[Luvian]

Well, it's complicated. Take a look at a couple years ago with games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Planescape: Torment, Morrowind, and NWN. Yes, back then it was about money too, but the companies cared about their customers.

They were complete when they were released, they had original content, and in most case the devs kept working on the game and creating new content and patches after release. Morrowing had some extra plugins, NWN got a tons of stuff etc.

Then we got Lionheart, a game that I'd say wasn't even 40% completed when it was released. There was the Fallout console game debacle, where they wanted to create a game with rock and roll, almost naked chicks, and big guns. There was Return to the Temple of Elemental evil. Remember how Atari didn't want to patch the game at all and only did after the community released a user made patch? How about Oblivion? They are now selling the extra content they used to give away to the fans last game.

NWN2? We couuld probably write a whole book about this one. NWN1 was about the community, they're still releasing content and tools for it, it was marketted as the computer version of D&D, with DM and all that. NWN2? They admitted they are focusing on the single player campaign, that there is no DM client or support for persistent worlds, and you can bet they are going to sell all the module they release for it, huge departure from the first one and that's just the surface, I'm sure there are more broken promises other people could talk about. These days it's always like that, companies release games before they are 100% complete, don't want to spend time to patch them up, and in some cases even try to charge you for more stuff.

Now you're saying. "That's stupid, if they do that people will stop buying their products and they will go bankrupt". And you'd be right, but you're overestimating these companies, how many gaming companies went bankrupt these last years, or are on the point to?

They only have the short term in mind. Before you figure out you got ripped on a game, you have to buy it, and in most places, you can't return used up games. A game can sell for millions and still get bad ratings, and they don't care, they got their millions and only paid a fraction of what a good complete and original game would have cost them.

I think the problem is that these companies are owned by shareholders. The guy is probably on 10 different board in 10 different companies, he probably never played a video game, he want money at all cost, and if after too much abuse it look like the company is going down? Sell and move on, like locusts.

[ 08-27-2006, 05:54 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]