Sam Bass on the EA Podcast

[Sonic 296]

Sam Bass, one of the Lead Designers of Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight appears as a guest on one of the latest editions of the EA Podcast, hosted by Jeff Green. And apparently, Jeff Green (an EA employee) has been very out spoken and highly critical about the DRM control methods found in Command & Conquer 4. In this podcast Sam Bass discusses the controversial, just released Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight. This podcast is worth listening to because Sam is more candid in his comments than you might expect.

 

Click here or on the image above to listen.

[Mighty BOB! 5]

Ha. Sonic, you should warn us that it's more than an hour long. I'm 30 minutes in and it isn't even half done, and Sam Bass is still being interviewed, and they haven't mentioned the DRM yet.

[recover 2]

The interview continues to about 50:00. After that Jeff talks about some technical problems (= DRM) he's been having. And after that they talk with the other guy about EA comics.

 

A lot of the interview is about Sam Bass's background in game development, and some C&C4 development history.

[Sonic 296]

Sam Bass is still being interviewed, and they haven't mentioned the DRM yet.

Yeah they don't talk about that in the podcast. Once the Sam Bass section ended I stopped it. What I was referencing was how vocal Jeff Green has been about the C&C 4 DRM. He posted on his Twitter page and stuff about it. More here http://www.bluesnews.com/s/108706/ea-on-c+c4-drm

 

For those that don't know Jeff Green is the EA.com editor-in-chief.

[Mighty BOB! 5]

Oh whoops, yeah I misread the news item a bit. But yeah he does talk about the DRM, but not with Sam Bass. (It's after the interview segment for only a couple minutes.)

 

Yeah I know about Jeff's stance on the DRM. I read about his twitter post and disapproval of the connection requirement on another site.

 

So the C&C-related section of the podcast is 53 minutes long. And now I need to go to sleep because it's 6:40AM. I may listen to the rest later. Do they talk about the Mass Effect comics during the comic section of the podcast or just the Dragon Age comic?

[Silverthorn 0]

I just read that small news since I don't have time to listen to the podcast. No way, not because I'm a big C&C4 hater which I'm sure you all remember, because I'm pretty darn busy with my jobs again.

 

Anyway, if those connection keeps on fluctuating and causes SP to become unplayable and cannot save player progresses, then how about those MMO games that can save those profiles? What if there's a disconnection happened during gameplay and then either reconnect itself or disconnect permanently until you restart your modem? And yes, Steam is the solution for this game, but too bad the dev team didn't thought of that earlier on.

Edited March 29, 2010 by Silverthorn

[Koen 2]

I found it interesting to hear about the C&C4 history. Basically the game started out as an experimental take on RTS (by the people who do the console ports). It's a bit like Sole Survivor, which also started more as a side project. And by the time they wanted to make it a C&C game, the only way to get budget was to make it C&C4. Sam Bass and Jeremy Feasel were brought on-board only after the whole gameplay had been drafted. "But, like, there's no harvesting". But they couldn't change the core mechanic of the game anymore.

[Nmenth 291]

Very unfortunate, because as an offshoot, this game would have been fine. Too bad they needed a budget...

[recover 2]

I'm glad we all agree that this is a DRM now, even people over at EA. I lost some respect for Apoc before when he said that the always-online requirement was not a DRM.

[Gben 20]

I just got a chance to listen to the interview. I really enjoyed the frank responses to the interview.

As had been said many times, it's a shame this couldn't have been done as a spin-off. It would have received much more respect me and probably from the community.

 

I would have preferred, and I'm hesitant to say this, to release the game with no single player campaign at all, and instead use those resources on refining the MP.