Games being released before they are ready?

jenjenten

With the current debacle over BF4 and Arkham Origins, and to an extent COD: Ghosts.....its apparent the games were rushed, riddled with bugs....had no QA and testing.

The trend of release now and patch later is really hitting gamer confidence in companies. I have BF4 and i wont even launch it until more patches come out.

I got sucked into the hype .... can we get our money back

Reekwind

I remember having this discussion ten years ago. Plus ça change...

Lone Stone

Its a very bad situation, you know i bought bf4 on the pc there a few weeks ago i usually get it on the console. But its the buggyist fps i ever played, crashing/disconnects no audio other weird things. I got fed up with it havent played in ages, most could be patched now.

But what im actually more worried about is on steam, nearly every game on the front page (thingy) is an early access beta, i find that a bit weird. People actually selling alpha/beta state games.

zenno

They have us all as beta testers.

krudler

zenno wrote: »

They have us all as beta testers.

Bingo, sure look at COD, there's never a beta rolled out or demo, because people would know how buggy they are. Why risk lack of day one record sales when you can fix things later once reports of what pisses people off come out?

Antar Bolaeisk

Early access has become a big thing at the moment will people now gaining access to alpha versions of games (ie. the development stage before beta). I can see that going down a very bad road and a lot of people getting burned.

Of course, this isn't quite the same as buying a full retail game that clearly hasn't been near any quality control.

professore

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

Early access has become a big thing at the moment will people now gaining access to alpha versions of games (ie. the development stage before beta). I can see that going down a very bad road and a lot of people getting burned.

Of course, this isn't quite the same as buying a full retail game that clearly hasn't been near any quality control.

Alpha is the stage after beta in programming terms.

Mr E

Nope. I hope you're not a developer.

http://www.techterms.com/definition/alpha_software

SirLemonhead

Just like the letter B comes before the letter A in the alphabet!

SmurfX

If developers skimp on testing with their finished product its up to the customer to respond with their wallet.
I suspect there's too many people who buy day 1 on reputation (or just pre-order) without ever really researching or considering the product quality.

shruikan2553

What I dont understand is how they charge full price for the beta. Minecraft did it the right way for me. The game was cheaper but unfinished so you could buy now and put up with it or wait until it was complete and pay full price.

Grimebox

I've fallen into the trap of buying Project Zomboid, Castle Story and Prison Architect on steam. All of which in alpha. Do not waste your time with any of these yet.

MadYaker

Arma 3 did it right imo. If you bought into the alpha it was cheapest. Beta was a bit more expensive and then the full game was full price. They were straight up with everybody and got feedback from people playing the alpha and beta. It's a bit more honest than the likes of BF4 which were still riddled with bugs because they weren't finished but you still had to pay full price for what wasn't really a release build at all.

It's been the same with loads of other games. Dead Island and Skyrim spring to mind. As long as we continue to buy half finished games in record numbers on release the companies have no reason to change the way they do things. My own personal solution for this is to never buy games on release. I buy almost all my games in steam sales.

titan18

Aye, I'd buy very few games on release. GTA 5 is the only one this year, and next will probably be The Witcher 3

Not The Real Scarecrow

Grimebox wrote: »

I've fallen into the trap of buying Project Zomboid, Castle Story and Prison Architect on steam. All of which in alpha. Do not waste your time with any of these yet.

Both Project Zomboid and Prison Architect are both very playable in their current states and get updated regularly. If anything these are two great examples of the system working, as the devs really listen and communicate with the community, leading to great games.
There are some nightmarish releases, but these two definitely don't fit into that category. If you want to see how terrible it can all go, check out the crap popping up on Desura's version of early access.Got a game called Survivor in some indie bundle, downloaded it and it basically doesn't even run. If you're lucky you get to move your character a bit. Glad I only got it in a bundle, but the cheeky prick selling it is asking for 15 quid for it,trying to say it's a playable alpha (like Arma 3 was ) and it's not even anywhere near an alpha stage.

J. Marston

Didn't have any problems with Arkham Origins myself. What are the problems with it?

death1234567

shruikan2553 wrote: »

What I dont understand is how they charge full price for the beta. Minecraft did it the right way for me. The game was cheaper but unfinished so you could buy now and put up with it or wait until it was complete and pay full price.

I don't agree that's the right way, although I know why minecraft did it that way. A game should be released when it's ready, just like any product. The problem with games is that you can patch them easily. This leads to development cycles being shorter, testing being shorter and bugs being more prevalent. If it was a pain in the ass to patch a game then you can be sure new releases would contain a lot less bugs. Its just much cheaper to release a buggy game, have end users test it for you and then create 3 or 4 patches that users can download.

