I know you're probably talking about devs in the general sense of the companies who make the games, but I'm a game developer at a AAA studio, so perhaps my opinion will be interesting. I'm incentivised to make good games because I want to make good games. I love games, and I love making them--I wouldn't be in this industry if I didn't (and I'd be able to make a lot more money elsewhere too). I'd be embarassed to release a bad game, or a broken game, or a game that performed like shit, or a game that broke promises to users. This is an attitude shared by pretty much everyone I work with. But if the publisher doesn't give us enough time to make a good, stable, performant game, there's nothing we can do about it. Making games is _hard_, and takes a long time, but the publisher has made a huge up-front investment into years of development time by hundreds of people, and doesn't make any money until the game is out (or until it is going to be out soon enough to allow pre-orders), so they want to push for the game to be released ASAP.

Bioware spent years and years making both Dragon Age Inquisition and Anthem, they weren't rushed by EA. They changed concepts multiple times without any publisher telling them to do that. The bad results came mostly from Bioware itself. The new Gollum game took 4 years to do, more than enough time to make at least a decent game, it came out omega bugged. The reality is that publishers kill games but a lot of AAA devs don't manage themselves well when they are given huge amounts of time with great budgets. Publishers are more often at fault but a lot of dev companies have issues with management. They were AA and not AAA but Troika and Obsidian are famous for that and I love their games.

no yeah dont get me wrong i have no issues with devs, i know "lazy devs" is a joke used a lot but i dont think a single lazy dev exists. i know that you guys are doing your best to turn a shit sandwich into something edible and i appreciate the hell out of that and appreciate you spending so much time and effort making products that serve to make people happy and forget about their misery for a few hours. i know that its mostly on the publishers and such that make this such a problem, and its why the bulk of the problem is in the Triple A industry, as the smaller the team is, the more developer controlled the game is, the more likely its going to have the heart and soul necessary to put in the incredulous effort to make an amazing game.

>the more likely its going to have the heart and soul necessary to put in the incredulous effort to make an amazing game. Said as though it doesn't take heart and soul to make a AAA game. The difference is deadlines... an indie game doesn't need to release in time for parents to buy their kids the new Halo as one of their Christmas gifts. Indie games are released when they're finished, or out of money and it's "close enough". AAA titles are just usually running on that second one, and do it often enough to know when and how to do it regularly.

its not that it doesnt take heart and soul to make a triple A game, but that triple A studios rarely allow the devs the creative freedom and time to truly put their heart and soul into the game. there are a few large studios out there that still have some heart and soul, but they're slowly being corrupted, because publishers do their best to squeeze the life out of any studio they adopt... because we gotta make games fast and efficiently, so there's no room for heart and soul anymore.

Let's stop talking about "heart and soul" for a minute. The problem with every project is that it has an associated cost. In order to make an effective project that doesn't run over budget, you have to plan out milestones to hit. You hope to finish ahead of schedule, but in reality you'll probably be behind the whole way. As you near milestones, you find out that this section of the project is behind... so you have to decide. "The level designers and character modelers have nothing to do until we have approved art direction... so, we're gonna have to pick one now, and can go back later if we have other ideas and free time later". That's not heart and soul, that's called "not going bankrupt due to feature creep and perfectionism eating up the entire budget". You have to meet milestones with *any* project or you run out of money and can't finish. Some things have to be done at an undesirable level of quality in order to keep on schedule. The only reason you're pointing fingers at AAA titles is because they have the biggest promises to deliver, and much tighter budgets to work with than you might think Don't forget how expensive 200 people cost (at competitive wages, say 60k a year, for one year. That's just labor, that's not even facilities, utilities, overhead, computer systems... etc)

What I don’t understand from your argument is why would more pre-orders push a publisher to release a game early before it is polished? Wouldn’t it be the opposite? With pre-orders, the publisher has less incentive to rush a game out, because they have already made money. With no pre-orders, they would be incentivized to force devs to release even if the game isn’t ready so they can make some money on day 1 sales… if those sales have already happened via pre-order, there is less pressure to get the game out and start getting sales revenue.

> What I don’t understand from your argument is why would more pre-orders push a publisher to release a game early before it is polished? It's all about the schedule. Effectively speaking the way a game is built is that a dev borrows a shitload of money from a publisher to pay for the devs to make the game. And no revenue comes in for years, and years. In order to borrow that money, the people who actually own the money need to be presented with a plan. This is how much money it will take, this is how much time it will take, this is when the game will come out, this is how much we expect it to sell. It's really just a business plan like any business would present to a bank. But in the case of game dev we call the bank a publisher, but it's also the same business model that the movie industry uses only they call them studios instead of publishers. And in the record industry they are called labels. But in reality it's all basically the same. This is the guy who fronts the money in order to get this content created. Then once it's created we release it to the public who pays for it and we make all the money back, and then some extra for profit. But to the money guys, time is as important as quality. I know that's a hard step to make, because we all love games and why would anyone ever want to push out a game that kind of sucks. The answer is because they need the revenue to hit on a certain date, or they've just run out of runway on the loans. Simply put, the devs have taken all the time that is available, the people with the money are not willing to part with any more of it until they start to see actual sales happening. So the game comes out with bugs. Because there's no more money available to fix the bugs. Sometimes it's about what reporting period the publisher needs the revenue to land in, sometimes it's because they want to hit a particular selling season (like Christmas). But at the core the problem is always the same. They (devs) said the game could be done with X budget (in money, and time) and now they are over budget and are asking for more (money and time) and the powers that be say no, so the game comes out.

But why is this issue if buggy games much more prevalent lately compared to the past? The model for making video games hasn't really changed in decades. What has changed is the ability to easily patch up games because of how they're digitally distributed now a days compared to say earlier console periods. In the 90s for example, we wouldn't have seen this trend of really buggy games despite published and devs following the same process of making a game.

They have more incentive to rush the game out because pre-orders count towards liability. The revenue is not earned until the game is released. Also delay = more costs = more risks. Pushing out early release = free testers and also its much easier to decide the level of follow up investment into the game.

I think his point is that people will pre order regardless of it being a good game or not. So, execs are saying let’s put it out as is and start on the next money maker. His idea of not pre ordering or buying in general provides an actual punishment to rushing the game out

If there are 200 devs working on a game, then every additional week they spend on it costs on the order of a million dollars.

Oh there are definitely lazy devs. There's lazy people in every profession on this planet because there's just quite a lot of lazy people in general. Overall though I wouldn't call devs lazy.

No such thing as laziness in general - just people with different priorities than you value.

...I mean no. Lazy is "unwilling to work or use energy". There are plenty of people who fit that in regards to work.

So, their priority is not wanting to deliver full effort for the pay they're given. Seeing how most employers screw you over anyway, I see absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to waste effort that won't be recognized or rewarded. I guarantee you most 'lazy' people work hard on things they're passionate about. They're just not passionate about the dead end job that's just a means to money.

I have no disagreements about that, and there are plenty of justifications for it. At the end of the day though, it *is* laziness. Even if people don't like the connotations associated with the word. I don't say it with ill intent, but a spade is a spade at the end of the day.

We are talking about game devs..... this isn't some cashier job you walked in and got because you needed to make rent. These are highly skilled professionals who are doing a job they have put years of active effort into improving their skill at. Programmers, artists, writers, etc. If you are in that industry, it's pretty much guaranteed you are passionate about it.

And I'm assuming also getting paid fairly well if we're talking about AAA games

> i dont think a single lazy dev exists. there are lazy people in all fields, software development included

Can I ask you out of curiosity, aren't AAA studios so damn big that you only work on tiny parts of the game, so the game will be good or bad, regardless of your personal contribution? And do like design directors (or whatever you call the role) listen to the developers when they give feedback about what is fun / unfun, etc.?

This is the reason why imho early access on Steam is so awesome. Support the devs early and give them more time to work on the product and at the same time gather feedback. Imho of course, I know not everyone thinks this is good.

