Huzzah! After waiting months for it, Arcanum is finally out!
And shock of shocks, it’s unfinished and buggy.
I love paying to beta test software. And we’re not talking about buggy in the sense of hardware incompatibilities (though there’s that too), we’re talking buggy in the sense of problems with the actual game. Quests that disappear.
Nobody at Sierra playtested it, because that would cost money. Better to release it and get people to pay to do that. After all, we can always release patch after patch after patch after patch to fix the problems they find. Who knows, in a year, maybe the game will be playable without problems!
The good part is, we can release it this way because if anyone complains, many more gamers will stand up and tell them how ridiculous it is to expect a game to ship finished, and how it’s okay to do this because “it’s been this way for so long.”
This just drives me nuts. This is the reason I stopped buying MicroProse games.
I’ve just gotten in the habit of waiting a year to buy a game, getting it from the bargain bin, and knowing that it either has the newest patches on the CD or readily available from the website.
Of course, my smug self-righteousness is thrown right out the window when a new Baldur’s Gate-type game comes out.
Legomancer, you’re totally right about this. So many game companies are looking to the game-buying public to finish the job for them, and it’s really irritating.
Even more irritating is the practice of continuing to release old versions of software, knowing that folks that buy it will be forced to download patches and updates to get the game to work properly. Someone needs to explain to me, if I were to buy a copy of a game like UT or Diablo II today, why I still need to go to the website and download patches and bug fixes. Why is this stuff not being included on the CD-ROMs after the release of the patches? I can understand the need to clear out old inventory with old software versions, but this is ridiculous.
Also, when was the last time you saw a game developer include the version of the software on the box? That should be standard practice by now.
Blizzard. shiver
Not sure how long this has been going on in the industry, but the aforementioned company does not give a drop of Liquid Fuck™* about their SP or non-BNet customers. That attitude seems to be prevalent.
But what can we do? Other than not get the gaming fix?
I know, lets all go download dungeon. Is there an online version?
*All rights to this phrase belong to the originator of said phrase. No infringing use of said phrase is intentioned by the poster.
I usually do the online registration thing when I buy new software. I have not once ever received an email telling me that there’s a patch out, although I did get a whole new version, manuals and everything, of some blood-sugar-tracking software I bought.
To be fair, for Diablo, all you have to do is connect to B-net and the game will automatically download and install the latest patch, and when you install Halflife/Opposing Forces, the Opposing Forces CD has the patch for Halflife on it.
I think it may be even worse when a company as an large beta with over 10,000 members of the public all playing it and STILL has a game that is completely unplayable when it’s released. I’ve already ranted on that one on my site, http://www.gamer-vision.com. If you’ve not already guessed, it’s Anarchy Online.
Why can’t companies do a crippled beta. Give out a working version of the game leaving the more important areas out of it. That way, your internal team is only looking in a small area for bugs while the public gets to a) play the game before it’s out, making them happy and b) gives you free beta testing.
Now, this would only work for something like RPGs and Adventure games, but it would be something.
Since this is the pit, I must add something to it for proper vile and venom. I would like to direct this one at Sierra.
You see, Sierra used to come out with fun games. Then they started getting buggy. Then they started to be no longer fun. Now they just publish games and MAKE them buggy with their Sierra tools program that doesn’t update properly, crashes frequently and regularly causes my computers to lock up.
So to Sierra: You jizz swilling, rat monkey, cum dumpster of a company who sucks the very life from computers with code that was written by spew gurgling programmers with shitstained teeth should just implode, as the ego of Williams’ has created a black hole vortex of talent and quality of which the like has never before been seen. If ever someone comes up to you and offers you a job at Sierra, punch them in the mouth for insulting you.
I have had the same experience with Sierra, and now I would load one of their games even if it was free - I don’t want to deal with the frustration. On a different note, a friend of mine (Moose - in the credits of various games) got laid off from Interplay about 4 months back, when they cut their playtesting department down by 20-30%. I know Interplay did a lot of the playtesting for some of the games mentioned above, but look for a quality drop in the future. When times look hard, the first thing inexperienced management seems to do is cut playtesting - because it just delays the release and adds expense, or so they seem to believe. Foolish mortals!
This is known as the Microsoftization of software – release a program/game/OS before it’s ready, promote the hell out of it , then issue some patches for the really glaring errors. By that time, you’ve made your money, so what do you care?
Bill Gates has created an entire industry from this paradigm & is laughing his ass off all the way to the bank…
And you know, this only happens in the PC gaming market. If you tried to release a Playstation/XBox/Nintendo/whatever game with as many problems as a majority of PC games, you would go out of business.
I actually make computer games- right now, I’m working on a PS2 game. We’re almost done, and we’re playtesting the hell out of it. Why? Because the game can’t be patched later on.
Why are PC games released before they’re ready? It’s the producer paradigm- the production company (us) really has almost NO control over how or when the game’s released. We’re completely at the mercy of the company we’re making the game for. Most companies I’ve worked for have been starving for cash by the end of a project- and while we get milestone payments, we’re always scrambling for new projects to pay FUTURE bills. The producer holds all the aces, and it sucks.
