What is it with games being released so glitchy?

Shalafi

Shalafi

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Nov 6, 2009
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So I popped in Dante's Inferno tonight intent on getting a little further, I got to Greed, and I beat this clockwork puzzle where I had to figure out how to get to this Damned to judge before I would continue because I wanted the Unholy exp points.

So I get to the next room where it has this lever that activates this spikey platform. I back out, save my game, go back in, and now I can't press R1 to activate the lever because there is no R1 prompt anymore.

Since I had my laptop on a coffee table near my chair, I googled it to see if there was a glitch in Greed

and indeed there was

the QA at some companies fucking sucks

FUCK YOU EA
 
Because of the internet. A company can release a half assed product and worry about fixing it later.
 
xdivenx said:
Because of the internet. A company can release a half assed product and worry about fixing it later.
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Or at least claim they'll fix it, doesn't cost much to post on a forum and say lots of things you don't intend to actually do. Or......they just might just threaten to not fix the game if you keep saying bad things about it.
 
I've noticed that many titles that are making it to retail are still in serious need of beta testing and bug fixes. I'm tired of the "we'll patch it later" mentality that game companies have adopted, yeah I'm looking at you EA!
 
because they have to meet deadlines to make $$MONEY$$ and keep their jobs (unless they get laid off anyway)
 
jiminator said:
because they have to meet deadlines to make $$MONEY$$ and keep their jobs (unless they get laid off anyway)
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Pretty much this^^ its because of shitty publishers and their unrealistic demands on the developers. The devs have no power and just have to comply or end up in the unemployment line.
 
there is also pressure from gamers to push out new product to stay relevant. Think of all the heat sony is getting for taking so long to get GT5 out. Think about how many times you've heard people complain about how long blizzard betas their games. They are notorious for taking a long time to produce and then beta test their games. As the gaming culture exists today there is so much pressure on devs to push out product. So a push it out, patch it later mentality has been adapted.
 
arcanetripwire said:
I've noticed that many titles that are making it to retail are still in serious need of beta testing and bug fixes. I'm tired of the "we'll patch it later" mentality that game companies have adopted, yeah I'm looking at you EA!
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Ubisoft lives by this mantra too...

Save files still get corrupted at 28% on Far Cry 2, on all three platforms.
 
xdivenx said:
Because of the internet. A company can release a half assed product and worry about fixing it later.
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100% true. I used to like the idea of playing console games over PC games at times because they were usually much more bug free. That's simply not the case anymore. I'm just as likely to look for console game patches as I am PC game patches now. I think console games have less chance to be patched though too, so it's a double edged sword.
 
you know what's weird? I was thinking about this topic today and felt like making a post.

Most QA/QC processes forbid a release if it has showstopping bugs, but nowadays games and software are released with these big bugs .

Testing is no longer conducted it seems because the products are not sold to enterprises but to teens and young adults who's satisfaction tolerance is completely expendable.

I remember small dev houses back then releasing almost completely bug free products, but now it's a bunch of a-holes with MBA's pushing people around like slaves to produce half-assed products to meet unrealistic launch dates.
 
eh, dunno. I doubt a company releases any game with "showstopper" bugs. Now what "showstopper" means can change as part of the qe cycle. An interesting comparison is with the last two stalkers. The US release has been some 6 months after the Russian version. Annoying, true, but when it did get released it was a fairly stable product. In other cases some games go gold and the first patch to fix bugs is ready at time of release.

of course this all becomes different/difficult when consoles are involved. Any patch that has to go through xbox is going to be a pain, not sure about the ps3. Big problems there since essentially 2 or 3 products have to go through extensive stages of testing and approval from various companies. We the customers get left feeling ignored.
 
that's naive of you

I literally cannot advance anymore in my current save of Dante's Inferno because of this glitch that will not allow me to pull this lever to trigger the puzzle

google

Dante's Inferno greed glitch
 
I think now more than ever games are made to marketing rather than development schedules.

Buying advertising/magazine/website coverage and shelf space in stores is something that has to be done months in advance, so in a lot of cases the game basically has to come out in a certain week, finished or not, or the marketing budget is lost, and you risk the game coming out into a cold market and not selling any copies because no one knows about it.

On top of that making games is really expensive, and there are almost no studios left who have the financial strength to be able to just go to their publisher/money men and say: "we need you to bankroll us for another quarter" (Valve, Blizzard, id, maybe a couple of others).

Even if they can get more money, there comes a point where spending the extra money just isn't worth it to the financiers.

I mean, if your perfect game, with absolutely no bugs cost a billion dollars to make, it's still going to be a miserable failure because the chances of breaking even at retail are pretty slim, and making a profit that investors consider worth it even slimmer.

Most of the funding for games come from venture capital from investment funds and shit and is conditional on getting a certain return in a certain timeframe, miss that return and that timeframe and you don't get money for the next game, so you ship it "good enough" and hope for the best.

