EA/Dice rant

[Scratch Monkey]

--On Tuesday, February 04, 2003 1:48 PM +0100 Christopher Kunz
<chris at de-punkt.de> wrote:

> gebumel at bluemail.ch wrote:
>> Think you dont understand me. EA say Linux Server is soon after BF
>> release, but they let make it by one person, that have some ohter thinks
>> to do, UT2k3, MoAA etc. My Linux Server cost me 50 Euro/Month. 
> 
> I think you don't understand what this here is about. This is not the
> list for people who think unproductive flaming gets them anywhere. We're
> testing a server here.

I took him to be ranting at EA for putting so little resources into this,
not a shot at Ryan. Has anyone on the Dice team ever written a large
multi-player game before? The design of the Windows server and the
difficulty in building a dedicated server from it suggests not. The lack of
logging and the poor remote-control system also suggests that no one at
Dice has even administered a server before, and they have no idea what
admins want.

I interpret gebumel's mention of his server cost as a point of comparison
to the investment that EA is putting into getting the Linux server
developed. In other words, we're all subsidizing EA's client sales with the
cost of our  server operations. We accept that cost, but it feels like EA
is nickel-and-diming us on development costs.