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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Gabe Newell says the PS3 is a waste of everybody's time

Omac on 12 October 2007

lol you've just stated what I was saying.  I was playing 4 player Doom on BBS, so I've been around and know who he is.  Just was saying he doesn't really do much anymore except produce.



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elnino334 on 12 October 2007

@mikeB

Again it all goes back to who is being quoted. All those people are making or have made games for the PS3. They are not going to say bad things about it. That is the main flaw of using them for any discussion. There is money at stake. Same way others may talk shit about the PS3 if they don't have anything to gain from it. Well that is my main point. Just wanted to clarify :)



phil on 12 October 2007
elnino334 said:
phil said:
elnino334 said:
I'll take this guys word over any forum poster on here in terms of developing a game. Obviously people hate on him because he make not like what you like but at least he can actually talk about it in great detail. MikeG talks about him not wanting innovation just beause he talks down the PS3 but hey all I care about is that Valve is giving us gamers 5 games for $60 which by the way is also coming to the PS3 and he assure us will kick butt on there as well.

Again going back to "innovation" what the hell has the PS3 done that you would call innovative for this generation? Blue-ray? well there is HD-dvd that is just as good. Motion Sensing controls? Wii does it better. Online?Xbox live just plains kills it. Games? Only game to score over 90% overral is a 1 year port in oblivion. I am baised as I just don't like depending on "potential" as I am a sports fan and have seen so much money wasted on "potential" with players. This is what the PS3 is basically doing and in the end it won't matter one bit. When the games can stand out against the 360 the system well sell but until then just have to roll with the punches.

Gabey-poo has a history of complaining about new technology. For example, before the current generation of consoles were even out, he was complaining about the fact that they were multi-cored:

"Technologically, I think every game developer should be terrified of the next generation of processors. Your existing code, you can just throw it away."

You don't have to throw the old code away, but it certainly won't be as fast as code that's optimized. This is how new technology works.

He goes on to say that multi-core implementations are all doctoral theses and not practical. You can tell just by looking at what software is out and optimized for multi-core systems that this is a load of crap. The fact that he was complaining about it before he was even able to try and program for them further detracts from his credibility. It should also be noted that, since porting Orange Box was outsourced(to EA, I believe), he probably doesn't actually have experience programming on the PS3.

Just because Valve puts out quality games like Half Life doesn't mean that their founder is bright. He probably hires bright people to do the work for him. As further evidence of this, please recall the keylogger/HL2 source leak fiasco. This sort of thing never happens to the likes of actually great programmers like John Carmack.

 

Hey I don't know the guy but he seems pretty bright if his running a succesful company. You make it sound like bosses are idiots that hire smart people to do the work for them to make them seem smart. In the end he is just sharing his opinion like any forum poster but since we know who is unlike a forum poster I take it more seriously.

 


I am not making it sound like bosses are idiots who just hire smart people, and I'm not sure where you got this idea.  What I am implying is that running a successful company does not neccesarily make someone smart, and it certainly doesn't imply any sort of technical expertise.  Using this logic, we should hold the CEO of Verizon up as a networking god.  This is fallacious reasoning at it's worst.  If Gabe Newell was the clever man you seem to think he is, he wouldn't have been running Outlook Express and had the source code to one of his company's most valuable products ever leak out to the Internet.



LingLing on 12 October 2007
elnino334 said:
@lingLing

Good point. Let the techies have their discussion though most of it to me seems like personal opinions which is what I been mainly responding to.

 Hey watch out, I'm one of these techies. :)

Of course they're just opinions. Classifying things as "Hard" or "Easy" is ALWAYS a personal opinion because there is no empirical classification for what is Hard or Easy.

Something which is hard for me, might be a breeze for you. So in the end it's impossible to classify PS3 development as hard or easy in an objective way.

 



phil on 12 October 2007
Omac said:
lol you've just stated what I was saying. I was playing 4 player Doom on BBS, so I've been around and know who he is. Just was saying he doesn't really do much anymore except produce.

 No, you were saying he doesn't do much programming anymore:

      "I don't think John Carmack does any programming anymore."

You're flat out wrong.  Like Darc Requiem pointed out, he makes some of the most advanced 3d games engines. 



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phil on 12 October 2007
LingLing said:
phil said:

"Technologically, I think every game developer should be terrified of the next generation of processors. Your existing code, you can just throw it away."

You don't have to throw the old code away, but it certainly won't be as fast as code that's optimized. This is how new technology works.


I say you CAN throw your existing code away (look at my longer post above). It's not just not as fast as optimized code, it's slow as hell and thus unusable.

Just boot a Yellow Dog linux on your PS3 and experience the slowness of unoptimized code. Even on a Pentium II it will boot and run programs faster.

@elnino:

I think you're perfectly right, the consumer is only interested in when a game is released and nothing else. But this thread is apparently being read by quite a number of software developers and for them it's an interesting topic.


