New Unreal Tournament

They started developing the game today and people already know how and why it will suck. Amazing.

I didn't say that it will suck, what I said that it will be something like quake live. I expected more. (a normal game)

It depends on how it works out. If everyone is allowed to create and share their own maps to be played online then that's one step ahead of quake live already which doesn't support user-made maps. If they plan to offer DLC's only, then it's a different story though.

Good, but not what I expected. Confirms the trend that PC games will be made cheap and released as low-quality alphas. They obviously expect that people will make maps and other crap for them. Their monetization strategy is weird, they seem to believe that the game will be payed by addons and mods which is unprecedented and completely retarded, even Valve's approach on selling pink AK47's is better.
Also, AFAIK Unreal Engine 3+ barely supports mods, at most maps and models, but no conversions, this is the reason they made UDK.

Its obvious that this is just a experimental, low-risk, cheap attempt to grab some PC market. They are either desperate or they have no real interest and they are half-assing it.

The only redeeming thing is that they ditched the consoles and will make it open-sourcish, which is great. It will probably turn out to be good but it will take years and a LOT of community involvement.

Maybe I'm just being overly negative but this is not how game industry does things. They are not some indie studio, they are an ancient company that makes millions on licensing.

You know nothing about how the game will first be released. Don't state your own speculation as fact.
They know this will take a long time. They said so. This is a high-risk high-reward strategy.

Of course they expect people to make maps for them, they have two of the most diehard and dedicated communities which still churns out content and mods to this very day. People love being involved like this. people LOVE ut. you're acting like it's a small indie company, and also a bit idiotic.
Their monetization strategy actually makes sense if you look at the immense amount of dev interest in UE4 alone right now. UT4 will give those people somewhere to channel that, and along with the huge community already garnered from 99/2k4/3, it makes a lot of sense. Of course, whether it works remains to be seen.

If they "no real interest", then why the hell did they spend 15+ minutes talking about how they were amazed at UT2k4's content, and vehicle mods for UT99, and how big the communities were? how much they wanted to stay true to the roots of the game as a "competitive FPS"? You either didn't read anything or have serious memory issues, as in those four paragraphs you jump between saying they will release cheap low-quality alphas, to how it will probably turn out good.

They are giving up a LOT of opportunities to make a lot more money and taking a big risk with the open strategy in order to try and make a better game. be thankful that a company like epic loves it's fanbase so much, don't bitch about it, i don't even know how you can find something negative about it.

Most ironically, you say how this will make the game more like open source, which is great - but you spent the entire first half bitching about how they are opening it up to the community to make their own maps and mods for the game. Which is the very IDEAL open-source is based around, being free to contribute and modify.

And if it's not how the game industry does things, then it's how they SHOULD do things. if all game developers cared about the communities' voice for their past titles even half as much as Epic is doing right now, people would be much much happier with them. It sounds like you almost WANT them to be uncaring and cold. c'mon.

I didn't say that it will suck, what I said that it will be something like quake live. I expected more. (a normal game)

quake live was a rather sad attempt by id to lengthen the life of the quake series as it was by effectively reheating quake 3 in the microwave of web plugins. it wasn't a normal game. it was, as you so eloquently predicted UT4 to be, an "either desperate (attempt) or they have no real interest and they are half-assing it."

THAT was what quake live was. it was not a normal game, the normal game was quake 3. And you clearly said it sucked, and made no references to what you thought it would be whatsoever. give it a chance.

They started developing the game today and people already know how and why it will suck. Amazing.

Yet another advantage of releasing an early alpha: it shields them for any kind of negative criticism.

More seriously though, can one not criticize their publishing model? Or have they just started developing that too?

They start developing it in some kind of "semi open source" style https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/the-fu...gins-today

Man, if this succeeds its the comeback of arena shooters, and will introduce new players to the genre so they more quickly get ehat Xonotic is about.

EDIT: Oh, Im one day late xD sorrt if it was linked before, just saw it on HN

More seriously though, can one not criticize their publishing model? Or have they just started developing that too?

Sure, if you can back it up with facts.

Again, I never said that the game suck. My problems are with the company and their decisions. From their description I assume that they do not want to commit manpower and money because they have doubts that the game will be successful (as total biscuit said) - the investments would not return. So they go broke-indie-studio-way (but for free). So therefore my expectations changed rapidly.

This is why I compared it to quake live, there's a high chance it will end up as niche game for old timers.

As I said before, one of the main problems of quake live is that it isn't open to user-made content. So you are stuck with what id delivers, which is, admittedly, not much more (or as some say, even less) than what quake 3 had to offer. I don't say it will end up decent but it's way too early to talk it down imo. Let's wait and see what the game, and the marketplace in particular, is going to look like before judging it.