GOG Helps Preserve Gaming's Legacy (July 23, 2018)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
Noclip has published an interesting documentary on the history of CD Projekt and its origins that led to the creation of Good Old Games, which turns ten years old next week. The video is highlighted by a number of interviews with GOG personnel and what they do to preserve and maintain classic games. It caught our attention thanks to a special shout out at 26:40 on the work to get Wing Commander on the service, but the whole thing is worth watching when you have the time!


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Original update published on July 23, 2018
 
Yeah, I didn't realize at all there was a connection to CD Projekt, and I forget sometimes that GOG is based in Poland.
 
You should also read the article about how they started. It's a great story. They are currently the best developers in the world. With Witcher 3 they wiped the floor with all other developers and set some standards. I can't wait for their Cyberpunk 2077. If you didn't play The Witcher trilogy you should.
 
You should also read the article about how they started. It's a great story. They are currently the best developers in the world. With Witcher 3 they wiped the floor with all other developers and set some standards. I can't wait for their Cyberpunk 2077. If you didn't play The Witcher trilogy you should.
I don't think there is such a thing as "the best developers in the world" - I'm not saying this to knock CD Projekt, but to highlight the fact that with so many different game types out there, that's an impossible description to use - what does CD Projekt know about developing an FPP shooter, for example, or a racing game? If you wanted to call them the best RPG developer in the world, we could have a discussion (I don't think they've got Bethesda beaten yet, though) - but overall? It's a futile claim :).

More importantly, from an industry perspective, I don't think they're anywhere near to being the best developers in the world, because for me, a good developer is one that gets good results without running his team into the ground. From a team of 50+ people on The Witcher, only a dozen or so stuck around long enough to appear in The Witcher 2's credits. The same story repeated, on a bigger scale, between The Witcher 2 and 3. Possibly things have changed since then, but that remains to be seen - certainly a number of people did leave immediately after cashing their Witcher 3 bonus, though so far the bloodletting has been at a smaller scale than before. In any case, when I hear from CD Projekt employees themselves (and as a Polish game developer, I get to actually meet these people over a beer every once in a while) that their team now works efficiently, but without excess stress and pressure - then we can talk about them being the best developer in the world. In the meantime, they may get great results, but the price paid has, to date, been consistently much higher than it needed to be.
 
@Quarto My grandmother could make better RPG games than Bethesda. They should be nuked from orbit. What they did with Fallout is unforgivable. It's a known fact that they don't know how to write the main story and side quests. They turned Fallout into garbage collecting and crafting simulator.

CD Projekt is the best developer in the world. All other developers should learn from them how to make good games. They also care about their fans.
 
@Quarto My grandmother could make better RPG games than Bethesda. They should be nuked from orbit. What they did with Fallout is unforgivable. It's a known fact that they don't know how to write the main story and side quests. They turned Fallout into garbage collecting and crafting simulator.

Not sure that's really that much of a step down from garbage 90s meme simulator, but hey.
 
This video kinda hinted that GOG and night dive managed to rescue the No one Lives forever IP from the insidious copyright hell.


@Quarto My grandmother could make better RPG games than Bethesda. They should be nuked from orbit. What they did with Fallout is unforgivable. It's a known fact that they don't know how to write the main story and side quests. They turned Fallout into garbage collecting and crafting simulator.

CD Projekt is the best developer in the world. All other developers should learn from them how to make good games. They also care about their fans.
i love fallout 1, it had everything perfect, story, system and such. but the games were garbage recycled from the garbage heap system that is GURPS.

Also fallout 2 is joke full of 90's memes and 80's Saturday morning villains based of the worst episodes of GI Joe, Defenders of the earth and Transformers.

also remove the rose-tinted glasses, Witcher 3 is bad.
 
You people can't be serious.

@ShadowArm: Saying that Witcher 3 is bad game tells me that you never played a good game in your life. You are probably very young and don't know much about video games. I recommend for you to play Planescape Torment and Baldur's Gate series(but not that Dragonspear crap made by some morons). You should also play Arcanum and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines. Basically you should play every game that is made by Black Isle Studious, old Bioware, Troika games and Obsidian Entertainment. You should also play Witcher trilogy.
 
