[bf1942] EA/Dice rant

[Bill Wood]

Have to agree 100%.

-----Original Message-----
From: Scratch Monkey [mailto:ScratchMonkey at SewingWitch.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2003 11:28 AM
To: bf1942 at icculus.org
Subject: [bf1942] EA/Dice rant


--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.