Gamasutra-Creative Assembly's 'fairly brutal' approach to achieving high Metacritic scores

[Captain W. Handberg]

I just realised...

CA is Sega's client state.

[captcruch]

I just realised...

CA is Sega's client state.

Just hope that declared war on them in the next round

[Unchained]

That's the thing though.

You can have an arcade like simplified game that is easy to learn or you can have something more... Sophisticated but that has a higher learning curve.

I often find that taking the time to learn the more complex games is the most rewarding experience upon full mastery.

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk 4

[sleepyx732]

Well it would appear they completely failed in that department.

How sad..

[Mr_Cyberpunk]

the two biggest issues I see addressed here is firstly, their cutting 90% completed features... what kind of is that?... its wasted development time and wasted budget when they should be deciding on if the feature is going to work during pre-production.. its as if they're doing game design and pre-production during the lead up to release... WHO THE HELL OPERATES LIKE THAT!? to me it tells me that their designers aren't taking control of the project enough and most of their talent is wasting time of that will either not benefit the game in anyway because it'll be cut or will likely be sold post-release anyway which isn't even reflected in the meta-critic score to begin with.. thus by their system is a waste of time and money.

the other issue having to do with they base the success of a project entirely on PR... again WHO THE HELL EVEN DOES THIS!..

Overall thats a very dodgy way of running a business. Absolutely disgusting. This sort of stuff needs to be solved early in the project, not towards the end. We can blatantly see that's what went wrong with Rome 2. Too much trying to cram essential features in at the end and just having them not make it in as a result.. no amount of post-release patching is going to see those features added because their system is based on meta-critic scores which only reflect the initial release.. CA has no reason to implement them, so instead you're likely to see them just patch what they can and move onto the next game.

Metacritic doesn't matter. Your basing your entire performance on a score given to you for 1 week out of an entire 2 year dev cycle, its better to instead look at the project as a whole and see where it could be fixed in the future. Who ever is managing this clearly needs to go back to management school because they're ignoring problems and just assuming things based on the result they're given. That's really piss poor.

[Humble Warrior]

This isn`t the attitude we were getting in the days of Empire and Shogun2. I wonder what Craig would say now? Kieren, the propaganda minister had me first suspicious because he was so wheeled out on cue every time. Since then they got more subtle using proper members of the CA Dev teams, which would convince prospective buyers that `they couldn`t possibly be lying since they`re just honest working developers`. From the sounds of it, someone had to convince them to be economical with the truth, which they did. It`s just proven everything I suspected was going, though I had hoped SEGA could`ve taken some of the fault.

[Tredlador]

Boo to CA and SEGA for not seeing for how long cats have been waiting for ROME II. I have been waiting since MEDIEVAL II, then SEGA, STEAM and EMPIRE came along. I was like WTH?

Lots of things about ROME I were half-baked, (politics, diplomacy, and then generic uniforms, and quite inaccurate and arcadey, too) that I assumed that CA had their finger on the pulse about this particular period and its popularity, (the countless mods alone testifying to that), that CA would keep developing these aspects of the game.

When Empire came out, I was crossing my fingers and hoping: maybe they just haven't developed their thing well enough to do ROME II justice (for now), and they are exploring periods (that are interesting but aren't really TW periods) so that they don't wreck their bread and butter titles, Shogun, Medieval and Rome.

I like the chop-chop of the TW series. Shooty pew-pew, I go elsewhere. Empire had some nice ideas and art, but... no cigar. Medieval introducing cannon was quite fun really, and using the very first type of cannon you could get in M TW (a cylinder strapped to a bench) and taking it to Scotland to blast the first orange hedge that came out of the bailey, made me chuckle. But TW is the face-off of opponents in a pitched melee battle. That's what the TW title is for me, and few reviewers do not slink their living to tell me about a game I already know, which to a new fan, would speak for itself.

I never pay any attention to game reviews. I really do not care what someone thinks who plays an enormous amount of games. Generally speaking, they're "all over the shop" and as an occupational hazard, I don't believe they would show a game the dedication to have an informed opinion. Just a paid job to them. Not worth much at all to me.

