Dude. In games like last of us even if they use algorithms to generate stuff, it is ultimately approved and changed and tweaked by a human hand. I know how it works. And everything is there because a human ultimately deemed it so.

Ok, but you just contradicted yourself. You claimed procedural generation can't be the future because development will always need a human hand, but here you claim procedural generation falls under that category because the algorithms are touched by a human hand.

Disagree. I can name a hundred hand-crafted games with less-than-perfect design... and a thousand more with really crappy design.

And I can name zero games with design handled 100% by algorithm that have good design. Of course there are bad designers out there. But I can name hundreds of games that have amazing design, which are completely the result of a human touch.

Yeah, can you name a game that has NO algorithms in it? Games are made with human hands and algorithms. That is just what it is right now. You are arguing that we need to stay with human hands, which will make games better. They are just arguing that games need to be progressed by giving more control to algorithms as oppose to human hands (that I know from personal experience can only do so much). They aren't saying that EVERYTHING is procedural. That can't be done right now. It's that simple. Maybe one day that is a possibility, but not right now.

Y'all need to stop thinking so black and white. Although I love lurking in on your debates about such things, sometimes you guys needs some perspective :-)

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And I can name zero games with design handled 100% by algorithm that have good design. Of course there are bad designers out there. But I can name hundreds of games that have amazing design, which are completely the result of a human touch.

Rogue? Any other rogue-likes? All of the rogue-likes? They're all designed by algorithm. Wayward, Hand of Fate, Rogue Legacy, just to name a few recent ones.

. . . and can use the same guns and techniques that you did at the start of the game all the way to the end, that's not a very satisfying experience.

You mean like you can in Halo?

I was with you up until "When you dont have to learn or improve".

Have you played Spelunky? The whole point is that you learn and improve, adapting to whatever situation you find yourself in rather than memorising levels.

I don't even like Spelunky (also Im terrible at it), but its absolutely a game about learning.

Spelunky was terrible. But like, that's just my opinion man. When you don't have to learn or improve, and can use the same guns and techniques that you did at the start of the game all the way to the end, that's not a very satisfying experience.

I'm not sure you and I played the same game. I learned and improved a lot in the process of the game. Learning how to perform tough jumps and certain strategies for each enemy/trap was extremely satisfying and fun experience.

I got super into the Daily Challenges, one of the rare instances that I got into seeing where I was on leaderboards... I think it's one of the only games on PSN that I've bothered to get all the Trophies for.

That sounds great to me.

Again, you're glossing over the fact that neither the developers nor the publisher initiated these pre-release reviews. Dealers *illegally* sold early copies, and some people chose to do review/preview coverage based on an un-finished version of the game. The developers were actively telling everyone "what you're seeing is not final, the game won't be final until launch day".

I'm not glossing over it at all. I'm not even trying to defend the retailers. I am saying that you can completely eliminate the chance of players not playing the version of the game you want them to by not even giving them that option. If you put your complete trust in the people selling your games, then you are foolish. All it takes is one copy in this day and age with the internet.

Which is exactly why your attitude is absurd.

It takes time to get real copies to retailers. It takes time to print those copies, put them in packaging, ship them. It takes time for retailers to put them on shelves.

Publishers don't have 100% control over all aspects of that chain - and couldn't, unless they also become retailers, and run their own factories, etc etc etc. (If you're saying that they need to do all of these things in order to make a reasonable game that they can be proud of, you're not even arguing in the same LANGUAGE as I am, so there's no point in continuing this conversation.)

At SOME point, a point that comes AFTER they supply a product to the next link in the chain and BEFORE the consumer is supposed to be able to get his hands on the product, someone along the way can steal a copy, and sell it. (Or just play it. Whatever.) Unless the game is an always-on game that REQUIRES a connection to the internet to play (I don't know enough about NMS to know if it falls into this category, but it's sort of irrelevant, since your argument isn't about NMS, it's about games in general), there is NO WAY for the developer to stop people from playing/discussing that leaked game.

What you're suggesting, however, is that developers go back 20 years, when technology didn't allow them to fix small things after the manufacturing process started - to say "we're going to call this game completely done, no matter what, and this is the release version, no matter what" when they send the game off to the manufacturer, to start the disc creation/packaging process. And that's just dumb.

