Increasing trend of PC games being rushed out unfinished?

[Memnoch]

I was browsing the Medieval II Total War forums at www.totalwar.org (as I have the game and am about to play it) and I came across this thread listing over 100 bugs in the game. So far not many of them appear to be showstoppers, but there's a lot of criticism of CA in that forum about "shipping a game unfinished". I believe CA are promising to fix a lot of the issues in their upcoming first patch.

This struck me, as the people over at the NWN2 forums (and here, to think about it) have also been whinging about how NWN2 seems to be unfinished by Obsidian, and contains a lot of bugs, bad coding or whatever. A good example was the fact that there was a patch already available the day NWN2 shipped, with a lot of "new" content in it. Obsidian have already issued three patches for NWN2, each of them fixing bugs in the game.

Then you go back to KOTOR2, which also seemed to be unfinished (the game files had a lot of content which looked like it should've been in the game but was left out for whatever reason).

Those are just three examples I've noticed in the last couple of years. In all cases the games had to be launched to be on shelf in time for the pre-Christmas selling season, when the sales uplifts are crucial. They've then been "fixed" (or in KOTOR2's case, not been fixed) afterwards, with patches and whatnot.

There could be valid reasons of course; there's such a proliferation of systems configs these days that it's probably impossible to test for issues with all of them - but the games I highlighted above seem to have enough bugs on enough "common" systems to be more than coincidental.

Thing is, I don't remember this happening with earlier games like BG2 or KOTOR1, or before that. Maybe games were simpler then?

So I'd like to raise the following points for discussion:

1. Are game publishers shipping more "unfinished" or "incomplete" games these days, in order to meet year-end sales targets, and then fix them with patches afterwards? In other words, is this premeditated for economic reasons?

2. Is this because of a ) poor project management; b ) unreasonable timeframes; or c ) both?

3. Is this fair on people who do not have internet connections (what little of them there still are) and cannot download patches?

4. If so, is this a good idea for companies in the long term? In the short term they might get the uplifts that they need (and in Atari/Infogrames' case, desperately need) but wouldn't this affect their long term branding and credibility? On the other hand, if they wait and miss the holiday launch seasons (end Nov) they might not be around to reap the fruits of their labour (I'm not sure what cash burn rates these companies have - they might really need those sales to survive).

4. Do you feel it will change or only get worse? Should we all start buying consoles?

Comments?

[ 12-11-2006, 02:27 AM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]

[Zaleukos]

Hehe, Medieval 2 is ironically one of the most polished new releases I've gotten my hands on this year, way ahead of Sid Meier's Railroads, Gothic III, and Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales (arguably the buggiest game to ever occupy space on a HD of mine).

1) My instinctive response is that this isnt all that new. Daggerfall, Darklands, Ultima IX, Elite II, Frontier: First Encounters... I've had a lot of experience with crappy first releases, and we tend to forget . There is one difference compared to the past though, and that is that devs and publishers feel that since "everyone" is online nowadays you can expect your customers to download patches to a larger extent. In a way this makes it easier to meet deadlines. It would however surprise me if it is more economical overall to release a buggy product, as patching requires resources that could have been devoted to creating new products.

2) C. Unrealistic deadlines are symptoms of poor project management From my experience with other areas of software (or other) engineering you have three groups involved. The marketing/sales people who push for a deadline but have limited grasp of the capabilities and difficulty of technology, the creative people who come up with great concepts but tend to underestimate the difficulty of implementation, and the engineers/programmers. It's the second or the first group that plans the project, and the first one that sets the deadline.

Then there are some problems caused by the rapid improvement of gaming technology. If you withhold your release for too long then your technology (the graphics engine for instance) might be obsolete. Couple this with there being a few highly preferrable release points in the year (meaning that it is imperative to get a game out before christmas or some other holidays) and you have a situation where a missed deadline (which often is set by external factors rather than by a realistic estimate of how long it would take to finish the project) could make the project a pure money sink...

Finally there is the fact that games do become bigger. Customers except more content with each new release, and more refined graphics/gameplay/AI/whatnot. These improvements do require more manpower and a stronger cash flow, which makes it more costly to miss a deadline.

3) Of course not. But the world isnt fair...

4) It will probably get worse. I can see two ways of reversing it. First reviewers (that do help quite a few buyers make up their mind) need to be more critical towards technical problems in games, and reduce the amount of uncritical raving about unfinished preview versions. Second we as consumers need to start using the great power we have in a market economy. Namely that of voting with our feet. We put up with way too much crap from publishers and developers.

Since I dont expect review quality to go up anytime soon (to me it rather seems like reviewing is following general trends becoming more tabloid-like outside the niche channels) it is up to the gamers to bite the bullet and deal with this.