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@Quarto My grandmother could make better RPG games than Bethesda. They should be nuked from orbit. What they did with Fallout is unforgivable. It's a known fact that they don't know how to write the main story and side quests. They turned Fallout into garbage collecting and crafting simulator.
I'm more than happy to ignore you on this, firstly because you don't actually have any arguments, and secondly because ultimately it's a matter of taste. But this, on the other hand:

CD Projekt is the best developer in the world. All other developers should learn from them how to make good games. They also care about their fans.
...This is just bullshit. Did you read a word I wrote? CD Projekt is a company that has a track record rivalling EA when it comes to exploiting their employees. Until they demonstrate this is no longer the case, they are not even in the running for any "best developer in the world" title. And no, I don't give a damn if they care about their fans. The team comes first - not the fans.
 
@Quarto You said before that you are a game developer and now you are saying that you don't care if CD Projekt cares about their fans. If someday you make a game why should anyone buy it? Why should anyone buy a game from developer who doesn't care about his fans? As a CD Projekt customer I can say that I am satisfied with quality and price of their products. Compare 2 big DLCs for Witcher 3 with horse armor from Bethesda and you'll get the picture. Also, why should I care about their internal problems? Do they care about problems that I have in company where I work? Why are you not worried that my company exploiting me?

Everything that I wrote about Bethesda is true. Ask any experienced old school RPG player and they will confirm you my words. You just like @ShadowArm are probably young and don't have much experience. Just play the games that I recommended in previous post and see for yourself.
 
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@Quarto Why should anyone buy a game from developer who doesn't care about his fans? As a CD Projekt customer I can say that I am satisfied with quality and price of their products. Compare 2 big DLCs for Witcher 3 with horse armor from Bethesda and you'll get the picture. Also, why should I care about their internal problems? Do they care about problems that I have in company where I work? Why are you not worried that my company exploiting me?

Obviously because we're not having a conversation about the company where you work. Since the topic is CD Projekt, as a customer of theirs who has an interest in what they make, you should very much be concerned with how they treat their employees. That isn't an "internal problem." There's an entire field of study on putting the "Employees First, Customers Second" that you should really read up on.

https://www.business.com/articles/put-your-employees-first-for-first-class-customer-service/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmo...y-it-really-works-in-the-market/#25314d3512c4
https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/employee-first-organization

And if you think about it for a second beyond the selfish knee-jerk gut reaction, it makes so much sense. Employees that aren't burned out, that are treated well, whose well being is taken care of, etc, will then pour passion into their work and therefore turn out a higher quality product for the customer. This is true from software development to manufacturing to retail and food service. When I first entered the workforce two decades ago, our senior manager told us, "Leave your personal problems at home" during a staff meeting. There's a reason why every major company has flipped that mentality on its head over the past decade and has invested heavily in employee amenities, emotional intelligence training for management, employee family support resources, etc. It's good business and ultimately makes for more satisfied customers down the line. The employee turnover that Quarto mentions is extremely concerning - if most of the people who make the games attrit out between every project, there's no continuity and no expectation that their future projects will resemble their past projects. If they've managed to maintain quality over time, then they're lucky that a super human few have remained enough to convey the culture onto the next batch of employees, but that's not sustainable.
 
Obviously because we're not having a conversation about the company where you work. Since the topic is CD Projekt, as a customer of theirs who has an interest in what they make, you should very much be concerned with how they treat their employees. That isn't an "internal problem." There's an entire field of study on putting the "Employees First, Customers Second" that you should really read up on.

https://www.business.com/articles/put-your-employees-first-for-first-class-customer-service/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlmo...y-it-really-works-in-the-market/#25314d3512c4
https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/employee-first-organization

And if you think about it for a second beyond the selfish knee-jerk gut reaction, it makes so much sense. Employees that aren't burned out, that are treated well, whose well being is taken care of, etc, will then pour passion into their work and therefore turn out a higher quality product for the customer. This is true from software development to manufacturing to retail and food service. When I first entered the workforce two decades ago, our senior manager told us, "Leave your personal problems at home" during a staff meeting. There's a reason why every major company has flipped that mentality on its head over the past decade and has invested heavily in employee amenities, emotional intelligence training for management, employee family support resources, etc. It's good business and ultimately makes for more satisfied customers down the line. The employee turnover that Quarto mentions is extremely concerning - if most of the people who make the games attrit out between every project, there's no continuity and no expectation that their future projects will resemble their past projects. If they've managed to maintain quality over time, then they're lucky that a super human few have remained enough to convey the culture onto the next batch of employees, but that's not sustainable.

Chris, the last thing that we need here its blind company fanboys, and i deal with this kind of people everyday, which he's simply acting like one of those.

