6 ms·

We're not going to patch the patch

40 points by cyanbane 14y ago

shawabawa3 14y ago
> 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. Does anyone know any reason why they would do that? Why would you pay to be exclusive to anyone?
- lukejduncan 14y ago
  Microsoft advertises for you in the form of product placement, co-branding, etc
- endemic 14y ago
  I don't understand this at all. How did the 4 year development cycle of Fez get funded, if not out of Microsoft's pockets? I don't think Fish & Co. were bootstrapping it. If anyone has insight into Polytron's financial situation, I'd be interested to hear it.
  - BigglesZX 14y ago
    In "Indie Game: The Movie" he mentions that their initial funding came (partly?) from a grant from the Canadian government, to promote creative development etc. What happened after that ran out I don't know.
    - jpenner 14y ago
      I believe Trapdoor (http://www.trapdoorinc.com http://www.trapdoorinc.com) funded the rest.
CubicleNinjas 14y ago
• Game company signs deal with Microsoft to be a platform exclusive. • Game company releases game with problems but has a successful launch. • Game company complains that their original contract is bad, it would be fixed in an alternate world, and that they complain about paying to be a platform exclusive. If I didn't think Phil Fish was a drama queen before...
- cube13 14y ago
  >they complain about paying to be a platform exclusive. This smells wrong. There's absolutely no benefit for the developer to release an exclusive game on a platform if the developer is paying the platform holder for the exclusive rights. The only way exclusivity benefits a developer is if the platform holder is paying them to stay exclusive.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - jblow 14y ago
    It is not exactly that developers are "paying for exclusivity", it's that if they want to be on the platform, exclusivity is required, and fee payments are required. Basically, you have to pay to play. The reason a developer does it is because he hopes to sell enough copies on that platform to make up for the fees.
    - cube13 14y ago
      Is exclusivity required only for independent developers, or does that also apply to non-MS published titles?
      - jblow 14y ago
        It is mainly an Xbox Live Arcade thing. They know they can apply exclusivity pressure to independent developers simply because enough of those developers will cave, since indies aren't generally willing to walk away from the deal.
- jblow 14y ago
  I suggest you do some math on the actual facts, and try to figure out how much money the developer is actually making on a deal, before you brand someone a drama queen. I guarantee Phil Fish knows a lot more about the facts of the situation than you do. (And this is not to deny that Phil Fish tends to have a lot of drama. I am just saying that to anyone in the game industry this kind of armchair quarterbacking is obviously uninformed, and then seeing someone attacked / blamed / whatever due to the conclusions of said armchair quarterbacking is just pretty sad. Speaking as someone who has been through this himself on multiple occasions.)
ars 14y ago
Anyone know how much money he's talking about to certify the new patch? Even a ballpark?
- funkiee 14y ago
  I've heard around $10,000. It's not much if you're a larger studio, but if this patch could potentially introduce more issues, the costs could add up.
- Ralith 14y ago
  > microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game. That seems like a decent ballpark.
  - ars 14y ago
    Missed that somehow. Thanks.
- walru 14y ago
  I've heard it's $40k to submit a patch. I've also heard you get your first patch free. There's more info in the following thread on neogaf. (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=483071 http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=483071)
- Ihavenoname 14y ago
  Fish has claimed 40,000 in the past. Part of this I suspect is developer time and expensises simply for the cirtifiication not MS fees. For a small company with limited number of employees you cant deligate the certification tasks and result in a delay in developling a new game as people are diverted for the certification process. It is an unfortunate situation but part of the cost and hassle is to punish unfinished games. It hasn't stopped the big game companies from constant day one patches.
justin66 14y ago
> Microsoft gave us a choice: either pay a ton of money to re-certify the game and issue a new patch (which for all we know could introduce new issues, for which we’d need yet another costly patch), or simply put the patch back online. They looked into it, and the issue happens so rarely that they still consider the patch to be “good enough”. To someone with no background on this at all, this is just painful to read. That parenthetical bespeaks a lazy attitude towards engineering. "Why fix it when we might just break it again? It's not like we're actually good enough at this to have confidence in our work!"
- yen223 14y ago
  Their cost/risk analysis plays out. If the new patch somehow introduced a new bug, it's going to cost them yet another large amount of money to fix it. And if you say "well just make sure the new patch doesn't break anything, duh!", then you clearly haven't been in software engineering long enough.
  - justin66 14y ago
    I certainly believe it's possible to write and test a patch for a single, well-understood bug and deploy it with a reasonably high degree of confidence that it will not introduce any new issues.