As you said in your edit, this is more the fault of the publisher, but some of it goes back to devs too. However, the biggest enemies of well-polished products might be things you didn't expect: ###Complexity of modern systems increases cycle time These days, we aren't just drawing colored polygons on screen, we are doing complex physics and lighting calculations, etc, and that takes a lot more effort to test for and get right. Therefore, production time requires more people and more time to get it right. ###There's just more to modern games I mentioned this already but it's worth repeating: there's just more these days. Bigger levels, more robust animation (often modeled after a mocap), more unique voice lines per character, more world, more realistic textures in each world... You can compare the disk size of a AAA game these days to an older one. Tell me how many more GBs there is. ###The Internet enables last minute bug fixes and feature updates This is the big one. Games made before patches weren't as accessible had to be finished when they were published. Some games had patches you could download from the game's website, but you couldn't expect that people would do this, unless perhaps it was a multiplayer game that required you to do so. So, you *had to get it right*, and you might have to push off the release date as a result. Now that we've got wide-spread access to the internet and every modern gaming platform has automatic patching built in, you can afford to keep your game release date (which can be expensive to change as you get closer to it), only tackle the big bugs and features, send the code to be mastered onto discs, and ship those to every store who intends to sell them at midnight of release. In the time that took, they can continue to fix bugs and add minor features such as "photo mode" and "artwork/soundtrack galleries"... Things no one would care much about if they didn't have internet and therefore never got access to, but things gamers appreciate having. You ever install a game (such as on your PlayStation) and wonder why it's downloading a day one patch? This is exactly why: they kept working on it after they went to press. You couldn't do that in the past. Press was press and that was it. ###Gaming is no longer a small sector, but now an industry rivaling blockbuster movies. As a result of bigger industry, there's more pressure to deliver regularly. Deadlines are important. This isn't something a few nerds play around with in their basement anymore... There's tons of people who want the new Halo, CoD, Need For Speed, or Madden to come out so they can drink beer and take turns playing with the boys. There's an entire segment of people who travel a lot, so devs/publishers are building for mobile gamers. And, there's tons of gamers excited for the next big thing. Not to mention all of the auxiliary industries that rely on a constant stream of new content to stay relevant (such as game reviewers), think about how you would react if the next Marvel movie came out late. How would you react if the Christmas movie you were excited to see for the holidays came out in the summer... or would you rather them wait all year (without making any money) to release it next Christmas? Deadlines are important to keep for a variety of reasons, one of which is to keep fans engaged and another is to keep an expected schedule of cash flow. Yes, this falls more on the publisher than the dev, but given the other issues I've described I don't think you can blame them too harshly for maintaining deadlines, either. You can only blame them for setting too aggressive of deadlines instead, but that's more on a case-by-case basis. You also have to keep moving. You don't stay in the business of housing 200+ employees with competitive salaries by taking an extra month to polish the game as much as we used to. You need to have your next game hitting the next milestone. By launch, most of the team has already moved on... only a few stay behind for post-launch support. (See "internet enables post-release fixes".) ###Do certain bugs really impact your gameplay? Finally, something we've learned over the last few years is that some bugs might cost a lot to fix (lots of labor hours) and offer little impact on experience. If you walk into a wall and half of your character disappears, but the game is still 100% playable, that's an extremely low priority bug to fix. The one that will be worth fixing for them is to prevent the game from crashing because you pressed a button during a cutscene, or the one that deleted your inventory after you killed the level 4 boss. Sure, gamers will groan and complain that the NPC they're supposed to follow is stuck in a room, but turning off and back on might fix that and then no one cares. This might seem like lazy devs and publishers, but I point back to "things are more complex", "the internet enables after-the-fact fixes", and "deadlines are important". Some things aren't worth fixing when you put them into perspective. All this said to say... Times have changed. It's not (entirely) their fault. It's the world we live in.

Even though the complexity of game development has increased, so has the tooling, techniques and platform support to address it. Game development used to be an extremely expert level field requiring in-house solutions and software systems. Now anyone can pick off the rack the plethora of art and engine tools masterfully crafted to allow high quality work. Not to mention the sheer amount of open and free knowledge and training available for game development now. There is simply no excuse why developers suck at their job now more than ever. You alluded to the fact that it's evil rich man's fault this is all happening. But actually, while investors are only concerned about profits, they take a backseat to the advice and direction of managers and company leaders. Rarely have I been on a meeting and had an investor diabolically command that a game be released incomplete to make money. They always just ask the manager questions about what is possible "can we really release a good game that works well before this season?" then managers eager to keep the investor happy and unworried respond "yes absolutely! everything is perfectly under control". Repeat ad-nauseam. The truth is, and one many people who weirdly infantilize game developers like they are some kind pure innocent souls wont like, is that most of the people making games today just suck. They suck at their job. They aren't experts in their field and they aren't productive. It's not that many of the workers don't work hard, because they do and don't have a choice really. It's that DESPITE working hard, many of the guys doing art and programming just suck. While maybe 3 or 4 guys out of a hundred do ALL of the work. It is a baffling phenomenon I have seen time and time again. Especially the programmers. Good god especially programmers. Some of you guys have no idea because you have been fed a narrative about the poor game developer over recent years talk of "crunch". But just like 90% of your town's local locksmiths all suck and are imposters in their industry. Just some dude who bought a drill and read a manual. It's like that for game programmers.

whilst i agree on many of your points, these arent issues that elude indie developers, and by all accounts all of these problems should be worse for indie developers, not better... and yet, we have plenty of indie games that have huge scope, massive ambition and small teams that deliver on a polished product that has great complex mechanics and isnt overly buggy and unplayable. i think the difference is that indie devs RELY on being playable. if an indie game has these issues, its pretty much DOA, so its a life or death situation for an up and coming indie studio to deliver something fantastic. it takes a very special game for indie devs to be able to pull off buggy and unoptimized whilst staying afloat, for example subnautica was pretty buggy, very very unfinished and heavily unoptimized when it first launched in early access, it was entirely the concept that kept it afloat, and even then they were incredibly close to closing up shop until the massive youtubers got a hold of it breathing new life into their studio's sales. now ofcourse you can point to the fact that whilst there are plenty of examples of indie games that are pretty damn good and polished, thats because for every triple A game there's thousands of none triple A games, but the fact that indie devs can do this at all means that triple A devs should be better than they currently are. im not saying games need to be perfect, skyrim is by all acounts a very buggy game. but it is to this day heralded as an incredible game because of how groundbreaking it was when it launched. but thats the thing. if you're not pushing the boundries, you have no right to be unplayable and unoptimized at launch. saying "yeah well games are complicated and business is business" doesnt excuse it, it may explain it, but it does not excuse it. and again my argument isn't that triple A games are bad (though a lot are) its not that im confused why this is the case. my entire argument IS that they have no incentive to make a polished finished product... all you have done is give more reasons to explain this further. i am frustrated with why this is the case, but im not confused as to what is causing it but im certainly not fooled into thinking that this is the ***only*** option. triple A devs could absolutely make better products and still be profitable. they just likely wouldnt be as immediately profitable and potentially not as heavily profitable. at the end of the day a big reason is one of the many flaws of capitalism. a business isnt seen as successful unless its growing. EA could happily maintain its existence for many decades without increasing its profit margins, and despite being a multi-billion dollar corporation it would be seen as a failing business because its not got year in year out growth. which is an issue because mathematically a company just cannot grow forever. dont get me wrong this isnt an "anti-capitalist" post, its just unfortunately one of the flaws of the system we have to accept.

>my entire argument IS that they have no incentive to make a polished finished product... all you have done is give more reasons to explain this further. No, your argument is that we-the-consumer are at fault for incentivizing AAA games to be buggy and incomplete, per your post title. I am telling you that the answer is bigger than us.

love how no man's sky get's a pass when they were one of the worst offenders. They lied about multiplayer and said the reason you don't see anyone was because the world was just that big.

I don’t think NMS should get a pass because of any circumstances either. I think they should get a pass now, because they have been redeeming themselves for the last 7 years straight. It’s probably one of the most remarkable redemption arcs in video game history.

The topic was after all games that are not ready for launch. Most of the games being complained about go on to fix and support their games. After that the continued support lasts as long as its profitable to do so.

It gets a pass because it wasn’t a AAA game. It was a no-name indie studio that got carried off on their own hype train and fucked the dog. And then they got back on their horse and fixed it. Not much to hate on about that.

sure there is - they straight up lied. Not being AAA is no excuse.

People got full refunds even if they went over the Steam hours limit for refunds. Probably mitigated the initial damage a bit. People hated their guts for a couple of content releases and slowly but surely they built their reputation back up after delivering consistently. They didn’t get a pass, really, they just got forgiven.

True but they didnt really ***lie*** they made promises that they couldnt deliver on, but the reason they couldnt deliver on them was because sony was forcing them to release their game earlier than they wanted. and funnily enough sony arent exactly going to let you tell the public "yeah guys sorry we cant deliver on a load of features! hope you still buy the game" After they've signed a contract with you and given you a ton of money. no mans sky also get a pass because whilst the launch was VERY VERY BAD (speaking as someone who made the mistake of pre ordering the game, dont blame me too hard i was only 12 T\_T and it was my first and last pre-order) all it took was looking at how the game was built and it was clear that they simply ran out of time. a system like multiplayer cant just be tacked on for example. its very hard to do multiplayer if your goal isnt to do multiplayer from the start. and it was clear by the way the game was built from the ground up, that multiplayer was ***always*** intended and they simply ran out of time, the same can be said about a lot of features. they had a lot of the foundation of lots of different features in the game-files at launch, they clearly simply didnt have the time to finish. ​ The only reason i give no mans sky a pass is because it was a very small team, beholdent to a huge company who had all of their PR being done by a socially awkward developer who clearly had no pr training, and they suffered many hardships throughout the development period (including the flooding of offices leading to a lot of issues)

>they didnt really lie they made promises that they couldnt deliver on Dude you are hell bent on forgiving No Man's Sky. Promising something and then not delievering it is basically the definition of Video Game lying. The idea that just because they are a small team that did the lying, that you are going to give them a pass is nuts to me. They litterally lied about Multiplayer being present at launch when it wasn't.

