DICE says modern gamers would be unable to "understand" Frostbite 2 engine

thiefinthedark on 4/7/2011 at 16:16

(http://youtu.be/yTdTs7dNgbk?t=2m4s) http://youtu.be/yTdTs7dNgbk?t=2m4s

Really have to wonder at the talent drain that is going to occur in the industry in the next decade or so if the major studios keep up with this kind of sillyness. I mean, a pretty huge chunk of the studio's out there today got their talent from the modding community.

Considering that DromEd is one of the most arcane and un-intuitive level editors ever written, but conversely has spawned more fan-made levels than nearly any other game out there, I don't think their argument (if you could really call it that) holds much water.

Koki on 4/7/2011 at 16:58

Quote Posted by thiefinthedark

Considering that DromEd is one of the most arcane and un-intuitive level editors ever written

Uh-huh.

Eldron on 4/7/2011 at 17:12

I would agree, frostbite 2 is a complex toolset, and I don't mean badly created, it's a toolset made for big teams and multiple persons working on sets of things.
I don't think the issue is that its too complex for other persons, but preparing the whole toolset as a mod-tool for bf3 just isn't a small task.

Dromed is a relatively simple tool these days, it runs on one computer alone and doesn't require a dozen other interconnecting tools or external baking solutions.

Ulukai on 4/7/2011 at 17:13

The guy is a either an idiot, or a puppet on corporate strings. I'm leaning towards the latter.

DromEd is a particularly vile lesson in interface design, no matter how fond people may be of it. Not very, in my case

Eldron on 4/7/2011 at 17:18

Dromed might have a shitty interface, but it's not complex in setup compared to big inhouse engines.

Ulukai on 4/7/2011 at 17:21

I think that's more reflective of its age, than good design.

Eldron on 4/7/2011 at 17:31

Back then people didn't have long experience with good design, the whole thing was still fresh, people had yet to learn good techniques.

But the tools got the job done.

nicked on 4/7/2011 at 17:57

Maybe 10 years ago lots of modders could have got jobs in the games industry on the strength of those mods, but the complexity of games and game engines today means that anyone (and in fact it would need to be any team) capable of making a mod good enough to get them noticed and get them a job in the industry would need to already have all the skills necessary to get a job in the industry anyway.

The masses of extra time and money it takes to make mod tools available in a professional state is just not worth it for the 6 people who would be able and willing to put them to good use.

Eldron on 4/7/2011 at 18:20

Not to mention the vast amount of mod sdk's already available for games, and not only that, we have stand alone toolsets like UDK and UNITY, both of which are light years ahead of what you had back in the days.

Jason Moyer on 4/7/2011 at 18:24

From a non-technical side, I'd much rather have a multiplayer shooter without mod tools. Keeping a game's multi focused on a relatively small amount of official content means servers full of players playing content everyone has rather than a fragmented online community where it's impossible to find a game you want to join. That's just me, though; I typically stop playing multiplayer games when the amount of content starts to exceed the userbase's ability to stay cohesive.