40 points by cyanbane 14y ago

> 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. Does anyone know any reason why they would do that? Why would you pay to be exclusive to anyone?

lukejduncan 14y ago
Microsoft advertises for you in the form of product placement, co-branding, etc
endemic 14y ago
I don't understand this at all. How did the 4 year development cycle of Fez get funded, if not out of Microsoft's pockets? I don't think Fish & Co. were bootstrapping it. If anyone has insight into Polytron's financial situation, I'd be interested to hear it.
- BigglesZX 14y ago
  In "Indie Game: The Movie" he mentions that their initial funding came (partly?) from a grant from the Canadian government, to promote creative development etc. What happened after that ran out I don't know.
  - jpenner 14y ago
    I believe Trapdoor (http://www.trapdoorinc.com http://www.trapdoorinc.com) funded the rest.

CubicleNinjas 14y ago

• Game company signs deal with Microsoft to be a platform exclusive. • Game company releases game with problems but has a successful launch. • Game company complains that their original contract is bad, it would be fixed in an alternate world, and that they complain about paying to be a platform exclusive. If I didn't think Phil Fish was a drama queen before...

cube13 14y ago
>they complain about paying to be a platform exclusive. This smells wrong. There's absolutely no benefit for the developer to release an exclusive game on a platform if the developer is paying the platform holder for the exclusive rights. The only way exclusivity benefits a developer is if the platform holder is paying them to stay exclusive.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- jblow 14y ago
  It is not exactly that developers are "paying for exclusivity", it's that if they want to be on the platform, exclusivity is required, and fee payments are required. Basically, you have to pay to play. The reason a developer does it is because he hopes to sell enough copies on that platform to make up for the fees.
  - cube13 14y ago
    Is exclusivity required only for independent developers, or does that also apply to non-MS published titles?
    - jblow 14y ago
      It is mainly an Xbox Live Arcade thing. They know they can apply exclusivity pressure to independent developers simply because enough of those developers will cave, since indies aren't generally willing to walk away from the deal.
jblow 14y ago
I suggest you do some math on the actual facts, and try to figure out how much money the developer is actually making on a deal, before you brand someone a drama queen. I guarantee Phil Fish knows a lot more about the facts of the situation than you do. (And this is not to deny that Phil Fish tends to have a lot of drama. I am just saying that to anyone in the game industry this kind of armchair quarterbacking is obviously uninformed, and then seeing someone attacked / blamed / whatever due to the conclusions of said armchair quarterbacking is just pretty sad. Speaking as someone who has been through this himself on multiple occasions.)

ars 14y ago

Anyone know how much money he's talking about to certify the new patch? Even a ballpark?

funkiee 14y ago
I've heard around $10,000. It's not much if you're a larger studio, but if this patch could potentially introduce more issues, the costs could add up.
Ralith 14y ago
> microsoft would charge us tens of thousands of dollars to re-certify the game. That seems like a decent ballpark.
- ars 14y ago
  Missed that somehow. Thanks.
walru 14y ago
I've heard it's $40k to submit a patch. I've also heard you get your first patch free. There's more info in the following thread on neogaf. (http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=483071 http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=483071)
Ihavenoname 14y ago
Fish has claimed 40,000 in the past. Part of this I suspect is developer time and expensises simply for the cirtifiication not MS fees. For a small company with limited number of employees you cant deligate the certification tasks and result in a delay in developling a new game as people are diverted for the certification process. It is an unfortunate situation but part of the cost and hassle is to punish unfinished games. It hasn't stopped the big game companies from constant day one patches.

justin66 14y ago

> Microsoft gave us a choice: either pay a ton of money to re-certify the game and issue a new patch (which for all we know could introduce new issues, for which we’d need yet another costly patch), or simply put the patch back online. They looked into it, and the issue happens so rarely that they still consider the patch to be “good enough”. To someone with no background on this at all, this is just painful to read. That parenthetical bespeaks a lazy attitude towards engineering. "Why fix it when we might just break it again? It's not like we're actually good enough at this to have confidence in our work!"

yen223 14y ago
Their cost/risk analysis plays out. If the new patch somehow introduced a new bug, it's going to cost them yet another large amount of money to fix it. And if you say "well just make sure the new patch doesn't break anything, duh!", then you clearly haven't been in software engineering long enough.
- justin66 14y ago
  I certainly believe it's possible to write and test a patch for a single, well-understood bug and deploy it with a reasonably high degree of confidence that it will not introduce any new issues.