Did anyone at Firaxis PLAY the game?

[Craterus22]

Before I get flamed too bad - let me explain where the question comes from...

Way back when - Front Page Sports Football 99 was released...

The product was extremely buggy(far buggier than civ3-which I have major reservations about) and there was a major soap opera on the sierra boards. One of the people brought onboard to fix the problems made the mistake of announcing to the community (when he was given free reign to publically speak about what was going on) that he was making it manditory for everyone on the programming team to join the companies test league.

People flipped - you mean that the people working on the game WEREN'T playing it? There was a lot of hemming and hawing but they jist of what they said was - people play the game all the time - but only in parts - hardly ever in the manner in which it was meant to be played (as a whole game).

With that preamble done...

It just makes me wonder that maybe the air superiority bug, the wacky ai, the weird build choices, and the trading saga were all the result of compartmentalized play testing...

 

[Zouave]

They had no time to playtest it. We know that.

They had to get it into the stores in November in time for the Christmas rush. So we became beta testers at fifty bucks a pop, not including that lame-ass "Strategy Guide".

 

[simwiz2]

I find it hard to believe that firaxis could have not known about the bugs, especially the air superiority bug. I think they knew about it but were unable to fix it in time for the release, so they had no choice but to let it go by.

 

[Evil Robot]

Originally posted by Zouave
They had no time to playtest it. We know that.

They had to get it into the stores in November in time for the Christmas rush. So we became beta testers at fifty bucks a pop, not including that lame-ass "Strategy Guide".

I wish I could change your icon to "I have no purpose in life other than to flame Civ3 uselessly when I could move on with other, more important things."

 

[Craterus22]

But seriously,

You only have to play the game once to say - hey how do I tweak the AI to play better?

It would be cool if there were scripting tools that we could tweak for various states of the game(for the AI).

 

[Parmenion]

We get patches for free I guess - that makes up for it to some extent. Given the choice though, if Firaxis said you can have Civ 3 now but it may have a few bugs and you will have to wait a few months for the patches, or you can wait 6 months till it's completely finished before we put it on sale....... I know I'd want to play it ASAP whether it was buggy or not.

Lets face it, Microsoft do the same with all their software and it's not for 100% commercial reasons - the public get what the public demand whether it's ready for release or not.

 

[Craterus22]

this isn't really about patches

its more about how could you miss THAT... something so obvious that it can be found in a single fully played game

hey why don't my airplanes work?

hey why can't I add a city to an otherwise acceptable trade?


As far as patches go - the effusive praise that is given out for the 3 patches that have come out in 6 months is a bit much...(the first one took an ungodly amount of time to come out)... heck i think puresim baseball which was a one man show had a patch out within a couple weeks of release...

BTW - in the latest patch its looking more and more like the patch team made either a mistake or a bad choice when they decided to check the offensive box for defensive units...

 

[TrailblazingScot]

If they couldn't put a decent Earth map in with realistic startsites what chance them wanting to playtest

 

[D. Boon's Ghost]

I believe Craterus22 has brought up a great point. I have seen a few examples of this admission of compartmentalized playtesting over the years, and these are the public ones.
I have a strong feeling that many, many companies do the exact same thing - just that they would never admit it. They work on and test the program as they go, it seems.

Businesses have compartmentalized every aspect of the creation process since Henry Ford rolled out his T's. The gaming industry, especially the big boys, are no different. Whether it is right or not that the car engineer never tests drives the finished product, it is a practice that has worked for many years.

Programmers, anymore, work on little sections and move on. Beta/play testers are supposed to be there to ensure that the game is worked out start to finish. If you look at the more 'buggy' software out there, you will see that many of them either have below average QA, or none at all.
I suggest to everyone that they research this aspect of any game they may plan to purchase. That is not to say that the finished product will not be a good one, just that you will have to accept the 'patching process blues', if you decide to buy it fresh off the loading trucks.
Civ III is no exception.

Alot of products sell because of a programmer, or lead designer, or figurehead 'name' attached to it. 'It must be good', you think to yourself, 'Mother Theresa did the death animations'. But really, it is Joe Schmo and his crack team of play-testers that see the thing through.
If you know that a game is lacking in this 'compartment', you can expect some troubles.

It amazes me that some fan made 'mods' of games are more thoroughly play tested than many of the bigger known original titles out there. One great example is a still thriving mod for that golden moldy Quake 2, an obviously WWII inspired D-Day : Normandy. For those of you that may still dig FPS'ers, this mod is stunning and I higly recommend checking it out - do not let the Q2 inspiration fool you, the creators of this mod, Vipersoft, have done wonders with the engine.
The play testing alone, for its newest version, puts much grander, newer titles to shame. Of course, to these guys it is an act of love, whereas with bigger companies it is profits.

Interesting subject you brought up, Craterus22.

 

[Shabbaman]

Originally posted by Craterus22
this isn't really about patches

its more about how could you miss THAT... something so obvious that it can be found in a single fully played game

You could say that, but I've played since december and the 1.21 patch is my first upgrade, and I didn't even notice that. In fact, I stumbled at it by coincedence in a thread on a completely different subject some weeks ago, or I wouldn't even have noticed it. Which doesn't mean that Firaxis doesn't s* imho...

P.S. kittenOFchaos, how did you dig this thread up?

 

[Alexnm]

Originally posted by Evil Robot


I wish I could change your icon to "I have no purpose in life other than to flame Civ3 uselessly when I could move on with other, more important things."

I like it.