Edit: Also does anyone remember before the xbox360 and ps3 launched and they were talking about how xboxlive/psn would allow game updates, and people were worried that consoles would start working with a "ship it broken and patch it later" ethic like PC games, but the developers were all like "that will never happen".

Whatever happened with that?

:p
 
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Gaming is no longer about a finished polished product, its about refined marketing nowadays.
 
I don't think people realize how difficult game development is and how complicated it can get.

It's never the developer's decision to release a half-assed product, they just get put into impossible situations and never really come out on top.

Don't blame the dev's for unfinished games...
 
450 said:
Gaming is no longer about a finished polished product, its about refined marketing nowadays.
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I'm not sure it was ever really about a finished polished product, it's just that as the industry costs and lead times for marketing and complexity of the products and stuff have grown it has become increasingly hard to justify not shipping when it's "good enough" if the schedules require it.

I'm in my 30's and have been gaming since the 80's, there was always buggy shit being released, it's just that until recently it was much harder to patch later so it was a bit easier for devs to justify to publishers hanging on a little longer.
 
Blazestorm said:
I don't think people realize how difficult game development is and how complicated it can get.

It's never the developer's decision to release a half-assed product, they just get put into impossible situations and never really come out on top.

Don't blame the dev's for unfinished games...
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Unless the devs themselves piss away their time and budgets on bullshit and make stupid decisions, like ion storm did with Daikatana :p
 
Haha, there are situations, but you get what I'm saying...

Developers get blamed when there's nothing they can really do... The only reason companies like Valve and Blizzard "seem" to release only great games is because they never release a game until it's ready, and they're successful enough to do that. Most studios can't do this, so they end up with unfinished games a majority of the time just because of time/money constraints. Not because they were lazy or incompetent.
 
Blazestorm said:
Haha, there are situations, but you get what I'm saying...

Developers get blamed when there's nothing they can really do... The only reason companies like Valve and Blizzard "seem" to release only great games is because they never release a game until it's ready, and they're successful enough to do that. Most studios can't do this, so they end up with unfinished games a majority of the time just because of time/money constraints. Not because they were lazy or incompetent.
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there ARE lazy and incompetent developers, we just end up making fun of them as they go out of business

the money people would see a better return on investment if the game managed to be polished enough to be better than just "good enough" because it would sell more.

I realize that's not true in all cases . . . . .
 
Fail said:
t

the money people would see a better return on investment if the game managed to be polished enough to be better than just "good enough" because it would sell more.
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That's not necessarily the case, the Greed glitch in Dantes Inferno was clearly known before the game shipped, but they obviously looked at the sales projections and compared the cost of fixing the glitch and possibly delaying the launch against how much they were likely to lose by shipping the game in it's current condition and came to the conclusion that shipping was still the more profitable option.

We gamers like to say stuff like "it would sell more if it was better polished", and it's probably true, but that volume increase might not to be enough to offset the costs of the delay.

The guys making these decisions are guys with business degrees and more knowledge of how the backend of the industry works than pretty much any of us will ever have. Their full time job is figuring out how to make the most profit possible. You can bet your ass that shipping the game in the condition it was shipped was the best *business* decision, even if it sold gamers (and the developers) short :p
 
Cerulean said:
@Topic title
Because it's all about releasing in time for the holiday rush.
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Fixed that for you. Who else remembers waiting for Quake 3's 1.32 Point Release(aka "A whole, finished game.") from id Software? Yeah, that sucked. Damn Christmas, pushing our games out early.
 
that's funny, some games get released long before christmas and still end up selling incredibly well.
 
Plague_Injected said:
Ubisoft lives by this mantra too...

Save files still get corrupted at 28% on Far Cry 2, on all three platforms.
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You could actually get the game to run on your PC??? I got a copy free with my video card and tried installing it about 10 times and could never get the game to launch.

I pretty much have adopted the $5 Steam mentality when it comes to video games these days. I mean we wait for years for these game to come out, whats waiting another 6-9 months to pay what the game is actually worth.
 
It might be easier to look at gamers as drug addicts, and games as ....your choice of drug. Let's say crack. Drug addicts usually don't care how pure it is, as long as it gets them high. And if it isn't quite as strong as it could have been, there's another batch coming out soon.

Gives you a little more insight into the people selling you your drug of choice as well....rock slingers.

They are still working on their strategy to minimize the cost of chemicals, but still keep you buying their product maybe even a little more frequently in smaller doses.
 
Fail said:
that's funny, some games get released long before christmas and still end up selling incredibly well.
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I never said they didn't. If I said companies like Ubisoft use DRM because they want to increase their sales, that's not the same as saying I think DRM will do that.

Games are rushed out for other reasons too, like say, if you signed some specific time-limit with the publisher, or if the publisher is otherwise able to "make" you release the game early.
 
it's all about the money and deadlines, and now that everyone in America has the internet they have the comfort of "fixing it later".
 
It the publishers that are doing this, not the devopers.

I think that most of the accountants and big wigs at the publishing houses don't know anything about making games. Their livelyhood revolves around one single line. If the line is black and heading upward, everything is bliss. If the line is red or heading doward, then panic erupts and stupid decision to rush things happen.

