Tim Static
New member
Wait you just signed up here, to post this, and your bringing maturity into question? wow.
TMK WB Rant
- Thread starter AndyLecter
- Start date
Wait you just signed up here, to post this, and your bringing maturity into question? wow.
Kelsper
New member
I've been a lurker on here for a pretty long time - why can't I sign up today and post my opinion on this today? Consider it my introduction. I may not post much, but no need to have a problem with what I said.
As far as him "attacking" me, again I said I was told that, as I haven't had time to watch the video today as I've got other things on my plate.
I'm sure he's contacted WB, I never questioned that. But it's HOW you do it not WHAT you do. Going to the head of Marketing over the head of your contacts with angry emails will only anger everyone involved. I have contacted WB a few times and gotten them to change how fansites get information on MK9, It's been great and I did it all without embarrassing all involved on the internet with a 40 minute rant. Now we get great communication from the community team about what is coming, when to expect it and what-not. I can't argue with that as we've NEVER HAD THAT BEFORE. We didn't have a Community Team before either, who is on our side and fights for stuff that we want and ask for. It's not their call they have to go to their bosses and colleagues to get extra stuff for us.
Midway didn't do that for us, and Midway also treated some fansites more fairer than others. We at TRMK can say we only once got a copy of a game to review from Midway, Midway Arcade Treasures for PSP. It wasn't in advance either, but I know other sites got free games from Midway. This was something we fought for privately back then, for equal treatment of fansites. It's something I still fight for today and think we've got worked out fairly well now.
I am happy with what we (we = everyone: me, Luke, Kotaku, Game Informer, etc) has gotten on the game. Many people just immediately assume that WB can just go out and start handing out tons of media and information on the game once it was announced. But they CAN NOT. There are two major things at play here that enter into the problem.
One of which is quality control, while the developers may have many of the characters of the game further along in development they aren't considered "finalized" everything from art department, to animation and then the developers have to work together to reach a final product that everyone including the producers agree on before they are "revealed" to us. So this is a long process, they have a set schedule that they have been working on to reveal these things to the public. Let them do their work and be happy that they unveiled a game almost a YEAR before it was set to be released. Not to mention they want certain video and screenshots hand-picked to be of a certain quality before release. Some of the developers have to take time away from their other jobs to record and capture proper footage just for public consumption. This sounds easy but it's not, that's why you normally see only certain people doing demos because it's a thing they want to look good and proper to ensure that the fans don't get all up in arms about it.
The other big block to releasing stuff is the ESRB. They have to approve every and all gameplay screenshots and videos that come out of the studio that would see the public eye. This is a lengthy process, and accounts for why the MKast has been taking so long to come out. But it's necessary. Sure the current episode was recorded a month ago now, but the ESRB always has Rigo and the Community team do edits of the footage to fit their purposes. It's a long process, and you have to combine that with with the process above to get media ready. It takes time, and because of this very little official media gets handed out.
Being someone who takes screenshots of games often for coverage, I understand their pain and work that's involved in creating this stuff. Anything we get is great. I don't demand to have more footage, and sometimes our friends have gone out of their way to get us game footage from events. It looks like crap, but we do what we can with what we got. Over time Warner will have more footage and screens for us, so I await those days.
Right now we've been getting about one video every 1-2 weeks pretty consistently. I don't see how that is terrible at all, it's quite awesome actually.
We have gotten plenty as I said above, let me list a few here for you from October and November of 2010. I left off the MKasts on purpose as well as these videos below were sent to us directly, but the MKasts coming soon are sent to fansites as well.
Gameplay Video
http://www.trmk.org/news/13507/fatality_friday_new_subzero_gameplay_video.html
(Two Videos, ONE exclusive to fansites)
http://www.trmk.org/news/13451/fatality_friday_the_living_forest_and_subzero_bio_videos.html
(Gameplay video, 5 screenshots)
http://www.trmk.org/news/13387/mortal_monday_video_scorpion_gameplay_demonstration.html
Bio Video
http://www.trmk.org/news/13292/mortal_monday_scorpion_bio_video.html
First EnviroBio video
http://www.trmk.org/news/13225/mortal_monday_video_environment_bio_1_the_pit.html
The buttons were a mistake, something that Luke even mentioned they were going to fix. From what I heard is for whatever reason Chicago wasn't given the ability to do international shipments, so WB HQ in California did and forgot the buttons. So that has been fixed and new stuff was coming to them, as Luke even said. Lets just hope for his sake the packages went out before he posted this rant.
