Grand Theft Ping Pong?

#1 Nice perspective. Makes it more clear why being independant is better than giving in to the darkside.

#2 ahahahahah... yeah ping pong will save them, too bad its not 1990 anymore...

#3 funny in a way......ya its a stupid company its its its.....[Rockstar]

#4 Ping Pong, thats pretty damn funny.

I was contacted this past week by one of the "big" companies that is interested in me as a lead concept artist. There was a point when I would have jumped at it, but my attitude about game development vs quality of life has changed so much in the past couple of years that when I read the email I just sort of chuckled at the irony of the timing.

I made it through a few of those feast famine cycles in the industry, and I have watched many close friends lives get turned upside down or completely wrecked by it.

It would take one hell of an offer to get me to go back to that sort of life, and even then, it would be with a very definite goal of making it a short stay.

#5 I'm actually pretty suprised at this point of view coming from someone from the indy game world. To me this seems like one of the most "indy" moves by a large game company in a while. Just a couple quotes that I think fit into that theory:

"We have always been a company that likes to take risks, and do things differently from everyone else. For us this does not just mean gangster films, or car chases or westerns (much as we still love them), but anything that we think is interesting and has not been successfully handled elsewhere in a videogame."

"The fascination is really with purity, on concentrating the entire power of the hardware on one activity to create a game that is precisely addictive in its focused simplicity."

"In terms of value for money we think the hundreds of hours of gameplay of Grand Theft Auto is probably worth more than the $50 price tag, but rather than pushing to increase the price of games, we'd rather keep on over-delivering on value."

I mean honestly, to me that sounds like it could have come straight from a company like PomPom or even Garage Games itself. To say that they are just acting deperate or that this is a last ditch effort, seems a little niave and even more counter productive. We've been saying for years how the big guys should take more lessons from the indy community, but then when they do, we razz and jeer them? I think the truth is we would rather see a big company fall using their bussiness model, rather than succeed using ours.

::quotes taken from this IGN interview

#6 I usually don't comment on anyone's blogs except to give a compliment or encouragement, but this will be different.

I too find it a peculiar/funny/amused to see RockStar writing a Ping Pong game, but I think you're going a little over board with your cynical critism. Personally, I found Max Payne, GTA, and other games produced by RockStar to be top notch games, and I'm sure there are others who feel the same. I wonder what that number may be? Tens of thousands, millions(??). I wonder...

I don't think it's a laughing matter about companies going through lay offs. I'm sure you're laughing at the companies, but it sounds like you're laughing at the company and the people getting layed off. I'm sure many of these individuals have families to take care of, and probably go through some hardships. Is what you're dong a polite thing to do? I think it's sad.

I wonder if anyone else sees the irony in this blog -- someone with a Marble game laughing at another for making a PING PONG game.

My 2 cents.

#7 Yeah i'd have to agree with Matt on this. I havent played a rockstar game since GTA3, and after that they just seemed to be tired iterations of the same stuff. I was intrigued when i read they were doing this table tennis.

i like ping pong. I just hate how you need several people around to get a game going. And even then its only fun against people of comparable skill level. This would do away with that if it was done right. I wish it was on the revolution, seems like a good fit with the input device. And I don't really see how this is funny to so many people, if anything else it should be supported.

#8 I just looked at the IGN interview provided by Matt, and man, that's looking awesome!!! It doesn't seem like a laughing matter to me:)

#9

Quote:it seems to me that just a few years ago, when they were riding high on GTA, they were spouting all this crap about ... how they were going to change the game industry with adult titles, real stories, sex, and violence.

...and they did. I'd say 50 percent of games released in the past 3 years have been inspired in some way by GTA3.

...dunno, Ping Pong sounds like fun to me! :)

#10 um, so Jeff, after the bloodshed in your first paragraph, you wouldn't happen to have a list of pro-studios that are accepting resume's would you?

Actually, in all seriousness, I must be reading the wrong web-sites because I knew about the ping-pong but not about the layoffs (except for at LionHead..)

As for the rest of it - I also was amused, but i'm intrested to see what they come up with. One never knows... Good blog though. I bookmarked your site, looks like a good one to start watching! :-)

#11 It's silly because... who the hell can't just go out and play ping pong in reality? This isn't like simulating big league baseball, or over the top skateboarding. I do know the high levels of ping pong are friggin' nuts, but I mean... seriously.

#12 I think it is pretty damn funny. Lay offs are no laughing matter nor is the impact they have on lives of the people involved.

There are plenty of good reasons to make a Ping Pong game, its a valid idea and a marketable one. The last good thing Rock Star released was GTA 3, in my opinion. And it definitely did have an impact on the industry, some good some bad.

