Command and Conquer Junkie

For those of you whom of which had entered Red Alert 3 Beta keys many month’s ago, there’s good news to be had! Community Manager Apoc, has posted on the official forums about the Beta, where it stands, and what you can expect.

Good news all round it seems. It has also been confirmed from this thread on our forums that EA have begun to send out e-mails confirming people’s queue slots in the Beta. So if you have registered yourself, keep your eyes on your e-mail inbox.

To read the rest of Apoc’s announcement, click here.

Project Perfect Mod is starting a communitywide campaign to help make Kane’s Wrath mod SDK a reality. The campaign includes several leading…

A swath of C&C fansites, us included, have begun a public campaign for a Kane’s Wrath Mod SDK. While at least one additional patch for Kane’s Wrath has been confirmed, there are currently no plans to release a Mod SDK for Kane’s Wrath.

Unlike in past Command & Conquer games (prior to Tiberium Wars), an official Mod SDK is absolutely required in order for any actual "modding" of Kane’s Wrath to take place, due to the nature of the game’s engine. Without an SDK, there will be no substantial mods for Kane’s Wrath.

A number of Tiberium Wars mod projects have expressed desire for a Kane’s Wrath Mod SDK, to open up new engine features that Kane’s Wrath has over Tiberium Wars. Our The Forgotten mod is among them.

We ask those of you who enjoy mods to kindly join us in this campaign. Visit this thread on the Official C&C Forums and let your voice be heard.

The following C&C fansites and mods are supporting this campaign:

Long serving community modding Guru Banshee, has started a campaign to call for the release of a MOD SDK for Kane’s Wrath. This isn’t just a small call for a few modding tools. In fact it’s a rather head strong drive to keep support and the shelf life of Kane’s Wrath alive. Here’s what Banshee has to say:

For all the details on this campaign head here to read about the campaign. If you agree strongly with the campaign, then show your support by replying and expressing your own concerns. By doing so, this campaign will hopefully allow modders and even casual gamers to take experience of limitless replayability of the game.

Stop the press! Kane’s Wrath was not developed by EALA, instead it’s development was outsourced to another developer called BreakAway Games. This has actually been known for many months but a lot of people aren’t really aware of this fact. So on the subject of outsourcing, CNC Generals World have posted a new article that takes a close look at this. Was outsourcing the development of Kane’s Wrath the reason for the long delay of the recently released 1.01 patch? The article is well written and researched. Here is a quick sample.

As I’ve said, putting people in roles where they can do the most good is certainly not a bad thing, so long as you get good people to take their old jobs. The results are the bottom line. This is where things look bad for Kane’s Wrath. As they did with Battle for Middle Earth II: Rise of the Witch King and Command and Conquer: The First Decade, EA decided to outsource development of much of Kane’s Wrath to another company, with poor results.
Breakaway Games Credits in Kane’s Wrath

Their company of choice was BreakAway Games, based in Hunt Valley, Maryland (BreakAway had previously done the development of Rise of the Witch King). BreakAway did more than pitch in once in a while for Kane’s Wrath; they had a large hand in developing the game. According to BreakAway, “BreakAway was contracted by Electronic Arts to develop Kane’s Wrath.” Indeed, this is borne out in the credits of the game, as BreakAway is given its own section and extensive credit. For example, every position listed above (and many many more) was filled by at least one BreakAway person (sometimes working with an EA affiliate, often not). None of these fill-ins had ever worked on a C&C game before. None.

That’s not to say there was no one connected to C&C on the team. Indeed, it appears a lot of the macrodesign was done by folks at EALA. A few EALA people, such as Sam Bass, moved up to take on larger roles than they had in C&C 3, mostly in things like storytelling. But on the whole, there’s no doubt that BreakAway Games, a company that is also known for making simulations mostly (almost all of its media presence is with regards to simulations, not games for entertainment) and with no one affiliated with C&C, took on a huge role. This approach represented a radical shift from C&C 3’s development.

Click here for the full article.

Answer: Breakaway Games. Not EALA.

In truth, that’s a bit of an oversimplification. EA’s Los Angeles studio certainly had oversight over the development process and provided guidance, but it seems the majority of the work was actually outsourced to a company called BreakAway Games. We are not the first ones to observe this, but in light of the Kane’s Wrath 3+ month lack-of-patch debacle, we felt that it warranted additional investigation.