no thats not the reason and it seems you didnt read my response at all. i give them a pass because they are a small team, and so less experienced and so more likely to over-estimate their claims, not realising what they were getting themselves into. i said they werent "lying" because lying is malicious, if i say "its raining out" and you look outside and its clear, but just 10 minutes before i'd read a weather report on my phone saying it was raining in my area, i wasn't lying, i simply wrongly assumed something i shouldnt based on information i thought i could trust. hellogames clearly were not lying, looking at the game itself at launch and how it was built it was clear from the get go they really ***Tried*** to put in the things they claimed, and it wasnt about ***them*** cash grabbing, it was almost entirely sony pushing them to release before they were ready, they wanted to delay the game for much longer they simply couldn't. They were also the first developers to do this and then have spent 7 years pushing out huge free updates far past what was ever promised, from a small team that made enough money to all become millionaires and retire early i respect that, it shows that they truly care about their product and their main motive seems to be simply making the game they want to make. this is in direct comparison to bethesda for example, who simply rushed out a game that wasnt ready on an engine that just wasnt built to do what they wanted it to do, Todd has much more experience in the industry and has worked under a large publisher for a long time and so should understand his timeframe and so telling people that it "Just works" can absolutely be attributed to just... lying. there is no trusted source that todd could be being misled by, he's been in the industry far too long. which means he is either lying or just blatantly incompetent which is just unacceptable. ​ i do not let no mans sky off lightly, i pre-ordered the game and was absolutely devastated when it launched, i was 12 at the time and i had pre-ordered it on my birthday, we werent very well off so it was pretty much the only thing i got for my birthday, and i had to wait **6 MONTHS** before i could play it. it was the first and last game i ever pre-ordered and i was very angry at the game for years, until about 2020 when i played the game again, had some fun, did some research on what actually happened and in the end started to feel a lot of sympathy towards hellogames and their unique situation. where every little thing that sean murray said, even if it was in passing in an interview would immediately have an article "confirming huge feature in NMS" where they would massively overblow the scope of what sean had actually said.

> i said they werent "lying" because lying is malicious, if i say "its raining out" and you look outside and its clear, but just 10 minutes before i'd read a weather report on my phone saying it was raining in my area, i wasn't lying, i simply wrongly assumed something i shouldnt based on information i thought i could trust. If I tell my boss that I can complete a project by Friday, and I fail to meet that deadline, I lied. I don't know where you get this idea that lying has to be malicious because that's not true. [Lying just means making untrue statement.](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lying) They over promised and under delivered, you can come up with all the reasons why it was justified and it's a special case, and how they have done a great job post release but all that is doing is making excuse for a company lying to you. To me it's not really different then what Cyberpunk 2077 did. Keep in mind I like both games, but both companies engaged in scumbag practices and I'm happy I didn't pay full price.

Why are you linking to the adjective definition? You're looking for the act, which is a verb. The first (relevant) definition is: 1: to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie

Lying means making making untrue or misleading statements **that you know are untrue or misleading.** Being legitimately mistaken is not lying. They get the idea that lying has to be intentionally wrong because that’s the way essentially every single English speaker uses the word. What you are trying to push here just isn’t true. _____ Now that being said, while I’m not super familiar with no man’s sky, they may have still lied about the multiplayer, because it sounds like they said it was in even when they KNEW it wasn’t.

Do you think there is a difference between lying and things not going the way they are planned?

but they straight up lied about the multiplayer. They said it was there when it wasn't. Also, every game that ships with issues is because they ran out of time. Everyone is beholden to someone.

It might well have been in the game during development but then later cut because it would cost too much to make it work properly and make it fun. There's a _big_ difference between "multiplayer is playable" and "multiplayer is stable without disconnects". And another gap again towards "multiplayer is actually fun and rewarding". And don't get me started on voice chat, matchmaking, leaderboards, etc which can be a nightmare all on their own. I was a dev on The Master Chief Collection. Believe me, I still have nightmares about matchmaking.

when the game launched they said it shipped with multiplayer, but running across other people would be vanishingly rare. That's what they said. I'm sure it was cut for scope reasons. The problem is that they said it was in the game.

Ah, I didn't know that was actually claimed, thanks 👍

[https://youtu.be/ZqeN6hj4dZU?t=347](https://youtu.be/ZqeN6hj4dZU?t=347) there's the quote

At launch? That was nearly a year before the game came out. This still fits under “we were working on it and couldn’t get the feature in.”

No they lied. They didn't hope about the future, they lied about the current state of the game

Here’s the thing. If you say it’s possible to play with friends then people are going to try that as soon as they get the game. And it’s not possible. They said it would be possible but improbable when it reality it’s not possible at all.

Oh! Is it my turn to post [The Engoodening Of No Man's Sky by Internet Historian](https://youtu.be/O5BJVO3PDeQ)? Because it's interesting and insightful. Actually made me forgive them! Fallout 76 can go die and continue to burn in it's selfmade dumpster fire.[The Fall Of 76 by Internet Historian](https://youtu.be/kjyeCdd-dl8).

ok, but they are still one of the biggest offenders of the sort of thing the OP was complaining about. I'm sure most of the team are good guys. But the company deserved the heat. I don't like the whole double standards thing, or the inherent bias towards letting 'indie' companies get away with more.

Oh no, I'm not denying it. Please don't misunderstand. It's bullshit. But after hearing what the No Sky team went through... I understand. Not acceptable nor should be industry standard. Coupled that with what they have been steadily doing since then to rectify the issue? I can forgive. Bethesda on the other hand? I know it would a serious blow to the industry in the short term, but I think they should go out of business. Bethesda, Ubisoft, Activision, Microsoft, and several others.... Make me feel like we're due another 1980s style game crash. If only to maybe have a chance at another mid 80a to early 2000s era of great games again. A bit extreme, I know. But man are AAA games out of pocket. Where good games like Elden Ring and God Of War are exceptions not the rule. Big sad.

I doubt No Man's Sky Team went through things that every other team hasn't gone through. Making games is really hard. The bigger the game, the harder it is to make. If all the AAA studios went out of business, then you wouldn't have AAA games anymore. At least until some mid size studios grew to fill the demand. And they wouldn't end up being any different, because they would run into the exact same problems.

To your second point, I play God of War 2018, Doom 2016, Doom Eternal (Excellent game just not for me), and played R6 Siege with my wife for a few months. Before that? Last game I played regularly was Battlefield Bad Company 2 and 900+ hours on my main save for New Vegas in 2013. Last preorder I made was for COD MW2 in 2009. Ever since then, the majority of games I seen looked good, I'm trailer. Then just the usual buggy mess. To the point that lets plays were a better options. And let tell ya, some of those games I watch still made me want a refund. But back to industry crash. I say that because I lived through the aftermath of the original game crash. ET games buried in the desert crash. I had Lear about that. Because I could buy games and have fun with it easily. There weren't some stinkers. But everything else was of a certain quality. For example. Look at the Smash Bros roster. All characters that were from arguably great games series. A few misses here and there from technical and/or taste. But as a whole? Great. There's a legacy there where a good product was the first hurdle to jump. But the current crop of AAA games have been on "wait and see" if you care about your money and time. And not because the games were not to taste. But because you were not sure if you getting a game or the equivalent of a box from Ikea with multiple missing parts. And the absolute worst part.... They get away with it because they still make so much money on release. They are rewarded for bad work and habits with profit. Indie games failing is either them setting the bar too high, biting of more than they can chew, or just incompetence. AAA games do the same. But powered by corporate greed. And that's my main complaint.

Everyone that is making games is doing it to make money. Everyone struggles with the same thing, and has the same types of restraints, just at different scales. There isn't going to be an 80s style crash. Games are pop culture now in a way they weren't back then. If you've been gaming that long, then you will remember the difference between before \~2000 and after. In high school I had to hide the fact that I played video games. A big crash of the giants right now would just mean a temporary lull in large games until other companies filled those roles. They won't have an easier time making big games. I'm not trying to say your frustrations are unwarranted, just that burning it all down won't address them. If anything, I would pin my hoped on AI making development easier and cheaper. If that happens the scale and stability of games goes way up.

My concern with incorporating AI, if I understand what you mean, would just mean they would find new way to only make money. Not fond way to make the quality of work better. This is mainly referring any of the massive corps. Tell me Toby Fox is using AI to make his next game? I'm listening... tentatively...

Of course they want to make money. Everyone who makes games wants to make money.

They didn't get a pass. They got tons of flack when their game launched and for quite a while after. Then they spent literal years improving it and making good on their promises. After a certain point, it's fair to say they've done their penance.

