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It's cool that you share your thoughts on this! I hope what I write below does not sound too aggressive. > It honestly takes nearly 4 months for the game to go

by onli 8y ago

It's cool that you share your thoughts on this! I hope what I write below does not sound too aggressive. > It honestly takes nearly 4 months for the game to go from a finished build to a disc you can buy at a store near you. But we do not buy games in stores anymore. I do think you miss why day-1 patches are hated. It's not really about the patch, it's about the state of many AAA games on release, in that they are released with significant bugs. I understand why that happens - time is short, testing on PC with all the possible configurations is very hard - but when really basic things are broken as a customer you feel betrayed. It does not help when console ports have completely unusable UI on PC and games have always-on requirements that fail on game launch, etc. All this "vitrol" gets merged with day 1 patches and that's what this is about. At least partly, I think. > especially in the era of "live" games which receive ongoing support all the time That's kind of a funny thing to say in a thread about EA when they and others shut their multiplayer game servers down all the time to sell the next very similar installment of a franchise. In the current climate, this "live" service thing stinks like corporate speak for an ongoing stream of new micro transactions. We just had games getting micro transaction + lootboxes shortly after the reviews were over. Not a good precedent to set. > It's just how it is. Bug reports can take days to percolate through support, then to the right studio, then to the right team, then to the right person. That seems to be very common in large enterprises in general, but it is also very sad. I think having these crusted large-enterprisey structure on one side is a big factor of why gamers feel developer studios/publishers are disconnected from their reality. But there are means to combat this, Riot for example was very successful in reaching their base with their champion spotlight and nicas community shows while already having a huge number of players, at least that seemed to work well for a while. > But I can't be in a position where I'm advising people to download and use VPN software VPNs are not illegal. Is it that your EULAs forbid using one? That would be ridiculous. In a good company you should be able to give that advice.

gambiting 8y ago
No offence taken ;-) >>But we do not buy games in stores anymore. Well yes, I meant release in general, not discs specifically - it takes few months for the game to come out on Xbox Live/PSN mostly due to certification process as mentioned by Agentlien. The actual production process for discs has almost no impact on this. >> It's not really about the patch, it's about the state of many AAA games on release, in that they are released with significant bugs. Yes, I do see that. The dark side of what I said is that sometimes our master build has a significant issue, but it can be waived through because "we have 4 months until release, obviously we can fix it until then". And then for whatever reason it doesn't happen and the game launches with this critical problem that we totally knew about just didn't fix it in time. It's partially linked to the almost complete inability to push release dates back due to some technical issues, I could probably write a whole blog post about the amount of pressure things like preorders are putting on the push to release "on time". >>In the current climate, this "live" service thing stinks like corporate speak for an ongoing stream of new micro transactions Well, from the inside, all it means is that teams are not rolled off a project after it ships. I've worked on both "traditional" and "live" games and the difference is that with the "traditional" game you make your master build and pretty much everyone rolls off to another project, with a skeleton crew staying around to fix any bugs that pop up after release. But in 2-3 months after launch no one is actively working on it anymore. With "live" games the entire team stays on and is still in full development mode, even though the game shipped already. They are producing new content, and well, yes, they need to be paid somehow. So you get more content for a game that is unlikely to sell more copies than it already did by either making this content paid or by selling so many copies that you can effectively afford this development until next paid expansion ships. But hey, I'm a C++ developer, I don't have any control over this stuff ;-) >>VPNs are not illegal. Is it that your EULAs forbid using one? That would be ridiculous. In a good company you should be able to give that advice. No, it's just that if I say "use Tunnelbear to get around this issue" and someone finds out I work for this company then suddenly it's "Company X endorses Tunnelbear!". If I just say "try using a VPN to get around this problem" and someone downloads some dodgy VPN software that gives them a virus, then again they will present it as our fault. And gaming press is very very quick to pick this kind of stuff up so it's just safer to not say anything. If not for the company sake then for my own, you don't want to end up in spotlight by accident.

by onli 8y ago

gambiting 8y ago

No offence taken ;-) >>But we do not buy games in stores anymore. Well yes, I meant release in general, not discs specifically - it takes few months for the game to come out on Xbox Live/PSN mostly due to certification process as mentioned by Agentlien. The actual production process for discs has almost no impact on this. >> It's not really about the patch, it's about the state of many AAA games on release, in that they are released with significant bugs. Yes, I do see that. The dark side of what I said is that sometimes our master build has a significant issue, but it can be waived through because "we have 4 months until release, obviously we can fix it until then". And then for whatever reason it doesn't happen and the game launches with this critical problem that we totally knew about just didn't fix it in time. It's partially linked to the almost complete inability to push release dates back due to some technical issues, I could probably write a whole blog post about the amount of pressure things like preorders are putting on the push to release "on time". >>In the current climate, this "live" service thing stinks like corporate speak for an ongoing stream of new micro transactions Well, from the inside, all it means is that teams are not rolled off a project after it ships. I've worked on both "traditional" and "live" games and the difference is that with the "traditional" game you make your master build and pretty much everyone rolls off to another project, with a skeleton crew staying around to fix any bugs that pop up after release. But in 2-3 months after launch no one is actively working on it anymore. With "live" games the entire team stays on and is still in full development mode, even though the game shipped already. They are producing new content, and well, yes, they need to be paid somehow. So you get more content for a game that is unlikely to sell more copies than it already did by either making this content paid or by selling so many copies that you can effectively afford this development until next paid expansion ships. But hey, I'm a C++ developer, I don't have any control over this stuff ;-) >>VPNs are not illegal. Is it that your EULAs forbid using one? That would be ridiculous. In a good company you should be able to give that advice. No, it's just that if I say "use Tunnelbear to get around this issue" and someone finds out I work for this company then suddenly it's "Company X endorses Tunnelbear!". If I just say "try using a VPN to get around this problem" and someone downloads some dodgy VPN software that gives them a virus, then again they will present it as our fault. And gaming press is very very quick to pick this kind of stuff up so it's just safer to not say anything. If not for the company sake then for my own, you don't want to end up in spotlight by accident.