Open Letter to People Who Make Games

[Mykonos]

Where in the world are all of these people who are so interested in these topics? Cause they surely don't shop at the (game)store that I work for.

Most of them just come in, cross their eyes, put down cash and buy all three games at once.
I'd explain: "The game has bugs/glitches and it's going to play like crap for a while. At least until (insert company here) comes out with a patch for it." Yes, I am an honest employee. Even if it hurts sales. "If you don't have internet on your system, you won't be able to get the game's full worth."

But none of the customers ever really care THIS much. They usually respond: "I've been so pumped about this game, it's gonna rock!", thus tossing my comment aside.

A lot of people who go and buy these games typically don't care about bugs and glitches. Course it would be a lie to say that NONE of these people care (I mean, look at the length of this topic!). Many just keep their heads above the sea of 'know how' and remain oblivious to these things. Call it "ignorance" (like I do) or whatever you like, but it's true.

Personally, I've been super-excited about Fable 3 and I plan on getting it next paycheck. I'm not an ignorant person obviously. I know it has issues with bugs and glitches or whatever. But I also know that Peter M is very dedicated to his work. A perfectionist. I have my head deep in the sea of 'know how' and I know he's gonna rid his prize pumpkin of the bugs. Other folk, like the majority of people who shop at my work, just don't get it.

But, that's just my opinion. No need to go spreading it around.

~M

 

[Mykonos]

nvm this

 

[Gyrefalcon]

Well said, Sir. Although the games are often becoming larger and longer, which I am sure makes coding more and more convoluted, we are also paying more for them and that is part of the unspoken deal. If the game really knocks your socks off, you will be willing to pay for it. But if it doesn't even work why is it on a shelf? I'd rather have the release date pushed back than to have a buggy game.

good read. broken games are a shocker and you have to wonder about the beta testing part of game development... how are these epic bugs not seen? one big reason that games seem broken (pc) is hardware. with the ever growing sea of different hardware and driver configurations its no surprise. Then there is code based errors. Is this due to rushed deadlines or some other issue?
The love has left the industry as of late, due to the massive amount of revenue being generated. This has had the same effect as it has on all industries.. the quality suffers. The old line quality over quantity shifts and the end consumer is left with bad games.
I liked what the head of nintendo said, some thing like "we are not to worried about pirates, if you make a really good game it will sell".

As fKd pointed out here, Nintendo isn't worried because if the game is really good it sells. And people don't tend to sell back copies of their best games, it's the ones that failed their expectations in some way that wind up back in the bins. Once in awhile it is a genre issue but usually-it's buggy in some way.

And again, great article. I hope the companies manage to see it.

 

[Michael O'Hair]

Um... Bethesda?

He does realize that New Vegas was developed by Obsidian right? He must. But I didn't think Bethesda had released anything since Fallout 3. Or did they publish New Vegas? need to check that....

Ah, yes. BethSoft published it.

So yes, the criticism is earned here. If the devs muck up (which Obsidian does on a regular basis) the publishers should catch it and bring them to task. Personally, I'd love to see Obsidian absorbed into Bethseda. Put the Obsidian people in the creative department, and get some competent coders to write the damn game.

New Vegas was built upon the Fallout 3 engine, which was still buggy and broken after all the patches had been applied to them. Obsidian wrote the story and character interactions and other things, but they didn't build the engine that ran the game. Obsidian built KOTOR2 and it was horrible, but Bethesda built Fallout 3 and Oblivion and Daggerfall and they were just as bug-filled and unplayable at points before patching.

Bethesda is well known for releasing buggy games. Each iteration of the Elder Scrolls series was riddled with game-breaking bugs that were addressed later in patches. But there are many other developers and publishers that have earned the same amount of infamy for the same reasons.

The bugs in games today really come down to deadlines and their impact on testing. I feel really cheated when I'm notice multiple holes in the environment where I can see a huge void in a mountain and through the one-sided texture at the other end, to a building on the other side of the mountain. I get the feeling that no one was paid to play through the game to look for those things, and therefore the $60 price tag wasn't justified.

On another note, the game crash of 1982 was cause by too many bad games and lack of control of what entered the market. That's why Nintendo put "Seals of Approval" on games for their system, because someone took the time to see if the game was playable and had the fewest possible number of bugs. That doesn't happen anymore. Publishers rush the games out to compete, regardless if they're ready or not.

This is leading to a rush development culture is game development where many games will be released broken and almost unplayable, and they will still cost $60. I don't want to buy broken product. Rent, maybe, or buy used. And this will cut into developer and publisher profits, but this will only be realized far too late after layoffs and studio shut-downs.