@Quarto You said before that you are a game developer and now you are saying that you don't care if CD Projekt cares about their fans. If someday you make a game why should anyone buy it? Why should anyone buy a game from developer who doesn't care about his fans? As a CD Projekt customer I can say that I am satisfied with quality and price of their products. Compare 2 big DLCs for Witcher 3 with horse armor from Bethesda and you'll get the picture. Also, why should I care about their internal problems? Do they care about problems that I have in company where I work? Why are you not worried that my company exploiting me?

Everything that I wrote about Bethesda is true. Ask any experienced old school RPG player and they will confirm you my words. You just like @ShadowArm are probably young and don't have much experience. Just play the games that I recommended in previous post and see for yourself.

before you ever though of buying a pc, i had Ultima for PC and CT when i was a kid.
 
@Quarto You said before that you are a game developer and now you are saying that you don't care if CD Projekt cares about their fans. If someday you make a game why should anyone buy it? Why should anyone buy a game from developer who doesn't care about his fans? As a CD Projekt customer I can say that I am satisfied with quality and price of their products. Compare 2 big DLCs for Witcher 3 with horse armor from Bethesda and you'll get the picture. Also, why should I care about their internal problems? Do they care about problems that I have in company where I work? Why are you not worried that my company exploiting me?
Well, of course, I couldn't care less about people exploiting you, because you don't care about other people being exploited - so the more you get exploited, the more justice is served. No, but seriously - what Chris said. Employees come first. Fans second. Or, to be more precise - employees first, product second, and fans a distant third.

Everything that I wrote about Bethesda is true. Ask any experienced old school RPG player and they will confirm you my words. You just like @ShadowArm are probably young and don't have much experience. Just play the games that I recommended in previous post and see for yourself.
I don't know how old you are, frankly you sound like someone in his early twenties, given your lack of maturity. But maybe you're just one of those people that never grows up, regardless of age. As for me, I am an experienced old school RPG player, and I absolutely do not confirm your words.
 
@ChrisReid and @Quarto: You people are telling me that I am a selfish jerk and you don't even know me. Let me explain you something. The only people that I really care about are members of my family and some old trustworthy friends. For them I would give my life without hesitation. Also I would help any person on the street if that person is in trouble. I did that few times and one time I got beaten up by some a**holes.

All these things that you two are talking about tells me that you are naive persons living in a bubble. Real life is something completely different my friends.

@ShadowArm: I am not a fanboy. I dare you to show me some other company that cares about their customers like CDPR does. With GOG they saved a lot of old games from oblivion. They deserve a lot of respect for their actions.

If you are really old school then why are you talking sh*t about Fallout 2? That game is a cult classic but you obviously don't know that.

@Quarto: Please tell me about your favourite RPGs cause I am curious to know.
 
@Quarto: Please tell me about your favourite RPGs cause I am curious to know.
To be honest, I'm really not interested in continuing this conversation. Not only have you not made a good impression so far as a person, but also you seem to do a great job of confusing your own tastes for some sort of universal standard. However, in the interest of making a point - my favourite RPGs include AD&D Second Edition, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1st edition, I think - the really old one, in any case). So, not cRPGs at all - pen and paper stuff. The kind of stuff that Bethesda's RPGs do an incredibly fantastic job of emulating on a computer - as opposed to CDPR's "be anything you like as long as it's Geralt the Witcher" approach. I'm not knocking The Witcher series, it's very good at what it tries to be. However, there are aspects of the RPG experience that Bethesda does incredibly well, and CDPR doesn't actually even attempt to do. If you do not understand this, then you simply have a very narrow understanding of what an RPG is - and your definition of an RPG would just happen to exclude most of the genre, especially the oldest and most classic parts of the genre.
 
@Quarto: I didn't leave a good impression? Really? First you made some accusations regarding CDPR without submitting any hard evidence and then you started insulting me. You are selfish and spoiled little brat and wannabe developer. You never had a real problem in your life. You think that people who are developers like you deserve some special treatment and the rest of us can die. I am sick of people like you.
 
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I mean, you're the one who comes across as immature here. Other than the weird psychopathic screed about how much you don't care about developers being horribly abused, your entire contribution to this thread is being outraged by people not respecting your favourite corporate entity enough and being outraged by other people feeling differently about vidya.
 
@Dyret: Do you have some hard evidence about developers being horribly abused? Do you even know what it means to be horribly abused? I don't see anything wrong with showing some respect to the company that makes quality games and cares about customers.
 
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