Pachter in Major Tizzy With Advocacy Group Over Black Ops
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
- Start date
Best Outcome of this whole thing:
Trading Standards doesn't prosecute Activision and set an untenable precedent but puts together a team to put a structure on what constitutes a game that is of a sufficient quality for retail. Other countries follow suit
Activision Patches the UK/Europe version to work correctly
Pachter gets egg on his face and Shuts the Hell up.
Can we have more Ryan Quickbender? A much more sensible and in touch industry analyst!
Trading Standards doesn't prosecute Activision and set an untenable precedent but puts together a team to put a structure on what constitutes a game that is of a sufficient quality for retail. Other countries follow suit
Activision Patches the UK/Europe version to work correctly
Pachter gets egg on his face and Shuts the Hell up.
Can we have more Ryan Quickbender? A much more sensible and in touch industry analyst!
I'm wondering how many will notice how much their personal dislike of Mr P reflects on their commentary that they should feel more aggrieved by Mr P voicing his opinion, rather than the issue of the claimed inferiority of Activisions products.Kalezian said:
we really seem to hate this man don't we? then again when he says just return it...well you can't. Even here in Canada they give you a new copy of the game until you're stuck with it , so if it's a bug problem you're kinda without a paddle. That being said, there's a reason why I buy most of my games for my xbox.
No I actually expect bugs now. Everyone is so accepting of them we can expect more too. I'm just glad I rent. I just wish I rented Fallout New Vegas.MonkeyPunch said:
It's funny because I actually wrote to Gamers Voice (politely) asking the same thing: why (if they are cracking down on glitchy games) haven't they gone after Fallout New Vegas which is probably the buggiest game ever. They wrote back quite swiftly saying that FNV is actually their next target.
I personally haven't had many problems with Blops but if anyone is having even close to the amount of problems as I was having with New Vegas, their voice should be heard....
as long as their voice is saying that it sucks and that games should not be released in that state, not if their voice is saying that it's okay and that if they were given a choice they would buy it again.
Those people are just making everything worse for the rest of us.
"...any serious gamer expects bugs."
Yes I do, but I don't expect them to need me to restart my machine every five minutes or give up playing it till its patched a week later do I? And this isn't a series of isolated incidents; there wouldn't be people complaining on such a scale; people see this as a serious problem
PCGamer UK's reviewer had to install it on THREE separate machines just to get through the whole campaign. Is that not bad?
All games will come with bugs, but they should not make the game nigh-on unplayable or total broken. Is the game good? How is the reviewer supposed to know if he can't play it?!
If a game doesn't work well enough to be playable, why should it be released? Pachter seems to have missed the point.
Yes I do, but I don't expect them to need me to restart my machine every five minutes or give up playing it till its patched a week later do I? And this isn't a series of isolated incidents; there wouldn't be people complaining on such a scale; people see this as a serious problem
PCGamer UK's reviewer had to install it on THREE separate machines just to get through the whole campaign. Is that not bad?
All games will come with bugs, but they should not make the game nigh-on unplayable or total broken. Is the game good? How is the reviewer supposed to know if he can't play it?!
If a game doesn't work well enough to be playable, why should it be released? Pachter seems to have missed the point.
This is a vote with your wallet situation, not something that could or should be regulated by law.Tom Goldman said:
Any game publisher has the right to release a crap game, just as any movie studio can release a shoddy film, any book publisher a poorly written book, any snack food company can market poo-flavoured crisps...
As with anything it's up to the consumer to inform themselves on the product they're buying, so I really don't see how this is even debatable.
Well, it's actually good that we're seeing gamer advocacy groups, we need to see more of this. No industry welcomes organized consumer advocacy though, and you have to expect attempts to dismiss such groups, or prevent them from being taken seriously. That kind of attitude is likely going to last until we actually see advocacy groups being actually responsible for costing game companies money, or even seeing people arrested. This is how it goes with most industries when they get big enough to see advocacy groups form.