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Kelsper
New member
Watch the video, he explains it better then I do; he claims to have sent them politely to WB like you explained, but still got no reply. I don't know how valid that statement is. I agree with gamemk's and Kamal's above comments.
I'll admit that I don't really have an idea on how the whole game development/marketing process works, but there has been so many delays on so many timers and Mkast editing (which you went over, fair enough; but does editing really take THAT long? I've edited some professional videos before myself) and barely any suspense-building that really should have been shown in under 5 months to release. You think the rate we've been getting stuff is awesome, but I disagree. Whatever, doesn't hurt me much, it's maybe just that I check too regularly for information, haha. (daily)
And it's not as bad as another game I've been waiting for, Diablo III, where at some points we never got anything for 2-3 months. Thankfully, not that bad.
I understand wanting quality control on any screenshots or renders you may release, but you know, in my opinion at least, the game looks really awesome already, and have you seen those super hd 1080 pixels screenshots we got a while back? I'd certainly be happy with some more of them!
I think fansites are getting treated miserably here, you don't have to agree with me, but I do hope things approve.
My main point was to stop the flaming and name-calling on Luke.
Peace.
EDIT: I understand that they can make mistakes, but really should a huge company like WB not have some sort of quality check? To be frank, from these stories I've had better support from amateur game companies/businesses in general.
I'll admit that I don't really have an idea on how the whole game development/marketing process works, but there has been so many delays on so many timers and Mkast editing (which you went over, fair enough; but does editing really take THAT long? I've edited some professional videos before myself) and barely any suspense-building that really should have been shown in under 5 months to release. You think the rate we've been getting stuff is awesome, but I disagree. Whatever, doesn't hurt me much, it's maybe just that I check too regularly for information, haha. (daily)
And it's not as bad as another game I've been waiting for, Diablo III, where at some points we never got anything for 2-3 months. Thankfully, not that bad.
I understand wanting quality control on any screenshots or renders you may release, but you know, in my opinion at least, the game looks really awesome already, and have you seen those super hd 1080 pixels screenshots we got a while back? I'd certainly be happy with some more of them!
I think fansites are getting treated miserably here, you don't have to agree with me, but I do hope things approve.
My main point was to stop the flaming and name-calling on Luke.
Peace.
EDIT: I understand that they can make mistakes, but really should a huge company like WB not have some sort of quality check? To be frank, from these stories I've had better support from amateur game companies/businesses in general.
I will tell you this, NRS and the MK Team LOVE their fans and the ones who run the fansites. Trust me on this. They are VERY grateful of what we do, as I've been doing it longer than anyone else I can tell you as I have many friends over there and they love all of us, even when we're jerks.
As far as giving us stuff, they have been handing out stuff to all the fansites evenly. From shirts, to buttons, to screenshots to videos. We're all getting it, some international screw-ups I mentioned above happened but we're all human last I checked. I don't expect them to give us copies of the game early, it's got around 5 months if not more until release (WE DON'T KNOW THE RELEASE DATE PEOPLE).
The only thing we were not given that they produced for the games is the rare MK Fatality T-Shirts. They barely have enough for all 100+ employees of NetherRealm Studios so it's clear why we didn't get any. They've sent us everything else though. But I wouldn't be surprised to see more random stuff isn't given to us closer to release date as well.
As far as interviews, I haven't personally asked for any interviews as that's something we usually ask for around the end of the development cycle. But I'm sure once they have time they'd be glad to give us all exclusive interviews and other stuff. It's just not the right time.
There are over 100+ people working on Mortal Kombat 9. All doing lots of various jobs. The undertaking is massive. It's not just Ed Boon behind a keyboard programming away with a team of 4 artists supportng him anymore. It's a large operation that has many things going on at the same time.
