Why Phil Fish Ought To Patch Fez
Indie developers don?t always deserve special treatment.
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Indie developers don?t always deserve special treatment.
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Isn't the cert just to make sure the game doesn't brick the console though? I really don't think they do QA; they just make sure no explosions happen when you start the game.The Random One said:I broadly agree, but in this case I have to side with Fish, may DeGroot forgive me. Microsoft ostensively charges that due to their verification process. Shouldn't that verification have found the patch'es errors? I'm not saying that's not Polytron's responsability, but when Microsoft charges that much money to verify a patch they must also assume some responsability for it if it fucks up.
I find your second point flawless though. We all know Fish took Microsoft's offer for a buttload of cash, making it an exclusive even though Microsoft hasn't been a healthy place for indies in years, if it ever was. You reap what you sow.
Polytron is very adamant that it was not paid by Microsoft. You can read the story here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118578-Fez-Studio-Rereleases-Save-Corrupting-Patch], but the relevant quote is, "People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM."The Random One said:I find your second point flawless though. We all know Fish took Microsoft's offer for a buttload of cash, making it an exclusive even though Microsoft hasn't been a healthy place for indies in years, if it ever was. You reap what you sow.
Why should they get special treatment? If Skyrim had some bug that deleted your save, we wouldn't say "Oh it's okay Bethesda, we don't want to hurt your bottom line. We'll just start over."kitsuta said:Ignoring any arguments about Polytron's past decisions, I'm genuinely wondering what people would think of the company if it shelled out the $40k for a new patch and subsequently went under. Or if it was really unlucky and its new patch made things even worse, and then that had to be pulled. Would people still demand the developer shell out another $40k for another new patch? Is there an upper limit to how much the Polytron should pay to fix this bug?
There's a difference between "hurting your bottom line" and "completely dissolving." The consequences are potentially much greater for a studio that can't just absorb the cost of a $40k re-cert. Recognizing that isn't special treatment, it's just understanding that some businesses can afford to make more mistakes than others. You're allowed to let that temper your judgement of a studio's actions without babying it.Sylveria said:Why should they get special treatment? If Skyrim had some bug that deleted your save, we wouldn't say "Oh it's okay Bethesda, we don't want to hurt your bottom line. We'll just start over."kitsuta said:Ignoring any arguments about Polytron's past decisions, I'm genuinely wondering what people would think of the company if it shelled out the $40k for a new patch and subsequently went under. Or if it was really unlucky and its new patch made things even worse, and then that had to be pulled. Would people still demand the developer shell out another $40k for another new patch? Is there an upper limit to how much the Polytron should pay to fix this bug?
If you make and release a game, it better work. If it doesn't work, you better fix it. If you can't or wont fix it, you deserve the consequences. People paid for a product, they expect it to work.Since it's XBLA, they can't even return it or dump it. Welcome to the anti-consumer age of digital distribution folks, you've been clamoring for it, enjoy what you got.
Not your best sentence everDennis Scimeca said:We don't refer to the developers who work at AAA studies by any collective label
This is a pretty good defense of the developer, and actually somewhat persuades me, so kudos to you. But even if this is all true, I would still take issue with how the guy presented the news to the world/his customer base: he went on about how much it would cost to fix, and how if it were on Steam, it would be fixed by now. But it's not like he was forced to put it on Xbox - in fact he talked about paying to be on Xbox. If that's the case, then he can't afford to patch it because he made some (seemingly bad) decisions when it came to deciding what platform to put the game out on. The customers, then, are not getting a patch, because the dev apparently chose the wrong console to release his game on. Without further explanation, customers are more than justified to be upset if a patch isn't coming.kitsuta said:There's a difference between "hurting your bottom line" and "completely dissolving." The consequences are potentially much greater for a studio that can't just absorb the cost of a $40k re-cert. Recognizing that isn't special treatment, it's just understanding that some businesses can afford to make more mistakes than others. You're allowed to let that temper your judgement of a studio's actions without babying it.
The patch was originally released specifically because Polytron wanted to make the game work better for people. It fixed a lot of bugs, at least according to its blog post. That means the company already shelled out $40k to make the game work better, and then it got unlucky with a bug that only affected 1% of use cases. You can say 'they should have caught it,' but that's demanding absolute perfection of human beings, and even big studios screw up. Repeatedly.
The fact that the studio took responsibility for this decision doesn't mean it can actually afford the extra $40k. It even said that it still owes Microsoft money right now. That doesn't scream financial stability to me, so I'm inclined to believe the decision was more about 'will this patch be beneficial enough to outweigh the costs' than 'how much money can we keep in our McScrooge-like vault.'
