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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

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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