SR Gamer Pleased With Playtest of Xbox Game 57
Like many Shadowrun players, Philip Richardson felt frustrated by the announcement that the SR title for the 360 was essentially Counter-Strike with elves. Mr. Richardson, though, happens to be the Program Manager at Microsoft's CRM team. He was invited by the folks at FASA studios to give the game a try, and GameSetWatch reports that he's actually pretty pleased with the situation after all. From the post: "Yes folks: it's share price increasingly good... Artwork: Feels like Shadowrun. Good Job! The SR universe has a lot of different types of artwork (as Tim pointed out yesterday). From the gritty stuff in the early source books to the more cartoonish work in the more recent editions. Gameplay: Feels like Shadowrun."
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Informative)
However, I reckon that whether he works for MS or not is irrelevant given that Xbox 360 owners will be able to download demos of the game from Live to see if they personally like it before they buy it. Plus at least he's up front enough to blog as an MS employee, rather than it being some convoluted viral marketing campaign. And let's be honest, we've all got a right to voice comments about stuff - even if it's made by companies we work for.
Incidentally, the demo download is one of the best things about Xbox Live, because I can get a demo of pretty much any game instantly. So a tiny slither of kudos to MS for doing this, rather than me having to reply on magazine reviews and glossy box pics.
Re:Let me get this straight... (Score:3, Informative)
I know a guy whose dream job is to be able to make music. He loves writing music, growing up he spent countless hours learning about music and acoustics. He's also damn good with math. When he graduated college with a math/comp sci degree, I was startled, but, as he explained, if you go to school to study music, they will teach how NOT to make the music you want to be able to.
Before finishing his degree, Microsoft had already signed him on, and agreed to pay moving expenses from Boston to Seattle, more or less. This man hates MS, comes from a family of devoted Mac users. But he saw the dollar signs and decided that if he made enough money quickly enough, he could spend the rest of his life on music.
Now, John (name changed) is not the easiest guy to get along with, and upon getting to MS and beginning work, he found all manner of coding practices that he disagreed with. And he was vociferous about it, angering almost everyone above him, save those few souls who saw that, indeed, by trimming this out and doing that, it would make a more efficient function. John was promoted because of his ability to see these flaws and fixes. This lead to people writing WORSE code that he was then forced to fix. After a year or so of this, John quit.
Are you going to be found interviewed on gamesetwatch.com talking about this? I'm guessing no.
When John left, he told the people above him at MS exactly why he was leaving: the department was turning out shitty code and no one other than he seemed to care about it; that struggling to work in their environment and under their terms was destroying his ability to pursue the creativity that was a part of his life.
Less than one year after leaving MS, John was, again, living in Boston when he was contacted by the head of the department he had been working for. The worst offenders whom John had cited had been fired and MS was happy to pay his moving expenses, again, and reinstate him in his old position if he would come back. It's not the same case as what you mention, no, but it does demonstrate that *shock* Microsoft does listen to internal feedback, even if it happens to be scathingly negative, and is willing to make changes to improve itself. Maybe not always, but it happens.