So to discover that CA makes these games on metawhateverscores, really irks me cos they have had a very loyal fan base, which if they listened to that fan base they would drag in more and more fans because they "had" a winner, which had a major habit of getting new players right? Not every TW nutter bought the original Shogun in 2000, nor went gah-gah when M TW, and then R TW were released - the games themselves drew in people. And the Rome expansions were all a delightful, edifying surprise.

Since Empire it has been sort of interesting but kind of frustrating that they have had no consistency nor the foresight to understand that if a political system for a republican senate, for instance, isn't "90 percent" (whatever they mean by that) but is at least 50% better than the last senate mechanic, we don't care! If it's a step in the right direction, we'll BUY IT! Like including two consuls, (as is accurate), not only one - then we'll keep giving them money to develop what we love most about this series. So that we'll still be happy with a release, not for what it doesn't get right, but for what it improves each time, not stripping the game, but including the features that "made the series" until they make a game that will always be remembered, and not a pretty yet vacant "thing" that no-one will forget.

Rome II is just murky rubbish - vague, uninteresting and unfinished, for all the chopping, and this meta-crap'd seem to've killed the game. I feel like I've wasted my money on TW hoping they were developing a popular series, and thinking they understood their tradition, and that they knew they stood apart from the irrelevancy of review, (in my opinion).

TW is a misunderstanding. Developers want to do this and the fans that supported them most, want something else, and had reason to expect "something else".

[bigfootedfred]

I think theres more to it than just the cutting. thats what really worries me.
i posted this over at the .com, but as its relevant to what you are saying, and im not in the mood to just reword what i just said.

i can't help but think, this was not just about 'cutting' and chopping up the game a couple of months before release, a month or so before preview builds. there is something else to.

Someone chose this IPAD, android like interface thing. were the art staff fired? we cannnot know..
Something has happened here and i don't like it.
The more i look at rome II, the more i feel like someone has mortally wounded a dear friend, in some stupid quest to appeal to a larger crowd. (when the core of total war HAS EVERYTHING YOU NEED)

Take Mark strong, great addition right?
pretty cool leading him through the prologue if your a new player.
I did the whole thing (when i could get past crashing at capua), as, i always do anyway...

But why have him pop up as a SEGA paperclip that you cannot ever make go away...

Its for new players. so they don't accidently 'lose' their advisor.
Whoever decided that, had about as much thought for TW vets, as the real pope.

[Durnaug]

Reading that was a nightmare. So the game wasn't released too early; rather it was hacked to pieces due to bean counting. Jeebus. Now I understand the haggard and harried look of the battle AI developer in those interviews.

Anyway, Tom Heaton certainly didn't meet his metacritic target.

[absinthia]

the only honest reviewer is your self, that is why demos are a must.
if there is no demo, then there surely is something rotten.

[jrhindo]

the only honest reviewer is your self, that is why demos are a must.
if there is no demo, then there surely is something rotten.

And to further, this kind of development policies are also among the reasons behind PC gaming piracy. By doing all of this, the only thing they do is bite themselves in the knees.

[gunnergoz]

Nothing like surrendering control of the direction of your production and quality process to a third party (Metacritic) and trusting it to accurately convey what your client base actually wants and thinks.

[Ataegina]

the only honest reviewer is your self, that is why demos are a must.
if there is no demo, then there surely is something rotten.

true


Metacritic is a Tumor, it must be taken down for the sake of the whole videogame industry!!!! and this behaviour is not only SEGA/CA but its like a disease that infected everyone on gaming developing...... except CDprojeckt (i love them )!!!

[DropkickCleary]

None of this surprises me. This is how major publishers in the industry work.

I am a credited designer on 4 iterations of a major American franchise published by one of the largest publicly traded gaming companies on the planet. What the OP says here is pretty much par for the course. Allow me to explain why.

In any company owned by a single individual or private group... we'll use Bioware of the late '90s, early 2000s as an example... you have ownership that is passionate about the product. They're playing the games themselves, they have a vision for their company and push their teams to produce great quality.

In a large publicly traded company such as Sega, EA, or Activision, your ownership is especially a gaggle of nameless, faceless investors. They might be fine people; that old man down the street you used to rake leaves for, or the guy who processes your deposits, or the cop who got your cat out of the tree. The point is, they're not necessarily gamers, and even if they are, on an individual level, none of them have the pull to give a company creative direction.

