How do we FORCE gaming companies to start releasing FINISHED Games???

[Davor]

Except DLC aren't used in most cases as patches.

They're used as DLC.

But they will be in about 5 to 10 years time. 15 years ago, I said people shouldn't buy games as soon as they come out because they will needed patches. The response I got was like you give now. That it will never happen is only a rare case that a game needs patching.

Now look 15 years later it's an accepted practice and people are actaully defending 2K and Firaxis saying it's ok to release an incomplete game since it will be patched later.

But now companies are saying they are getting no money from patches so, pretty soon, these DLC will be incorperated with patches. Of course the companies will say these are not "patches" but DLC but funny how they will fix your game. You are not forced to buy it, but then you will not have the fixes the DLC incoperates as well what ever it "adds on" to the game.

Don't believe me? Well don't people say that every game released now needs to be patched up?

 

[whomybuddy]

Stop buying the game obviously

 

[SuperJay]

Civ4 has been released 6 years ago, not exactly a short time ago. In the years 90s games would be released a lot more polished and it didn't even take 6 years between new releases of a new game franchise. You might want to find another lame excuse for the poor state of the art of the gaming industry today... but I bet you wouldn't be successful. The ONLY reason why games are released with this methodology is that it actually works. Customers like you and others, actually choose to submit to these scams and buy flawed products, then part of said customers waste their time trying to justify their course of action and defending the "poor" devs, while the other part throw pointless accuses to the devs when they themselves are the only ones to be blamed. The result is players/customers spending the first 6 months (at least) after purchasing a game either complaining, playing the fanboi, or reporting bugs; while they could be, for example, playing the game, if it was actually worth doing it.

Whoah there, ace. What's with the derogatory comments? Do you think you're more convincing if you insult people?

You think I'm defending or justifying the current business model? No, not really. That's a bunch of assumptions on your part, but good job "refuting" the "points" that you created in your imagination.

I just pointed out that if every game took 6 years in development, gamers would complain about THAT instead of complaining about games being released too early.

The ultimate way for any consumer to voice their opinion on any product is with their wallet. Period. But since everyone's buying new games the day they're released, we are where we are with regards to the gaming industry. They get away with it because they can, because we let them.

 

[Pantastic]

Blizzard's track record was from making iconic ips like Diablo, Starcraft, and Warcraft and having good support. The internet was in it's infancy then so there was no widespread discourse on how finished a game was so there was no "reputation" for making "finished" or "complete" games back then. Everything these days is under a microscope and there are thousands of forums discussing the minutia of every game ad nauseam so these issues seem like they are unique but they are not.

I know some kids think people didn't interact before the internet, but it's weird to hear on a message board about a game that covers human history from over 5000 years before the internet. There were BBSs, mailing lists, Usenet, Compuserve/AOL, and even early message boards for electronic discussions, plus magazines and fanzines for printed discussions, and the old standby of people talking to people using their voices.

Companies have had reputations since there were companies, the internet didn't create the concept. Blizzard did have a reputation for releasing polished games for a long time - their games work right out of the box, and have functional content from day 1. There would be some problems and lots of balance tweaks, but none of the huge, glaring errors or completely missing parts that so many other companies had. Of course their games are not 'bug free', no non-trivial $50 software package that runs on PCs is ever going to be bug-free, it's a senseless standard to try to hold someone to.

 

[DaveGold]

If game developers released completely "finished" games, you'd just be complaining that it took a decade for every new release.

Compared to fifteen years ago, the quality of computer games on release is generally very high. Full computer crashes are rare. Plenty of games are entirely stable and fully playable on release with only trivial bugs or hardware/driver issues remaining. The expected standard is much higher. Most companies delivery.

This game didn't need years more work. It needed 4 weeks more work to be at a presentable standard, in my opinion. A finance manager who's earning a big salary and probably a bonus was probably the one who decided that the game should be released before the game was signed out of beta testing.

 

[Thormodr]

I agree with sending in the hand written letter idea.

I'm going to get right on that and write a letter up telling Firaxis that I will not buy any of their future products until they shape up and make some fundamental changes to how they do business.

Does anyone have Sid Meir's mailing address?

 

[pi-r8]

Come up with some sort of business model where finished, quality games make more money than half-finished, low quality games. Unfortunately, I have no idea how you'd do that.

 

[Becephalus]

Compared to fifteen years ago, the quality of computer games on release is generally very high. Full computer crashes are rare. Plenty of games are entirely stable and fully playable on release with only trivial bugs or hardware/driver issues remaining.

Umm were you playing computer games 15/20 years ago?

Detroit (an otherwise great DOS based automobile business management sim, serious late game math issues breaking almost every game, research completely unbalanced and never fixed)

XCOM AAA title, was basically broken at release for a lot of people.

I know there were other games I purchased that I simply threw away after playing that I don't remember. One about Roman History (no not Caesar).

I think a lot of people are more sophisticated game consumers now so they think the quality has gone way down, but really its their standards which have gone up.

I have been playing games since 1991, and while perhaps he "finishedness" of the products has gone down a tiny bit (mainly due to the ease of distributing patches) the overall level of "brokeness" on the games at release has declined only very slightly if at all.

 

[ash88]

I completely agree with the OP.

That said, there is a counter trend among gamers to "not buy the game until a few months after release." Of course the hard core fans will always buy it on release, but I generally encourage people to wait.

Maybe one day game companies that release more polished games (like Bllizzard, although they aren't perfect) will reap the benefits of that with huge release sales numbers - while other companies with shattered reputations will only see a trickle of sales.

In any case I think the answer is to slowly change peoples buying pattern to buy the game later - much later - long after release.