And as the article indicates, the number of these games is increasing. There are more games without the appropriate testing time being released, creating a situation much like the crash at the beginning of the '80s: lots of bad games that no one wants to buy. Not quite the same scenario, but it's getting there.

Just a small note: Fallout 1 and 2 (mostly 2) were both just as full of bugs that required patching.

 

[Lord_Gremlin]

So true...

Take New Vegas for example. This game is not worth the money - in fact one should only play it if offered money for doing so.

It's also really alarming that Sony and Microsoft allowed this crap to be released.

 

[PlasticTree]

A very well written article, but it's a whole lot of text just to say: make better games. I liked reading it because, well, it's well written and all, but I got your point at the end of the first page, and after that I had to wait for a main point that didn't actually exist.

Better luck next time Pitts, I'll be waiting.

 

[gring]

you know, im happy for the people out there that say they have no problems running fallout: new vegas. no really, i am.

but to the people saying we're just blowing it out of proportion:

just because you have no problems doesn't mean that everyone else isn't having problems as well. im running the game on brand new drivers and a clean windows reinstall, yet there have been SEVERAL crashes for me. and most require a FULL REBOOT because i get the sound stutter/loop. I've counted about 40 crashes so far, with around 50 hours of gameplay. thats just ridiculous. and the fact is, if you people saying "GAME RUNS FINE FOR ME = THERES NO PROBLEMS WITH THE GAME" would look on bethesda's forums you would see a lot of people having the same exact problems. crash, after crash, after crash, after crash. oh... and bugs... LOTS of bugs.

these crashes/bugs are preventing me from progressing, or even completing the quest in the way i want. i'll refrain from spoilers, but lets just say that i had to complete a handful of quests by just killing everyone, which sucks because i was TRYING to go the good guy route, now i have to go sort of both ways, in order to just ADVANCE THE STORY. im a role-player at heart, so i've had to make up the excuse that my character has split personality disorder and a total schizo in order to justify my random rampages. one quest i had to retry it over a dozen times, doing nothing but just trying it over and over, finally getting it right. what did i do differently? NOTHING AT ALL. i was just lucky enough for the quest to snap into place and actually work for some obtuse reason.

truth is that these experiences rub off onto the "game experience" and it destroys any feeling of enjoyment or immersion, which is why we buy and play these games in the first place. and this is becoming waaaay too common. i dont even want to think about what i would do if i didn't even have an internet connection for patches, i thank god i do. but seriously, imagine having to eject the VCR tape/DVD and wait 2 minutes every 5 minutes or so the first time you watched star wars. oh, and also, you would have to rewatch the last minute and a half each time before it stopped. yeah... sounds a lot of fun right? you would probably hate star wars because of it.

also, ive had quests spoiled for me because since they dont work, i've had to look up the quest in my strategy guide or on the forums to make sure i'm doing it right, then i'll accidentally or even intentionally read all the options for the quest to make sure i can actually continue or if im doing it right, and boom, there goes any kind of exploration into that quest because i've seen every outcome. and i've had to do this several times at this point.

now i dont expect every game to be perfect, but this is far from even tolerable. we've seen one patch since release, and it really did nothing for me. in the past, we've seen oblivion and fallout 3 do the same EXACT crap, and usually we've had to get unofficial patches to actually fix these issues. its truly pathetic. i even had the same crashes during those games as well, crash to desktop w/ sound loop that requires a reboot to reset the speakers, and i've gone through 3 DIFFERENT COMPUTERS since oblivion. and of course the bugs, ohhh the bugs. whats shocking is that you would think that after releasing a total of 3 games using the same (total garbage) engine, and having the experience (and budget) of dealing with its problems that they would actually be on point this time around. nope, guess not, in some ways its worse.

so really, enough of the whole "well its fine for me so therefore NOTHING IS WRONG" talk. my experience with the game has been nothing BUT problems. and im not anywhere CLOSE to alone on that, there are many many people having the exact same crashes and bugs in the exact same quests/areas.

truth is, i would rather be PLAYING new vegas right now, but CANT because i'm literally stuck at this one point and cant continue. blowing off steam on the forums is more enjoyable then actually dealing with that POS.

 

[DornR]

To Russ Pits,

First of all, sorry about the English, it's not my native language.

I am a game designer and I'm kinda sick of the games I work on, generally, and of most games I buy and play by different companies, from Infinity Ward to Amanita Design. I wasn't at first, it's after all what I wanted to do career-wise, but as projects and years went, stress and bad management decisions are starting to get to you. What you said in your article is true, granted, but I really think you need to identify the main problem here: the management.

