Very Real Torment

Unreal Tournament 3 has shipped, and lo it is very pretty. I've got a copy here, and I quite enjoy it, but the reason I bought it was for the map and mod community. I couldn't give a damn about firing it up online and fragging people on the Internets in death match, because there's too many 13 year olds with autism who will put me through the wringer.

And fuck 'em, I say. And, there's only about 50,000 of them anyway, so it's a bit like watching a Western with tumbleweed blowing through a ghost town.

No, the real joy of UT has been maps and mods, and getting a Big Fun LAN Game going. Community Bonus Packs, Explosive Ammo, and Alien Swarm - I love you all.

However, a small fly in the ointment has been that this generation's UT has had a bit of a ruffled start. It's not even out on Xbox 360, because they can't sort out the DLC through Microsoft's draconian system, and on PS3, the DLC doesn't really exist either.

In this article, Tycho makes some really good points. Something that I take home from this is that the Epic Hype Machine is working overtime. Back in the day, you could assume Epic were good guys making good games. Now you get this shit with UT on PS3, and you've all heard about the lawsuit. When I see this stuff in the news, I start thinking that something's no longer quite right in happy town, and that Epic had best look to themselves a bit more to bring that extra bit of polish out.

If you've got a game that's sales are shit, it needs to become a positive experience for customers, and quickly. For UT3 to not have sold 500,000 units already is a Big Issue. There's problems with UT3 - not enough game modes, that kind of thing - and giving your customers some painful process to install mods on the PS3 version is just wrong. The hype when this was being developed was that there would be this wonderland on the Sony console where you could just download maps in a browser - seems it's not quite that slick. I mean FFS, having to own a PC, download the map, put it on a USB device, copy it the consoles... console owners are not PC owners, and you shouldn't assume that. They want a simple experience, and it needs to Just Work™. The current situation is not simple, and it's hardly Just Working.

Epic: fix it, and fix it quick. Your game is quietly sinking beneath the waves, and you're going to have to drop some new content on the PC (hint: maps, mods, and game types) as well as fix how PS3 owners get their content (and whilst we're at it, give them the same content PC users get - it's what we're all expecting considering the huge delay delivering this experience on XBLA).