Right now the gaming industry operates in a criminal, or borderline criminal fashion at least by US standards. It behaves like a cartel, engaging in price fixing, and doing whatever it can to prevent direct competition in order to keep prices high and costs as low as possible. You don't see companies in the industry striving to create the best possible product for the lowest possible price, since the industry as a whole sets things up to prevent the need to do that. With set prices, the relative quality of a game, and it's development cost are also irrelevent since a 2 million dollar game costs the same 60 bucks
on release as a 200 million dollar game.
Under the circumstances there is no reason for the game industry to spend the time and effort to do serious bug hunting and quality control, because nobody does it. There isn't enough direct competition where your buggy mess of a game is going to suffer because it's directly up against a product that was tested much more extensively at the same time. They set up the release schedule so big titles don't generally compete with each other, for example when "Modern Warfare 2" came out, you'll notice other companies with big titles ready around the same time pushed up their release dates.
Analyst or not, Michael Pachter is exactly the kind of arrogant guy that advocacy groups need to take down a few pegs with some victories. His attitude basically being "all games are buggy, your a crybaby" is hardly professional, and shows a rather disturbing perspective on how people like him view customers. I mean it's so horrible that we want them to actually take the time to properly test and debug their games... that's quite reasonable from where I'm sitting, and honestly if the Beta for that version of "Black Ops." was anything like any of the Betas I've been in over the last few years both the company and the testers were doubtlessly aware of the problems but chose not to fix them.
If you've been in a Beta test group recently, you'd notice that the testers are treated like cattle. They are there to at most stress test the game, all of the game's content and systems have been decided on, and even when massive bugs are discovered and known to the beta community it is increasingly rare to actually see the developers do anything to fix those bugs. As a result games, especially MMORPGs, are released in a very similar state to what they were like in Beta. The attitude of the companies being that *IF* the game sells well enough they can work on fixing the problems down the road. This is a messed up situation.
As much as I like the products of a lot of the gaming companies out there (and as much as it might hurt my future beta prospects), I have to say, if some kind of legal action based on producing shoddy goods got going against a company I tested for, and I was brought in under oath, I don't think there is one company I've done beta for in the recent past that I could defend because ALL of them have knowingly released shoddy wares, even with months to work on some of the issues that were present in the final game.
Right now the gaming industry operates in a criminal, or borderline criminal fashion at least by US standards. It behaves like a cartel, engaging in price fixing, and doing whatever it can to prevent direct competition in order to keep prices high and costs as low as possible. You don't see companies in the industry striving to create the best possible product for the lowest possible price, since the industry as a whole sets things up to prevent the need to do that. With set prices, the relative quality of a game, and it's development cost are also irrelevent since a 2 million dollar game costs the same 60 bucks
on release as a 200 million dollar game.
Under the circumstances there is no reason for the game industry to spend the time and effort to do serious bug hunting and quality control, because nobody does it. There isn't enough direct competition where your buggy mess of a game is going to suffer because it's directly up against a product that was tested much more extensively at the same time. They set up the release schedule so big titles don't generally compete with each other, for example when "Modern Warfare 2" came out, you'll notice other companies with big titles ready around the same time pushed up their release dates.
Analyst or not, Michael Pachter is exactly the kind of arrogant guy that advocacy groups need to take down a few pegs with some victories. His attitude basically being "all games are buggy, your a crybaby" is hardly professional, and shows a rather disturbing perspective on how people like him view customers. I mean it's so horrible that we want them to actually take the time to properly test and debug their games... that's quite reasonable from where I'm sitting, and honestly if the Beta for that version of "Black Ops." was anything like any of the Betas I've been in over the last few years both the company and the testers were doubtlessly aware of the problems but chose not to fix them.
If you've been in a Beta test group recently, you'd notice that the testers are treated like cattle. They are there to at most stress test the game, all of the game's content and systems have been decided on, and even when massive bugs are discovered and known to the beta community it is increasingly rare to actually see the developers do anything to fix those bugs. As a result games, especially MMORPGs, are released in a very similar state to what they were like in Beta. The attitude of the companies being that *IF* the game sells well enough they can work on fixing the problems down the road. This is a messed up situation.
