The importance of getting it right the first time (Gaming)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Monday, August 08, 2016, 12:30 (3029 days ago) @ Cody Miller

So I totally understand where you're coming from here, but I think you're placing the blame in the wrong place.

We all know games are complex to make, and take years of Dev time. The final months are critical, because only then are all the assets and systems finally put together. A team can spend 4 years on a game and not know if it is all going to "click" or not until the last couple months. More specifically, they may discover that the game is in fact going to come together, but there are a few unforeseen issues that need working out.

Because of the nature of certification and release schedules, Devs often run out of time at the last minute. This isn't new. It has always been this way. 15 years ago, it would be severely detrimental to the final game. There could be hundreds of mediocre games that were only a couple extra months of Dev time away from greatness.

Today, Devs have the ability to patch games which means they have time to put an extra month or two into fixing the unforeseen little problems that crop up right at the end of development. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, IMO. The way the media covers games can create problems (by setting expectations based on unfinished content) but that's not exactly new either.

So no, I don't think the problem is day 1 patches. I think the greater issue is a combination of unrealistic ship dates/bad planning early in the Dev cycle. Considering how complex games are to make, and how complex the games themselves often become (in terms of gameplay systems and mechanics), publishers should know by now that a little flexibility in terms of release dates goes a long way. They need to stop painting themselves into corners by announcing games so damn early, and showing so much of the game months or even years before release. Yes this is a business and targets/deadlines need to be met, but right now the publishers are putting the cart so far in front of the horse that problems are virtually guaranteed.

All that said, I do believe that development studios are partly to blame. Developers constantly bite off more than they can chew, which is part of the reason development of so many titles becomes "rushed". The industry-wide acceptance of "crunch" at the end of development is harmful to the games and developers themselves. What if developers stopped operating under the expectations of having the game "come together" in the final few months? What if games were expected to be in fully-playable states 9-12 months before launch, with the rest of that time allocated to polish/bug fixes? It's not unheard of. Members of the media (Garnett Lee, to be specific) was saying that Halo Reach was playable almost a full year before it launched. That was a grizzled, mature Bungie team working at peak efficiency. They knew what was involved in making a Halo game and were able to plan production schedules accordingly. And the game still needed post-launch updates, but only for relatively minor aspects of the multiplayer.

I'm sure that many developers actually do TRY to get their games into fully playable states earlier in development, but it rarely happens because of the other problems I mentioned (unrealistic release schedules, poor planning, etc). My point is that the severity of some day-1 patches is a symptom of larger issues with game development. Saying "no day-1 patches" won't make the end-products any better.