, look where is ARPG now. 6.5 million sales on the first week with Diablo 3 with majority of the retailers has no stock for Diablo 3. Then, Torchlight 1 actually sold better on Xbox LIVE if compared to PC on day by day basis since the product launch on respective platform. ARPG is not a dead genre, just because major publishers think so. So does this apply for adventure games, space combat games and so on, these genre are not dead, but publishers are picky over it and have no balls to pick it up. I think if some publisher decides to make a really good AAA space game, it will be a resurgence of space games like how Diablo 3 revived ARPG.

The best example of independent development now is, Project CARS made by Slight Mad Studio who made Shift series and GTR2. These guys didnt get a publisher to back them. Instead, all they did was investing 1.5 million euro of their own money and have a kickstarter sort of campaign where they have collected 1 million euro to date, with very little marketing, other than word of mouth. SMS listens to the fans, to the point they changed their business model from a free to play to a full priced $50 retail game, because the fans do not want to pay for Nurburgring and Spa seperately. At the same time, SMS is also taking feedback on physics, car list, track list and so on. It's a win win situation as far as i am concern, and i do hope Project CARS will be the first AAA independent game that can compete with the stuff that big boys are making. I think Project CARS is aiming to be the Forza or GT5 on PC with a wide selection of iconic cars, good physics, great graphics and lots of tracks.

I have pledged for the game, and at the moment, the pre-alpha is looking great and it plays great. It is a bit like Shift 2, with much more demanding physics while still playable on a 360 pad. It quite unoptimised now, and unfinished too, but seeing the game progress every month does feels awesome.



Bring on the Grim Dawn alpha. I am looking forward to see the faction system in play.

Good long reply. Agree. I didnt list the good ones since I couldnt find any, but I also cannot deny there is any good ones since i do not know the entire game industry publisher, but I do know those 2 are the biggest shit we got in the game industry.

Games these days for $60 is more like half of them goes to Marketing + advertiser's pocket, it is only a small portion that goes to the developer. I for one simply to not believe in spending $60 for a single game these days anymore. Especially knowing half of my money arent going to the people who directly create the game itself but the marketing leeches.

This post has been edited by Boldnut: Jun 8 2012, 12:13 PM

Haha, thanks. I still cant think of a good publisher. Paradox is probably the closest, as they are great innovators and very open to obscure games like Crusader Kings and also their nice little twist on the Battlefield/ Call of Duty with War of the Roses. I still wont put them as a good publisher as most of their games are either still buggy or it will take expansions to get a fully functional game. I mean if i had to choose, the best so far will be Paradox. Square Enix's Eidos branch, probably second because the their willingness to try reboot "dead" franchises like Deus Ex, Hitman, Lara Croft and also publish Sleeping Dogs. The rest like EA, Activision and Ubisoft, they are probably the worst lot. I think Activision and Ubisoft is losing some hatred to them, as EA is pretty much taking all the flak with ME3's ending and their new NFS which apparently pissed off the whole community. Also, where it is probably just me, where i hate all their recent games so much because they are really awful games with a lot of bad designs.

I dont know whether i can find that pie chart back, where in a $60 game, only $15 goes back to the developer. $10 go to the console maker, while the rest go to publisher and distribution. Which is why independent games are growing insanely these few years as if they put up a DRM free game, the developers will be able to keep all the money and also own the IP they make with full control over it. Steam takes a bit like 15% for independent developers. Thats why i didnt hesitate to support a developer if i see a proven developer like Crate or Slightly Mad Studio trying crowd funding for their upcoming games.

This post has been edited by Cheesenium: Jun 8 2012, 12:56 PM

Ubisoft still have some of the good games they developed, so it a lesser evil than EA/Activision. The biggest draw back in Ubisoft is their shitty DRM policy.(its what keep me from buying also) Well good news with the complains, they finally drop the always online DRM in their latest entry.

Activision didnt really learn what Ubisoft did. They are still putting the always ON DRM on D3, and ontop of that add a RMAH. lol? Look what happen next? And they ruin the whole Diablo franchise by dumbing down D3. So I wouldnt call them a lesser evil than EA. They are finally as bad as EA with D3!!!

I personally have nothing against Steam tho, they are the best content distribution so far. I take my stand on steam over the EA's origin. With the latest news they admitting they are not gonna give -75% discount at all, pretty much keep me from using Origin.

Grim Dawn on the other hand, I would prefer see more demo + may be the game with near 90% completion + beta first b4 play I hit the purchase button. It took Runicgame a lot of youtube demo + beta play to actually convince me to spend money on Torhclight 2. So its going to be the same on Grim dawn.

Thats just me, since after getting scammed by EA on the pre-order BF3, I have changed my purchasing style on any new game. Have to be-careful already.

This post has been edited by Boldnut: Jun 8 2012, 01:25 PM

even if grim dawn is as good as titan quest, it already deserved my money liao.

need to wait and see more stuff first. I sked buying games these days.

After kena EAphobia/ActivisionPhobia.

The Kickstarter video that was on Kickstarter and don't got posted here.

There are some nice gameplay and info in the video not released on demo video.

Eww, looks like they built it on an upgraded version of the Infinity engine or something

This post has been edited by gaeria84: Jul 1 2012, 11:01 PM

I see nothing wrong with it and liked how it looks.

It's based on engine used in Titan Quest and they got 2 people from 38 Studio working with them.

fap in excitement, fap fap fap

Compare this picture in a Korean art gallery



With Titan Quest box art



Instant lol.

this only mean 1 thing: titan quest developer travel from 2006 to 2012 using time machine and copy the design for the snake and put it on their game cover.

release date will be August 2013?

Grim Dawn is on Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/...-rpg-grim-dawn/

This post has been edited by neoengsheng: Nov 4 2012, 11:55 AM

The starting zone- Burwitch prison. Still WIP.



One of the recently unveiled monster named as Thorned Horror.

oh mee gawd, this look soooo freaking sweet!!

Environment 1
Environment 2
Environment 3
Environment 4

Check out some of the completed environment screenshots.

Next update on 20 Jan.