So the leadership in a company like this isn't a gamer, it's someone with an MBA. It's someone who knows about business. The last CEO of EA to be let go had been the CEO of a tooth care product manufacturer before getting into the gaming industry. They know numbers... NOT games. So they turn to where they think they can be best informed.

So, yes, metacritic analysis is common in the industry, and is absolutely a driving force behind design decisions. Most of these decisions aren't made at the developer level, but at the management level... hell, even above the management level.

A typical game team is made up of boots-on-the-ground developers; artists, designers, q/a testers, engineers. They're organised into teams commonly called pods or scrums, which are lead by a development director, who are collectively lead by a senior development director. There is usually a creative director overseeing design direction, and art director, a technical director, etc. Plus there are project managers and producers who are responsible for budget allocation, licensing, etc.. Normally all of these people are knee deep in gaming and indeed have the best interest of the game in mind.

It's above this level... studio directors and publishing suits... where the problems come in. First off, this is the lowest level of management, so you have a lot of hot-head right off the assembly line know-it-all MBA grads who think they know everything. You also have marketing, who have entirely too much say in design direction in the industry, and you have the senior numbers people. There is a correlation between metacritic score and revenue, so naturally, that's one of the main things they look at. It's also why you have an increasingly incestuous relationship between game developers and gaming media (see the critical reviews of Dragon Age 2 for an example of this).

The fact is, the REAL decision makers in gaming are people who know nothing about gaming... all they know is how to look at numbers. They see games as nothing more than the sum of their marketable features. Now, Sega isn't the worst about this, but they're not immune from it. It's a really sad aspect of the state of the industry (for the record, it's exactly why the film industry is nothing but remake and licensed film now days... again, risk averse people who don't understand their medium).

Now, to be completely clear; I'm not anti-corporate. I'm a self-professed conservative and very much pro-business... but large corporate entities have no place in CREATIVE industries. They simply aren't equipped to deliver art.

[DropkickCleary]

:/ if there's an edit button, it's not showing up...

4th paragraph, 1st sentence; "essentially" not "especially".

[Bob Doad]

Dropkick you have to have a center amount of posts before you can edit

I cannot speak to the performance issues because I did not buy the game I admit I was waiting for metacritic user reviews. Ultimately, I have decided to get it at a later date when it is inevitably on sale.

[Mono Ribeiro]

:/ if there's an edit button, it's not showing up...

4th paragraph, 1st sentence; "essentially" not "especially".

It is my understanding that you need a min of 30 posts to edit one of your own.

I also agree with your points I am not in the industry myself but several family members of mine are, and one was working for Team Bondi on LA Noire up until the collapse. I have heard many similar stories from them It is a shame but it is also inevitable as the industry grows, and more money is made, the suits who only care about profit margins with no or little interest in the industry itself will take over leadership. I really doubt the next total war game will be any different. Shogun 2 being the sequel to the beginning of the series was obviously something that was cared for and loved.

It a shame but what else can we do but not preorder the next Total War? Hoping that the one after that will be better when they finally get it through their thick heads marketing over substance just burns future customers. But alas the current suits will probably jump ship before that and a new batch will come in with the same profit driven, marketing and promotion focus, instead of a quality game.

[Celtoi]