That being said, there's a lot of criticisms to be made of Polytron's previous decisions - its insistence on sticking with XBLA consequences-be-damned is definitely high on the list. It could have absolutely avoided this situation just by being open-minded about a PC release. I would personally attribute its mistakes to naivety, but that doesn't make the mistakes any less boneheaded.
This seems to answer the burning question at hand. But if Xbox was so important, and so part of the design behind the game, the developer should not be suddenly blaming his choice of console once things go sour. And he certainly should not be proclaiming the virtues of another platform. I'm certain he knew the risks/costs well in advance.Buretsu said:Why not Steam? Because "Fez is a console game, not a PC game" and "It?s made to be played with a controller, on a couch, on a Saturday morning." To Mr Fish, "that matters; that?s part of the medium."So why wasn't the game released on Steam? If Fish did his due diligence and realized that he couldn't support Fez properly on Xbox Live due to the prohibitive patching costs, why didn't he pursue a different option?
The article you're responding to is great, and I just had to register an account to respond because you're the 20th person I've seen parroting the "only affected 1%" claim. This is a figure that Phil Fish made up - it's not based in reality. The patch was live for about 24-36 hours, and during that time it affecting a great number of people. Did all 100% of the people who bought the game sign on and download the patch during that window? Probably not.kitsuta said:That means the company already shelled out $40k to make the game work better, and then it got unlucky with a bug that only affected 1% of use cases.
No disagreement here. The original blog post reeked of unbridled frustration and tried to place a lot of the blame on Microsoft. People sometimes dislike PR's tendency to oversanitize communication, but there's a lot to be said for measured, calm statements. You can still apologize (which Polytron did, fairly profusely), but the emotional tone of the statement made it seem like the studio was lashing out. Not the best idea.ranger19 said:This is a pretty good defense of the developer, and actually somewhat persuades me, so kudos to you. But even if this is all true, I would still take issue with how the guy presented the news to the world/his customer base: he went on about how much it would cost to fix, and how if it were on Steam, it would be fixed by now. But it's not like he was forced to put it on Xbox - in fact he talked about paying to be on Xbox. If that's the case, then he can't afford to patch it because he made some (seemingly bad) decisions when it came to deciding what platform to put the game out on. The customers, then, are not getting a patch, because the dev apparently chose the wrong console to release his game on. Without further explanation, customers are more than justified to be upset if a patch isn't coming.
This is a much better alternative, and I think it would have earned a lot of brownie points from the community at large.ranger19 said:I'd have more respect for the guy if he said "You know, it was really important to us that this game be on Xbox, and only Xbox. We knew that had risks, and we tried to patch once, but we plain can't afford to patch again without going out of business. I'm genuinely sorry."
That's completely true - I don't have any solid information on how many people the patch actually affects, so I'm really just taking Polytron's word for it. I'm assuming/hoping that the figure is based on the company's internal testing. If it's egregiously wrong about the figure or even flat-out making things up, that's a much more serious issue for a lot of reasons.Hooray said:The article you're responding to is great, and I just had to register an account to respond because you're the 20th person I've seen parroting the "only affected 1%" claim. This is a figure that Phil Fish made up - it's not based in reality. The patch was live for about 24-36 hours, and during that time it affecting a great number of people. Did all 100% of the people who bought the game sign on and download the patch during that window? Probably not.kitsuta said:That means the company already shelled out $40k to make the game work better, and then it got unlucky with a bug that only affected 1% of use cases.
We pay them. To exclusively publish a game. When we could be getting our game published elsewhere to wider audience. My Occam's Razor detector is beeping like mad.kitsuta said:Polytron is very adamant that it was not paid by Microsoft. You can read the story here [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118578-Fez-Studio-Rereleases-Save-Corrupting-Patch], but the relevant quote is, "People often mistakenly believe that we got paid by Microsoft for being exclusive to their platform. Nothing could be further from the truth. WE pay THEM."
If they can't make a game that works, they don't deserve to be in business. This is how the free market is supposed to work (though it doesn't) and this is what people expect when they purchase a product (Some reasonable assurance that it actually, you know, works).Ignoring any arguments about Polytron's past decisions, I'm genuinely wondering what people would think of the company if it shelled out the $40k for a new patch and subsequently went under. Or if it was really unlucky and its new patch made things even worse, and then that had to be pulled. Would people still demand the developer shell out another $40k for another new patch? Is there an upper limit to how much the Polytron should pay to fix this bug?