Is Doug Lambardi a bad person?

[Pi Mu Rho]

Doug Lambardi might be a bad person, but I have no idea who he is.

On the other hand, Doug Lombardi is a cool guy.

 

[Dougy]

Theres only one good doug.

me.

EDIT: you do all realize im Doug lombardi and ive been posting just to annoy you all right?

 

[The Mullinator]

Theres only one good doug.

me.

EDIT: you do all realize im Doug lombardi and ive been posting just to annoy you all right?

OMG IM GOING TO KILLL JOO FOR NOT TELLING US ABOUT HL2 GETTIN DELAYED!!!!!!111!11!

Its so like Doug Lombardi to come in and purposely piss off the community because that is of course what an evil PR guy does.

/ignorantfan

 

[phantomdesign]

Pointless flaming. I hate XXXXXX threads should be closed because they don't help community attitude. I dom't mean to try to "lock down the truth" as some would call it, but hater threads are pointless and ruin communities.

 

[CreedoG]

Maybe you should just stop bothering to follow HL2 then

That's the funny part. As much as I hate the PR side of valve, I think they're incredible game designers. And I think they really are the innovators in the FPS arena. They just don't slap on new graphics and call it the next game. They think of how they can improve the genre in every aspect. I have massive respect for the game designers and developers at Valve. And I know those talented people have nothing to do with the Marketing side of Valve. And I have a lot of confidence in the fact that Half-Life 2 probably will be the best first person shooter ever made. Why else would I care so much?

 

[CreedoG]

Heh, I just thought it was funny that you bleeped 'hell' but didn't bleep 'a--hole'. 'Hell' isn't even one of the 7 dirty words is it?

I didn't type hell. I typed f u c k. And I didn't bleep it, the message boards did.

 

[Keeson]

Asshole Lombardi.....

They started out saying a 9/30 release date. They knew about the delay as early as May, but wouldn't tell the fans. They told the mags. They told online sites. They told their publishers. But they didn't tell us. Fine, whatever, like someone said, "They don't owe the fans anything."

On 9/23, when they finally graced us with their presense, and admitted the game wasn't quite finished, they also, out of the kindness of their heart, said they were shooting for a "Holiday Release". They didn't have to say this, but they did.

The real reason for announcing this release time frame was so that, people like me, would go out and buy a 9800/9600, in anticipation. That way, ATI could still make big bucks for the holidays, and wouldn't sue Valve for breach of contract. I can pretty much guarantee that Valve never had any intention of meeting a holiday release. On 9/23, to make a holiday release, they had to be 6-10 weeks away from going gold. Do you really think they thought they were 6-10 weeks from going gold? I mean, it's almost May, and we're most likely looking at an August/September release date.

However, due to their misinformation, I went out and bought a $325 card I could have today for $200. Sure, they don't owe us anything, but the "holiday release" thing was pretty ****ing shitty. Straight out lying to fans, to keep corporate partners happy. Commercialism rules. Valve sure learned a lot from their Microsoft background.

And now here's the REALLY shitty part. They never said another word to us about the release date until right now. When they missed their "holiday release date", they didn't bother telling us it was delayed again, before, or after. We didn't hear about this "Summer Release" UNTIL SOME GUY FROM CNN CALLED UP DOUG LOMBARDI (in february), and since CNN is soooo much more important to Valve than their fans, they were more than willing to tell this guy that they were shooting for a "Summer Release" .. NOT US. NOT THE FANS. Some ****ing dude from CNN. We had been begging for release information for months, and couldn't get a peep from Valve. And they've just now, in the last two weeks, confirmed the summer release date to the fans. (2 months after telling the guy from CNN).

They have kept us in the dark about the release since the start. Valve's PR was HORRENDOUS during the TF2 scandal, but this is getting to be just about as bad. In case you weren't around for the TF2 thing, it has pretty much gone down just like this. Except that after E3, we never heard from TF2 again. Imagine if you didn't hear about HL2 again after this year's E3, for another 3+ (still going) years

I'm not sure if Doug Lombardi is a bad person per se, but he sure as **** is an asshole. We've been treated like step children. But luckily, they can treat us like absolute shit, and we'll still buy their game. And they know it.

:thumbs: Ok this is a great post!!! (but there were some others in this thread that made good points)

It sums up the "reasons" for making up the phony Sept 30th date and the phony "holidays 2003" release date. It is simply all about the money Valve got from ATI. It's nothing personal but the money is the important thing to Valve. The fans can go screw themselves!!!

I've read so many times here is these forums "Why would Valve say Sept 30th and not deliver???" and "Why did Valve not announce the delay earlier???"

Money!!!

Personally I think ATI put Valve up to the Sept. 30th release date to coincide with the Alcatraz Island Sept 30th release of the Radeon XT lineup.

In early 2003, ATI and Valve must have been talking, since as we know Valve showed up in ATI's booth at E3 2003. There was speculation Doom3 would be coming out in 2003 sometime. Now ATI burned their bridges with ID because of the D3 Alpha leak. Since Nvidia would likely align themselves with ID which would fuel video card sales, ATI needed to counter by signing up Valve to a marketing agreement. ATI probably mentioned to Valve about the Sept 30th Radeon XT launch.