Generals World staff member Blbpaws has thus written an article investigating the effects of outsourced game development at EALA:

Looking in general across the board, RTS games that are outsourced by EA generally score in the 70s—that’s 6 to 7 points lower than their counterparts developed at EALA. Looking in specific at two of the biggest game review sites, GameSpot and IGN, we can see that the effect still exists, with the average drop-off between an in-house game and its outsourced expansion almost nine points. Nor are these rankings easily dismissed. In a meeting with Wall Street analysts in February, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello is quoted as saying, "our core game titles are accurately measured and summarized by these assessments [metacritic scores], and that is a very big deal." Obviously, the head decision makers at Electronic Arts find there to be some legitimacy to these scores.

Indeed, a simple glance at the games’ MetaCritic scores highlights the curious pattern.

These statistics aren’t perfect (they’re averages of various reviewers’ scores, compared across games developed at different times by a varying group of individuals), but they do seem to reflect the general anecdotal consensus that I’ve found around the community. (Namely, that the development of The First Decade, the Rise of the Witch King expansion, and Kane’s Wrath were all sub-par.)

Blbpaws’ article delves into further detail, taking a look at the roles key Tiberium Wars developers had in Kane’s Wrath’s development (hint: little-to-none) and providing additional analysis.  I encourage you all to read through it.

• Article: An Investigation into Outsourced Development

To what extent does the outsourcing of Kane’s Wrath explain the numerous desync bugs the game shipped with?  To what extent does it explain the balance issues?  And to what extent did it contribute to EA’s inability to release a patch in a timely fashion?  These are the questions that you, concerned C&C fan, should ask.

EA has (finally) released the first official patch for C&C 3: Kane’s Wrath. The patch fixes numerous desync issues, resolves some exploits, and also majorly rebalances the game.

<Bug/Exploit Fixes>

- The Message of the Day will now show up online for Kane’s Wrath.
- In-game rank/stats now show up alongside player name while in the game lobby.
- Improved Automatch performance
- Reaper 17 - You can no longer sell a stasis chamber to receive a group of Ravagers for only 600 credits.
- You can no longer use group selecting to allow a Mantis, AA-loadout Firehawk, flying Shadow Team, or Slingshot to force-fire on other ground units.
- Titans crushable level increased. Titans can no longer crush other Titans.
- Fixed the minimap while match is loading
- Can no longer build more than one VOICE of Kane
- Can no longer build multiple epic unit factories

You can find a complete list of changes here. You can download Kane’s Wrath Patch 1.01 from the Official C&C Website or by simply logging in to Kane’s Wrath online.

For those of you (still) waiting for the Kane’s Wrath patch, here’s some news that might tide you over:

• CNCNZ has the Red Alert 3 Summit Roundtable up. Yours truly participated, along with folks from EA, Planet CNC, RADEN, CNCWorld, Derelict Studios, and CNCNZ.
• Two new unit profiles are up: the Allied Apollo fighter and the Japanese King Oni mech.
• MidEast Crisis 2 has a new batch of screens, in light of their coming release.
• Session 7 of the Red Alert 3 Q and A is up.
• One other note: we’re working on a piece here that I think a good number of you might find interesting. We hope to release it next week, so check back then.

The bad news is that Kane’s Wrath patch 1.01 - originally slated for release today - has been pushed back until next week. Presumably, this is because a bug was found in the patch that EA decided to fix - so in a way, this is actually good news. Despite the vehement and completely justified anger on the official forums.

The other good news - if your definition of good includes promises for the future, which it may not - is that EALA General Manager Mike Verdu has announced that EA is creating a "live" team for supporting their released RTS titles:

I am not as proud of our record in supporting our games after launch. In fact, I’m downright unhappy with that aspect of our business. There have been some bright spots: For example, our community manager’s passionate advocacy on behalf of our customers, the huge patch 1.05 for Battle for Middle-earth II that was a labor of love between our team and the community, and our fast response to some initial problems on C&C3. But overall, the level of support has been lacking. We tend to put out a limited number of patches for our products and in many cases those patches take longer than they should to finish, test, and release. It’s been a chronic issue for more than four years, and we need to fix it. (emphasis added)

It’s good to see someone at EA admitting that they suck at supporting games.  And it’s good to see that they are, in theory, taking substantial steps to get better.

However, this isn’t the first time Verdu has apologized for EA’s poor performance and promised to do better in the future (to dig up an old favorite - see the Generals Ladder Kit, for starters). So, forgive me if I remain a skeptic. Indeed, I think Verdu’s comments support my skepticism:

I am not going to say that this initiative is going to instantly solve all of our support issues – and I don’t think we have the credibility with our customers to make that claim anyway.