 

[Pantastic]

XCOM AAA title, was basically broken at release for a lot of people.

Like for anyone who wanted to play above settler difficulty - once you ran one tactical mission or loaded from a saved game, the difficulty of your game dropped to the lowest one. That was the original reason for the Xcomutil program.

 

[Brawndo]

Stop pre-ordering.

 

[Kruelgor]

This is ridiculous. I like CiV generally speaking, but this overall general culture in the gaming world of releasing games at 75% completion is getting ridiculous and we've got to figure out some way of stopping it. CiV is incomplete, if you don't think so, well there have already been 2 patches and the multiplayer is literally unplayable unless you are playing only with 'friends' that you know load and don't crash- and even then it still crashes on occasion. I know a lot of people out there defend the game by saying there will be more patches and you can mod it, and that is fine and good, BUT you seem to be forgetting the primary, underlying concept that the GAME WAS RELEASED INCOMPLETE!

This ongoing trend is an INSULT to you and me and the gaming community who actually pay our hard-earned money for these games. It is like buying a hamburger and getting it with 2 bites out of it and then eating it anyway, it is so ridiculous yet we allow it to happen.

You are correct and I agree with you.

The best solution is to encourage game developers to have open public beta testing before release. If they don't have public beta testing then refuse to buy the game.

 

[DaveGold]

Umm were you playing computer games 15/20 years ago?

Yes. I don't think you understood my post properly today .

 

[SuperJay]

Man, remember Wizardry I? That game was PERFECT the day it shipped (on 5.25" floppies)

I mean, you had THREE WHOLE COLORS and all of them displayed properly!

Monks were OP, though. They still need to patch that, it's so easily exploited.

Seriously, check out these killer graphics:

 

[niall78]

Civ was the last franchise I had fate in, apart from small studios which I hold to a lesser standard because I know their limitations of very small staff numbers and very little money. Any new Civ product will now not have my loyalty until I am sure it is worth the cash, not from raving reviews that are bought or bribed but from fine sites like this.

I've played PC games since the mid-eighties and never pirated a single game. My loyalty has been rewarded by games being more and more broken on release, with the content getting worse instead of better. Lately I've went back to board games both table-top and on line and the experience has been a breath of fresh air. the major studios and their major releases, I'd rather spend my £50 on beers or a meal out than nearly 100% of the shite released in the last five years.

I'm now starting to think I should pirate games and if I find them unbroken and unengaging I will buy them. When loyalty goes unrewarded the only thing to do is hit right back where it hurts, in the pockets of these money grabbing suits who have hyjacked a great hobby/pastime. Will PC gaming die if we all do this and ignore bad games? No it might get smaller but it might also get better and back to the ideas and values that made it great in the first place.

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[PieceOfMind]

#2 don't buy the game until your sure its at the point you consider finished

I agree with this...
There really is nothing more to it. It's very simple.

 

[ChaplainDMK]

Civ4 has been released 6 years ago, not exactly a short time ago. In the years 90s games would be released a lot more polished and it didn't even take 6 years between new releases of a new game franchise. You might want to find another lame excuse for the poor state of the art of the gaming industry today... but I bet you wouldn't be successful. The ONLY reason why games are released with this methodology is that it actually works. Customers like you and others, actually choose to submit to these scams and buy flawed products, then part of said customers waste their time trying to justify their course of action and defending the "poor" devs, while the other part throw pointless accuses to the devs when they themselves are the only ones to be blamed. The result is players/customers spending the first 6 months (at least) after purchasing a game either complaining, playing the fanboi, or reporting bugs; while they could be, for example, playing the game, if it was actually worth doing it.

In the 90s games also didn't need state of the art graphics to be even noticed...
In the 90s you could make decent graphics, nobody would give half a damn and you could throw evreything at the game mechanics and polish them to no end. Thats why so many games from the 90s kick so much ass.
But look at the gaming industry now... People ignore games if they don't have "t3h gr4ph1x", "t3h hyp3" or "t3h mult3hpl4y4h"
And contrary to popular belief, game designers actualy buy their food...

 

[Slowpoke]

I think the cold hard truth is we want them unfinished. If we're going to buy it anyways when it's finished, why not have it sooner to play around with? It's like buying beta rights with a free game later. You now have the copy, you can play it whether you want to or not until it is done.

 

[Jharii]

I would never want to buy a game that did not have any patches to follow simply because this would lead me to believe that the developer doesn't give a crap about the game.

CiV, unlike Elemental, does not have immense voids in its gameplay. Yes, there were some bugs, they have been and are getting fixed. Bugs are impossible to avoid, as there is no way to test every hardware combination and user combination in existence. Gameplay balance takes time as well, and there is no way to fully balance a game until more playstyles are experienced (i.e. it needs to be played, and a lot).

There is no excuse for unfinished games to be released, but CiV hardly falls into that category.

FYI, the number of patches is not proof that the game was incomplete. It's proof that they uncovered some issues after release. The fact that they fixed them quick and efficiently is testament to their commitment to the game, not that they released an unfinished product.

This is not a post in defense of CiV, merely how software development is these days. It's simply impossible to catch everything. Hell, NWN1 was one of the most solid releases of a big name game that I can recall in the last decade, and they patched that game for 5+ years.

 

[Kruelgor]

Man, remember Wizardry I? That game was PERFECT the day it shipped (on 5.25" floppies)

I mean, you had THREE WHOLE COLORS and all of them displayed properly!

Monks were OP, though. They still need to patch that, it's so easily exploited.

Seriously, check out these killer graphics:

Haha. Funny. My sentiment exactly.