As much as I like the products of a lot of the gaming companies out there (and as much as it might hurt my future beta prospects), I have to say, if some kind of legal action based on producing shoddy goods got going against a company I tested for, and I was brought in under oath, I don't think there is one company I've done beta for in the recent past that I could defend because ALL of them have knowingly released shoddy wares, even with months to work on some of the issues that were present in the final game.
quixoticTherumancer said:
Caught up in the romance of noble deeds and the pursuit of unreachable goals
Actually I would argue that they need him
"Gamers' Voice can continue its quixotic quest to cause Activision to respond to a regulatory inquiry, or could take a more traditional approach and try to unite gamers to take a more civilized approach."
A discoragment from a self-defeating proposition, can only make them stronger, his argument is simply that to act in thier current manner shows only help for publicity not any notion of achieving anything.
Surely people have not so quickly fogotten how Activision responds to legal action considering the EA, Zampella and West case.
Quite hard actually.Kalezian said:
How are you meant to know that a game is buggy in advance. Demo maybe? (Did BLOPS have a demo? I don't think it did) And even then, the first thing written on all demos is "This is not representative of the final product... bla bla... work in progress..."
So you would presume, nay, hope that any bugs found in demos would get ironed out on release if there was a demo in the first place.
Rely on reviews?
IGN - "...There are also a few design flaws and annoyances, not least of all was a game-ending bug in the first level that made me restart the entire mission. " - Not so bad. One bug.
In fact none of the "big" gaming review sites really mention much about bugs.
Also, a lot of people just don't read gaming reviews. Should they expect to receive buggy software then?
At the end of the day people buy software expecting it to be fully functional. You can't expect the broader public to go out on massive research before buying a game - n'or should you actually want to have to do that before every games purchase.
I've done some impulse buys over Steam myself, without researching whether or not the game was actually in a working state beforehand. I expect, you know, my games to be in a working state. Not in the state BLOPS PC, or Fallout New Vegas were.
But if you're happy playing beta tester for companies and continuing the trend of receiving buggy software, then I guess it's fine.
I've never been able to return a piece of software, for console or PC, to a retail outlet. If I put down 60 dollars for it the best I can hope for is a small portion of that when I trade it in. Pachter's rebuttal is very poor considering it's not in the same neighborhood as reality.
And frankly game-breaking bugs are far too common in this generation. Fallout: New Vegas may be an outstanding game (I don't know; haven't played it yet) but seeing as it has worse issues than FO3 (so I hear) there's no way it's worth my money at full retail price even if they've patched it. When I buy a game off the shelf I expect it to be complete and functional. I shouldn't need a patch to prevent my save data from getting wiped or to ensure I don't wind up in an unwinnable situation. What if I don't have my console connected to the internet? What if it's in a room where it would be too much of a hassle to bother with it? If I can't or don't want to be part of the online community I'm SOL. That's not right.
Call of Duty is a different story to some extent because online is a major component of the game; it's the only way I could see anyone justifying a full-priced retail purchase near launch. Even so, I think it's entirely reasonable to expect the game to play well from day one. Patches should only have to cover minor issues and maybe balance the game, anything more than that and we're getting ripped off.
Compare modern games to the triple-A equivalents of past generations. None of Squaresoft's mainline titles for the Playstation had any game breaking bugs from what I can remember, and while there was plenty of buggy software on the market all of the major players kept their products on the up and up. Now it's common to run into problems that would have gotten a game lambasted five or ten years ago. No, I'm not going to stand for that.
Publishers: If you want my money, give me something worth paying for.
Now if you'll excuse me I think I'll dig out my Super Nintendo.
And frankly game-breaking bugs are far too common in this generation. Fallout: New Vegas may be an outstanding game (I don't know; haven't played it yet) but seeing as it has worse issues than FO3 (so I hear) there's no way it's worth my money at full retail price even if they've patched it. When I buy a game off the shelf I expect it to be complete and functional. I shouldn't need a patch to prevent my save data from getting wiped or to ensure I don't wind up in an unwinnable situation. What if I don't have my console connected to the internet? What if it's in a room where it would be too much of a hassle to bother with it? If I can't or don't want to be part of the online community I'm SOL. That's not right.