:angry: Lombardi probably said "hey ATI, it'll be tight but we could have HL2 ready by Sept 30th, how bout a packing deal!!!!"

It's hard to turn down easy money like what Valve got from ATI. Valve's hands were tied and they had to maintain the Sept 30th release until the last minute for the sake of ATI. Holidays 2003 was just another concession for ATI. Valve helps ATI hawk video cards both before and after Sept 30th, justifying the 6 million they got. Being honest about the "real" HL2 release date would not be good for ATI's sales and hence the reason for one phony date after the other.

I would bet if the hack never happened Lombardi would have been spouting all kinds of bullshit, hyping the impending holiday 2003 and "go buy an ATI card, they rock!!!, 9800XT is the way to go".

The hack knocked the wind out of Valve's sails and dealt ATI's marketing strategy a serious body blow. Did you know the day after the leak ATI own PR people denied all knowledge of it, claiming there was no leak... bet they were livid...

Lombardi is smart!!!! He makes Valve a bunch of ATI money, he gets CNN coverage for the game- while ignoring the fans, he hawks the source engine to other companies with a 25 minute E3 source commercial, him and Gabe had a go at hawking the HL2 movie rights around Hollywood during last summer when the hype was thick and he uses all that HL2 hype to create a nice steam install base for future profits.

:O The real brilliance of Doug and his marketing is that the only people that know how scummy Doug and Valve are - are an obscure bunch of fans hanging out at HL2.net, who of course will buy the game anyway and whose sales total only represent but a drop in the HL2 bucket. The millions of mainstream CNN watchers (Doug's real target fans, not the "true" fans at this website) are totally oblivious to Valve and their BS and will eat the game up when its released.

 

[CreedoG]

:thumbs: Ok this is a great post!!! (but there were some others in this thread that made good points)

......

.

Lots of crazy stuff in your post, but it could be spot on.

I hate to be all conspiracy theory, because it sounds so neurotic. But out of my whole post, there is one fact in there that you can't deny. Valve told us they were targetting the "Holiday Season" for release, when they never had any intention whatsoever of making that date. Why? One thing's for sure, there IS a reason. I'm not sure if my reasoning is correct or not (guaranteeing ATI has a good holiday sale of 9800/9600's), but it does somewhat make sense. What do the level headed people around here think about this?

 

[Styloid]

too many people + too little information = lots of crazy stuff.

 

[Keeson]

Lots of crazy stuff in your post, but it could be spot on.

I hate to be all conspiracy theory, because it sounds so neurotic. But out of my whole post, there is one fact in there that you can't deny. Valve told us they were targetting the "Holiday Season" for release, when they never had any intention whatsoever of making that date. Why? One thing's for sure, there IS a reason. I'm not sure if my reasoning is correct or not (guaranteeing ATI has a good holiday sale of 9800/9600's), but it does somewhat make sense. What do the level headed people around here think about this?

As far as I can tell the "level headed" people at this site are about 85% pro Valve and totally ignore all of their BS and think they are a lovely group and pat them on the back every chance they get... Personally I think there are alot of good people at Valve, but I think Fragmaster is right when he says there are "a few bad apples" wrecking it.



:dork: ... So anyway, on Sept. 12 we did receive an incentive to increase our urge to buy an ATI video card, a movie was released from none other than Valve's Doug Lombardi. :imu:

The missing E3 bink videos??? Nope!!! :flame:

We get a High Dynamic Rendering (HDR) video that also shows cool bump/specular mapped textures/antlion skin. This was a tie in with the ATI shader days where Valve released all those benchmarks show how ATI cards own when running HL2. The only video cards that can do HDR are - you guessed it - ATI video cards (Nvidia can't at least not yet until their newest cards are available at retail)

The interesting thing about the HDR video was that Doug Lombardi chose not to release it on Steam, rather he posted it for a few hours at VERC website(Valve Editing Resource Center) where it was picked up by Fileplanet, Fileshack etc. instantly before it was pulled down off that site.

You see Doug wasn't making this video for the fans but for ATI as an advertisement. He needed to distribute it as widely and quickly as possible so he avoided Steam and went back to the old distribution (faster/more reliable and IMHO better) method solely for ATI's benefit.

Hmmmm.... :cheese: makes you wonder if Steam is so good afterall... I mean Doug didn't trust it enough to use it for something important like ATI HDR video. No, Doug wouldn't want to screwup ATI's ad by putting it out on Steam. No way!!!!

Doug wanted us all to run out and furiously buy ATI video cards to play HL2 on Sept 30. Doug of course knew full well he would be shamelessly announcing the game's delay in a couple of weeks. So Doug helps ATI clear old 9600pro/9800pro cards from the shelves, then in 2 weeks announces the delay, then Valve helps ATI launch the 9600XT/9800XT radeons on Sept 30th at Alcatraz with the HL2 packin coupon offer while changing the release date to Holidays 2003 to make sure those cards sell well for Christmas.

Valve makes money, Valve's partner ATI makes money, the fans get Nada, Zip, Zilch, Zero, Nothing, Nil :angry: . If you bought an XT card you probably at least got a HL2 coupon (or rather the equivalent of a Duke Nukem Forever coupon). This coupon pretty much forces you to use Steam in order to get the game in a timely manner on release which in my opinion just adds insult to injury.