Grimebox

Not The Real Scarecrow wrote: »

Both Project Zomboid and Prison Architect are both very playable in their current states and get updated regularly. If anything these are two great examples of the system working, as the devs really listen and communicate with the community, leading to great games.
There are some nightmarish releases, but these two definitely don't fit into that category. If you want to see how terrible it can all go, check out the crap popping up on Desura's version of early access.Got a game called Survivor in some indie bundle, downloaded it and it basically doesn't even run. If you're lucky you get to move your character a bit. Glad I only got it in a bundle, but the cheeky prick selling it is asking for 15 quid for it,trying to say it's a playable alpha (like Arma 3 was ) and it's not even anywhere near an alpha stage.

You're probably right with those two. Castle Story is the one I most recently played. It's got so little content

Not The Real Scarecrow

Grimebox wrote: »

You're probably right with those two. Castle Story is the one I most recently played. It's got so little content

It's a shame when they do stuff like that.I think it hurts the game more releasing it in a condition like that,leading to bad advertisement and then fewer sales.It's fair enough if it's in a kickstarter thing, at least you know you're giving money to the barebones of a game, but when it is on steam, even if it's stated that its in very early stages, it does give the impression that it's playable or near enough finished.

There was a similar one on steam a while back, I think it was Skyforge or something like that, basically minecraft in space. From what I gather there was hardly any content to the game , but the trailer made it look like it was nearly finished. There was a bit of a backlash to it, and I haven't read anything positive about it.If they had to be patient and release it when it was at least someway playable or didn't falsely advertise it, I reckon they would have had a lot of support from the community.

Kiith

Why bother paying for QA or beta testing, when we'll still pay full price and just report the bugs on release. It's not like it's damaged their sales (at least not in BF4 or COD's case).

As per usual, the only way this stops is if people stop buying broken games.

Which won't happen.

TerrorFirmer

BF4 is stable now for me thankfully, crashes are extremely rare. But it was a disgrace the way it was released. You can understand, to some extent though, that when people say 'there was obviously no quality testing done', that they're being a bit dramatic, as one of the devs pointed out, 200 guys could spend 24 hours a day testing it, but they're drops in a pond compared to the tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of people that will be playing the game.

As for games being sold as Alphas or Betas, I'm not against that, because the player understands what he's getting into at the point of sale, and in the case of smaller developers, sometimes those funds keep their development going until the final product. No problem at all with that, though personally I don't like playing Alphas, whatever about betas.

dreamers75

death1234567 wrote: »

I don't agree that's the right way, although I know why minecraft did it that way. A game should be released when it's ready, just like any product. The problem with games is that you can patch them easily. This leads to development cycles being shorter, testing being shorter and bugs being more prevalent. If it was a pain in the ass to patch a game then you can be sure new releases would contain a lot less bugs. Its just much cheaper to release a buggy game, have end users test it for you and then create 3 or 4 patches that users can download.

Last Gen consoles tried to stop that by making patches expensive which would work towards what your saying.

But this gens consoles have waived that fee so ummm BF4 type ****e is here to stay.

rizzodun

What's worse about the 'release now, patch later' way of doing things is that if a game doesn't sell as well as the studios had hoped, they just end up dropping it altogether. Race Pro was a good example of that, great potential as a realistic console racing sim, WTCC licensing, but didn't sell too well, had a small dedicated following who clung on for months waiting for the issues to be fixed and DLC to be released, ended up trading mine in after it became clear the worst problems were not going to be fixed.

Grumpypants

Sums it up nicely.

Reekwind

Lone Stone wrote: »

But what im actually more worried about is on steam, nearly every game on the front page (thingy) is an early access beta, i find that a bit weird. People actually selling alpha/beta state games.

Despite my earlier blasé response, the one big thing that has changed in the past decade (less, really) has been the rise of pre-orders and paid alpha/beta access. And this, married with the decline in the status of games journalists, is a disaster

Games will always be pushed out in conditions considerably less than 100% and games will always need patches. So it was in the past and will be in the future. The problem is more that consumer protections have been stripped away: people are increasingly giving up their money without knowing the state of the game that they are buying. And that I find baffling

challengemaster

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

BF4 is stable now for me thankfully, crashes are extremely rare. But it was a disgrace the way it was released. You can understand, to some extent though, that when people say 'there was obviously no quality testing done', that they're being a bit dramatic, as one of the devs pointed out, 200 guys could spend 24 hours a day testing it, but they're drops in a pond compared to the tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of people that will be playing the game.