The first game company I worked for was literally driven into bankruptcy by the company we were working for- they kept saying that we hadn’t fixed several bugs, but they wouldn’t TELL US WHAT THOSE BUGS WERE! Eventually, we just ran out of money… and the game never got released.
sigh
I love the game industry, I really do. I just hate the current business model.
It is ok for a game to have a few bugs. It is not ok for it to have so many bugs that it makes enjoying the game impossible. I understand where you’re coming from. I was looking forward to buying Arcanum but after I hear about the problems I decided to wait for a while. Even when it isn’t buggy I haven’t heard anyone say it is the great game they expected it to be.
As someone who has worked on a couple games, allow me.
First and foremost, most games are released buggy, beyond expectation. Just thought I would get that out of the way before I launch my defense. Now it’s quote time:
I don’t really have a defense for this, as Sierra is known for releasing buggy products. About patch 5 this should be stable. I would like to point out there is a misnomer, used repeatedly in the rant, complaining about the developer. I have been on one released product, which should not have been released. Was it the developer’s choice to release it? No, it was the publisher’s, plain and simple. The main people you have a problem with here is the publisher, in this case Sierra. I don’t believe that Sierra has any internal development anymore (did they not just completely close down Dynami?) and frankly they don’t seem to give a crap about quality.
Again, I doubt many developers wish for the public to finish the job for them, however publishers don’t mind. Game-testing is an expense, especially because testers don’t do a heck of a lot for extended periods of time. Good testers will work in bursts, 15 hour days, then nothing for weeks. However many, if not most, testers (especially good ones) want to be developers and don’t stay in that role for long, thereby hurting testing. And one of the rants below is entirely accurate in stating that QA goes first on a project.
Well duh, you can’t get a patch for most console games. Naturally publishers understand this. Furthermore console games make a LOT more money than PC games, with only a little added expense. Therefore 2 more months of QA can be justified on a console game.
Another big problem, on the developer end, is that game developers are constantly bullshitting schedules, even to themeselves. Then again, if the developer gave an honest appraisal of the development and QA time for a product, it would never get released.
It helped, though, that two days after I got the game I left the country for three weeks, so by the time I got back the patch was ready. Still, its a really fun game in an very original setting. And it has a hell of a lot of character options. I don’t know what I’m going to do when Pool of Radience II comes out in a few weeks. Might have to get a second computer.
I used to beta-test for a few companies a couple years back. My “specialty” was flight sims.
Nothing would burn my ass anymore than pointing out what you thought were “fundamental flaws” in a game or features/enhancements you thought would really help but to have them ignored.
As for other bugs, I am certain they publishers/developers want as few as possible, but they have that all important deadline that MUST be met. I’m sure they knowingly let some by thinking they’ll patch 'em later.
Because no matter how much a company playtests, there’s ALWAYS going to be some glitches. Additionally, most of Blizzard’s patches are tweaks to the game itself, not bug fixes. Sometimes they make a certain weak spell stronger, or they nerf-down a very powerful spell to balance the game.
Personally, I believe that many people doth protest too much. “Me me me, now now now” seems to be the prevalent attitude.
You’re forgetting that when you design a game for a console, you don’t have to design the game for a vast range of different possible system configurations. How can you have a hardware incompatibility if you’re only programming for one or two different sets of hardware?
Furthermore, console games are generally quite a bit simpler than their PC counterparts. It’s an entirely different marketing segment. You’ll never see a console version of something like Falcon 4.0
Actually why not buy a game that once a year you have to buy the add-on once a year to get things that should be in the patches i.e graphics upgrades new code ect … ?
Of course ya add a new player race and some new levels and call it a expansion
Welcome to Everquest a game I love to death and spend many hours a day on
But part of the problem is you get the idea they didnt know it was going to be that popular
Of course thats becuase they were the only game in town and attracted every so and so ( pit rant on eq players coming soon) but they seemed to think "well as our user base grows we can change things "
Although compared to what I’ve heard about the ww2 online game AO runs smoothly
Regarding the console game argument (console programmers don’t have to program for a wide range of hardware) I’m not talking about hardware problems. I’m talking about problems within the actual game itself.
If PC games are more complex than console games, I’m sorry. I don’t accept the argument that it’s okay for a game to be unfinished and not work because it’s very complex. If the game is too complex to be played through once without problems, something is wrong.
I’m tired of hearing the game companies piss and moan about how much money they don’t make and how bad piracy is and how nobody buys their games and then release shitty, broken, unfinished products. Guys, one reason many people pirate games rather than buy them is because so many of them aren’t worth buying.
My other complaints about Arcanum aren’t even bugs, they’re apparently working as intended. The combat system would be awful if this game had been released ten years ago. The NPC system is something that people complained about back when it was used in Fallout 2. The manual, while charming and folksy, is worthless as a guide to understanding the game. Should I be able to throw 14 molotov cocktails in combat without using any actions? I don’t know if that’s a bug or a feature. Did anyone check to see if technology is well-balanced with magic? Apparently not, from what I’m hearing.
Take the stuff that’s intentionally frustrating, add the bugs on top of that, and then add hardware bugs on top of that, and suddenly you’re deep in the heart of no-fun-land.