In my experience, the worst decisions (very unrealistic deadlines, STUPID design ideas to name the most important ones) come from the top, and it doesn't help a designer, programmer or artist who already works on a tight schedule to still generate content while already in beta. I can recall from a game i worked on that a first prototype had very positive results in an external focus group, but then, a big honcho from "HQ" decided he liked some features from another game, "demanded" that those features be implemented, and surprise! in the next focus group we had dropped quite a few points...(sounds familiar to any developer?) There are many stories in the same vein...

To sum it up, "Dear game-making people, give the game back to the developers".

However, I don't think they want to risk losing money by doing something other than a) copying a successful game by another company and tweaking it a bit or b) redoing a game of your own to death with few changes(Bioware, really? NWN, Kotor, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age?)

To anyone that read through this far, as a game designer I'm rather sick and tired of making games as they are done now, with all the stress,long hours and poor management and marketing, and seriously considering a career change. Does this affect the quality of my work? That goes without saying...

 

[Monshroud]

Russ,
Great article. I hope you actually mailed that to various game houses so they could read it.

 

[geizr]

While I agree with some of the sentiment that Mr. Pitts puts forward on general grounds(to me, most of gaming has just become crap and same ol' shit; you have to go on an archeological expedition to find the true gems), intellectually, I cannot be at all convinced by this so-called letter. It complains, but it states no case, because it presents no examples. It does not mention the games that caused the offense, what specific properties or nature of those games caused offense, and it does not present evidence of any trend that would lead one to conclude this is truly an industry-wide situation. It just sounds like the typical petulant gamer whining over the fact that their little corner of the universe(i.e. the games they were over-hyped on) failed to manifest their skewed fantasy expectations. If I were a game developer/publisher, I'd probably be laughing to the bank because you bought the game(s) anyway, whichever ones they may be. Right?

Also, you want to talk about who's to blame for bad games, I have to implicate the gaming press, of which Mr. Pitts is a member, as well. The constant hyping of the same ol' shit(same game, same game mechanics, same character personalities, same ol' way of playing games) and the inflation of scores for games that are, in reality, quite bad(the system and method for reviewing and rating games really stinks, in my opinion). The gaming press is just as much to blame for not creating a balance of thought and perspective in the gaming industry and instead feeding on the hype-engine and sensationalism of the more commonly peddled games(the same 5-6 games, God of War, Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Call of Duty, Devil May Cry, and Metal Gear Solid, for which it seems every game made must now, in some way, emulate). They harp on the same few games until everyone relents to the skewed thought that only those games are "true" games and all other games are unworthy of attention or purchase. Why do they do this? Simple payola from the game publishers in the form of swag or advertising dollars("We'll pull our hyper-expensive ad from your site/magazine if you don't give our game a good score, even though it's a pile of manure, or talk about it incessantly; make up something, if you have to."; it's how the gaming press actually makes its money. But, it leads to a corruption of the industry as a whole.

Of course, as someone said, we gamers are also to blame for this sad state of affairs, because we keep buying the shit. The only way to really stop this is for gamers to stop buying it and buying into it. Companies hear and comprehend only two sounds, the creak of your wallet opening and the slap of your wallet closing. They want to always hear the creak; they never want to hear the slap. If the companies hear enough slaps, only then do they begin to understand that they screwed up somewhere. Anything else is just cryptic cacophony to be ignored. Companies will only do things where there is money to be made and will avoid things where there is significant money to be lost.

Further, the immature attitudes of some gamers really does not help the problem. These silly religious wars on the forums over which is the best game or which is the best console only provide fuel to collapse the gaming industry into a pigeon-holed niche. One could argue that it would seem that such arguments would push the industry forward as people demand higher quality, but that is not the result such arguments ace produced. Instead they have only served to divide the industry and entrench the various sides into their own insular worlds which have become fixed in attitudes, perspectives, and progression(the gaming press has also added its own fuel to such conflicts as it feeds off the sensationalism such conflicts create).

Unless everyone, game developer/publisher, game press, and gamer, makes a significant change, the situation will persist and potentially get worse, because, really, everyone's at fault. We, as a people and as an industry, need to grow up, get over ourselves, and learn that reality is much bigger and full of many more allowable possibilities than we can imagine in our fixed ideological microcosm.