This is it in a nutshell. I'd stipulate that games should (unless being sold as alpha/beta) be released as stable as possible and certainly feeling finished. However, it's like anything - there's no comparison for real world testing of something. No amount of quality control will ever manage to play every single part of a game doing every possible action at any possible time. It gets even more complicated when you add the variability of the system the game is running on.

Witcher

AC3? The horse mechanics were dire, you had to chase 3 guys on a horse at one stage and I probably would have been better off tearing after them on foot:pac:

Pushtrak

Lone Stone wrote: »

But what im actually more worried about is on steam, nearly every game on the front page (thingy) is an early access beta, i find that a bit weird. People actually selling alpha/beta state games.

I wouldn't have too much issue with it personally. I wouldn't buy in unless the price was right, but I don't take any issue with them letting people buy it in alpha or beta state. I'm not even going to object in theory with them charging full price. I guess I'd object in practice - I just wouldn't buy.

Grimebox wrote: »

I've fallen into the trap of buying Project Zomboid, Castle Story and Prison Architect on steam. All of which in alpha. Do not waste your time with any of these yet.

I bought Prison Architect in the Summer Steam Sale and got Cave Story as a gift. I briefly played Prison Architect and it seemed to be working fine. Just checked my record on Steam. Played about an hour on the 21st of July with no issues in that admittedly brief time.

Mr Freeze

J. Marston wrote: »

Didn't have any problems with Arkham Origins myself. What are the problems with it?

Freezing.

Mine froze the console about 10 times in a playthough, on XBOX.

Shiminay

Stop pre-ordering games.

Seriously, this is the only way it'll stop. There is literally no other solution. Stop pre-ordering games and publishers will start panicking and they'll either react in one of two ways: 1) rush things out even faster and even more broken and doom their game to failure or 2) let the developers finish the game knowing it has to be as close to 100% as it can reasonably be (no software is ever 100% bug free) otherwise it'll crash and burn.

This is market driven.

Gamers have shown time and time again that they are all talk. They make loads of noise on forums about things being wrong and broken and how they hate everything about a game, but because the company's already got their money, they have no reason to listen to them. So stop pre-ordering games, demand to see a finished (working) product before you hand over your €€€'s. If they want to have people play as beta testers, give them an option to become a beta tester and sell them the game at, lets say half price and with some manner of bug reporting tool and that'll do quite well.

Pushtrak

Mr Freeze wrote: »

Freezing.

Well, the solution is obvious. You need to change your username to Mr Unfreeze (sorry*)

Shiminay wrote: »

Stop pre-ordering games.

Seriously, this is the only way it'll stop.

I can only remember pre ordering a game once in the last... Er.. Ever really, now that I try to think about it. The kind of games I could be motivated to pre order though are kinda justified. Even though it was only one game ever, all I can remember honestly is it was a JRPG. Those games depend on pre orders really. They play a bigger role than other games, or at least it seems so. People who pre order a game that'll ship millions of units... Uh, wha?

*Gets coat

Creamy Goodness

Grumpypants wrote: »

Sums it up nicely.

Wow, the first time i've watched one of this guys video without wanting to punch myself in the genital area.

Shiminay

When he's not being "Francis" he's great. The hatred people have for Francis shows how well he does the character

Sierra Oscar

I think it is something that has become all too tempting for some developers. They know that today they can get mandatory updates released that can be downloaded relatively quickly to address bugs and the likes.

Some developers start developing their first patch before the game is even released!

Grimebox

Shiminay wrote: »

When he's not being "Francis" he's great. The hatred people have for Francis shows how well he does the character

Seems we are opposites

I found that whole video rather cringey and was wondering where the funny was

nesf

challengemaster wrote: »

This is it in a nutshell. I'd stipulate that games should (unless being sold as alpha/beta) be released as stable as possible and certainly feeling finished. However, it's like anything - there's no comparison for real world testing of something. No amount of quality control will ever manage to play every single part of a game doing every possible action at any possible time. It gets even more complicated when you add the variability of the system the game is running on.

One issue is how complex making a game (for PC especially) is. I watched a few years back a dev from a well regarded RPG company talk about this.

1) Hardware configurations are incredibly annoying. Someone, somewhere will have a combination that just makes your game roll over and die. You cannot stop this just mitigate it by testing on as many configs as possible (not something small devs can do easily).