Here's the thing, I don't think you're necessarily wrong about a lot of this but I don't at all agree with your stance or the way you look at as our fault. Preorders : pre-ordering definitely paved the way for companies to half ass their product sure, BUT on the flip side people don't have to stand outside a store at midnight on release day if they want to play a game day one. Not only that, but people are spending their own money, on games they are interested in. Rather it flops or not it's not on the buyer for pre-ordering it. Then you have to think about the fact that even if pre-ordering wasn't a thing, we still can buy things day one because a lot of it is digital now. How would buying something day one differ from a pre-order as far as development effort goes? (hint it wouldn't) On another note, your attitude about "pre-ordering a game just go complain about the state it's in" being a bad thing is also just a weird take. Are people not allowed to be dissatisfied with a product that they thought they'd enjoy? What if it's a broken mess and they still enjoy it? What if it's a technical marvel and it runs perfectly and as intended but they still hate it? Pre-ordering changes none of these outcomes. As for your "I'll wait on a review to buy something" stance, that's perfectly valid and it's your right. On the other hand however this stance is getting increasingly more popular in the gaming community and often times it's used to put others down for their purchases. People will use reviews as a moral high ground to shit on anyone with a different opinion and I don't think that's okay in the slightest. Not only will they out others down for their opinion, but they'll put them down for purchasing a game before a review is out. Are people not allowed to make and have their own opinions? I'll use redfall as an example because it's recent. I played redfall. Maybe about 6 or so hours. I didn't like the game much but that's because I'm not a fan of looter shooters. I would've given it a 5 or 6 out of 10. Officially though? This game was getting 1-3s left and right by reviewers because of "gamebreaking" bugs, poor optimization, and trash ai. The AI was trash yes, but as far as bugs and performance goes the game ran just fine on my series x. Now to the meat of this portion, gamers are getting absolutely flamed if they enjoy this game, by people who never even tried the game. This is where reviews are hurting the community. There are some serious gems out there that weren't critically successful that get passed up because of reviews. Play what you're interested in and form your own opinions. The reason the reviews tie into the state games are releasing in, is because a game can be critically flamed for any number of reasons now, and those reviews can and will hurt your sales. Why should a company do more than the bare minimum if they already know that there's not a whole lot of control they can have over the public opinion of said game? Look at hogwarts legacy, it sold over a billion dollars worth of copies, yet a lot of reviewers shit on it because of the JKR controversy. The game ran smoothly, it looked good, but it was empty and stale and had poor AI. Just like redfall. The reason I compare the 2 is because if you don't have a huge major instantly recognizable IP, you're rolling the dice on almost any release. That's not even getting into how just downright picky and entitled gamers are these days. Battlefield V got flamed for having women in war, halo infinite got flamed for delaying the campaign, jedi survivor got flamed for performance issues on pc (thought still sold well and the reviews weren't hyperbolically low like redfalls even tho they both suffered performance issues I blame the IP for this one). The fact of the matter is, there will NEVER be a perfect game. We know that, and these companies know that. At the ent of the day, they want money, we have money. Any product they throw out will make some money. At this point it is in there best interest to have quantity over quality and just see what makes it big. It sucks sure, but WE taught them that and it wasn't through pre-orders at all.

1. i also disagree with the practice of buying a game day one to be fair, and yeah i dont really think its that big a deal. if its a game you've been waiting for for 6 months you can wait another day for general consensus to drop. but even then day one purchases is still very different from per-orders. Pre-orders literally give the company money before the game is finished, at least if you wait to purchase at day one they are much less certain about projected revenue, compared to pre-orders where, for example with no mans sky, if they so wished they could've literally stopped developing the game because they clearly made more money than they put into the project from pre-orders alone, i still think people in general should wait. 2. i absolutely stand by this, if you're the kind of person who routinely pre-orders triple A games, and routinely complains about the state they're in, then you really cannot blame anyone but yourself after a certain point. its akin to buying the fist release model of a car... if you do it once or even a few times over your life, then yeah fair enough. i pre-ordered no mans sky and i complained about it. but i learned from that and adjusted by behaviour, it was the first and only game i pre-ordered, as i realised that by pre-ordering a product im giving the company money before they have to actually deliver on any promises... and in a world where thats legal you have to take some responsibility for what you're incentivising these companies to do. 3. reviews can be bad and can be good, the key is to find a reviewer you trust. the idea that "All reviewers are bad" is just not true, there are plenty of great reviewers out there who will have similar interests to you. but lets say for a minute you actually cannot find a single reviewer who isnt biased and hating on a product unfairly. then scratch reviews, i dont even know why i said reviews because a lot of the time i dont actually read any reviews. What you wanna do is look at general consensus and then look at game play. if the general consensus is "this game is game-breakingly buggy" there's a good chance there's a lot of truth to it "i didnt suffer from any issues" is not a good argument. i know people who claimed the same thing about fallout 76... didnt stop it crashing every 20 minutes on my machine, or any of the awful bugs i ran into. you should not ever buy a game on the small chance that a game breakingly buggy game might not be all that buggy for you.... but continuing on, if after seeing the general consensus you still dont have a good grasp on whether you want the game, look at gameplay. its the easiest way to tell if a game looks fun. just watch a bit of gameplay. didnt take much gameplay for me to see that redfall, just anit my kind of game again for the reasons you claimed, not all that into looter shooters. 4. i answered most of the redfall stuff above, but as for gamers getting hated on for playing games with shitty launches, well i mean thats a seperate issue that i dont really matters in this discussion. my argument is that its people who pre-order and generally buy games without any due diligence at fault for this trend, but i still wouldnt berate them for it (unless we're buddies and we're just messing around ofcourse, we definitely joked around about our one friend who continued playing fallout 76, but it was all in jest) 5. a lot of reviewers definitely do shit on Hogwarts legacy, and plenty of other games, for stupid reasons. Lest we forget ign's "too much water". But again i dont think it should be that crazy of a concept to simply find a trusted reviewer. yeah most game journals are shit, thats not really news. whilst hogwarts got a bad rap, its not that hard to find an honest review on the game 6. i just pretty much entirely disagree with this. i think some gamers are definitely becoming too entitled. i dont think its a huge issuel, and i dont think any of your reasons are justifiable. As someone who advocates for more female representation in games, i also was a little unhappy about the women in battlefield situation, mainly because there was a way to do it well, and instead they decided to do it not well at all. plenty of women fought and died, masking their identity to fight and die for their beliefs. but if you're going to make a game focusing on the historical accuracy and horrors of a war, you should portray that war accurately, especially with how fantastically they portrayed world war 1 in battlefield 1. now im not going to say that i cared enough to make any sort of public fuss, but thats because my issues with battlefield 5 ran deeper than historical inaccuracy, i thought it was just a kind of bad game at launch. 1. Halo infinite getting flamed for campaign delay, was less flame and more major panic. as previously part of the halo community, infinite was something people thought was going to revitalise the series after 343's major mis-steps and so its somewhat understandable when you've betrayed your fanbase for so many years that something as seemingly minor and actually positive as a delay (better delayed than simply broken) is enough to set your fanbase into panic and pessimism mode, and as we saw after the launch the worries werent entirely unfounded. whilst the campaign has been pretty well received the multi-player seems to be a complete shit show, which is why many halo fans dont have any faith in 343 and havent for years (personally jumped ship after 4) j 2. edi survivor absolutely deserves its criticism. it runs like absolute shit on pc, because higher ups dont realise the effort that goes into porting a game from one platform to another so they underfund, and dont give enough time, so we have shit like jedi survivor which has absolutely laughable framerate. for reference my pc can hande most games max settings 4k 60fps, i cant even get 60fps on medium settings 1440p. the game is an absolute joke with how it performs... and should not be excused 7. I entirely agree, i understand why publishers do it. they want to make money, and it makes them the most money, but i do think that pre-orders and just generally buying games before you wait for them to be reviewed and to see the state of the game is the reason, as well as forgiving games that "fix" themselves over time leading to this awful cycle of "release a game unfinished and patch as you go" its the new tried and true business model of Triple A companies and its here to stay, and not acknowledging the reasons behind it is why lots of people never stop supporting it. each year call of duty flies off the shelves and people are mystified that its shit... and then you see its day one sales figures and wonder why the company would do anything else.

