I wonder at what point it began to dawn on Daivd that making a believable, working, generally bug-free 3D football game was a lot harder than he originally thought it would be.

I still can't decide whether his decision to make this game on his own with a small group of amateur beta-testers at the very end of the project was arrogance or sheer chutzpah.

For a point of reference, the NFL Fever 2000 team (a game he has cited as trying to come close to in terms of 3D graphics) consisted of 8 programmers, 6 artists, 4 animators, 1 audio engineer, 1 project manager and 12 full-time testers, and that project took around 2 years to complete.

Aren't these kind of the same thing?

And you didn't even include teleportation or a beer tent. :)

I guess I'm ascribing a slight difference of mindset to the two, but yeah, they're pretty much the same thing. I guess a better way to put it is, what level of naivity was there in his decision as opposed to "I'm a fucking brilliant programmer, so it'll be no problem"...

Hey, we only had 2 years...

and what makes you wonder that he's reached that point as of now?

FM

Perhaps he's completely oblivious, but I would think that he's realized the enormity and complexity of building such a game as he's reached the point of bug-fixing and discovered just how difficult it is to model real football player behavior (witness the issues surrounding sacks and his attempts to fix it). The whole, "fix" one thing while breaking another.

my comment was semi tongue in cheek but looking at how he's in fact fixing one thing then breaking another and repeating the process, and always trying to point the finger at what other people shouldn't do, even offering to do an "in-house" to a forum member over there, he certainly loook obvious enough to the whole situation...

Makes me kind of sad for the dude...

FM

That would be when he bailed on CFL Football ’99.

This is rich:


So someone with a Mac is supposed to buy the game to test it out in order to fill his curiosity? Forgive me if I pass on this enticing offer.

Oh....I saw this and was shocked to see it under the Public Beta section. Why is he concerned with this if he is trying to knock existing bugs. That was one of the strangest posts he had written and I still can't figure out why this belonged in Public Beta.

Well....you did'nt expect him to test anything....given his past record did you?

I would think with all the sales from this game rolling in, that besides the new car, new house, strip club tab, that this would be next on the list to buy.

It's just nice to see that success does not change some people. That some people stay close to their roots and who they were before getting famous, and is once again asking for someone else to to do something instead of focusing on the more pressing needs at hand.


Yep, it's good to know that Daivd is a grounded guy and knows who he is.....










P.S. This guys f%#king sucks as a developer and as a business man.

On top of everything else, that latest Daivd post about Mac is retarded. All that the test would be proving is that the stupid ass game works on Windows XP when it's run on a Apple built computer. Dipshit will then probably claim that it's "Mac Compatable" which I guess it sort of is, but only if you are willing to invest 200 some odd dollars into another copy of WinXP plus have the latest Mac hardware/software.

Hrm....would'nt it be funny if this game were to run perfectly on a mac?

Would he then claim that we all have the wrong computers?

He must be creaming his pants that a new potential market to rip off now exists.

I thought they weren't beta testing:

This seems to be going in reverse order of most software coding I've been involved with.

They've gone from Released Product, and now have moved on to beta testing. Look for a Software Design document sometime in June, and a brainstorming session in the August/September timeframe as to what shape the product should take.

That's what is funny. They are going to give people a free copy of the game to test it when other people put out their money for this game.

Shouldn't he AT LEAST offer to give the game to the Mac tester for free??

Nicely done cartman.

They shouldn't need post-release testing since they already have some kind of customer base. They are already doing the testing and bug reporting. At least this game has given us the new phrase "post-release testing".

The problem is that the customer base is more focused on creating unforms and plays. They don't usually report any other errors on a regular basis. There are only a handful of people that report errors regularly. And you will also notice that many of them see errors, but they blow it off as not a big deal.

I am ignorant...what is the point of post release beta?

I would think that the customer base, already likely small, has all but evaporated now. The signs point to Maximum Football being in meltdown mode.

Sales must be awful if they are going to run a round of post-release testing. If you had customers playing the game, you wouldn't need to do this. This does assume that they are planning to give the game away to testers.

There are only four/five threads that get new posts each day on the Maximum Football board. Maybe two a day in the support forum.

Worse than anger is apathy. I just don't think anyone except a handful of people care any longer about the game. Those few that both have it and like it are happily making uniforms or trying to make utilities for it. Everyone else has either decided not to buy or stopped playing. Sales must be all but dried up.

The moment of truth has arrived.

Pull it off life suport or keep trying to fix it? What will they do? With the call for testers, Maximum Football obviously wants to try and fix it, but what will David do? How long will they keep working at a game that so few people are buying?