 

[eels05]

Sounds to me like the games industry is suffering the same sort of drop in quality that alot of other industies have been experiencing for years.
The people at the top of the food chain crack the whip and middle managment and the workers all pull extra hours and suffer alot of stress to make a profit margin set by basically greedy people.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Here's a comparison to stew on, game designers:

If the US had decided to push the A-Bomb out without working bugs out and making sure it wasn't going to explode on takeoff, would that have been a good idea?
If you don't think so then don't release games that aren't polished. I don't care about having to wait 2 extra months if that means I get a good working game out of it (Two Worlds 2 dev's I'm looking at you).

 

[Morganan]

We are buying a license to use software, we aren't buying a finished product or even a *wink wink* finished product.

To put it another way, imagine if instead of purchasing a vehicle, you simply purchased an agreement that allows you to use the vehicle for your own personal use. You pull out of the lot and the thing runs like crap, you go to return it and the dealer tells you that you didn't buy the vehicle, just the ability to drive the vehicle for an unlimited period. If the thing runs like crap, that's not their problem. They will try and address any issues with the vehicle "as soon as possible" but they are under no legal obligation to do so.

congratulations, you just bought fallout: new Vegas the family sized sedan.

 

[Denizen]

I, for one, am looking forward to 1982 mkII - if it comes. The internet tears will be oh so enjoyable as to make the misery it will no doubt cause hundreds to thousands of industry workers almost seem worth it.

I'm with you when that time comes. We need another crash. Hopefully this will leave only the top companies to survive and make them get their shit together.

Edit with Response to Mr. Pitts,

I can't express my appreciation enough for you writing this. You've touched on every topic needed for examination. There are not enough people bringing up this topic to the the industry's patron's (the developers and consumers alike) as well as those who can do it well. All I can leave in response is a share of my current experience with how the industry has changed and with it how I approach gaming.

The current state of the industry has shaped my recent preferences in games to the point where I filter out most of the upcoming titles and reserve my attention to only a few select developers as the ones I trust and support. I won't mention any platform or particular preferment but what I eventually compare it to was when there was a time where I could almost blindly purchase a new title and could even bet it would be my new favorite. I may be even too generous describing "this particular time" but most will agree that during that time, there were instant classics, bargain worth-a-rent selections, and the rare bottom-barrel quality letdowns.

That time is so far-gone. When comparing to the amount of games I would buy in one year, I have narrowed the margin to about 2 per year to what used to be about 7-8. It's to avoid the mass amount of resentment and disappointment with meager and mediocre garbage that I've come to expect with upcoming titles. I no longer rent and I wait. I wait a very long time to see if a (then aged) game was actually worth it. I believe all the phrases that go along with today's releases coined to describe every consumer's frustrations (that I'm pretty sure we're all tired of hearing) are there and constantly being used for a solid reason. I recognize that gaming has shaped several facets of who I am and I believe it deserves recognition as an art form but my ire for this medium is growing more and my appreciation of it is depleting.

This is why I will, and have already mentioned many times, say this industry is due for a crash.
They seem to have forgotten how it started.
Maybe the 30 year anniversary of it (2012) will remind them.

 

[littlerudi08107]

Make better games? Are you serious? That's quite possibly the most ungrateful thing I've ever heard. I understand that the industry is rife with assembly-line produced Halo clones and Madden, but the only thing you have to offer is "make better games?" Do you realize how childish that sounds? How dare you simply demand that better games be made simply because what is offered displeases you.

If you don't like the way the game industry is going then make your own video game and sell it to people. Complaining is the least productive thing you could do with your time and you aren't going to change the face of an industry by whining about how it's not what you wanted. I'm so sick of "gamers" like you who think that the only thing they can do to solve a problem is complain about it.

 

[azala]

Nobody is really to blame. The industry is saturated, AAA titles are typically a net loss, and products are sold front-loaded ($60 upfront, no subscription fee). Under those conditions, why wouldn't you expect them to cut corners to ship faster?

 

[The Cake Is Annoying]

Absolutely agree with this open letter.

I think far too many people in the industry are using patching as an opportunity, again and again in careless ways. More and more of my money is being spend on pen and paper RPGs now because I think computer games are becoming insultingly slipshod.

I'm even reluctant to buy new games as presents for friends because I simply am less and less trustful of developers not rushing crap out the door. This should not be an issue, and my enjoyment of games extends beyond video games. I've already began spending my money elsewhere and its becoming a habit.

I'm even beginning to think a second crash would benefit indie game publishers, retrogaming, and a better understanding that aesthetics matter more than graphics.

I hope Russ Pitts' letter gets a response.