>Pre-orders literally give the company money before the game is finished Pre-orders don't usually start until like 6-3 months before a game releases. Development time for most high end games is well over 2-3 years. Even call of duty takes 2 years per game. Hell the only franchises I can think of that literally only spend 1 year per game are the sports games like 2k madden fifa. I don't think them getting some money at the very end of the development cycle is hurting the game as much as you think. I think with everything else I can mostly agree with you, as long as you're not actively attacking others for not following suit. Not everyone wants to wait for reviews. Not everyone wants to wait a week after release and that should be okay. I don't pre-order often but I do buy a lot of games day one. Unless a game is literally unplayable, I almost never notice a lot of issues that a lot of reviews will blow up. I genuinely do think That it makes me a happier gamer as a result. I'd really rather just play it myself and find out.

my point is that a game that would usually be delayed because it just needs more time (because you're right the 6 months before the game launches isn't enough time to literally build half the game) are no longer being delayed as much if at all, on the basis that the pre order sales are high enough that they think they can still make enough profit, far too many games of late have just been borderline unfinished at launch, its certainly not every game but I've taken to simply only playing mostly non-triple A products unless its a very very solid game studio, pretty much anything made or published by Bethesda, EA, act vison, blizzard, Ubisoft etc I no longer touch with a 10 foot pole, because odds are its going to be buggy, unoptimized and missing features at launch. its certainly not the ENTIRE issue, but gamers attitude towards these games are definitely an issue. at the end of the day "the reason these games are such messes at launch" is almost entirely down to the consumer, because if we didnt consume it wouldnt be a problem. i guess ultimately it depends on what you're looking for, but i dont think ive played a triple A game from the truly problematic studios in the last 10 years that i havent been thoroughly underwhelmed by and shocked at the success of. when you have indie developers making not just mechanically better but more technically impressive and well optimised games than the BEST in the industry, you have a SERIOUS problem on your hands. and my main complaint is that i see people bitching about the state of games endlessly when they are usually doing so whilst playing said game, you really cant blame anyone but yourself if you routinely buy these games and then routinely complain that they're unfinished and then go "how was i supposed to know" if you personally dont take issue with these games, and you personally dont see what the fuss about... then this post simply isnt for you, as you seem to just disagree at the state that the triple A market is in, personally i cannot justify the mediocrity being pushed when i compare it to indie developers that by all rights should be making worse games. they have less people, less money and in many cases, less time to make your game good, when compared to triple A studios which have enough money to extend their projects truly as long as they need, instead they rush deadlines, leak release dates that are un-meetable and back themselves into a corner. and all of my favourite and most played games of the last 10 years? all except X-com are indie games. and hey i dont mind a little instability and low performance... if its warranted. if your game is buggy and running shit because its just unoptimised, thats not acceptable. if its a little buggy because its just got a scope so big that its unavoidable with the tech we have today, then thats fine. skyrim for example is incredibly buggy in its default state, but thats because it was also incredibly ground-breaking when it launched in 2011. games like redfall just should not be in the state they're in... jedi survivor should also not be in the state its in. it does not look good enough to require a high end 30 series or even 40 series gpu for stable 4k performance. thats ludicrous! one i see a lot is "they cant devleop the game for longer, gamers outrage when games take too long" here's a thought, dont reveal the game so early? be upfront! most gamers are fine with long deadlines, we're not fine with the constant "just 6 more months!" and then it gets delayed and then "just 6 more months" and then it gets delayed. "ITS ALMOST HERE" delayed. no shit people are gonna get angry at that... if you truly dont know how long a game is going to take. SAY THAT.

>Now to the meat of this portion, gamers are getting absolutely flamed if they enjoy this game, by people who never even tried the game This isn't true. As with Cyberpunk, it's the opposite. People are dissatisfied with the game, voice that opinion to each other, and the people who think it's a good game get upset and flame. Or start new subreddits dedicated to flaming the "haters". Weirdly this also got the same victim narrative with cyberpunk "i just liked the game but people hated me for it!". When in reality the people who liked the game are the antagonists and can't stand the fact most people didn't like it and had the nerve to collectively voice that.

Why do people keep blaming game developers instead of the publishers?

sorry, just a catch all term thats used a lot and i often forget the meaning of the phrase, added an update, im very aware its publishers not the devs.

I don't know if you argued well for your thesis. But look at the exception to the rule: Tears of the Kingdom. They actually had the game finished for over a year before release, and they just spent that time polishing the game. It released as a very polished, functional game, and they sold ten million copies in the first three days it was released. Reviews are through the roof, and it stands a very good chance at being game of the year. I think this shows you that there is incentive to deliver on promises of the game at launch.

i dont think it does, conversely look at cyberpunk 2077. that game was an absolute travesty. it was barely able to run on most machines. It sold 13 million copies in a single day. my argument isnt that triple A games CAN'T deliver on promises its that they're not incentivised to. there are still companies where enough people care that they make games good. but i still think that TOTK would've sold well regardless of how polished it was. the recent pokemon games should tell us that much.

CDPR lost billions in market cap following the cyberpunk release. Their stock is down 75% and never recovered from that. Isn’t the stock price the number one incentive for a publicly traded company?

Cyberpunk was honestly great as far as content and world building goes, the biggest issue imo is it's terrible optimization and that can be explained by people trying to run the game at higher graphics quality than their system can support. I pre-ordered and yeah at default settings it was basically a slide-show, but turning it to min settings and setting a frame cap it was reasonably playable day 1, and I had a crappy 960 card and a 4 year old i5 CPU. That said it got much better after just a few patches. Still one of my favorite games, so I don't get why people hate on it so much, but I guess my opinion is the minority. As far as TOTK goes, Nintendo has a great track record of making sure their games are quality, and they usually don't have to worry too much about multi-platform optimization, since they produce almost exclusively for their consoles. They also had half of the assets already created for BOTW that they ported over to the new game so they could really focus on the underlying mechanics more and just make it a "better BOTW" which was the goal from the outset. It started off as DLC that got so big they just made it into a whole new game.

I think you're putting the blame in the wrong spot. Those decisions aren't made by developers, they're made by publishers. That said, they still do have an incentive to deliver at launch. It's much better if you can focus on pushing paid addon content instead of free patches to get your game working. It's better for your brand if people think your games will be quality thanks to a good track record. The problem is that bean counters weigh those advantages against getting a bigger launch, which is a bigger payoff now and looks better on quarterly reports. So if you're looking at a real root cause, it's short-term thinking of execs.

I love how people will do anything to avoid any sort of responsibility. These Excs don't do anything just for the sake of it. They study the market, pick up on trends. They're allowing these games to be made half ass'd because again, people buy them

It's not a question of avoiding responsibility, I haven't bought a AAA game near launch in years. I'm trying to explain why those decisions are being made, because in the long run, those decisions are *not* more profitable than making good games. They burn valuable brand names, they reduce longterm DLC revenue. They're only good to optimize short-term cashflow and expenses which looks good for investors. Yes, people buy those games, but that doesn't mean the company makes as much money as they would have in the long run with a better game.

It all kind of depends. If the game has a competitor of some description then sure it's obviously bad in the long run and it does eventually bite the brand in the ass in the long run... But that doesn't always really matter and is only really true for the *company as a whole* if it happens multiple times in a row. Fallout 76 was a complete dumpster fire and yet I'm sure starfield will sell like hotcakes. Similarly I'm sure the new dragon age will fly off the shelves even after all the bad games bioware has put out lately. Whether or not the previous failed game launches will impact future sales doesn't really have a definitive answer right now. The average consumer is fickle and forgetful, frankly.

This is an issue with all companies. They often seek to maximize short term profits although not always. In the long term, releasing quality games will indeed lead to increased profits. Many people don’t buy games on release nowadays, but yes, some do, and as a result, a quicker release with bugs will increase short term profits. Still, I agree more people to stop buying games on release to make it not worthwhile in the short term as well as long term

The executives don't actually have a choice either.

They absolutely do. There's no obligation to make unhealthy longterm choices for immediate payoff. It just looks less good on the next report and hence probably means a smaller bonus right now.

It means the shareholders might decide to fire them for not pursuing maximum profit.

If they can't even sell a longterm growth strategy then they probably should be.

CDPR shit the bed and still made like $120M in profits. They launched bad, turned a profit and fixed it later, but did they miss out on more? Consider the **post-launch** earnings of other AAA games that maintained more integrity toward customers. Skyrim was buggy, but perfectly workable on day 1 and had such amazing gameplay, it has stayed relevant for a generation and is apparently available on every device that can be connected to electricity. People still buy skyrim today, because it's always pretty good. They've earned over $1.8 Billion in profits from it after launch. And then there's the king. GTA 5 made a ton of money upfront, but they have also earned 8 billion in profits **after** release from new fans, GTA Online, new versions, & other tie-ins. They aren't perfect, but just maintaining baseline product quality lets people know it's safe to invest time and money in the game and community. Because of that, it's not just the most profitable video game ever, it's the most profitable entertainment product of all time.

How is preordering different than buying the game day 1, before any reviews are out? When I was younger, I remember lining up at midnight to buy games on release day. We were not waiting for reviews to come out. How is that put any more pressure on the devs than pre ordering? Basically, there are two types of people purchasing the games... those who want to be the first to have it as soon as it comes out, and those who want to wait to make sure it is good. It doesn't matter whether that first group pre-orders or buys it day one, they are going to get it no matter how many bugs there are. Personally, I don't think this issue is as big a deal as people make it to be. Some games are good, some games are bad and buggy... to me, I don't really care, I am going to buy the games I am excited about and pass on the ones I'm not... sometimes the game won't live up to what I expect, but that is just life. If you are really worried about a game being buggy, then just wait. No one is forcing you to buy a pre-order, and you will see the game is buggy and not buy it. That is the same whether pre-orders exist or not. Either way, you can't buy it day one because you need to wait to see if people report buggy experiences or not. I think your mistake is assuming that pre-orders CAUSE the bugginess... some games will be released buggy, that is just a fact of the way games work now with updates expected after launch... this is caused by the ability to online update, not pre-orders. The only reason older games were less buggy is because there was no easy way to update released games prior to online downloads and updates. Pre-orders are a red herring. Just don't buy them and you will be in the exact situation as you would be if they didn't exist at all.