Also the lack of knowledge by the publishers, leads them to believe that if a game released 5 years ago only took X amount of time to develop, ship, and make a boatload of money, then the new game thier developer is making should only take the same X amount of time. They fail to understand, that as technology increases, so does the time involved in making games that use said technologies.

The oldtimers around here can probably remember the old "Album Cover" EA games for the C=64, and how they were made by 1 to 3 people each. Now, a typical EA game is made by dozens if not hundreds of people, each one putting in far more manhours than the programmers of yore.

You want a great example of a publisher rushing a game out the door before the developer is finished making it, see "Knights Of The Old Republic 2".
 
QA costs a hell of a lot of money. due to that, I believe devs have forsook it in order to get the content they want to put into the game, and then rely on the sales of this glitchy game to pay for bug fixers.

Not sure if that makes sense or not, i'm not in the video game business.
 
well, everybody has to QE. it is just how the QE is done. In these cases the devs do it themselves. the issue there is that they will use a game in the way it is expected to be used and thus have a really narrow focus on potential problems. QE also doesn't help much in the case of massive multiplayer games. There are a lot of things that cannot be realistically simulated.
 
Dante's Inferno is a single player game, they are adding DLC to enable co-op and shit, but when released, it was a single player game.

How can you NOT test that part in Greed, if any of you have even played the game, you know that tricky jump you have to do off the cogworks to reach that Damned for you to Punish or Absolve.

I tried many times and failed that jump before finally succeeding. Once I did that, I went to save my game then returned to the room with the lever to move on and finish the game only to find that glitch!

Literally game breaking. I heard they patched it, but I'll have to update to it. I had my PS3 disconnected from the Internet and so I didn't know it was patched or that the glitch even existed.

I bought it for $26 off the EA Store. With a glitch like this, it's no surprise it fell in price so fast. I only bought it cause my best friend was saying he liked it so much and was on his 2nd playthrough at the hardest difficulty.

I wouldn't term it mediocre or great, i think it's only slightly above average. The moves and Dante himself are what makes the game really good. The story is average at best, I like the graphics though, the level design and environments are the stuff of nightmares.
 
It seems like this is the trend with most electronics nowadays. Almost any piece of tech I buy nowadays has some kind of software update or patch or firmware upgrade. My BluRay player, graphics card, ipod, blackberry, ps3... It's like we are no longer buying RC's but instead buying Betas, and the really sad part is most consumers dont even know to upgrade their stuff (unless forced to).
 
...seriously? you act like games never had bugs. And it's incredibly difficult to locate every freaking bug because there are so many ways one tries to crash a game.

Pointing out Valve and Blizzard...hah! whenever they do release a game it has quite a bit of bugs. Half Life2 already forgotten?
 
Netrat33 said:
...seriously? you act like games never had bugs.
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I don't mean this as a personal attack, but maybe if you spent more than a half second thinking critically and reflecting on all the bugs being found in newly released games and all the post-release patching done on an more frequent basis then you wouldn't waste your time posting that.

It's far more rampant than it has been in the past, I don't think anybody's going to debate or question that.

It's making me want to buy games long after their release date, and cheaper too instead of shoveling my money out the door to beta test a product and then wait for the final version to be released in the form of a patch AFTER I've already paid for the game.

Games are NOT being released as finished products these days.
 
Fail said:
I don't mean this as a personal attack,
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Uh...what? hah! Now you're projecting.

but maybe if you spent more than a half second thinking critically and reflecting on all the bugs being found in newly released games and all the post-release patching done on an more frequent basis then you wouldn't waste your time posting that.

It's far more rampant than it has been in the past, I don't think anybody's going to debate or question that.

It's making me want to buy games long after their release date, and cheaper too instead of shoveling my money out the door to beta test a product and then wait for the final version to be released in the form of a patch AFTER I've already paid for the game.

Games are NOT being released as finished products these days.
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What a loaded argument. Look up this history of bugs for games and you'll see there were just as many bugs back in "the good ol days." I buy and play a ton of games for years now and it's not rampant or whatever you're thinking.
 
So many reasons.... least important of which is probably the developers themselves (the people who develop the actual software).

I know in my industry it's not uncommon for a VP to run down to your office and tell you to do something right away... that something could be design changing stuff while you're closing to going "gold".

Shit happens, developers don't have time to think so they implement bare minimum.... And since the requirements are always changing it is easier to keep something slow yet flexible, than to spend time optimizing it. Speaking of optimizing... the least "important" part of development process... lol
Typically this results from poor management on top.


Oh and nevermind games becoming so complex that it's scary. Thousands upon thousands lines of code... bugs are bound to happen. I suggest you judge a game not by an initial release but by the amount of support you get post release.
 
that's good and well BDV, but what about a bug that literally stops you FROM completing and progressing through the game?

that's NOT ok.

I'm not talking about just any random glitch, i'm talking about a GAME STOPPING glitch
 
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