WB Corporate handles all the PR and most of the marketing, some NRS people do that as well like Rigo. It's a massive process with many gears turning. If they released MKasts with just audio or video only of the developers talking, then people would complain. Marketing had the idea to do full blown VIDEO + GAMEPLAY MKasts.
This takes not only multiple people at NRS to record the interviews, then when free do the gameplay and then Rigo has to edit them together to make it work. After that he likely has to get it cleared by both WB Marketing, WB Legal and then the ESRB. From what Rigo has said on Twitter the ESRB constantly asks for more cuts of the footage to remove more violence, etc. Basically to tone it down a bit, this is exhaustive back and forth. I've heard the lastest MKast has been going back and forth with the ESRB "all week"
As I said the ESRB has to approve everything that comes out of the game studios, it's to protect kids and a necessary evil. It's better than having violent games banned all together like the Governor of California Mr. Terminator wants to do.
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Kamal
Active member
People really don't understand how much approval is needed to get stuff out the door. I'm not going to say what titles, but I have worked on a few T rated titles and also E rated titles for Disney before they started their own game division in the past and let me tell you everything must be approved. Especially with MK. Mortal Kombat has no rating right now. We all know it will end up "M" but for now it has no rating. Because of this it is the ESRB's duty to make sure the videos are not too violent because the product is not yet rated. This is also why you rarely see an uber amount of violence in commercials for games like God of War. The game may be rated "M" for Mature but the trailers and commercials must be approved to be viewable by all.
PS - As a side note, this is why you will always see me against the argument for having game Demos. Sure they can help in some cases, but in my professional experience, most game demos do not have a big enough effect to garner the amount of time and effort it takes away from the real game development to get one into the hands of the masses.
PS - As a side note, this is why you will always see me against the argument for having game Demos. Sure they can help in some cases, but in my professional experience, most game demos do not have a big enough effect to garner the amount of time and effort it takes away from the real game development to get one into the hands of the masses.
Thanks I have been trying to do nothing but educate people here, nothing more.
But back to what Kelsper said earlier. If you or anyone else thinks you can produce video and content better, I urge you to seriously apply for a job. There are no Chicago positions open, but many more across the company are now available if you are interested in making a difference.
http://wbgamesjobs.com/
Kelsper
New member
Honestly, I wasn't trying to start an argument or anything; sometimes I just see things as being not up to scratch and don't appreciate the sheer amount of effort that goes into them, just the sort of person I am. You've all probably done it, with all of our technology that we take for granted. I enjoyed reading your posts regardless as they more or less gave me more faith in the game's marketing process, heh. I'm just a little disgruntled, and I'm sure Luke feels the same way that the series that we love isn't going completely great for us at the moment.
I'm grateful for what WB/NRS has giving us so far, sure. And well you know, I know I could never produce videos and content better than any of the professional guys. I'm awaiting this weeks Mkast with anticipation.
Neither was I, I was simply trying to educate how the process works so people have a better understanding of it. That's the ONLY reason I spoke up about Luke's videos. I've tried to talk to him personally and found that didn't work when he'd instead start to insult me.
So this time I chose to correct the educate the readers on my website forums, so I didn't get an angry mob of people. I figured it was inevitable he'd read it, I just didn't expect him to call me spineless in another video. Whatever, his opinions are his.
Lets hope the ESRB approves the latest edits so Rigo can toss it up! If not then it may be next week's MKast.
Kelsper
New member
Neither was I, I was simply trying to educate how the process works so people have a better understanding of it. That's the ONLY reason I spoke up about Luke's videos. I've tried to talk to him personally and found that didn't work when he'd instead start to insult me.
So this time I chose to correct the educate the readers on my website forums, so I didn't get an angry mob of people. I figured it was inevitable he'd read it, I just didn't expect him to call me spineless in another video. Whatever, his opinions are his.
Lets hope the ESRB approves the latest edits so Rigo can toss it up! If not then it may be next week's MKast.
Ah, fair enough. I respect both sides of this argument as long as they are civil.
Oh yeah, I did hear that they have trouble with the ESRB at the moment, if it isn't up today it should be up around next week apparently? That doesn't bother me too much actually, still okay with that, though a little disappointed that the ESRB couldn't have come to a decision sooner. Some people on different forums will take it harder then me.
