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Speaking as someone who has helped develop two extremely successful mobile games "objective" goodness is pretty meaningless. People have more patience than you

Speaking as someone who has helped develop two extremely successful mobile games "objective" goodness is pretty meaningless. People have more patience than you expect for a game that captures their imagination and will put up with buggyness. In the long run, if a game isn't polished it will lose because of retention. But pure technical polish is often overrated.

syngrog66 10y ago
your comment is gold to it I'd add that this is also the difference between the $20/hour programmer and the $200/hour programmer -- speaking in broad strokes, knowingly, and if you'll indulge me charitably. Because the difference between the commodity "let's ship something!" programmer/engineer and the one who truly knows his/her stuff, and who truly thinks about and knows about and cares about the edge cases, the big picture, the total system, all possible states in the state machine space, is what justifies those differences in (ostensible) upfront cost. If you only want "the user is in location X and so icon Y should be rendered on their screen at point P" then you can get that pretty cheap, at globalization-plus-crowdsourced-plus-cloud-reduced prices But if you want that above but also, with good performance, correctness, stability, scale, all edge cases handled reasonably and gracefully, and in v1.0, and well documented, and with good English, and maturity, curtesy, legality, i18n, etc... well, then you're going to pay. Or you should expect to pay. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Ever. If you think you have a free lunch, or a reduced cost lunch, then all it means is that somebody else off-stage is paying for that difference. And that difference may come back to bite you.
- 2bitencryption 10y ago
  > to it I'd add that this is also the difference between the $20/hour programmer and the $200/hour programmer You could have a hundred "$200/hour programmers" on the team for this app, but if management says they need to ship three weeks early to catch the buzz, or something like that, it doesn't matter. We can't say the developers were bad. I mean it's possible, given how poorly the game handles network disconnections, among other bugs. But unfortunately we don't live in a utopia where the guys writing the code get to decide when they want to release. Or if features get added in the last minute. Etc.
  - syngrog66 10y ago
    so many HN replies say 'you're wrong and you implied <what-you-didn't> therefore should feel bad'. yet this did not. well said, agreed. you added signal. in many situations, an owner/manager/lead is making decisions where, frankly, the company has no revenue so they know their ostensible default spending path is equivalent to a ticking time bomb. or... they don't truly know whether or how well the engineer can deliver, yet they do know for sure definitively what their dollar spend will be. thus, the results we see.
  - buzzybee 10y ago
    We totally do get to say that in this case. This game inherits issues that have been present in Ingress for years. Years! Ingress gets away with it most of the time because it's not operating in a worst-case scenario where the backend has to suddenly scale from limited beta to millions of active users, so fewer of these bugs present. The actual architecture work underneath is poor; client code should not crash, softlock, or lose frames because of a temporary connectivity issue. But TBH, that is probably not about how much the engineering team is paid, it's about what culture they have. Nintendo's console development teams would never ship something with this many catastophic bugs. Niantic has probably decided that the way they're doing things is "industry standard" (within the context of mobile and their particular silo) and does not need substantial improvement. Edit: How poor is this code, you ask? It does not let me rename my Pokemon. A race condition occurs where it tries to pop up the Android keyboard and close it at the same time.
MBCook 10y ago
I can put up with a fair amount. There are some Z-buffering issues that don't really matter. I've seen occasional glitches with the way the background works in AR. But how can you not remember if I've me that the sound? How can you not remember I logged in? With a handful of ultrabasic bugs it feels like they just didn't even try. If they are network issues why do I get stuck in a try again later screen were the only thing I can do is force quit the app? It's a lazy as hell and Nintendo should be ashamed that someone's dragging their name down like that.
- fphhotchips 10y ago
  I completely agree with this. The network issues, and the lack of tolerance for GPS issues would be frustrating but acceptable if they were handled properly. As it is they're absolutely infuriating when combined with the way the app just dies when it encounters them. It's incredible that an app that's been in beta for months still has 20 un-recoverable different freeze states that I've found in 72 hours. My girlfriend didn't even know how to kill an Android app before this app, now she can do it in seconds. The real killer? I love the idea of this app. I'd probably end up spending a bunch of money on it if I kept it around for a couple months, because I don't have the time I need to play it the free way. It's fun (or it at least scratches that grindy type itch), and it's the only game I've ever been able to play with my partner. I'm on the verge of uninstalling right now though, because every time I get the chance to play, the app dies in my hands.
  - 2bitencryption 10y ago
    There is NO graceful handling of loss of network connection at all. Many times I've been out throwing Pokeballs at a Pidgy, then my phone catches the nearby Starbucks wifi and switches over. In the brief period of no connectivity during the switch, the game loses connection, and just... dies. All actions stop. The animations keep playing on loop, but it's impossible to throw another pokeball, impossible to leave the minigame, etc. This doesn't just happen when in "catch a pokemon" minigame mode. This happens at all screens. The game was programming to expect full, 100% network connectivity, and if it loses that for even a brief moment, the whole thing comes crashing down, requiring a full kill and reset.
Betabot101 10y ago
Agree, just look at DayZ. Players stuck with that through extreme buggyness. Sure it might not have the same number of players as it once did but there were periods during which players were putting up with a lot of bugs.
- flashman 10y ago
  Because we're believers! And there's no subscription cost and we've already paid, and all our friends play it too, I guess...
- MBCook 10y ago
  I don't really 'get' DayZ, but I also know that it was a pay-once game, not free to play. Once you've paid the money you might as well get your fun out of it. But if you're constantly losing items and getting frustrated by bugs what's the incentive to keep playing and possibly giving Niantic money?