None of this surprises me. This is how major publishers in the industry work.I am a credited designer on 4 iterations of a major American franchise published by one of the largest publicly traded gaming companies on the planet. What the OP says here is pretty much par for the course. Allow me to explain why.In any company owned by a single individual or private group... we'll use Bioware of the late '90s, early 2000s as an example... you have ownership that is passionate about the product. They're playing the games themselves, they have a vision for their company and push their teams to produce great quality.In a large publicly traded company such as Sega, EA, or Activision, your ownership is especially a gaggle of nameless, faceless investors. They might be fine people; that old man down the street you used to rake leaves for, or the guy who processes your deposits, or the cop who got your cat out of the tree. The point is, they're not necessarily gamers, and even if they are, on an individual level, none of them have the pull to give a company creative direction.So the leadership in a company like this isn't a gamer, it's someone with an MBA. It's someone who knows about business. The last CEO of EA to be let go had been the CEO of a tooth care product manufacturer before getting into the gaming industry. They know numbers... NOT games. So they turn to where they think they can be best informed.So, yes, metacritic analysis is common in the industry, and is absolutely a driving force behind design decisions. Most of these decisions aren't made at the developer level, but at the management level... hell, even above the management level.A typical game team is made up of boots-on-the-ground developers; artists, designers, q/a testers, engineers. They're organised into teams commonly called pods or scrums, which are lead by a development director, who are collectively lead by a senior development director. There is usually a creative director overseeing design direction, and art director, a technical director, etc. Plus there are project managers and producers who are responsible for budget allocation, licensing, etc.. Normally all of these people are knee deep in gaming and indeed have the best interest of the game in mind.It's above this level... studio directors and publishing suits... where the problems come in. First off, this is the lowest level of management, so you have a lot of hot-head right off the assembly line know-it-all MBA grads who think they know everything. You also have marketing, who have entirely too much say in design direction in the industry, and you have the senior numbers people. There is a correlation between metacritic score and revenue, so naturally, that's one of the main things they look at. It's also why you have an increasingly incestuous relationship between game developers and gaming media (see the critical reviews of Dragon Age 2 for an example of this). The fact is, the REAL decision makers in gaming are people who know nothing about gaming... all they know is how to look at numbers. They see games as nothing more than the sum of their marketable features. Now, Sega isn't the worst about this, but they're not immune from it. It's a really sad aspect of the state of the industry (for the record, it's exactly why the film industry is nothing but remake and licensed film now days... again, risk averse people who don't understand their medium).Now, to be completely clear; I'm not anti-corporate. I'm a self-professed conservative and very much pro-business... but large corporate entities have no place in CREATIVE industries. They simply aren't equipped to deliver art.

Great explaining: have some rep. !

[bigfootedfred]

None of this surprises me. This is how major publishers in the industry work.

I am a credited designer on 4 iterations of a major American franchise published by one of the largest publicly traded gaming companies on the planet. What the OP says here is pretty much par for the course. Allow me to explain why.

In any company owned by a single individual or private group... we'll use Bioware of the late '90s, early 2000s as an example... you have ownership that is passionate about the product. They're playing the games themselves, they have a vision for their company and push their teams to produce great quality.

In a large publicly traded company such as Sega, EA, or Activision, your ownership is especially a gaggle of nameless, faceless investors. They might be fine people; that old man down the street you used to rake leaves for, or the guy who processes your deposits, or the cop who got your cat out of the tree. The point is, they're not necessarily gamers, and even if they are, on an individual level, none of them have the pull to give a company creative direction.

So the leadership in a company like this isn't a gamer, it's someone with an MBA. It's someone who knows about business. The last CEO of EA to be let go had been the CEO of a tooth care product manufacturer before getting into the gaming industry. They know numbers... NOT games. So they turn to where they think they can be best informed.

So, yes, metacritic analysis is common in the industry, and is absolutely a driving force behind design decisions. Most of these decisions aren't made at the developer level, but at the management level... hell, even above the management level.

A typical game team is made up of boots-on-the-ground developers; artists, designers, q/a testers, engineers. They're organised into teams commonly called pods or scrums, which are lead by a development director, who are collectively lead by a senior development director. There is usually a creative director overseeing design direction, and art director, a technical director, etc. Plus there are project managers and producers who are responsible for budget allocation, licensing, etc.. Normally all of these people are knee deep in gaming and indeed have the best interest of the game in mind.

It's above this level... studio directors and publishing suits... where the problems come in. First off, this is the lowest level of management, so you have a lot of hot-head right off the assembly line know-it-all MBA grads who think they know everything. You also have marketing, who have entirely too much say in design direction in the industry, and you have the senior numbers people. There is a correlation between metacritic score and revenue, so naturally, that's one of the main things they look at. It's also why you have an increasingly incestuous relationship between game developers and gaming media (see the critical reviews of Dragon Age 2 for an example of this).

The fact is, the REAL decision makers in gaming are people who know nothing about gaming... all they know is how to look at numbers. They see games as nothing more than the sum of their marketable features. Now, Sega isn't the worst about this, but they're not immune from it. It's a really sad aspect of the state of the industry (for the record, it's exactly why the film industry is nothing but remake and licensed film now days... again, risk averse people who don't understand their medium).