2) You design a balanced game, but it's balanced for you, how you think and how you approach gaming. Give the gaming community of any genre a half hour and they'll break your game and find some way of making it work in a way you never dreamt of.

3) Similar to 2) Bugs are really tricky to eliminate because it's almost impossible to predict how everyone will play the game. Someone somewhere will find a bug caused by a series of actions that (to you) no sane person would do, but now its out there and it needs to be fixed.


Even the best, most tightly coded large projects suffer from the above. This is why I like the beta access model so much, it basically farms out the finding of 1), 2) and 3) to the customer in exchange for (hopefully) a discount on the RRP. But, this doesn't mean handing the customer a buggy piece of crap vapourware. It's handing them something that plays pretty damn well for the devs but needs to be QA testing by a couple of hundred or thousand gamers on different kinds of machines to be truly ready.

Going with an alpha/beta release model for this developer meant the final release would be far more stable than it could ever be if they just released it the traditional way. I was quite sceptical but after thinking about it I can really see how this makes for better games in many genres.



That and this has been common in the MMO market for a very long time. Subscribers for many games were encouraged to play the Test Builds and find as many bugs as they could during games. This idea of crowdsourcing the QA and Balance Testing has been with us for easily a decade.

Zillah

I really, really wish Steam had the option to filter out "early access" games. Stop luring me in to look up an interesting game only to discover that it's unfinished but they want money anyway. It is a horrible trend. It's like inviting someone to an interview and then announcing that it is only an internship.

Rome 2 was a total debacle - regret pre-ordering. X3, if any of you were unfortunate enough to endure that piece of half-baked misery, is one of the worse launches I have ever seen.

I am completely done with pre-ordering games or playing betas. I'm waiting at least a couple of days after release from now on to get bare minimum reviews to see if it is at least a functioning game. I'm starting to get the feeling that a lot of other people are feeling the same way. It had to get this bad before enough people were forced to change their behaviour.

I'll still back an interesting indie game on Kickstarter, that's about it. I am never pre-ordering again, or paying for access to a beta. Hell, even if a beta is free, I'd still be better off waiting until the game was finished for a better experience.

Gamayun

Refunds have been promised to buyers of Ashes Cricket 2013 (505 Games). Pulled from Steam and taken off sale. It was rush released unfinished.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25137093

505 Games has removed Ashes Cricket 2013 from its Steam catalog following widespread reports of bugs and other technical issues. The publisher later announced that it has no plans to issue a fixed version, effectively canceling the game post-release.

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/12/02/ashes-cricket-2013-pulled-from-steam-publisher-issuing-refunds/

ScumLord

Antar Bolaeisk wrote: »

Early access has become a big thing at the moment will people now gaining access to alpha versions of games (ie. the development stage before beta). I can see that going down a very bad road and a lot of people getting burned.

Early access is being used a good bit on PC but it's all done upfront and in an open way.

I've joined the early access for Assetto Corsa and we get new content every 2 weeks and a discount. Based on the previous game these guys made I was buying Assetto Corsa so I was happy to get it cheap.

As long as you know what your getting into it's a great way to get in early.

nesf

ScumLord wrote: »

As long as you know what your getting into it's a great way to get in early.

To be fair to Steam they do make it bloody obvious with a big brightly coloured banner saying that a purchase is for "Early Access." Now that is marketing speak for Alpha/Beta Access but you'd want to be pretty naive/blind not to realise that you weren't buying a full retail release.

ScumLord

nesf wrote: »

To be fair to Steam they do make it bloody obvious with a big brightly coloured banner saying that a purchase is for "Early Access." Now that is marketing speak for Alpha/Beta Access but you'd want to be pretty naive/blind not to realise that you weren't buying a full retail release.

the only way I can see it going wrong is if you join an early access and they decide not to finish the game.

nesf

ScumLord wrote: »

the only way I can see it going wrong is if you join an early access and they decide not to finish the game.

That is a risk you take. It's no different to buying a multiplayer title and the publisher pulling the server support after a few months due to poor sales.

Reekwind

ScumLord wrote: »

the only way I can see it going wrong is if you join an early access and they decide not to finish the game.

Or it turns out to be crap

ionapaul

Shiminay wrote: »

Stop pre-ordering games.

Seriously, this is the only way it'll stop. There is literally no other solution. Stop pre-ordering games and publishers will start panicking and they'll either react in one of two ways: 1) rush things out even faster and even more broken and doom their game to failure or 2) let the developers finish the game knowing it has to be as close to 100% as it can reasonably be (no software is ever 100% bug free) otherwise it'll crash and burn.

