Deep analysis of the Ashes cricket game

[grkrama]

The cost of fixing this mess is around US$400,000 which means having to re-hire a team of expert developers to simulate the navigation, game logics faithfully.


This is hiring senior developer who has experience dealing with game AI, game physics. Such candidates are - Senior developer who did Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, Blizzard World of Warcraft Server developer, Senior artists in GameLoft or EA.


That cost excludes the development kit costs. Including the development kits - such as AutoDesk Maya, AutoDesk 3D Max, PathEngine or full-source of Unity or UDK, the price comes from US$500,000 to US$1,000,000.


There would be obvious issues - such as dealing with fraud developers, charlatans, cheating, lying developers who do monkey business than do actual work.


There is problem about quality. They should have known immediately about the quality control problems than let it fester and make so many stupid changes that the game becomes joke.


If anyone has US$1,000,000 the best choice would not to make a cricket game and invest in shares or equity for Big Ant Studios. Then you can meet the development team, see them do the works, learn a bit about how games are actually made


I am not affiliated with Big Ant Games nor do I want a job there. My opinion about this funny game

..

mate i just said i had plans for making a simple cricket game my self your clubbing that with with me resurrecting ashes

I am not affiliated with TrickStar nor have i worked or plan to work there.

 

[SpitfiresKent]

505 paid an incredible amount for the license, an incredible amount for the development, everyone got sold down the river except the management of TrickStar who are now planning fantastic holidays around the world, First Class I hear.

But how can anyone who worked on this game justify being paid? All they've basically done is sh*t on a plate and ask for ?13.99.

 

[silverthorne]

That's good question.

If those senior developers want to work elsewhere, they would have to swallow their pride and start as junior or rookie developers.


This kind of quality of work, well, you know the answer

 

[barmyarmy]

So...
Saved the game at 68/2 with the openers out.
Reloaded it; still 68/2 but the openers are batting...

 

[silverthorne]

I think I would extend that to anyone involved in the project that was in the developer videos too. It was ALL bogus.

I don't do this too often, telling mistakes of others. The last time I did it, I got banned from their forums and their developers are not appreciative of someone telling correct answer why their game is so bad .

I told the answer straight down to the correct image, correct location, correct procedure, correct function where the failure was.

----------

So...
Saved the game at 68/2 with the openers out.
Reloaded it; still 68/2 but the openers are batting...

The save game is not loading because of wrong XML data loaded and saved. It is simply case of XML going out to save file, not properly read back from save file.


They need to learn basics of file saving and file loading. You need to capture all the game data, not 90% or 80%. 100% of the game data must be saved to XML and loaded correctly.

----------

Do you think it is the fault of the game engine, that the game cannot load and save XML correctly?

 

[barmyarmy]

You might find this amusing.

 

[BigAntStudios]

I really, really overestimated the competition...and they really lied on here a lot... I'm not sure what you were shown Barmy but if it was ok then there is little chance that it evolved into this - we're missing something, that Lords show must have been the prior product with mods or something...

 

[barmyarmy]

There are just so many different parts of the game that are broken.
Very strange.

 

[BigAntStudios]

I think the "broken-ness" isn't the issue for me, it's more about how they pulled off this charade and had their publisher believe they were close.

I've never been so hoodwinked in all my life.

 

[silverthorne]

I think the "broken-ness" isn't the issue for me, it's more about how they pulled off this charade and had their publisher believe they were close.

I've never been so hoodwinked in all my life.

Here is a possible explanation:

They knew they were not going to make it. They tried and tried. The good people left because they could not bear to see the falsified quality assurance reports being submitted, they could no longer bear working so hard for nothing and then having to getting not paid for overtime.

The new people came along, played along with the charade, not knowing which is good or bad, did try to fix bugs and then months passed...

As the management there continued to put falsified reports that the game is OK, the game works well, the publisher must have been hoodwinked into believing the beta builds passed all Quality Assurance tests and decided to publish it...

When the negative feedback came by the dozens including many funny YouTube videos, the publisher must have went through all the prior reports and found them all to be false or misleading or wrong. Things marked as OK, fixed, passed Quality Assurance were wrong.

When confronted TrickStar games could be truthful and apologise. Maybe they got too arrogant and greedy, decided to blame the game engine instead. As the publisher could not get any straight answer or any good answer, they cancelled the whole game after release and pulled it.


There may be more to it happening right now. They may schedule QA reports to be done on other TrickStar games and on other games that 505 games sells.


This is a possible explanation using Occam's Razor. If someone else has another explanation, please let me know

 

[Mondy]

I think the "broken-ness" isn't the issue for me, it's more about how they pulled off this charade and had their publisher believe they were close.

I've never been so hoodwinked in all my life.

Is Trickstar still open for business?

 

[Crossy333]

Is Trickstar still open for business?

They are all sleeping on piles of money with many beautiful women in the Bahamas somewhere.

 

[BigAntStudios]

They are all sleeping on piles of money with many beautiful women in the Bahamas somewhere.

Just the upper management...

 

[IceAgeComing]

They are all sleeping on piles of money with many beautiful women in the Bahamas somewhere.

don't knock it until you try it!

 

[cricket_online]

Here is a possible explanation:

They knew they were not going to make it. They tried and tried. The good people left because they could not bear to see the falsified quality assurance reports being submitted, they could no longer bear working so hard for nothing and then having to getting not paid for overtime.

The new people came along, played along with the charade, not knowing which is good or bad, did try to fix bugs and then months passed...

As the management there continued to put falsified reports that the game is OK, the game works well, the publisher must have been hoodwinked into believing the beta builds passed all Quality Assurance tests and decided to publish it...

When the negative feedback came by the dozens including many funny YouTube videos, the publisher must have went through all the prior reports and found them all to be false or misleading or wrong. Things marked as OK, fixed, passed Quality Assurance were wrong.

When confronted TrickStar games could be truthful and apologise. Maybe they got too arrogant and greedy, decided to blame the game engine instead. As the publisher could not get any straight answer or any good answer, they cancelled the whole game after release and pulled it.


There may be more to it happening right now. They may schedule QA reports to be done on other TrickStar games and on other games that 505 games sells.


This is a possible explanation using Occam's Razor. If someone else has another explanation, please let me know

You are making the publishers (505 Games) as some sort of victims. I don't believe it for a moment. If this was a swindles, as Ross has stated, then 505 Games was much a party to it as Trickstar. 505 Games paid for the license and were accountable for the project, not Trickstar. In this case Trickstar were simply hired workers for 505 Games and accountability for the the project lay with 505 Games.

Just because 505 Games didn't do their jobs doesn't absolve them of any responsibility. They had Chief/Jamie as the chap to oversee the project as the producer and Jamie did mention he had access to various builds of the game and did play the game. Go through the "Ask Chief" thread and it's clear Jamie/505 Games knew what was going on. If they still couldn't figure things out, either 505 Games didn't care about the project or Jamie was one of the most gullible and incompetent person to hold the position he was holding. The fact 505 Games decided to give the go ahead to the game being released on Steam proves they were as much in it for cash-grab as Trickstar.