The only time I see a problem with Day-1 patches is when their existence is used or acknowledged in misleading ways during the review/preview process. EA will throw these huge Battlefield review events where they invite a bunch of press to come play an unfinished version of the game while also making them very aware that a day-1 patch is coming. This sort of thing inevitably leads to the reviewer questioning any problems or issues they have with the game, technical or otherwise, because they don't know for sure if those problems will exist on launch day. I find it leads many reviews to focus more heavily on the positive aspects of a game, for fear of heavily critiquing a shortcoming only to discover that it has changed by the time the game launches. The fact that most sites go ahead and publish reviews written under these conditions is a whole other can of worms. In cases like that, I could almost agree with Cody. But then I realize that the real problem is lack of proper communication, or worse, intentionally misleading the audience. Either way, the day-1 patch itself is not the problem.

But in the case of No Man's Sky, Sony and the developers are going out of their way to let everyone, including reviewers, know that they should wait until launch to play the game because then and only then will it be finished. It's a game that mostly comes on a disc with a little bit of final code delivered via download. As I said before, Cody is essentially complaining about the delivery method which I don't personally understand. Leaks happen. Basing opinions on leaks of an unfinished game is foolish in any case. Doesn't matter if the game is a month away from completion or a day away. Either way, it is unfinished.

At SOME point, a point that comes AFTER they supply a product to the next link in the chain and BEFORE the consumer is supposed to be able to get his hands on the product, someone along the way can steal a copy, and sell it. (Or just play it. Whatever.) Unless the game is an always-on game that REQUIRES a connection to the internet to play (I don't know enough about NMS to know if it falls into this category, but it's sort of irrelevant, since your argument isn't about NMS, it's about games in general), there is NO WAY for the developer to stop people from playing/discussing that leaked game.

Correct. This is why if I were running a video game company it would be so damn important not to send anything off to manufacturing that I wouldn't mind the world seeing.

But your console will strongly suggest, if not demand, you patch the game before you play it, right? Yeah, day one patches suck for offline games and players with no internet. Preventing those edge cases is the best argument against day one patches. But even so, <b>reviews and the public's perception of a game should be based on how a game will play for the overwhelming majority of players</b>, not the few unfortunate edge cases.

I can't recall the site, but there is one that published a review a few days ago based on the pre-patched version of No Man's Sky. While, no, I don't every site should publish a review that way, I do happen to think it's great that at least one did. That is the experience people are buying on the disc, that is the experience some players (a minority of them, obviously) will get. I think it's completely fair to judge a game on those merits.

If it's ok to judge a game based on its unpatched version, is it also ok to judge it based on someone's console with a bad hd making load times 10x longer than they should be, or someone attempting to play a modern heavily multiplayer game over a 14.4k dialup modem, or someone who tries to play a VR game like Golem on a single 1950s television? Of course not! That would be absurd!

Those are all bad analogies. The things you listed are all obviously not the way those things are meant to be experienced. The fact that the unpatched version of No Man's Sky was put on a disc and sent to retailers for people to buy has to mean something, in my opinion.

Instead, we need to agree upon a consistent state by which to judge new games. And in the current day, with development practices as they are (for better or worse) judging games fully patched running on proper and properly performing hardware makes a hell of a lot more sense than judging a game unpatched a week before it is even supposed to be playable...

That's what I'm arguing against. For a probably not insignificant amount of people, the unpatched version is what will be experienced. I'm not rallying against Hello Games--they're not doing anything that any other developer doesn't do. I'm arguing against the entire trend of putting unfinished games on a disc in the first place. It's about principle. If that's what people can buy, then it's absolutely okay to judge based on that, and that alone.

But your console will strongly suggest, if not demand, you patch the game before you play it, right? Yeah, day one patches suck for offline games and players with no internet. Preventing those edge cases is the best argument against day one patches. But even so, reviews and the public's perception of a game should be based on how a game will play for the overwhelming majority of players, not the few unfortunate edge cases.

First of all, I'm fairly certain NMS requires an Internet connection to play (can anyone confirm/correct me on that?)

And even if it doesn't, anyone playing the game without the day 1 patch is not playing the game that the developers intended everyone to play.

What I find strange about this whole argument is that if NMS were a digital-only game, nobody would be complaining about a day 1 patch. The nature of the game's development would be identical in every other way, yet nobody would care. Some people just seem to be hung up on this concept of "what is ON THE DISC" mattering above all else. NMS, like many other games, includes a download as part of the initial purchase. I don't see any problem with that.