Jimquisition: Shaming PC Ports Because Why Not?

[mjc0961]

This didn't make it into the video but I'm going to shout about it anyway because it deserves to be mentioned:

[HEADING=2]BULLETSTORM[/HEADING]

Fuck you EA, Epic Games, and People Can Fly for releasing a game where I need to download a special text editor that bypasses the encryption you put on the INI files just so I can disable the goddamn mouse acceleration. And then there's the piss-poor keybinding and the launch issues where if you weren't running at a handfull of select resolutions, the game ran like this (this is the only thing they actually bothered fixing).

Look, I acknowledge that Bethesda can make some pretty good games...

... But at the same time, most of their games are released in a VERY unfinished, buggy, even broken state before the mod communities can fix the issues themselves.

I just have a weird feeling seeing an otherwise good game like Skyrim win several Game of the Year awards, when at that very moment entire versions of it were completely unplayable (especially on PS3).

I mean, if we literally reward them with the highest honors we can give a game, while their games are in a broken state, and they expect the fans and communities to fix their mess for them, what incentive do they have to actually ever release a polished, working game to market?

And this is also why it pisses me off that GTA V won GOTY at the VGX award thing and is going to win it from more places as time goes on. As a game, yes, GTA V is fun. As a product though, GTA V was (at launch) an unpolished and unfinished piece of shit. What was the point of the delay from spring when the game still released in such a sorry state? Obviously the big one was no online at launch and when it did finally get patched in it was broken (I'll talk more about that in a minute), but not even single player worked properly. What the hell were they doing all spring and all summer, because I can tell you what they weren't doing: testing the game properly. There's just simply no way any competent team would have missed a bug that makes cars you spend your money on disappear from your garage.

And then online. Not only did you delay the game but then you delayed online past the launch of the rest of the game. So that's two delays for the online portion and it was still broken when it came out. And I've thought about it a while and I'm not accepting of their pre-release statements about the game probably not working at launch as an excuse for hte game not working at launch anymore. There's this thing you can hold called a beta that would have given you a chance to iron out some of these issues before people paid money for your product. You didn't have one. You didn't put in the effort to make sure your game would work, so why should I accept a lazy "it's probably not going to work" excuse as justification?

And even though it's somewhat stable now (playing with friends and staying with them without randoms getting in is still far more a pain in the ass than it ever should be), it's still not finished. We're only just getting the mission creator we were promised this week, and the heists aren't coming until 2014. So it won't be until sometime next year that you can buy a copy of GTA V off the shelf and actually get the complete product they were advertising to everyone before it launched. We should not be giving this GOTY awards. We should be giving this "one of the biggest disappointments of 2013" or "one of the most poorly handled launches of 2013" titles instead so Rockstar and other developers can see that we aren't happy putting down $60 to beta test their unfinished products.

Same goes with Battlefield 4, it had no business being on the VGX's list of Best Shooters of 2013 considering it's so broken that EA actually had to pause work on DLC to focus on making sure the game works. Usually EA just lets their broken games stay broken (see the above mention of Bulletstorm for just one example), so for them to actually come out and say "right, we're going to stop making DLC until we fix the base game" just shows what an utterly bad state that game released in. It's so bad that they can't ignore it like they usually do. There should be boycotts and lawsuits for this kind of behavior, not "Best Shooter of 2013" nominations.

But sadly none of this is going to happen as long as gamers refuse to separate the game being fun from the product being terrible, and use that distinction to start calling developers and publishers on their bullshit instead of defending them because they liked the game. Like I said earlier, GTA V was fun to play (at least the parts of it it actually came with and worked). It was still a terrible product though and one I wish I hadn't given Rockstar money for on day one, because they damn well didn't deserve money for what it was back in September.

And to anyone who wants to reply to my rant in defense of Rockstar, just save yourself some time and watch these again instead because one of them is sure to answer whatever tired, generic defense you have for bad business practices:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6098-I-Hate-Videogames-Because-I-Love-Them
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/5653-Better-Does-Not-Mean-Good
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6814-Companies-Exist-To-Make-Money

 

[weirdee]

Well why shouldnt an inexperienced crew try to port thier works to PC?

How can they learn to do a good job of it if they do not make the mistakes?

I don't want to pay money to be someone's guinea pig. That's what beta testing and QA is for.