I'm not sure consoles will remain problem free either. Some titles (such as Morrowind a few years ago) already took bugginess and crashing into the console world.
We are also seeing consoles with online capability now, making it possible to offer patches to console games as well, offering the same kind of temptation to devs. But maybe the fact that the console market have more "joe blow" ordinary consumers that have less patience with this crap can moderate that?

[JrKASperov]

1. Yes, but old news.

2. None of the above. Greed is the answer. And that trend is most vividly shown on the huge leap to consoles.

3. Eh if you don't have an internet connection, you're not bound to have fun with most new games anyway, since SP games seem to be rare. Good ones that is.

4. Yes it sucks both for us and the companies. They will die off and decent companies might grow, or the circle repeats itself. Interplay didn't learn, and so doesn't Atari.

5. Never. Consoles were the whole start of this mess.

[Olorin]

I don't know if we'll see a real effort on the part of publishers to get rid of the bugs before release unless there is enough pressure brought by gamers to change the return policy on games. Currently, if I go out and by the latest release, only to find that it is unplayable due to bugs, I can't take it back for a refund. I realize that piracy is what brought on this no returns policy in the first place, but because we can't return games because of the bugs, it takes away a lot of the consumers power.

I do think that we'll be seeing more and more people holding off on purchasing new games until they've been out long enough to hear good feedback from other gamers, and for the patches to come out. This will push developers to fix the bugs before release because once people hold off on their purchase, they might hear bad feedback on their favorite forums, and end up passing on the game completely.

I don't know what will happen with consoles. I'm assuming that the new consoles can only get online through broadband connections, and there are enough people that still have only dial-up or no connection at all to keep the console market honest for now. I doubt that they could refuse to refund someone for a bugged game if they don't have a way to get the patch to them. Of course, the games that are made for online play might start coming out bugged.

Personally, I don't play many new games. I'm still having fun with the older titles, and I don't have the money to upgrade my computer or buy a next gen console. If I want something new, I browse the used PS2 games for something I haven't played yet, or find an old PC game that will work on my system.

[Kyrvias]

Quite frankly, it saddens me that so many people could be so greedy.

I can only still have hope with Bioware and what the future will bring...

[Yorick]

Originally posted by JrKASperov: Consoles were the whole start of this mess.

Why?

[johnny]

Haven't encountered any major or even lesser bugs in MTW2 yet, so i guess i can't comment on that, but since i'm a member over on the Rome TR forums, that also discusses MTW issues, i know that there are plenty of people experiencing numerous bugs, nothing big, but still...

About the earlier mentioned Age of Pirates... if i ever meet the man who is responsible for the release of this game, i'm gonna bitchslap around town for a day. This game didn't just have some bugs, this game had a bug that's responsible for not being able to continue the mainquest. Figure buying a game for 50 bucks, and you happily run home to install your brand new game only to find out that it's simply not playable, and you're going to have to wait several weeks until a patch helps you back on track. There are few things that piss me off more than situations like that. From where i stand it's a clear ripoff, an insult to the customer.

[Felix The Assassin]

Same tune! Commodore 64, different verus, Dual core PC. Call it reversion!

[ 12-12-2006, 05:26 PM: Message edited by: Felix The Assassin ]

[Yorick]

Originally posted by johnny: Haven't encountered any major or even lesser bugs in MTW2 yet, so i guess i can't comment on that, but since i'm a member over on the Rome TR forums, that also discusses MTW issues, i know that there are plenty of people experiencing numerous bugs, nothing big, but still... About the earlier mentioned Age of Pirates... if i ever meet the man who is responsible for the release of this game, i'm gonna bitchslap around town for a day. This game didn't just have some bugs, this game had a bug that's responsible for not being able to continue the mainquest. Figure buying a game for 50 bucks, and you happily run home to install your brand new game only to find out that it's simply not playable, and you're going to have to wait several weeks until a patch helps you back on track. There are few things that piss me off more than situations like that. From where i stand it's a clear ripoff, an insult to the customer.

Send it in and demand your money back. The only way the companies hear you is via their bank accounts.

People should not buy unfinished games they hear about, and should return ones they find. It starts and stops with consumers. As long as we blithely accept shonkiness, game-makers will get away with whatever they can. Why should the gaming industry be held to different standards than everyone else.

[johnny]

But noone knew upfront this game was this bad Yorick, in fact, everyone had their hopes up very high for this game to be the best ever released sailing/pirate sim, and so did i. I thought the previous game, Pirates of the Caribbean had some room for improvement, and all that was promised to happen in Age of Pirates, according to magazines i read, it was going to be huge.

And then they release something like this...

I don't want my money back, i simply want a game that runs smoothly without having to patch it a dozen times before it starts looking like they promised us in all the previews, is that too much to ask for ?