Why do most Game Dev's not play there own Game

Zeema

The Furry Gamer
Jun 29, 2010
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Why is it most Game devs dont play there own game? look at alpha protocol and new vegas both have potential to be fantastic. if they polished Alpha protocol it could have been one of the best modern Rpg's out there but no one at the company seemed to play there game before release. Also with the New Vegas a bug came up during one of there E3 videos and they didn't know what to do so they reloaded a old save they should have done a play through of there own game and see if there were any bugs i wouldn't mind if the release date was delayed but if the bugs are fixed then theres no problem with the game.


But its not just that like think about most games like Too Human, RE5 and Every mario game if the game dev sat down played them and then he could have realised how to improve it and make it a better game.

But why does the past repeat itself lots of Game Devs/companies get frighten [cough nintendo cough] and make the same game 500 times. they don't want to leave there safety blankets to try new things. which is like what Yahtzee has been saying for 3 years.

Remember how Portal and Half life changed the world mixing up formulas trying new ones and having fun revolutionising games for the better. but what did Valve do they reached outside the box and made a great game out of it. the best things about those games were they were fun and funny.

Portal reached outside a box and changed so what if the game is like 3 hours long its a fun game its not like what they do in some games and just put in a trivial puzzle or something they will take a fair while to figure out.

Ive asked alot of questions like

Why Game Devs don't play there own game?
Why do Game Developers get super cocky about there game making and think that whatever game they make will be good?
Why is Trezu so fucking handsome?
Why do people try to latch onto other gaming success like Dante's Inferno i through of it as a god of war expansion pack then an actually game?

And why do Developers and Company's Copy other Developers and company work?

so if the Escapist could give me a hand that would be helpful

sorry if the english is bad.
 

tomtom94

aka "Who?"
May 11, 2009
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I knew this would be about New Vegas.

The answer to all your questions is pretty simple: the publishers.
They set unreasonable deadlines which causes all the playtesting to be rushed.
They take any game the developers make if they demand a sequel.
Can't help you on Trezu...
Success = money. Latching on to success = money. Simple.
 

Glamorgan

Seer of Light
Aug 16, 2009
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Trezu said:
Why Game Devs don't play there own game?
Probably because they know the game back to front, meaning they don't want to play it.
Why do Game Developers get super cocky about there game making and think that whatever game they make will be good?
They probably don't. They just want people to view it that way, so they say it is
Why is Trezu so fucking handsome?
That thing you are looking at isn't a mirror. Its a portrait of me.
Why do people try to latch onto other gaming success like Dante's Inferno i through of it as a god of war expansion pack then an actually game?
Well, say that someone makes a game. It sells amazingly, and it is well loved by all who play it. Now say that a company wants to share some of that success. They could either think of a new whole idea, which may not work quite as well, or at all, or copy the successful idea, which they know will sell.
These companies want money, and they will do whatever they have to do to get it. Even if that means making shitty God of War rip offs.
That help?
 

Squeaky

New member
Mar 6, 2010
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tomtom94 said:
I knew this would be about New Vegas.

The answer to all your questions is pretty simple: the publishers.
They set unreasonable deadlines which causes all the playtesting to be rushed.
They take any game the developers make if they demand a sequel.
Can't help you on Trezu...
Success = money. Latching on to success = money. Simple.
This.

90% of the time its down to the publisher setting time constrants, there are always execptions to the rules but i agree its a shame about Alpha Protcol its got the shell of a really great game.
 

TheBluesader

New member
Mar 9, 2008
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Because people who make games do it for a living. They do their part in the making of the game, then it's out of their hands in most cases, and it's on to the next game.

I'm not saying they personally don't care about what the game turns out to be. A lot of them are artists and either way take pride in their work, so I'm sure they care very much about it. But the games they're working on are 1) not their property, as they're getting paid to make it, so the final product is the responsibility of the financial backers, and 2) anyone who works on a game only works on a part of it, so they're not going to have access to the finished product either way before it's time to start working on their part of the next game.

I'm sure a lot of devs would love to shut the whole company down after every game is made and have everyone play the bugs out of it for the next month before it's released. But you can't keep a company profitable that way.