Agreed, but if nobody buys into the first crash landing then why should the devs consider coming back for a second go?

if they devs don't consider actually getting help from people with experience (like, for instance, the modding communities which create their own day one patches) or consider just hiring/contracting people with experience, they should stop trying to develop this kind of thing on their own anyway if they intend to ship before they can actually manage something that works, or stop charging full price for their halfassed experiments

they knew that they couldn't provide what fans wanted, but they went ahead anyway because i guess they were willing to accept those consequences? we'll never know if it was actually about getting the money, but they still gave up a part of their reputation out of some odd sentimentality over actual reason. it's great that they have feelings, but i guess that shouldn't get in the way of decision making.

addendum: decision making is about making the judgment calls between reason and feeling, so while reason would have been the better option this time, feeling is by no means diminished in importance, it's just that this case would have been clearly improved given their situation at the time, with the acknowledgement that their resources were not suited for a port at all, and it would have better served to focus on their sequel's development

 

[Xman490]

At least PC ports are made in the first place for most games. One big exception that makes me sad is GTA V. There is still no sign of a PC port anytime soon, and I don't want to be simply satisfied with a 30-FPS sub-1080p game with multiplayer requiring a significant fee - on Xbox 360, a console that I am rarely using. I'm not buying a PS3 for GTA V either, because it will soon become just a memory for developers.

It also bugs me that I would have to buy the linear single player game with mediocre characters to get GTA Online, even though the name "GTA Online" sounds like an MMO and in truth is close enough to such a community experience. Yet again, a GTA game with scattered jarring problems becomes GOTY, but GTA IV's campaign and GTA III's horrible controls have stained my opinion of the series.

 

[lord.jeff]

Not really, a Professional [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional] from a work perspective simply requires the knowledge and/or training for that profession. Since Peter Thorman has a Ph.D and co-authored several research papers [http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/pers/hd/t/Thomaneter] I would say he fits the bill.

Either way the words layman [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Layman], Average Joe [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_joe] and amateur [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur] don't apply because this guy is none of those things. Sure he doesn't work as a Games Developer, but the stuff he's doing is so far beyond that it's incredible.

Personally I would not feel ashamed if someone like this was fixing my code.

But would your feel ashamed if you released a game that was only playable after he fixed it?

 

[jpoon]

Well said Jim! I can only hope the right people pay attention to you.

 

[Thanatos2k]

A fully patched and modded Skyrim on the PC is a wonderful game.

An unpatched and unmodded Skyrim is an absolute disgrace and I can't believe they charged anyone money for it.

Just another reason not to ever buy games near release. Wait 6 months for Steam to have it at half off with a full slate of unofficial mods and fixes.

 

[Thanatos2k]

I get kinda mad at the developers when a spokesperson for the game says some simple feature was impossible to implement, and then have that same feature implemented within a week by the community.

Like, say, Sim City offline mode.

 

[Sotanaht]

Technically speaking, Dark Souls without DSFix is exactly the same quality as the console version. That means it doesn't have the things that the console version doesn't have, like 60fps or anti aliasing or KB+M controls worth a damn. The same thing can be said for most if not all "bad" console ports. They aren't WORSE than their console counterparts, almost all of them are better in at least one way, but they are still shit by any logical standard which I guess just stresses how shit consoles themselves are.

 

[Catrixa]

My guess: Game devs are given a timeframe by the publisher to finish a game. This timeframe is usually too short. The game is subsequently released with bugs. Then, some portion of the team is moved onto the next game, DLC, something, and some portion sticks around to release patches. The thing with company patches vs. Basement Dude patches: Companies usually release patches based off of some procedure to ensure quality (i.e. coding is done, then it moves into QA. Since this process can take a long time, multiple fixes/features are added to the patch). Basement Dude does not have to worry about this--he just has to get a patch that works on his system. If that patch doesn't work elsewhere, who cares? He's not getting paid for it, it's unofficial, everyone installs it at their own risk. Basement Dude won't have the same ramifications as the company would, so he can turn over a fix faster.

The question here then becomes: Should we be releasing games (even ports of games that have been out for ages) that are pretty much a beta version? Indie titles are already selling beta versions of their games via Kickstarter and Early Access. I mean, I got Skyrim day 1. I then spent the first few hours playing it saving constantly and avoiding looking at certain things, because these actions would crash my game. Every 5 minutes. If they gave Skyrim another two months to iron out more bugs, would it have been that horrible? If you're going to invest in a PC port, shouldn't you be giving it the attention it deserves?

As for the community's reactions: I think people just want the damn thing to function, and don't believe the people making up the development schedules actually care about anything other than the initial purchase. I've seen a lot of "Well, they already have your money," so I think most gaming communities just take it upon themselves to do what the publishers "don't care about" (who actually knows what they're really thinking? Not just conjecture?) and game devs "can't do anything about" to save a good idea from buggy obscurity.