What is funny, is that its Rock Star who is making a ping pong game. It gave me a good laugh. Its sort of like the HALO crew making Barbie and Ken game, only funnier.

#13 ...its Called TABLE TENNIS! ... and its a highly sophistimacated game.. with lots of subtlely.. from such diverse techniques as hitting the ball with the front of the bat contrasted with the technique of hitting the ball with the back of the bat..

[from a peeved ex table tennis player] :D


ps. did you know they made the regulation ball twice the size it used to be, purely so it would be easier to see on tv. It slowed the game down to half speed aswell which sux..

#14 Well to be fair to Jeff, I don't think he was making a joke off all the layoffs. I work at EA (one of the studios that lost a lot of people last month), and I have to read through a lot of tripe about how funny it is that some of my friends lost their jobs, so I've gotten pretty good at spotting it :P I think he was more just setting the 'stage' for his argument: "Things are splitting at the seams, when the savour cometh: Ping-Pong".

@Paul - Well I could think of quite a few successful games that go against the grain of what you're saying. How bout a game where you move a marble around on basic forms of geometry :) I think the best games are the ones that take something real, and make it play like we wish it did in real life; to make the real seem surreal. To continue with the Marble Blast analogy, it's not that pushing a marble around is inherently fantastic, it's that Marble Blast makes it feel fantastic while working in the confines of what we (the player) deem plausible. I mean, it seems funny to me that we are forgetting that one of the first games to ever really capture the imagination of players was non other than Ping-Pong!

#15 @Akio: It's our MISSION to make little games like Marble Blast. If an Indie wants to do Ping Pong, it makes total sense. It makes no sense for a company who's MISSION was to make huge adult themed games to jump to something like Ping Pong, no matter how next-generation it is.

There is no place in my blog that says this will be a crappy game. But, in fact, it can be the best Ping Pong game in the universe, and it makes no sense for Rockstar to be making it. To me, it sparks of desperation. Coming back after the fact and saying that they have always wanted to do games like this, is totally revisionist history.

-Jeff Tunnell, GG

Edit: Here is a little tidbit about the finances of Take Two out on the net today:

www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15170

Edit#2: Oh yeah, Scot Miller, the Executive Producer/Owner of Max Payne agrees with me:

dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/2006/03/killing_a_brand.html

#16

Quote:It makes no sense for a company who's MISSION was to make adult themed games to jump to something like Ping Pong.

(disclaimer: I haven't read all the comment above your last one yet, so I might have missed something. I'm too tired to do it right now. Will do tomorrow morning though =).

Anyway, I personally think it makes PERFECT sense. I don't see anything strange at all here. rockstar, just like any company, are in it to make a profit. And from that point of view there's absolutely nothing wrong with this. There's (relative) low risk involved in terms of cost to produce the game, and it could potentially sell quite well (it could sell nothing too, but I'm guessing the production costs for this are a spit in the ocean if you compare it to their other titles). So... makes perfect sense to me.

#17

Quote:
To me, it sparks of desperation.

The feeling I got was not one of financial-desparation directly, but more their trying to "redeem" themselves in the eyes of the parents and "Walmarts" of the world; particularly after the whole hot-coffee debacal. It's like them saying "hey we're a ligitimit viable corporation like anyone else, and we can make good-wholesome family-appropriet content too!

Not that that makes it any better or more sincere but, oh-well...

--

hmmm.. sorry for the spelling, it's been along day of codeing...

#18 It kinda makes sense for Rockstar to do the Ping Pong, it's an untapped game really, it looks pretty good, and could be fun - somewhat of a competition to the street soccer series from what I've seen, in terms of street style. This also shows the departure from GTA which was about 70% of Take Two's sales, which is what analyst feared, as this doesn't give it diversity. Apparently the Rockstar guys like to play this, we'll see how far it goes. I'd like to see a Squash game or rock climbing.

#19 The problem is wall street people that got spoiled from big Y2k IT spending and keep wanting those type of numbers. Intel is a good example. They have just completed a huge jump to nano tech stressed silicon IC's at 65. nm and people dumping stocks because of weaker than forcasted sales.

Just saying something incredible happend. Everytime Moore's law advanced we advance as human society technology wise. Impacting every industry, maybe suttle impacts but still. Anytime you can increase automation performance business advances.

This is like Lukes run in the death trench. It looked bad but it was glory in the end. Just keep on target and Torque is gonna own the world soon.

#20 Rockstar had it's day, its share of doing just to get media attention, but it gets old after a decade.

They may have realised it was time to finally move on.