GFWL head part of recent layoffs

[J Arcane]

So saith Dean Takahashi.

I'm not sure what this means for GFWL. Part of me chalks it up to a continuation of MS' obvious prioritization of the 360 over the PC, but then another part of me remembers that GFWL really sucks, so maybe they guy just deserved to be fired.

Still, not exactly boding well for MS' attempts to convince us they really care about PC gaming, honest . . . we just shut down all our PC game studios and canned the guy responsible for one of our two main software initiatives for PC gaming . . .

[Telefrog]

Yeah, if anyone deserved to be fired, it was the guy in charge of GFWL. The whole campaign has been a joke since day one.

I'm with you in that I doubt his firing was solely based on the performance of the program. I think it has more to do with Microsoft's priorities in gaming. Obviously, the console side is a lot more profitable and less prone to piracy...

[LongStepMantis]

I mostly use my PC to play retro games. I don't buy new titles very often. I still keep up with a fair amount of the newer PC trends/games/programs though.

That being said I wasn't even aware GFWL still existed. Which says at least a little about their "success". Just saying.

[Libuke]

It is very clunky and slow, to many menus to go through to talk to someone etc, especially compared to steams overlay. To me is not very successful and not a very good product.

[biosc1]

Reminds me...playing Kane & Lynch for the pc last night and there was no mouse support for the GFWL overlay. All had to be done using the keyboard. Even when there is mouse support, such as Fallout 3, it's finicky.

[MagGnome]

GFWL is a joke and I wish it would just go away. PC gamers don't need it. It's not like MS has done us any favors lately.

My worry is that they will sign more exclusive deals ala Fallout 3, in effect forcing us to use their crappy platform to access content. The last thing the PC needs is a walled garden like Xbox Live.

[ShivaX]

DoW2 uses it and its fairly annoying. It gets the job done, but its insanely inefficient at doing anything, especially the most basic of all functions: chatting.

You can't just talk to someone in a pop-up or with keyboard commands. Oh no. You can send them email. Slow email. If they want to invite you to play a game with them, they send an email. You respond. Everything requires 3-5 more clicks than it should.

As an added bonus it tends to fubar things a lot as well. That could be on Relic's end of things, but nothing is as fun as being thrown into random games when you're grouped with friends and having no way to get out of it beyond Alt-F4.

[MagGnome]

That is really disappointing to hear. Company of Heroes has a great multiplayer system. Why they couldn't have gone with that instead of GFWL is beyond me.

Do you have to install this even if you buy the game over Steam? That's the case with Fallout 3, right?

[GigaFuzz]

Yes, the game's multiplayer system IS GFWL, and you have to be signed in to do anything.

In Fallout 3 GFWL worked fine for me, but then all it was doing was giving achievements. In DoW2, you're most likely going to be sending out and receiving game invites. As was said earlier, this is a little too clunky. If they added in a couple of extra shortcuts for sending & receiving invites, and joining people's games in progress it'd feel a lot smoother. My flatmate and I nearly always get NAT errors when trying to accept each other's invites as well, and have to wait for the game to appear on the games list.

[ShivaX]

Originally Posted by MagGnome

That is really disappointing to hear. Company of Heroes has a great multiplayer system. Why they couldn't have gone with that instead of GFWL is beyond me.

Do you have to install this even if you buy the game over Steam? That's the case with Fallout 3, right?

All the matchmaking uses GFWL, so you have to install it if you ever want to play multiplayer. It does a passable job as a matchmaker, though mismatches are common (hard to say if thats because of the limited pool of players or what at this point).

Its just a clunky system that feels like what it is: A port of a console interface to a PC environment. Also I hate that there is no push-to-talk for mics. Not a huge issue most of the time, but dear lord at the end of game screen having to listen to some dude's television or heavy breathing makes me so happy that I'm playing with CoGgers who either mute, don't have a mic or keep the background noise bearable.

I think I deafened Clanner going for a smoke by accidently placing my headset on top of my computer so he could listen to my fans run while I was gone.

[MagGnome]

Wow, it sounds like a complete mess. I'm not surprised, but I am frustrated that this is happening. What is Relic thinking?

[Hotcod]

no push to talk is unforgivable really, i don't like using the current system. I have to use headphones beacuse my speakers can trigger the mic, i have other people using the room and often talking to me and i don't want to have my private conversations spread all around the place. I mean given how much we use mics when playing tf2 and how we don't use them at all when playing dow2 it's silly

[ClannerDelta]

Originally Posted by ShivaX

I think I deafened Clanner going for a smoke by accidently placing my headset on top of my computer so he could listen to my fans run while I was gone.

I do remember that. I ended up just taking my headphones off until you typed in chat.

Another thing is its inability to register my mic. It works for every single other program I've ever tried to use it on without fuss. Yet GFWL just can't accept that.

It's a bad system. If it was as good as the 360 counterpart. It wouldn't be nearly as bad. But it's clunky by console standards ... the fuck?