Tl;dr: if you don't think anyone loves you, do you spend time agonizing over their apathy, or do you just move on with life?

 

[Sotanaht]

A fully patched and modded Skyrim on the PC is a wonderful game.

An unpatched and unmodded Skyrim is an absolute disgrace and I can't believe they charged anyone money for it.

Just another reason not to ever buy games near release. Wait 6 months for Steam to have it at half off with a full slate of unofficial mods and fixes.

Skyrim has many, many flaws and poorly thought out systems that are broken beyond repair. A fully modded skyrim is BETTER than an unmodded skyrim, but beyond repair is still beyond repair and no amount of mods is ever going to fix that game.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

Well all I can really add to this discussion is that at least you PC players get the mod help and community support fixes. Console games don't come to us in a much better state and most of the things that are broken are going to stay broken in all likelihood. Hell, I'm converting to the PC player group as soon as financially possible simply because I am aware that the modding community fixes and adds to games I enjoy already on the console (in their comparatively diminished state). So? yeah, shame on publishers for not being more awesome to begin with when they ought to be (and when I say that, I really mean to blame the money controllers at publishing institutions, because in reality it's probably their call, not the artists or programers or what have you in the trenches) and equally Thanks and Yay to the people who make up for those gaps that wouldn't be there in an ideal world.

 

[Comic Sans]

But wasn't the PC version of Dark Souls priced less than the console versions?

Actually no. It came out at less than the game cost when it was brand new on consoles, but didn't release on PC until much later and as such it was priced for it's age. However, at the time of release on PC it cost $10 more than it did to buy a new copy at Gamestop or on Amazon for console. So we did not get it cheaper for when it released, and the extra content was not "free". So people who bought copies of Dark Souls on PC at release basically got gypped.

 

[geizr]

Why do developers keep doing it and not feeling ashamed? Because gamers keep buying it.

I no longer blame the developers and the publishers for things like this. The fault, in my opinion, is squarely and entirely on the shoulders of the gamers, because they just keep buying it, like electronic-crack addicts. Because gamers keep buying it, there's no incentive to make better quality games and no disincentive from making shitty games. Publishers and developers know that all they have to do is slap some hi-res, hi-fidelity graphics on the game and, viola, watch the money come rolling in.

 

[Lunar Templar]

THANK YOU!!!!

I've been saying this about Bethesda for years now, there's no excuse for a dev that's worked on PC for so long the continually release game that or so horrendously buggy and broken. None. They should know better by now. And while yes, I am more forgiving of buggy games from devs that aren't used to making PC ports, I fucking expect them to improve and do better the next time, like any sane person would when confronted with failure.

 

[PMAvers]

I'm surprised the computer version of Borderlands 1 doesn't come up more often in these discussions, since it would totally fit. Was so bad they had to write a love letter to fans [http://borderlands2.com/loveletter/] talking about improvements for the sequel in regards to the UI.

Granted, the sequel's UI isn't perfect... if I had a nickel every time the inventory UI glitched out, I could bankroll Psychonauts 2.

 

[Seracen]

Never explicitly thought about it, but it IS an issue. PC gamers have ALWAYS known that they are really the BETA testers, if they buy a game at launch. As often, however, I prefer the PC version simply because mods provide more value then the nickel and diming that console versions provide (often with inferior results). It's sad, but sometimes it's worse than others.


My fave examples of this...

- Elder Scrolls/Fallout (as noted by Jim)

- Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (and Redemption, to a certain extent)

- Dragon Age: Origins (I actually posted the fix for a bug with the DLC content, but there were a lot of unofficial patches which went unrecognized)

- KOTOR 2 (primarily the restored content mod)

- Hellgate London (although I imagine Hellgate Tokyo fixed a lot of this)


To be fair, however, I think Bethesda and Bioware got a pass on their snafus due to the release of their toolkits (although Jim's point about patches/etc within the 1st week still put the developers "on notice," as it were).

 

[ACE1918]

This also applies to unfinished games that originate or even are exclusive to PC. This is why Sub simulator fans got pissed at Ubisoft for Silent Hunter 5, that and the always online drm they had (but later got rid of) for it.

 

[DarklordKyo]

Hopefully From Software put their money where their mouths are with Dark Souls 2 (considering they apparently stated that the PC release is going to be the main release, with the console versions as the ports, and that they claim they're making DS2 a proper PC release).

 

[Magmarock]

I love this episode and I agree entirely. God bless GOG for shipping their games pre patched to work and links to mods to improve it should you so chose