Plus, publishers supposedly hire testers (or testing contractors) who are supposed to find all the bugs and gameplay issues the devs need to go back and fix. They are spending money on this, so it shouldn't be a problem.

The fact that it is must mean the testers aren't doing their jobs, or are doing their jobs right, but doing the wrong jobs. Which could be a problem on the publisher's end or not, but is their responsibility either way.

So we can blame the publishers if we want. But if it weren't for publishers a lot of games would never have been made (too expensive, devs can't find talent they need, indie game companies can fall apart because they have cash-flow problems).

So when we bite the hand that feeds us, let's do it gently. Just to get the point across.
 

HellsingerAngel

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Jul 6, 2008
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Trezu said:
I'm not sure how you missed the boat on this, as the discussion seems to crop up everywhere, but I'll try and make this as painless as possible.

Game developers don't have the money to do what gamers want out of them. That's just fact. Developers are poor and they need funding to make million dollar games because that's what people want. A game doesn't sell if it sucks and a lack of funding will lead to sucking. So for all those drool inducing titles the money needs to appear from somewhere. Enter the publishers. These investors are people who give game developers a big pile o' money and tell them to make their game on the condition that they see their investment plus X% back in profit.

So now the game developers are preasured into selling a lot of copies of their game immediately. They also can't get bogged down in developement costs because their publisher is only willing to wait so long on that loan they gave the developers. This means that a game needs to be finished before they run out of money. And don't get me wrong, companies hire people to specifically play their games and find all these nice little bugs. Unfortunately, because of funds used on, say, adding that extra anti-ailiasing we've all become spoiled with and call any game without it shit sauce, they can't spend that time doing something that seems very fundamentally important, like a particular bug. However, what seems more plausible to patch after the game's release, especially on a big blockbuster title that'll sell copies just because it has a particular brand name like Mario, Zelda, Gears, Half-Life or, you guessed it, Fallout? My bet is that it's easier to patch out that glitch than it is to add extra graphics to a game post-release. So, what will they developers go for everytime? Well, they'll obviously put the shininess in and patch the bug out later when they find an efficient way to deal with it, and thus extending their development time to what they needed while still turning a profit to pay back that loan from the publisher.

This is also why you see a lack of innovation. It costs too much money to take a gamble these days. Publishers want their money plus something extra and developers want to see their paychecks roll in to feed themselves and their family, as well as watch their games become a success. What sells? Well, right now it's FPS games, so you'll see a lot of FPS games with the same sort of mechanics because everyone knows it'll at least be half-decent, so why not buy it? The difficulty of turning a profit is only compounded by large companies like GameStop using policies such as the "used games" market to cut out the developers to gain maximum amount of profit on their sales. In short, it doesn't pay to get risky, and because games cost millions of dollars to make and most things innovative will fail miserably from a commercial stand point and cause the few, dwindling developing companies out there to go bankrupt, it's best to make the shit everyone knows and loves and actually see a return on the investment made.

Now a lot of people will start saying that indie games are flooding the industry and they make innovative games, so why can't big companies!? Well, have you ever seen any of those companies floorish in the last decade? Valve is really the only one I can think of. Maybe RIOT games? I'm sure there are a couple others, but for the most part indie game companies stay indie and make very little money off their games. Is this bad? Heck no, because they develop software over large spans of time with a few guys in a basement drawing 2D sprite characitures of some sword wielding badass for their game. They don't need massive amounts of money like the next Call of Duty game does. They don't need to have billions of options to entertain people to get the longevity needed to not end up on the GameStop used games shelf. There's no point in pushing millions of dollars into grpahics, engines, rendering, etc etc. Most of these indie games are flash quality or slightly better, or have terrible 3D rendering compared to the technology available today. Comapred to our beefy 360s and PS3s, most indie games either have graphics that look like an early PS2 era game or go for a more stylized conception that saves on space which generally ends up being 2D. The fact is, indie games will never be as good as our triple-A blockbusters. Will they still entertain? Yes, certain, because innovation is fun! Will they get as many sales as the next Fallout game? Heck no, because Fallout provides weeks of content while an indie game is good for a few hours and a few laughs.

Sorry that took so long, but I think I put a debate that's gone on for years into a neat little package readbale by anyone. If you have any other questions or need clarification, just give me a quote and I'll try and give an informed answer.