This is market driven.

Gamers have shown time and time again that they are all talk. They make loads of noise on forums about things being wrong and broken and how they hate everything about a game, but because the company's already got their money, they have no reason to listen to them. So stop pre-ordering games, demand to see a finished (working) product before you hand over your €€€'s. If they want to have people play as beta testers, give them an option to become a beta tester and sell them the game at, lets say half price and with some manner of bug reporting tool and that'll do quite well.

+1

It blows my mind that people buy games before they have been officially launched - it's like a buying a house off-plans! A recipe for disaster at some stage. Even waiting a single week after launch before buying seems like it would ensure you are rarely burned.

Antar Bolaeisk

ScumLord wrote: »

the only way I can see it going wrong is if you join an early access and they decide not to finish the game.

Or the developer could decide a game is finished and it might be nothing similar to the original promise.

I think this year will be very telling with regards to kickstarted and early access games. We've already seen some games which have just fallen over, Clang springs to mind, and we're only now starting to see some of the big games coming out.

I agree that it's a great way to get in early, particularly if it's from a developer or group of people with a good track record and I enjoy the content access that a lot of the developers provide, the ability to see the game grow over time, but i still think it's a bit of a gamble to pay for something which doesn't yet exist for the most part and I think it's something that will be greatly abused in the coming year now that it has become an established funding channel.

CrazyRabbit

I don't mind Alpha or Beta releases. They allow everyone to try out the game and perhaps have their feedback incorporated into the finished game. When you have ideas from 1000's of Alpha/Beta players, you're bound to have a few amazing ones that the dev's wouldn't have thought of. The end result is a better game.

What I do have a problem with is games being released as a 'full game' when it's clear it never had any decent testing at all. Take X:Rebirth for example. It's a full price game with bugs so obvious and game breaking that it seems it wasn't even tested internally.

CiDeRmAn

When I was a PC gamer, back in the 90's, games were released finished as there was no way to update them, the Internet being a relatively new thing at the time. Patches were mostly releasedas updates to features, often by fan groups, F1GP2 on the pc used to get regular fan made updates to car textures and driver rosters for example.
But once it was common for devices to be online, developers were free of the shackles of hard deadlines, releasing games with unimplemented features promising updates to add them later, despite the features being on the box.
I think we are all familiar with this phenom.

But console gaming, up to the PS2/Xbox/GC we were update/patch free. All three devices could go online but strictly for gaming, only one had a hdd anyway, so no where to store update data regardless.
As a result games were released finished or else the publisher would have to shoulder the expense of a recall and replace program.
Once the PS3/360 arrived we found ourselves in the same boat as PC owners, with games that were patched in day one, like waiting over an hour for GT5 to update.
The Wii seemed immune to this, but only partially, rather than improve the gameplay or expand features they took the opportunity to update the firmware and security with major releases, to try to undermine the mod chip industry, unsuccessfully I might add.
At least the latest batch of consoles seem to have faster dl speeds so the obligatory updates are fate and less intrusive.
But it would be nice to buy a game that you can simply play as the finished article and not hope that it'll be corrected in an expected patch.

Skerries

The only game I intend to pre-order this year is The Witcher 3 as I know that the quality and durability of the build will be there

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

Skerries wrote: »

The only game I intend to pre-order this year is The Witcher 3 as I know that the quality and durability of the build will be there

seriously?

witcher 1 was next to broken when they released it first
witcher 2 was playable but barely and it took lots of patches for it to reach some sort of stability

ScumLord

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

But once it was common for devices to be online, developers were free of the shackles of hard deadlines, releasing games with unimplemented features promising updates to add them later, despite the features being on the box.
I think we are all familiar with this phenom.

I don't know that it's a case of laziness where they know they don't have to finish the game.

It could be just the easier option. When you have fans crying out for a game and traditional testing might take another few months, it may be the quickest solution to release, they'll get the months of testing done in a matter of hours when people start complaining. As far as I can see patches (on PC at least), come out pretty quickly, within days of a reported error. That's a quick turnaround in any industry.

Reekwind

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

When I was a PC gamer, back in the 90's, games were released finished as there was no way to update them, the Internet being a relatively new thing at the time

I remember getting patches on the cover CDs of PC Zone. And many older games simply being bug-riddled beyond playability. Let's not idealise the past here - any game with any real complexity will have bugs. That's unlikely to ever change

What can change is when we actually shell out cash for the game. That's simply good practice: making sure that you don't get burnt by games that don't work as advertised