The problem is that quote from Newell wasn't in reference to the PS3, it was in reference to multi core processors in general.  If you throw code you ran on a P4 onto a Core2Duo, it will run just as fast, if not faster.



Omac on 12 October 2007
phil said:
Omac said:
lol you've just stated what I was saying. I was playing 4 player Doom on BBS, so I've been around and know who he is. Just was saying he doesn't really do much anymore except produce.

No, you were saying he doesn't do much programming anymore:

"I don't think John Carmack does any programming anymore."

You're flat out wrong. Like Darc Requiem pointed out, he makes some of the most advanced 3d games engines.


 Just curious, like which game.  I'm looking at my DOOM3 and it says he is a Technical director.



elnino334 on 12 October 2007
phil said:
elnino334 said:
phil said:
elnino334 said:
I'll take this guys word over any forum poster on here in terms of developing a game. Obviously people hate on him because he make not like what you like but at least he can actually talk about it in great detail. MikeG talks about him not wanting innovation just beause he talks down the PS3 but hey all I care about is that Valve is giving us gamers 5 games for $60 which by the way is also coming to the PS3 and he assure us will kick butt on there as well.

Again going back to "innovation" what the hell has the PS3 done that you would call innovative for this generation? Blue-ray? well there is HD-dvd that is just as good. Motion Sensing controls? Wii does it better. Online?Xbox live just plains kills it. Games? Only game to score over 90% overral is a 1 year port in oblivion. I am baised as I just don't like depending on "potential" as I am a sports fan and have seen so much money wasted on "potential" with players. This is what the PS3 is basically doing and in the end it won't matter one bit. When the games can stand out against the 360 the system well sell but until then just have to roll with the punches.

Gabey-poo has a history of complaining about new technology. For example, before the current generation of consoles were even out, he was complaining about the fact that they were multi-cored:

"Technologically, I think every game developer should be terrified of the next generation of processors. Your existing code, you can just throw it away."

You don't have to throw the old code away, but it certainly won't be as fast as code that's optimized. This is how new technology works.

He goes on to say that multi-core implementations are all doctoral theses and not practical. You can tell just by looking at what software is out and optimized for multi-core systems that this is a load of crap. The fact that he was complaining about it before he was even able to try and program for them further detracts from his credibility. It should also be noted that, since porting Orange Box was outsourced(to EA, I believe), he probably doesn't actually have experience programming on the PS3.

Just because Valve puts out quality games like Half Life doesn't mean that their founder is bright. He probably hires bright people to do the work for him. As further evidence of this, please recall the keylogger/HL2 source leak fiasco. This sort of thing never happens to the likes of actually great programmers like John Carmack.

 

Hey I don't know the guy but he seems pretty bright if his running a succesful company. You make it sound like bosses are idiots that hire smart people to do the work for them to make them seem smart. In the end he is just sharing his opinion like any forum poster but since we know who is unlike a forum poster I take it more seriously.

 


I am not making it sound like bosses are idiots who just hire smart people, and I'm not sure where you got this idea.  What I am implying is that running a successful company does not neccesarily make someone smart, and it certainly doesn't imply any sort of technical expertise.  Using this logic, we should hold the CEO of Verizon up as a networking god.  This is fallacious reasoning at it's worst.  If Gabe Newell was the clever man you seem to think he is, he wouldn't have been running Outlook Express and had the source code to one of his company's most valuable products ever leak out to the Internet.


Well that is what it sounds to me.  Again I don't know the guy but just stating as an opinion that he seems pretty smart because he is the boss of a succesful business.  He seems to know what his talking about similar to you I guess but I don't know what you do outside of posting.  If you want to go out fo your way to research all his accomplishment by all means go ahead but I'll just take his opinion at face value based on the company he owns and what they have done.  Again he seems like a smart guy and in terms of your outlook express example even smart people make mistake.  In the end as I stated before this is all a matter of opinion and it seems we are better off agreeing to disagree :)



HappySqurriel on 12 October 2007
Omac said:
phil said:
Omac said:
lol you've just stated what I was saying. I was playing 4 player Doom on BBS, so I've been around and know who he is. Just was saying he doesn't really do much anymore except produce.

No, you were saying he doesn't do much programming anymore:

"I don't think John Carmack does any programming anymore."

You're flat out wrong. Like Darc Requiem pointed out, he makes some of the most advanced 3d games engines.


 Just curious, like which game.  I'm looking at my DOOM3 and it says he is a Technical director.


"Technical Director" is probably a similar position to System Architect combined with Project Manager; basically he designs the system and lets lower level peons implement most of the details. The reality is that 5% of the code in an engine takes 95% of the execution time, and I'm pretty sure that someone with the experience of Carmack is heavily involved in ensuring that that 5% is as well written as possible.



Omac on 12 October 2007

thx for the info.