syngrog66 10y ago

your comment is gold to it I'd add that this is also the difference between the $20/hour programmer and the $200/hour programmer -- speaking in broad strokes, knowingly, and if you'll indulge me charitably. Because the difference between the commodity "let's ship something!" programmer/engineer and the one who truly knows his/her stuff, and who truly thinks about and knows about and cares about the edge cases, the big picture, the total system, all possible states in the state machine space, is what justifies those differences in (ostensible) upfront cost. If you only want "the user is in location X and so icon Y should be rendered on their screen at point P" then you can get that pretty cheap, at globalization-plus-crowdsourced-plus-cloud-reduced prices But if you want that above but also, with good performance, correctness, stability, scale, all edge cases handled reasonably and gracefully, and in v1.0, and well documented, and with good English, and maturity, curtesy, legality, i18n, etc... well, then you're going to pay. Or you should expect to pay. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Ever. If you think you have a free lunch, or a reduced cost lunch, then all it means is that somebody else off-stage is paying for that difference. And that difference may come back to bite you.

2bitencryption 10y ago
> to it I'd add that this is also the difference between the $20/hour programmer and the $200/hour programmer You could have a hundred "$200/hour programmers" on the team for this app, but if management says they need to ship three weeks early to catch the buzz, or something like that, it doesn't matter. We can't say the developers were bad. I mean it's possible, given how poorly the game handles network disconnections, among other bugs. But unfortunately we don't live in a utopia where the guys writing the code get to decide when they want to release. Or if features get added in the last minute. Etc.
- syngrog66 10y ago
  so many HN replies say 'you're wrong and you implied <what-you-didn't> therefore should feel bad'. yet this did not. well said, agreed. you added signal. in many situations, an owner/manager/lead is making decisions where, frankly, the company has no revenue so they know their ostensible default spending path is equivalent to a ticking time bomb. or... they don't truly know whether or how well the engineer can deliver, yet they do know for sure definitively what their dollar spend will be. thus, the results we see.
- buzzybee 10y ago
  We totally do get to say that in this case. This game inherits issues that have been present in Ingress for years. Years! Ingress gets away with it most of the time because it's not operating in a worst-case scenario where the backend has to suddenly scale from limited beta to millions of active users, so fewer of these bugs present. The actual architecture work underneath is poor; client code should not crash, softlock, or lose frames because of a temporary connectivity issue. But TBH, that is probably not about how much the engineering team is paid, it's about what culture they have. Nintendo's console development teams would never ship something with this many catastophic bugs. Niantic has probably decided that the way they're doing things is "industry standard" (within the context of mobile and their particular silo) and does not need substantial improvement. Edit: How poor is this code, you ask? It does not let me rename my Pokemon. A race condition occurs where it tries to pop up the Android keyboard and close it at the same time.

MBCook 10y ago

I can put up with a fair amount. There are some Z-buffering issues that don't really matter. I've seen occasional glitches with the way the background works in AR. But how can you not remember if I've me that the sound? How can you not remember I logged in? With a handful of ultrabasic bugs it feels like they just didn't even try. If they are network issues why do I get stuck in a try again later screen were the only thing I can do is force quit the app? It's a lazy as hell and Nintendo should be ashamed that someone's dragging their name down like that.

fphhotchips 10y ago
I completely agree with this. The network issues, and the lack of tolerance for GPS issues would be frustrating but acceptable if they were handled properly. As it is they're absolutely infuriating when combined with the way the app just dies when it encounters them. It's incredible that an app that's been in beta for months still has 20 un-recoverable different freeze states that I've found in 72 hours. My girlfriend didn't even know how to kill an Android app before this app, now she can do it in seconds. The real killer? I love the idea of this app. I'd probably end up spending a bunch of money on it if I kept it around for a couple months, because I don't have the time I need to play it the free way. It's fun (or it at least scratches that grindy type itch), and it's the only game I've ever been able to play with my partner. I'm on the verge of uninstalling right now though, because every time I get the chance to play, the app dies in my hands.
- 2bitencryption 10y ago
  There is NO graceful handling of loss of network connection at all. Many times I've been out throwing Pokeballs at a Pidgy, then my phone catches the nearby Starbucks wifi and switches over. In the brief period of no connectivity during the switch, the game loses connection, and just... dies. All actions stop. The animations keep playing on loop, but it's impossible to throw another pokeball, impossible to leave the minigame, etc. This doesn't just happen when in "catch a pokemon" minigame mode. This happens at all screens. The game was programming to expect full, 100% network connectivity, and if it loses that for even a brief moment, the whole thing comes crashing down, requiring a full kill and reset.

Betabot101 10y ago

Agree, just look at DayZ. Players stuck with that through extreme buggyness. Sure it might not have the same number of players as it once did but there were periods during which players were putting up with a lot of bugs.

flashman 10y ago
Because we're believers! And there's no subscription cost and we've already paid, and all our friends play it too, I guess...
MBCook 10y ago
I don't really 'get' DayZ, but I also know that it was a pay-once game, not free to play. Once you've paid the money you might as well get your fun out of it. But if you're constantly losing items and getting frustrated by bugs what's the incentive to keep playing and possibly giving Niantic money?