Now, to be completely clear; I'm not anti-corporate. I'm a self-professed conservative and very much pro-business... but large corporate entities have no place in CREATIVE industries. They simply aren't equipped to deliver art.

thank you for this post. Very clear. Does not take away from that, hurt feeling many have that this was the 'update to RTW', rtw was not my fav, CA did a good rendition of mine in mtw2.
For many RTW was their favorite, they all deserved much better. We all did. We havent all been sitting around this forum for no reason, some for 10,11+ years, some from before when it was i cant even remember now.
Its just a poor effort and its down to heaton quite frankly. Imagine working in that place, imagine getting the final marker, getting your work cut the game hacked back to an earlier build.
Then your left with the mess and release the thing. Great job heaton, well done mate. Managed to piss away the budget and got what? not even your 90 metacritic?
Get lost.

Sorry turned into a rant there, quoted you because it was a very interesting post. Thanks.

[m_1512]

None of this surprises me. This is how major publishers in the industry work.

I am a credited designer on 4 iterations of a major American franchise published by one of the largest publicly traded gaming companies on the planet. What the OP says here is pretty much par for the course. Allow me to explain why.

In any company owned by a single individual or private group... we'll use Bioware of the late '90s, early 2000s as an example... you have ownership that is passionate about the product. They're playing the games themselves, they have a vision for their company and push their teams to produce great quality.

In a large publicly traded company such as Sega, EA, or Activision, your ownership is especially a gaggle of nameless, faceless investors. They might be fine people; that old man down the street you used to rake leaves for, or the guy who processes your deposits, or the cop who got your cat out of the tree. The point is, they're not necessarily gamers, and even if they are, on an individual level, none of them have the pull to give a company creative direction.

So the leadership in a company like this isn't a gamer, it's someone with an MBA. It's someone who knows about business. The last CEO of EA to be let go had been the CEO of a tooth care product manufacturer before getting into the gaming industry. They know numbers... NOT games. So they turn to where they think they can be best informed.

So, yes, metacritic analysis is common in the industry, and is absolutely a driving force behind design decisions. Most of these decisions aren't made at the developer level, but at the management level... hell, even above the management level.

A typical game team is made up of boots-on-the-ground developers; artists, designers, q/a testers, engineers. They're organised into teams commonly called pods or scrums, which are lead by a development director, who are collectively lead by a senior development director. There is usually a creative director overseeing design direction, and art director, a technical director, etc. Plus there are project managers and producers who are responsible for budget allocation, licensing, etc.. Normally all of these people are knee deep in gaming and indeed have the best interest of the game in mind.

It's above this level... studio directors and publishing suits... where the problems come in. First off, this is the lowest level of management, so you have a lot of hot-head right off the assembly line know-it-all MBA grads who think they know everything. You also have marketing, who have entirely too much say in design direction in the industry, and you have the senior numbers people. There is a correlation between metacritic score and revenue, so naturally, that's one of the main things they look at. It's also why you have an increasingly incestuous relationship between game developers and gaming media (see the critical reviews of Dragon Age 2 for an example of this).

The fact is, the REAL decision makers in gaming are people who know nothing about gaming... all they know is how to look at numbers. They see games as nothing more than the sum of their marketable features. Now, Sega isn't the worst about this, but they're not immune from it. It's a really sad aspect of the state of the industry (for the record, it's exactly why the film industry is nothing but remake and licensed film now days... again, risk averse people who don't understand their medium).

Now, to be completely clear; I'm not anti-corporate. I'm a self-professed conservative and very much pro-business... but large corporate entities have no place in CREATIVE industries. They simply aren't equipped to deliver art.

Pretty much this. I can also add an example to prove your point.

I have a Bachelors degree in Business Management. But I studied in a uni which encouraged learning process, and not producing grads en masse. When there was a competition of product launch, we (under grads) were able to beat 10 teams from MBA colleges (post grads) for the first place. Why? Simple, we simply used a product concept we knew about hands on. Which shows that a person who spent a lot of time designing toothbrushes is pretty much likely to suck big time if asked to design cars.

End point, having MBA people is good as it brings efficiency in business. But there needs to be MBA people who not only play games but also know how games go. And that is something hard to find.