When is a Game Done?

[Bostur]

I would like to point out that this kind of development is by no means a new thing. Just look at roguelikes, RPGMaker games, GameMaker games, BYOND games, open source games, etc. These games were always community driven, and developed out of love for the game. There would never be a point where the game would be "finished", because developing the game was the goal! Minecraft simply was one of these kinds of games that happened to be picked up by the mainstream, and then the developer decided to charge money.

I think what really needs to happen, is for publishers like Steam to create decent programmes where such "game enthusiast developers" are properly supported. That is, methods for developers to come in touch with communities, *without* having to actually sell a "popular product", as is the case with Steam Greenlight. Steam Greenlight produces crap like Guise of the Wolf, what we need is the ability to try Guise of the Wolf for free, then decide whether the concept is good or not, then decide whether to fund development of the game.

Indeed, the new thing is not the open development process. The new thing is that it has become acceptable to put a price tag on these kinds of products.

I don't buy into early access games myself, mostly because I don't want to spoil a potentially good game by playing it in an unfinished state.

While I consider paid early access programs questionable, I do consider the trend of AAA games shipping unfinished to be completely unacceptable. The worst examples are those where the community is expected to fix the game after release through modding. Yes I'm looking at you Bethesda and Creative Assembly.
Software can always be thought of as incomplete, because improvements are easy to make. But a commercial product should ship in a reasonably polished state. Adding extra bells and whistles is fine and dandy as long as it's not used as an excuse for releasing too early.

In the end it's the consumers and the gaming press who is to blame. We have become acceptant of this behaviour, and the companies naturally take advantage of this. When we are paying the full price equivalent of a game we are not part of a development community, we are simply customers. We should expect the same as we do with any other product.

 

[Qvar]

When they say its done. If you want to regard games as art then you gotta go by the same rules, a painting isn't done until the painter tells you its done. You are also nothing short of a "tard" if you buy an unfinished painting and the painter decides not to go to your house to finish it up for free like he said he would.

Actually, at least in my country, if you paid the painter and he did say that he would finish the painting (why would you call it for "free" if you've already paid for it?), then he has to finish it. If it's impossible, then he must give you your money back.

I never pay for """early access""" games because I tend to hate the game forever if I don't like it's current state, but I don't see why it should be any different.

 

[Mortuorum]

Yes, but...

It's easy to forget that, even in this day and age, reliable broadband access is not universal. It's probably acceptable to assume that a PC gamer can download patches on an as-needed basis. Even if they don't have broadband, they will still have access to the Internet via modem. That's also a safe assumption for downloaded games on consoles; if you were able to down load the title in the first place, you can download the patches.

Where it is not acceptable to sell a game with a day-one patch is console games sold on physical media. Publishers clearly think that it is fine to sell a disk with an incomplete or broken game, but I believe that once the game goes gold, it should represent the publisher's best effort to get a game out the door that is complete and playable. Are after-the-fact patches going to be necessary? Absolutely. Not every bug can be chased down in QA and sometimes something needs to be changed because it just wasn't all that well thought-out (for example, the original endings of Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 3). Still, someone who - for whatever reason - can only play the game that shipped on the disk should have a complete and relatively frustration-free experience.

I'm actually OK with day-one DLC, provided it's clearly something in addition to the core game and not integral to it. (I'm looking at you, From Ashes.)

 

[snave]

This is simply why I don't buy games at release very often. Unlike many consumers, its not the high release day price thats offputting, but the risk of playing an incomplete product. There are more than enough games being released every day for me to spend my time on (plus games I've missed on Steam and GoG, and that's before you even get to other pasttimes) and I do not appreciate it being wasted with bugs and unexpected virtual roadworks. I like to consume games like books or movies (this incidentally is why I feel Portal 1 is one of the greatest games ever made: it was self contained, didn't outstay its welcome, and even had an optional set of special features). Seriously, I'm willing to slap down release day prices on games instead of waiting a year and picking up a Director's Cut, Game of the Year, Complete Edition or something in a sale, but I need a guarentee that the product is complete, and there are few (Western) developers I trust with this anymore.

 

[Robyrt]

Ah, the long-forgotten golden age of PC gaming! I remember eagerly setting aside time to download the multiple giant patches for One Must Fall 2097 in 1994. They patched in the entire multiplayer mode.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

What I love is the fact that these 'early access' games are considered unfinished, however their prices fluctuate constantly. I always am shocked when I see an early access game on sale, or a sudden price drop, and feel sorry for those who bought it.

It sounds to me like it's a product of the 'easy money grabbing' culture that fringes the gaming industry. Years ago someone would make an indie game and it would usually be free on a demo disk, or some sort of freeware, and then with better internet would be on a site like newgrounds... If it was a bigger game then you wouldn't expect to pay very much, and you may get involved with helping to alpha test or beta test the game.

Now you have a culture where you PAY for something that is less deep and less playable than your average mid 00's free online game (seriously... No, Luca No is apparently classed as an XBLA game! :S) and you also have to privalage to pay for a beta test of a game, where you don't even always have the ability to directly feed back to the Dev... you just leave your thoughts in a dusty forum somewhere and hope someone sees it!

I agree... there need to be standards and rules laid down for this before it gets silly! What is stopping scammers creating this 'fake game concept' selling it to people and then claiming that it can't be completed? What defence do we have, as consumers, against someone or something like this? Will we see more action from Steam, PSN and XBL and the like to ensure quality and insurance against poor or mis-sold games? I hope so!

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

When it comes out with all the features it has promised and everything works as intended. If it promises no features, there must at least be no serious bugs, but if it promises things like mod support and extra mechanics, those must work properly too. A lot of games are unfinished these days.