[total]

Damn...I have 0 issues in GFWL. Granted the only games I've used it for are Shadowrun, Fallout 3 (for a very short time...as in like 20 minutes) and the DoW II beta. Also, I am using a 360 controller for everything but DoW. I also use my 360 wireless headset and regular wired headset for chatting. Again without problems. I am running this all on Windows 7 with really no issues at all. I was actually just thinking the other day that I've actually come to enjoy GFWL as it lets me keep in contact with my 360 friends and what not. I do wish you could scroll through people on your friends list and just hit X on the controller to invite them to a game.

Anywho you assholes have somehow managed to get me to defend MS quite a bit lately and now I just feel dirty. I'm going to go install Linux on my PS3 for no good reason just to ground myself.

[Telefrog]

So far, I've had no issues with GFWL in Fallout 3 other than it's uselessness in that game. I don't care about my Gamerscore enough to give a damn about getting Achievements, and in a strictly singleplayer game I couldn't care less about knowing which of you guys are currently logged in. (No offense.)

The only other GFWL game I've owned is Universe at War, which to be fair was a pretty mediocre game anyway. Certainly, no one was busting down the servers to get on and play a match against me on that generic pile of rubbish.

[Cit Phil Cit]

So far I have completely managed to avoid GFWL, except in FO3: and it crashed whenever it tried to work. I'll hope for a mediocre experience with it playing DoW2.

[Ancalagon]

Originally Posted by biosc1

Reminds me...playing Kane & Lynch for the pc last night and there was no mouse support for the GFWL overlay. All had to be done using the keyboard. Even when there is mouse support, such as Fallout 3, it's finicky.

I remember how tricky it was getting that damn thing to work in Fallout 3. Which is ironic - one of the largest software developers in the world that wrote the most used operating system cant write a good interface for its gaming platform. WTF?

I'd love to know more about the politics behind this, but I suspect its more because of the current economic climate and the platform's profitability than the now ex-head of GFWL's job performance.

[J Arcane]

Originally Posted by Ancalagon

I remember how tricky it was getting that damn thing to work in Fallout 3. Which is ironic - one of the largest software developers in the world that wrote the most used operating system cant write a good interface for its gaming platform. WTF?

I'd love to know more about the politics behind this, but I suspect its more because of the current economic climate and the platform's profitability than the now ex-head of GFWL's job performance.

I suspect the convo went something like this:

"Quick, we need another marketing point for Vista. Lets try hitting the gaming angle again, DX10 isn't doing the job and it's all for the vidcard guys anyway."

"Well, Live seems to be really popular on the Xbox, maybe we can just port that over somehow?"

"Excellent idea, but how quick can you get it done, release is coming up pretty soon."

"We'll just direct port it. Embed it by game instead of in the OS itself, so all the implementation work gets dumped off on game developers instead of having us do the work. As a bonus, we'll even leave the control scheme completely intact, so we have another excuse to try and offload all those wired 360 controllers no one wants."

"Brilliant! But doesn't Live on 360 have a fee attached to it? You think we can squeeze some extra dough out of this even?"

"Well, the WoW players are all coughing up $15 bucks a month, so they must be used to it by now. And if they complain, we'll just go free with it a couple of months later, and they'll all flock to it anyway."

"Excellent. Have it done and on my desk by Friday."

[H.Bogard]

L4D does multiplayer implementation right.

Fucking online friends appearing straight in the multiplayer menu. THATS HOW YOU DO INTERFACES, ASSHOLES!

Sorry for the caps.
I'm really ticked off by how long it takes for me to get a game going in DoWII only to end up with some dude lagging all 5 of the other players. There's nothing but a "search for games' button and it shows absolutely no information. That shouldn't happen. Ever.

Game's still a must buy, mind you!

[Voodoo]

Originally Posted by H.Bogard

L4D does multiplayer implementation right.

Fucking online friends appearing straight in the multiplayer menu. THATS HOW YOU DO INTERFACES, ASSHOLES!

Sorry for the caps.
I'm really ticked off by how long it takes for me to get a game going in DoWII only to end up with some dude lagging all 5 of the other players. There's nothing but a "search for games' button and it shows absolutely no information. That shouldn't happen. Ever.

Game's still a must buy, mind you!

Noting that, I am also quite confused as to why they are using GFWL at all. They released the beta MP and are going to release the game one Steam. Why didn't they take that extra step to integrate SteamWorks into DoW 2?!

I know of of their frequent responses is due to TrueSkill matchmaking. I don't see matchmaking in Multiplayer to be that difficult. You play, you get a history and you get matched with people that have similar histories...

Here is an example...

Player 1
Wins = 2
Losses = 20
Drops = 5

That player presses Automatch with a preference on 1 vs 1. The system would go through their friends list first to see if anybody's history is close and suggest to play with them. If the player had nobody on the friend's list that wanted to play then a public search would be executed. I can't imagine that this process would be difficult, especially with a game that makes you login to play multiplayer. A query to a database containing play history of those that are online at the moment would suffice.