Call of Duty is a different story to some extent because online is a major component of the game; it's the only way I could see anyone justifying a full-priced retail purchase near launch. Even so, I think it's entirely reasonable to expect the game to play well from day one. Patches should only have to cover minor issues and maybe balance the game, anything more than that and we're getting ripped off.
Compare modern games to the triple-A equivalents of past generations. None of Squaresoft's mainline titles for the Playstation had any game breaking bugs from what I can remember, and while there was plenty of buggy software on the market all of the major players kept their products on the up and up. Now it's common to run into problems that would have gotten a game lambasted five or ten years ago. No, I'm not going to stand for that.
Publishers: If you want my money, give me something worth paying for.
Now if you'll excuse me I think I'll dig out my Super Nintendo.
Nice Dialogue.RatRace123 said:
Sorry,
I don?t usually like to double-post but the more I think about this, the more pissed I am at this guy. I was okay with him before when he was just making his un-educated guesses about crap nobody cared about for investors that I don?t know.
What I want to know is why he all of a sudden needs to give his personal opinion about technical issues others have. It?s not his place.
And frankly, I?m sick of these morons who want to call anyone a ?crybaby? when they say they?ve been ripped off and have legitimate complaints.
It seems that the only alternative to being a ?crybaby? is to be a total sucker willing to bend over and say ? gimme more.?
Personally, I?d rather be a ?crybaby? than a ?sucker.? The suckers are the reason that prices are going up and quality is going down and they are notoriously bad with money.
Point at the labelling that says "This game is glitched to the point of significantly reducing its quality" and I'll let that comment slide.Kalezian said:
Even if a game is loaded with bugs a la New Vegas, then you try hard to patch those bugs out, not that Activision relies on customers that demand quality, their fanbase can continue to prop them up.
Really I"M being a cry baby because people don't bother to test for or fix bugs so I get a barely playable product that may eventually get patched if I'm lucky. Lately all the AAA releases have had major bugs that the companies must have know about but never bothered to fix thats unacceptable. Yes I realize no piece of software will be bug free but I expect them to actually be playable especially inexcusable on consoles theres no variables the damn thing should work. I've gone from buying a game day one to waiting a month or two so it'll be patched.
I disagree, it's industries that are viewed as being untouchable that are most in need of this kind of advocacy, and it's why winning a couple of victories make all the differance.jamesworkshop said:
Understand also, these guys aren't pursueing legal action themselves. They made a complaint to the "Office Of Fair Trading", which I am guessing is a goverment body in the UK. If that office pursues the complaint, investigates activision, and decides to take action that's a heck of a lot differant than a bunch of nerds with a lawyer, or even a civil court battle with former employees and their lawyers. If this goes anywhere, the goverment bringing a case against Activision is an entirely differant matter.
In the US we have yet to see similar Advocacy, but if we did there are not just goverment agencies that overlook trade that could potentially be convinced to pursue an investigation and bring the case themselves, but also private agencies like the BBB (Better Business Bureau) that can be downright frightening if they get really invested in a case. Bigger companies than Activision have wished they never crossed the BBB.
I'll also be honest in saying that right now the lack of advocacy means that very few gamers see how an "enemy of my enemy" approach can also work. You'd be surprised what can sometimes be accomplishd through a letter writing campaign to the Stae Attorney General's office (and on what odd matters as well). A lot of State Attorney Generals don't exactly like the gaming industry right now it seems, and have issues with the way business is conducted through the internet when it causes people to be scammed and so on. While not popular with the gaming community for obvious reasons, given some documented complaints, some of these guys might very well be interested in pursueing an inquiry. Not likely the Attorney General himself would, but his office might, depends on the specific complaints. One of the issues with why the goverment never does anything in "obvious" cases is that you'd be surprised at how often nobody ever brings the case to the official attention of the people involved.