True, but I think the game has already acquired all of the customers who were looking for dress-up doll football players. There isn't much farther to go.

I get the point of what they are doing, it just seems funny that their whole customer base is basically useless for actual football game evaluations. Sadly, I don't see this helping the game. After a real round of beta testing, I expect them to find they are months from being ready to release the game. No way they go back to the drawing board for months.

Speak for yourself dungrod.

Thank You! I've been saying this for some time now. This game wasn't written for football fans, it was written for Football Uniform fans. You know, the guys who secretly wanted a Barbie doll growing up so they could change her dresses, but the social stigma got in the way. Now they can create pretty uniforms to their heart's desire. Does the game engine work? Who cares? Don't these pants look *fabulous* with these socks?

LOL

Um...I did. ;)

The post-release testing is just freaking hilarious.

Well, I at least hope they find beta testers who are getting a variety of framerates so they can fully test the game. :D

Is it legal to release a game and then to beta test it after?

It does not seem right to charge customers for the game thats not even ready. And they admitted to it by doing this beta testing.

I'm sure the game is fine. They are just beta testing the patches. :)

Let the buyer beware.

Also, it would be poor public policy, both inside and outside the software arena, to discourage companies from fixing/improving products after they are released to the public. If you could use post-release repairs as justification for lawsuits, then no company would fix something once it was released. And we would have a lot more broken stuff around.

While there are exceptions, the rules of evidence tend to bar admission of subsequent repairs in lawsuits for this reason. See Federal Rule of Evidence 407 and its state counterparts:

dola--

I of course am not saying whether the product at issue here was defective. From everything I have seen, Matrix has been very above board with its policies and promises (like, for example, honoring the refund policy). I'm just making a point about the legal effect of subsequent remedial measures generally.

I think they are talking testing future patches not the game itself

and how do i stop the emails

I keep unsubscribing from this thread and it keeps subscribing me again .... errrr and I can't find the option to stop sending emails if someone replies

I forgot Thornbird's e-mail address, but since he gets an e-mail every time there's a reply, I'll just send him my message here.

Yes, I am wearing the pink one. You put on the green one and we'll go out "Easter egg hunting" this weekend. ;)

It doesn't say anything about patches, it says specifically it's testing the post-release version of the game:


Also, I've never heard of anyone requiring a NDA to beta test patches.

Good execution of the Underwear Gnomes business model..

Step 1. Think of computer game
Step 2. ???
Step 3. Profit

I would assume the post-release version of the game would constitute the release version plus patches. I'm sure the intention is to finally test the whole product, but a PR person could easily spin this as patch testing.


What about this whole project makes you think that any past experience with real software projects applies? They are clearly making everything up as they go. :)

I am probably wrong, but post-release to me sounds like the next version of the game.

Something like...

Maximum Football 2107
Maximum Gold Football
Platinum Maximum Football
Ultimate "We Maximized Maximum" Football
Maximum Football "Too...bad you paid for it"
David Winter's Football Follies

Hi T-bird:D

How do you test future patches without the game? Unless you mean the current customers are doing this, but why the need for the NDA when you guys are already doing the testing? Not getting on your case since you are one of the few real supporters of the game, but this is just odd.

HA! I was right. The game hasn't been released yet (and I still say it never will). Beta testing is just begining.

I am getting this feeling that the reason why they are making people sign an NDA for what is essentially a "private beta" is because David is going to make some major changes to the code that may snap a few pieces of duct tape that is holding this together.

That way, no one can give bad publicity to the game as they continue to work out more bugs. Makes absolutely no sense to me because anyone who buys the game is going to wonder why they are having a "private beta".

It has already been over a month and you can see people becoming more disinteresting in reporting bugs. I don't know what they think this post-nuclear-release-private-beta is going to accomplish.

I don't like you

It kind of looks like maybe Matrix is trying to save face. Plus Daivd's gotta be thinking that with the start of the CFL in June that if he at least fixes it a bit, he has the opportunity to make some more money off of unsuspecting people.

Is anyone else getting the impression that Richard Chamberlain is constantly getting notified whenever this thread gets updated?

Yeah, they are "trying to save", but all they are doing is damaging their reputation (in regards to Matrix) even more. They deserve a credit for handing out the refund. That was stand up. Yet here is another move that leaves me shaking my head.

There really is no good reason for anyone to sign an NDA after a game is released unless their only motive is to keep people from honestly talking about how they view the game. Because now, they can hold that NDA over them indefinitely since no one will know when they will be finished patching the game.