 

[geldonyetich]

The way I hear it, technically speaking, no game is ever done: you just put it through as many iterations of refinement as your budget allows. Granted, I could see that getting rather difficult if you've already ironed out all the core features and are hesitant to introduce any more for fear of feature creep, so perhaps there eventually reaches a point where further iterations aren't worth the effort... that doesn't happen very often because rarely is anyone given that kind of budget (and, when they are, we still might end up with something like Duke Nukem Forever and Daikatana).

If you think people buying unfinished games is a problem, I say that decision lies with the consumers. As long as they're willing to pay for a thing, they are financially incentivizing people to sell it. For example, if you went to kickstarter and bought into a game concept, then you just contributed to making this a world a place where people sell game concepts instead of games. If consumers stop doing this for some reason, then I think we'll see a marked decrease in unfinished game sales.

But the real interesting thing about this is that unfinished games would never sell unless there was a demand for them, and what creates that demand? Hype alone, you say? You're not being specific enough: what is the consumer hyped about? I'm going to say something they want that they can't get any other way. That's the kicker about kickstarters: those developers are promising concepts the game market won't normally provide.

Basically, the fact that people are willing to buy unfinished games is indicative of just how bad cloned, boring game concepts have become where the market can be simultaneously flooded with finished games and having people willing to buy games that aren't even finished yet. Remember when we used to complain about clones? We don't anymore, because the problem has become so pronounced it is now the norm. In such a terrible environment, it's really no wonder that people are kicking over $60 in Kickstarter for something that may well be vaporware.

So here's a potential solution on the developer end of the problem: if you were a whole lot better at your job, maybe the consumers would have enough good, finished games around that there would be no demand for unfinished kickstarter products.

 

[Elijah Newton]

I've loved the Minecraft approach and would love to see it emulated elsewhere, even if that means some missteps. I got in on it for $5 if I remember correctly. While the core gameplay was in place, it didn't compare to what's out now in terms of depth. What made it worth the money then was that it was a stable build. Within the parameters of the game as it existed then, it was complete and I was satisfied with getting to experience a new game.

It's been an absolute delight to see each new iteration come down the pike, and the game is absolutely worth more than I originally paid for it. I would not have wanted to pay whatever it's current price when I started as some sort of 'down payment' on features which didn't exist. Nor would I have paid for the additional features as DLC. But in terms of getting funding for a work in progress, I think it's great for a game to allow supporters to pay what it's worth at early points in development.

That idea of paying for a stable build is really key to my regarding a game as a success or failure. I don't mind patches that tweak gameplay and personally haven't gotten burned by a game not working without a patch. (yet) On the other hand, I'm not generally an early adopter of games because I like to see how they perform for others before I throw my money at them. Caveat emptor and all that.

Incidentally, Titanfall for the 360 has me waffling on the day one buy for exactly this reason. I simply can't disregard EA's track record.

 

[Amir Kondori]

For now the only thing to do is hold developers to the standard of being very up front and honest about the current state of the game when you are dealing with anything early access or beta/alpha. As long as I can make an informed decision based on the description provided by the developer/publisher then I think this system of release can work well, for some people at least.
There are enough people who will not buy an early access or beta game that I don't think we have to worry about every game being released this way. Consumers overall are sharper then people give them credit for and after having a few bad experiences with early access most will learn to be wary when even considering an early access game.

 

[Tarfeather]

If you think people buying unfinished games is a problem, I say that decision lies with the consumers. As long as they're willing to pay for a thing, they are financially incentivizing people to sell it. For example, if you went to kickstarter and bought into a game concept, then you just contributed to making this a world a place where people sell game concepts instead of games.

Not that simple, really. I myself prefer the crowd-sourcing approach to the sell your soul to publisher for bag of money approach. Problem is, kickstarter is really bad at encouraging their creators to actually keep their promise(no milestones and many other issues), and while there are more sensible crowd-funding sites around, hardly anybody puts their project on there.

So, yes, the decision lies with "the consumers", but not at all with a single consumer. As a single consumer, much like in politics, you can only choose the least evil, you can't actually go for the solution you yourself think to be ideal.

 

[geldonyetich]

If you think people buying unfinished games is a problem, I say that decision lies with the consumers. As long as they're willing to pay for a thing, they are financially incentivizing people to sell it. For example, if you went to kickstarter and bought into a game concept, then you just contributed to making this a world a place where people sell game concepts instead of games.

Not that simple, really. I myself prefer the crowd-sourcing approach to the sell your soul to publisher for bag of money approach. Problem is, kickstarter is really bad at encouraging their creators to actually keep their promise(no milestones and many other issues), and while there are more sensible crowd-funding sites around, hardly anybody puts their project on there.

So, yes, the decision lies with "the consumers", but not at all with a single consumer. As a single consumer, much like in politics, you can only choose the least evil, you can't actually go for the solution you yourself think to be ideal.

Nothing in life is necessarily simple, but you're not going to effectively refute that you've contributed to an environment where developers are financially incentivized to sell unfinished games simply because you had a reason to do it. This being the entire drive of what you quoted from me, you have framed your message in that context.

So lets just say, yes, you're definitely doing this, but these are reasons why. Fair enough... that's what the rest of my message was about, after all. What you call "selling your soul to the publisher," I call the AAA games environment being one that has become something too poorly conductive to creating games worthwhile to play.

Kickstarter provides a potentially promising alternative, yes, but bear in mind we're commenting on an article by Shamus Young that talks about how the sale of unfinished games is, on some ways, a whole new low entirely.