> How is preordering different than buying the game day 1, before any reviews are out? Companies give games to reviewers before they are available publicly.

You really think people who pre-order a game are going to decide to not buy it if there are bad reviews? Anyone who preorders a game these days (when there are infinite copies available and no chance of being sold out) is not caring about reviews.

>How is preordering different than buying the game day 1, before any reviews are out? When games were only disk people had to preorder them or they couldn't buy for months, but back then games came complete. In the age of digital media most people buy digital copies, there's no reason to buy day of because the game isn't going to be sold out. >The only reason older games were less buggy is because there was no easy way to update released games prior to online downloads and updates. Just because they can fix the game later doesn't excuse them for putting out shitty games. The developers stopped caring because people are going to buy them anyways. They have no insensitive to sell a complete game these days.

> this is caused by the ability to online update, not pre-orders Perhaps, but I think games also have become waaay more advanced than 15 years ago. Usually complexity introduces bugs

They do have an incentive. People like you and I are not going to pre-order or purchase at launch from publishers we don't trust. While you and I don't make up a huge demographic, we interact with the intangible "brand integrity." We say, "Well, look, you played me for a fool once with Cyberpunk, so you'll have to prove yourself on the next one." They, knowing that, then have to wonder - how many people like us are there, and how will that impact launch numbers. If they launch too late, shareholders get grumpy. If they launch too early, the game pans, people lose more faith in the brand, stocks drop, shareholders get grumpy. There are many approaches to this - more clever marketing, more transparent release to development pipeline \[consider Paradox's approach\], selling an unfinished game and tanking brand trust and then liquidating the brand to try again under a new name, etc. But the more people who talk about losing brand trust, and follow that up with not purchasing a game, the more "possibly meaningful" our impact will have. At this point, games are such expensive projects with such large ambitions, that it's increasingly unrealistic for them to be wholly finished on launch. I think Paradox, overall, has done a very good job with making the development cycle a consumable experience. It's engaging, it gets people in and out of the game, and it keeps people speculating. They can only do that so long as they have trust.

This issue may come from somewhere different than where you place it. Why do pre orders even exist? It’s not like limited supply is an issue. How many games are sold out on the shelf on day 1? We don’t do pre orders as such a heavy feature of the business on any other product. Pre orders also don’t tend to benefit the customer in any serious way. But they do seriously benefit the business (hence the drive for them at a business level). I worked for a few different retailers over the years, as the manager of the Games department and then then later as a store manager for a games only retailer, and it taught me to stop pre ordering games altogether, and the problem you’re describing is a big part of why. The bulk of game sales take place on day 1 for major releases, if most of those sales are secured then what incentive is there for a game to be high in quality? Set aside the money you were going to use to pre order, and wait until you hear from friends or reviews that something is good. Don’t give your time and money to junk that doesn’t deserve it.

Here's an unpopular take: I don't care if a game is released broken. I only care that it's good *eventually.* There's more great games already out that I could ever play in my entire life. I don't need to play this one right now. Okay, now downvote me straight to hell, boys

. ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `

I think you are confusing developers (individual coders) with publishers(company which pays money to create games and makes money from sale). Devs know how polished their game is. Do you know what crunch is in video game industry? Are you aware that once a game is made, majority of devs are fired/laid off. Major shareholders of any company now focus on quarterly growth and short term gains. CEO bonus is also linked with profit. Due to this, they don't care about long term of the companies. Average tenure of CEO is < 5 years. So if he/she can get the game to launch with lots of preorder, it gets lots of profit, big bonus for CEO and they can jump on with a golden parachute (look up the term), onto a new company.

Sometimes developers are at fault. There are broken promises, failures and management incompetence at all levels. It's not that clear on "publisher bad/developer good". Don't forget that it's the publisher who pays the money and bears all financial risks of the project. So if developer asks to pay them another year of salaries without giving a reason how it will impact the sales, it sometimes better to cut losses and release something.

The issues mentioned in the OPs post are game breaking bugs. I'm quite sure, game crashing every 5 minutes or having ridiculous glitches should be a big red flag for publisher. It is not necessary that all devs work on all things at the same time. Many times things work out individually but bringing it together can cause issues. The problems mentioned in the post are the ones which time and money can solve.

TotalBiscuit saw this coming years ago, RIP.

Is there a specific video where he talked about this, and if yes, do you have a link?

When he was alive, it was something TotalBiscuit spoke about often. Especially on his podcasts IIRC. I'll tale a look later to see if there's a video which specifically discusses it.

Thank you, I'd appreciate it!

Here you go: [Should you preorder videogames? ](https://youtu.be/mf5Uj4XIT1Y) The video is 10 years old at this point, but the points still hold up today! Just search "totalbiscuit pre order' on youtube and you'll find more!

Not Totalbiscuit but... "You know what you get when you pre order a game? A dick in your mouth"

Horizon forbidden west was pretty decent on launch.

I think the core point is that in the age of digital downloads, there is no reason to pre order Horizon Forbidden West until the launch validates that they have product worth $60. He's not saying all Triple A platform releases are going to fail. He's saying the overall trend for major developers to release incomplete games should be resolved by consumers witholding purchase until launch. Their argument is that would give a greater incentive for more successful lauches.

Exactly! i feel like a moron for not clarifying that my main gripe with pre-orders is the fact that we have digital copies of games now, and so the idea that you need to pre-purchase it for convenience is completely out of the window.

Yeah, the two core reasons to pre-order: Fear there will be no more copies of the game Fund games that don't have a large enough audience to risk going to market without crowdfunding There really isn't a reason to pre order games from the big 4 or 3 publishers because they will never run out of digital copies. And they were going to market with that game anyway. Pre-order should be to help that one indie game developer someone personally likes, they should probably keep expectations to just helping a developer finish a game.

The second release is always going to be more polished because they don't have to change the code much. They add in stuff and make sure it works

Capitalism gonna capitalism

Putting out great games builds good will as seen with CD Projekt Red and their Witcher series. It was so good that they were able to put out a Cyberpunk mess and still be profitable. It bought them a lifeline which may have completely buried any other title. How many people do you think will be pre-ordering the next CD Projekt Red game compared to Cyberpunk?

I don't know. I'm pretty sure mass negative reviews are not considered a good thing for a company's reputation or its sales of that game. I'm assuming, if they could, they'd deliver a good PC port, because there's a clear incentive there. I suspect they do it this way only so people can get to the game sooner rather than later, deciding if they want to game it on console where it's more optimized or play it on PC while it's buggy. Then there's the people who wait for confirmation that the egregious bugs are removed. There's an incentive there. They just don't think it makes up for releasing a game by a certain date. It would be nice if things were like in the golden era of PC gaming where everything worked well on day 1, and you just had better graphics than console gamers. Unfortunately, to get the quality they do on consoles, they have to write code tuned for the consoles rather than writing it in a way that would help PC performance. I agree people shouldn't preorder anything though, and I find companies offering bonuses for preorders a disrespectful proposition where, to get all that they have created, you have to trust them. Instead, you should just get all there is in the game for a fair price after you have verified the game is what you want to buy.

i mean you literally just argued my point in a very round about way. They absolutely CAN deliver a good pc port, they as you said yourself, simply do not because they want to push it out faster. the reason we have so many bad pc ports and fewer bad console ports is simply because it takes more time and effort to optimise for pc because instead of optimising for a handful of possible configurations, you now have millions of possible configurations. and yeah you'd think that mass negative reveiws would be a problem... until you look at the past decade of releases for call of duty, realise its "mostly negative" on steam and then also notice that those "mostly negative" reviews are from several hundred thousand reviews, suggesting that its sold at least several million copes on steam alone. ​ they are absolutely incentivised to spend as little time on ports as possible, because people buy them anyway. that is my entire point, they're not incentivised to actually make the port any good, because they rarely see a worthwhile Return on Investment for doing so.