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Ricochetmatt
New member
Insult? Now that doesn't sound like Luke. He's a fair man.
jarvis653
New member
LOL. I read before that you were 'conversing' with him, maybe you should post a link to Pat's posts on his video(s). Dispel that little angry mob of followers. The way I see it, the more people that can get an insight into how the system works, the better. I doubt he'll appreciate it though, being the fair man that he is.
Ricochetmatt
New member
Hah... To be honest, I'm getting tired of responding to them. They're no fun anymore. And as soon as I respond, they blow up my phone with silly messages about how I'm a loser and a "retard" and all the other second grade insults they can conjure up.
I was sitting in Applebees last night and every five minutes my phone would go off with another youtube response. lol It was distracting with me trying to hit on the waiter and all.
If Pat or someone else wants to link them to his comments... By all means, go for it. But I'm gonna sit this out for a while. lol
LOL how'd that go for ya?
Ricochetmatt
New member
Well. He smiled at me. And his eyes got glossy and he grew red in the face. Oh and as I walked out he winked. But that's about it. The fact that I was with a bunch of people probably didn't help since they were snickering and such. Bwahaha... Good times.
To be honest, he's hardly worth a discussion. He's a child. Or at least he acts like one. My friend wants me to do a parody video of this guy... But nah. It'll just get his panties in a twist which will give him and his army of goats something to talk about. And the last thing I want is to cater to some poor sap's pathetic life.
I just watched the video, Luke didn't really attack me but he thought I was attacking him.
In the video he says I claim he never sent emails to WB. That isn't true, I know he did as the 40 minute first video says he did. I was well aware of his emailing when I wrote that. I never claimed he didn't either, I simply stated what *I* me, Patrick McCarron does.
I never worked at Midway Games, not even been paid by them either. I also despite what he says don't intend to change that in the near future, while I really think NetherRealm Studios is awesome place to work. I see no career advancement for me there currently. I am an senior level iPhone app development and there is no need for someone like me at NetherRealm at the moment. In the future? Who knows, but right now I'm not looking at an agenda to work there. By saying I'm "Not a real fan" and that I have my own "agenda" I guess 16 years of MK coverage is not enough to be a real fan I guess. Five years is double the "one or two" years he claims to have under me.
He also makes assumptions that I haven't met face to face with Warner PR. Not quite true actually, but anyways.
I took WB's site because as you can see in this thread, I UNDERSTAND their situation and how the machine works. I've been in and out of the gaming media for 16 years, it's a messy place and I was just trying to share some knowledge.
He also claims no other fansites agrees with me and everyone is on his side wanting anarchy? That is actually news to me.
I also loved how I have been preaching equality, and he rubbed into my face how he has things better than we've had it. Not very nice from my perspective. Not at all.
In the video he says I claim he never sent emails to WB. That isn't true, I know he did as the 40 minute first video says he did. I was well aware of his emailing when I wrote that. I never claimed he didn't either, I simply stated what *I* me, Patrick McCarron does.
I never worked at Midway Games, not even been paid by them either. I also despite what he says don't intend to change that in the near future, while I really think NetherRealm Studios is awesome place to work. I see no career advancement for me there currently. I am an senior level iPhone app development and there is no need for someone like me at NetherRealm at the moment. In the future? Who knows, but right now I'm not looking at an agenda to work there. By saying I'm "Not a real fan" and that I have my own "agenda" I guess 16 years of MK coverage is not enough to be a real fan I guess. Five years is double the "one or two" years he claims to have under me.
He also makes assumptions that I haven't met face to face with Warner PR. Not quite true actually, but anyways.
I took WB's site because as you can see in this thread, I UNDERSTAND their situation and how the machine works. I've been in and out of the gaming media for 16 years, it's a messy place and I was just trying to share some knowledge.
He also claims no other fansites agrees with me and everyone is on his side wanting anarchy? That is actually news to me.
I also loved how I have been preaching equality, and he rubbed into my face how he has things better than we've had it. Not very nice from my perspective. Not at all.