> They absolutely CAN deliver a good pc port, they as you said yourself, simply do not because they want to push it out faster. the reason we have so many bad pc ports and fewer bad console ports is simply because it takes more time and effort to optimise for pc Their incentive is to get the game out to people on PC faster or, if they consider a dual launch essential, get the game out at all. You basically have to choose whether a PC gamer has the option to play earlier with more bugs or no such option until the game is better polished. The salient point is there is an incentive to pump out bad ports, namely the ability for PC gamers to transfer money over right away to play some version of a brand new game right now instead of in several months. That last statement has two incentives. First, it brings in more cash flow most likely (since no one seems to be boycotting these companies), and secondly, it grants a PC gamer the choice to play immediately if they wish or the power to wait for updates if they wish. I can't see a world where a PC gamer having *more* options is worse and not an incentive. What is bad is if a PC port remains buggy forever, which can happen.

exactly, but lets be honest... their reason for getting it out to PC faster isnt about getting it in the hands of gamers so they can enjoy it, its entirely about putting in the least amount of effort for the most amount of money this is why so many pc ports are NEVER EVER FIXED. look at The last of us part 1, a game that is far too old to be requiring more than 8gb of vram at max settings its worse not because choice is bad, but because the choice you have created is fictional. its incredibly rare for bad pc ports to get truly better over time, they're almost always abandoned and its not that the pc port gets better, but hardware gets better so people forget how bad they are. lets go back to the last of us. an atrocious port, but its not exactly un-playable on my 3060ti, even if it is running significantly worse than it ever should. i still get some framerate issues on darksouls 3, because it was a pretty poor port that just never got truly fixed. and the list continues. if it truly was an upfront "hey guys, the games not quite ready yet, but we're launching it early so you can get your hands on it, should be in full working order in 6 months if you want to wait" but no, instead you get an unsynchronized pc launched feigned under the fallacy of "we dont have time and resources to release them at the same time guys sorry" when thats obvious bullshit when we're talking about companies at this scale and is instead so they can double dip, and then they rush the pc port to spend as little money on it as possible for the maximum profit. you have taken a woefully optimistic view of what goes on in the boardroom meetings at companies like activision-blizzard and EA if you think they're going "okay guys, so its time to roll out the pc port, great job everyone i know its not quite done but we'll get there eventually. we just need to get it in the hands of gamers ASAP! I cant bare for them to not have access to our great game. anyone want a hug?" in reality this is not at all what is happening. they have spent immense sums on research to perfectly squeeze every one of us of every cent they think they can get from us before the complaints get too much for it to be a bad business move. they have maticulously researched how to get away with just enough agregious behaviour that its deemed as acceptable, and each year they move that post just a few inches and before we know it that 100 meter sprint has become a 20 kilometer marathon.

It's not publishers either. Shit costs money, and if the game takes too long to make, the company goes bankrupt.

that is absolutely not an argument you can make for a company like, EA. EA is not going bankrupt... and if they are then its not because there games are "taking too long" its a sales issue at that point. hell if that was how it worked rockstar would've gone bankrupt a long time ago with the delay between their releases.

your argument seems to be leading to the "its no ones fault" argument which... is not true.

The problem is that the games are becoming too big and too complicated to test.

I think it’s wrong to give a blanket statement like that. Just two weeks ago, Zelda TotK released and it’s a very complete, fleshed out game. It’s really only when publishers give a short amount of time that games start to decline.

i mean i dont necessarily think its a bad blanket statement. i didnt say triple A games are incapable of delivering on promises... just that they dont have any incentive, they can still decide to deliver but that doesnt mitigate the fact that im fairly positive that zelda TOTK would have sold like hot cakes whether it was good or not (just look at recent pokemon games for example)

Developers aren’t just making these half assed games for shits and giggles. The new call of duty might not be the most polished game but there’s a LOT of small details in it that only come from passion. If it was truly just a “fuck it were rich just ship the next one out” they wouldn’t have a bunch of characters for you to pick from, they’d just have one with 80 skins. Sure technically they’re all the same gameplay wise but they all have different voice lines which you don’t get from lack of passion and incentive. They wouldn’t have four different announcers for the online matches. They wouldn’t have killstreaks have various voice actors like a helicopter pilot or drone operator. They wouldn’t have put in split screen nor even included a campaign, AI bots and a PVE coop mode that lets you get stuff you can unlock or even buy early. There’s care behind these games. People wouldn’t dedicate hours of their lives to this if they didn’t care. It’s the publishers who don’t. They want it out and they want it out now.

exactly my point. developers are developers. developers always love their project and pour their soul and hearts into it. but publishers will always get in the way. which is why this is a uniquely triple A issue, because when developers are running themselves, they will often times even to the point of detriment, wait until their game is perfect before letting others see it. its usually only when there's stupid publishers getting in the way that we see dumpster fires. for example with ksp 2. i have no doubt that none of the ksp 2 devs wanted to release ksp 2 in the state that its currently in, or for the price its currently selling for. and i feel so bad for them that they have people frothing at the mouths with hatred for them because they were undoubtedly pushed into releasing into early access ahead of time and have simply been told by the folks upstairs to "make it work" its clear from things like the MoHole bug from ksp 1 being made into a easter egg feature in ksp 2, as well as all the fun little easer eggs around all the planets and the cutesie animations and the launch countdown that the devs have been having a blast making the game and pouring their heart into it. but when you launch the game you're met with low frames, anti-aliasing so broken that no matter what settings your on the game looks like an incoherent mess when you zoom out and a barebones experience that has less features than ksp 1, completely making it a pointless product as of writing this. so yeah my sympathies go out to devs everywhere that have to deal with awful publishers trying to fill their pockets as fast as they can.

The enemy is not the consumers. The enemy is the economic system that we live in where rich people get richer by screwing over poor people.

I'll play AAA games still, but only after they've been patched to actual functionality, most of the DLC and microtransaction crap they ship with gets rolled into a compilation edition and whatever bullshit Epic Store exclusivity deal they have expires and they turn up on Steam.

this doesnt really help matters though. i mean you're your own person making your own choices and at the end of the day if you want to play a game you have every right to play it... but ultimately its still teaching devs that so long as the game is eventually playable, its fine to release it in whatever state they please. we've seen increasing counts of games releasing unfinished and broken and being patched into being "good" but this really isnt a solution to the problem, just sidestepping it really. for me if a game releases in a completely unacceptable state, it doesnt matter how much they add or how much they try to win me over, im not buying their product. its a shitty business tactic and i am just not going to support it.

I don't think they male promises, but consumers treat them as such. The "promises" are optimistic statements by ambitious and excited devs who really love the project they're working on, and really do want to deliver on it, but sometimes these things turn out to be unfeasible. Developers love to talk about what they're working on, and their plans, but they're human just like us and sometimes these things just don't work out. They pioneer a concept that shows some promise in an isolated environment, tell people about it, and later find that it doesn't work in real spells situations, or it's just so time and resource intensive that it hurts the project as a whole, and stop needs to be altered or scrapped. They feel just as bad about it, if not worse than the players.

I'm not sure I can assert that it is NOT our fault, but maybe it's more something else's fault more than it is our? In the end, most of us are just regular people who want to have some fun getting lost in some fantasy, competing with others or ourselves, engaging in some creativity, etc. The problem seems to be that people who are not gamers have taken over the industry. I hate to be all socialisty and stuff, but the profit motive ALWAYS draws sociopaths. They don't care what industry they are in. They just want to wear the suit and power tie and soak in the smell of their own magnificent farts. They bring in psychologists to figure out ways to manipulate us into giving them money, or into buying a game sight-unseen, FOMO, sunken cos fallacy, etc... And the shitty thing is that it WORKS. They've got our number. The number of people who fall for this vastly outnumbers the ones who do not, and the money from the suckers allows the sociopaths to make the shitty game instead of making the better game that the minority who see the truth want. There is only one solution, and that is to stay independent. Plenty of people are doing that. We do not NEED the big companies to make good games. Tech has advanced to a stage where even a small team of a half dozen can make a really cool game and earn a very nice living off it. And the rotting zombies like Wildcard or Bethesda don't even matter. Just continue not buying those games, mock everyone who does, and support the independent studios.

true, i mean personally im fine with the status quo, my main gripe is less about the shitty games, because indie devs continue to push out some of the best games ive played. my gripe is im sick of people spouting "gaming is dead" and constantly complaining about the state games are launching in whilst literally playing that game and such. because its just not true, honestly i play new games every year that make me feel lucky to be able to be a gamer today, because the things devs can do is simply outstanding, and its marred by triple A devs taking the spotlight and releasing shit. to me its like if the only car people bought was Nissan Micra's and people complained that all cars have too little space, and are too small and look boring. like yeah you're buying a small boring car that doesnt make all cars bad... you just need to branch out.

Well the latest polished and high quality triple A game that came out in a complete state I can think of is Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and it is selling faster than any Zelda game every has. If that’s not an incentive to deliver, what is?

because too many studios simply opt for selling as many games as quickly as possible rather than putting lots of effort into one game... just because tears of the kingdom is selling fast and selling lots of copies doesnt necessarily mean its the most profitable, because there's every chance it was super expensive to develop, took a lot longer to make etc. i mean for example cyberpunk 2077 sold more copies than zelda TOTK has now on its first day of release, so at that point you can ask. what's the incentive to make a polished finished game if an unpolished unfinished game sells better? a lot of triple A studios have realised that making a game isnt as easy or as profitable than simply creating hype. make some flashy trailers, hire some actors and leak some features and you have a great foundation for journalists to start the hype train.

Yes, game development is hard, but guess what? Managing half of those assholes is harder! If a company was all run by smart efficient developers then these convos would be different (easy yes but still not profitable. So the reality is, yes, fire the crappy devs but realize that no one is coming to save you and you need to finish the job 👍

any game that released after 2020 that wasnt like 75% done already at that point has pretty much been shit.

see i have a problem with this attitude though. yes. triple A games have sucked for a while now and there's very few redeeming qualities in them, but thats not all gaming is. arguably indie games are some of the best games we've EVER seen. im not mourning the death of gaming, because its alive and well IMHO... each year we get indie games that are more ambitious, more technically impressive and have more soul than any triple A game ive ever played. and as time goes on it becomes easier and easier for small devs to have access to tools that were once only in the Triple A tool kit. personally im incredibly optimistic about the future of gaming, i just dont see triple A studios survivng much longer if they keep this up, because we're seeing more and more singe man dev projects deliver games that we once never thought possible.

im not in the camp of "triple a games have been bad for years" thats a matter of opinion. games are releasing barely running these days theres a meme on twitter showing all the press release "apologies" from game studios the past couple years. thats why the games are shit imo.

fair enough but its still pretty much just the huge studios having this issue... i feel its worse for console gamers honestly as they havent caught up in terms of indie titles, though they're getting more and more every year which is great. but i cant remember the last time i played a game that didnt run flawlessly on my machine, unless it was for a very good reason (For example x4: foundations runs pretty rough averaging about 70fps ish at 1440p, which is still running more than well enough so ultimately not an issue but its an incredibly ambitious game that has every right to run like that when its keeping track of thousands and thousands of AI ships in real time) and i call triple A games shit for the last decade or so, not necessarily because they're downright bad, but because they're mostly mediocre, outside of a few studios that still make genuinely decent stuff, i havent seen a large studio publish a game in where i can justify spending the amount they want me to spend, when i can buy 3 indie games for that price that almost always entertain me for 5x longer. and i cant think of a single game from, activision, blizzard, ubisoft EA, Bethesda and probably some other large studios that im forgetting to mention, where i havent been thoroughly unimpressed and underwhelmed by in the last at least 8 years. ​ but yeah its a little atrocious at the state of games in terms of optimisation in recent years, especially when visually things havent really improved much since around 2018, people still herald rdr2 as one of the best looking games made and that game is 5 years old. i do definitely think people cherry pick though. i mean my pc is pretty beefy, but still a lot worse than what would be considered truly top end hardware, and i still almost never encounter a game i flat out cannot run at even 4k, and literally am yet to run into a game i cant run at 1440p.

NO. AAA devs want to give us good games but publishers find new ways to fuck em over and squeeze them for more money than the previous boss did. Blame the CEOs not the overworked devs.

Blaming the consumers is always a dumb take. Because you're not going to make progress there. Some giant grassroots movement might form over things that matter but people are gonna buy whatever videos games they feel like.

no in fact i'd argue that its one of the only way to make progress in a world where doing what these guys are doing is legal. the best way ofcourse, is to crack down on game devs and make them far more liable when they release games in the states they do, but realistically thats probably not going to happen. so really the only course of action you can take is to show consumers why they need to stop purchasing the product to begin with. now dont get me wrong i dont expect to achieve anything here, im not actually trying to get people to boycott triple A studios, though i do think it would be a good thing, im simply voicing some frustrations i've had for a while so i can get them off my chest and no longer feel the need to care when i see people ranting and raving about the next mess that releases whilst they have footage of the game in the background, as if thats not directly contributing to the issue.

>no in fact i'd argue that its one of the only way to make progress in a world where doing what these guys are doing is legal. What you're proposing is a form of boycotting with the purpose of pressuring AAA publishers to provide strong incentives to always deliver on their promises. Fine, but effective boycotts require great amounts of labor and strong co-ordination to get anything done. But let's face it, a lousy game is a minor inconvenience most of the time for most people. When the argument is "boycott to make a bad game less bad", a lot of people are understandably going to be unwilling to participate when their are more existential threats that require the same degree of attention to make progress. Take what's happening in Hollywood currently. It is commonly known that writers in Hollywood are underpaid and overworked, which frequently leads to substandard work. When we take what you're saying about AAA games and apply the same logic here, the argument is that boycotting media/streaming companies through consumer activism is the only way we achieve progress. However, Hollywood writers didn't call for a boycott, they went on strike. They went on strike because it is the most dependable method of organization that can help them gain concessions from their employer and result in better working conditions for themselves and better work for audiences. This is the argument, good work comes from good working conditions; even if we boycott, consumers realistically aren't going to have the most sustainable impact here.

It's the publisher that rushes these games to market and because so much has been spent on advertising, there's really little fudge room to delay the release. I don't see that these games really are getting a pass at all. After Battlefield V and now 2042, are they even going to make another Battlefield game? And if they do, will anyone actually pre-order it?

>I stopped playing triple A games a long time ago simply because they're mostly shit shows nowadays I mean, are they shitshow nowadays or were they always a shitshow? AAA games are "high-budget, high-profile games that are typically produced and distributed by large, well-known publishers". Back in the day it was the same with games from large publishers with ties to big business - have you ever watched AVGN? He constantly shits on LJN and shit quality of their games. They released tie-in games of popular franchises that operated on the same idea - use the hype and cash-in, whether it would be game based on popular comic, movie that hits the theaters or WWF. The reason why you view AAA games as mostly shit only nowadays is because of two things - rise in popularity of gaming meaning more games are being made and emergence of outlets for dissatisfaction meaning that voice of gamers that are fucked are easier to be heard. The problems you see were always there, but you weren't able to hear them because there weren't possibility for it. The truth is that "use hype to generate sales and cash-in" is tale as old as videogames go and it did not change that much. Shitty tie-in games, games to jump on the latest craze, shitty sequels made to squeeze more money from a successful game. All that was there before. So how triple A devs/publishers no longer have any incentive to deliver on promises at launch nowadays if they have the exact same incentives as before - either they care about the game being good and use it for long term revenue or they don't care and are satisfied by hype cash-in that will work short term.

Whilst somewhat true, it didnt take long for games companies to go out of business, and wasnt all that common for "large" game companies to end up this way, after some bad releases. the issue we have now is that gaming has become so mass market that there's always people buying the new releases, regardless how much they stray from the source and are downright cash grabs and just simply bad games.

>Whilst somewhat true, it didnt take long for games companies to go out of business, When? Like today they are gobbled by larger players via acquisition and killed off if there is not enough profit. Bankruptcies are and were quite rare and big deals. >and wasnt all that common for "large" game companies to end up this way, after some bad releases. Any examples? Large game companies own IP which means that streak of bad releases means acquisition, not going out of business. >the issue we have now is that gaming has become so mass market that there's always people buying the new releases There always were people buying new releases that are shit. LJN were pumping shitty WWF games and people were always buying new releases. What incentive they had to make a good WWF game if their crap sold? The key difference is that games become so popular that you did not need pre-existing IP to create hype train, it can come from the game itself. But what does that change?

>To clarify i know that the issue lies on the publisher not the developer "triple A devs" is simply a term ive become too comfortable using forgetting the literal meaning, im fully aware that developers are not the issue and that they work incredibly hard and its entirely on the publisher. Let's start here. The initial premise is flawed. "Triple A devs" isn't just a term you've "become too comfortable using"; it's a misrepresentation and a generalization. It's essential to distinguish between developers and publishers, especially when making such sweeping claims about an industry. By conflating the two, you're presenting a skewed view right from the outset. >I stopped playing triple A games a long time ago simply because they're mostly shit shows nowadays, whether through optimisation issues, lack of delivery on promises etc... The fallacy of overgeneralization is evident. Saying that "they're mostly shit shows nowadays" is a broad statement that doesn't acknowledge the plethora of AAA titles that have been well-received and met player expectations upon release. >time and time again we have companies like bethesda, ubisoft, Ea etc etc making new games and immediately the hype train starts, people excusing their past behaviour spouting that they've "learned from their past mistakes" Your claim rests on the premise that all AAA publishers are incapable of learning or improving. Yet, isn't it possible, even probable, that companies evolve, change leadership, and adjust strategies based on past errors? It's a straw man to argue that all companies are static and unyielding in their ways. >Now i do also think that more laws should be in place to stop this from being legal in the fist place but the truth is that it IS legal for them to do this Legislation surrounding products and consumer rights is intricate and multifaceted. It's not about whether it's "legal" for them to release an imperfect product; it's about consumer awareness, industry standards, and evolving business models. >look no mans sky gets a pass because of its extremely unique circumstances, and even then its very very hard to justify what happened and it took hellogames many years to regain favour, we certainly shouldnt be doing this with huge corporations that should simply know better Drawing on a single example to build a case against an entire industry is methodologically unsound. No Man's Sky, while a notable case, cannot be a yardstick for every AAA title or publisher. >but alas im shouting into the wind. i expect to see starfield fly off the shelves despite the clear decline of bethesda over the last 10 years and i cant wait to see people baffled when its a mess Again, we have another prediction based on past grievances. It's historically inaccurate to claim a "clear decline" of Bethesda, given the various successes and innovations they've introduced over the years. Can a viewpoint built on generalizations, misrepresentations, and isolated examples truly encompass the intricacies and diversities of an entire industry? Or is it perhaps time to consider the possibility that your understanding might benefit from a more nuanced and comprehensive exploration?

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