Will Obsidian end up with another Jefferson?

[Nepenthe]

P.S. Atari is a good publisher. They did a fantastic job overall with NWN at leats until their new toy NWN2 came along but that was bound to happen. OBZ has had good publishers too so let's not make the same excuses that Troika tried to make up.

 

Atari has it sahre of success and failures as all publishes do since they release so many games. The difference a publisher can suvive releasing bombs, dev companies can't...

 

Atari is apparently doing something wrong. This is the second time this year they are getting sued over something to do with D&D. If you read over the court docs that describe what Turbine sued them for, it sounds like they not only failed to help fund the release of DDO in North America, but then again in Europe.

 

Turbine is apparently capable of surviving a release bomb... considering they spent their own money on the two major releases of DDO without help from Atari.

 

http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/26/Atari.pdf

 

I think Hasbro/Wizards realised a long time ago that they basically gave away the DnD license - I'm sure their legal department has been waiting to pounce on Atari to reclaim the license the first chance they get... Not that I really care, I haven't finished any post 2e AD&D ruleset D&D crpg.

[bhlaab]

There's probably no such thing as a GOOD publisher

[Dark_Raven]

Not at all. All they care about is getting the product out at the deadline whether its finished, buggy or incomplete. $ is all they care about.

[jaguars4ever]

Not at all. All they care about is getting the product out at the deadline whether its finished, buggy or incomplete. $ is all they care about.

Just like hookers then.

[Hurlshort]

There's probably no such thing as a GOOD publisher

 

I wonder is anyone here has actually funneled large amounts of their money into something. Investments are not easy. I don't envy publishers their jobs.

[Volourn]

"There's probably no such thing as a GOOD publisher"

 

Nonsense. No publishers, no games. Any publishr thatr eleases a game I like is auto good.

 

Now, are there any good internet posers... oops... posters? Nah.

 

 

Gamers are the most selfish creatures in the known universe. They never see the big picture, and don't care about anyone about themselves.

[Morgoth]

Publishers release anything, ranging from **** to cream, so I don't really care.

 

It's the developers talent that makes me wanna buy a game.

[cronicler]

Volo, I don't beleve you can honestly take a "look around" and deny that a lot of games with good potentials were pushed half baked and "steamlined"out of the door due to insistence of the publishers. I know and I actually do agree that the publishers are in the business of moneymaking not charity but there is a line between cutting losses (ala Ion storm, DNF) and wrong choices (Kotor 2, VtM:B, Nexus 2, Exigo, Lost Planet PC, X game PC port...).

Despite its primary strenghts, A game is as good as its final polish. I have said this openly before, Oblivion was a turd but it was such a shinny and polished turd that you spent at least 5,10 hours before you started noticing the problems. How many games that had more potential were victims of publisher pressure (JoWood for example?)

 

I agree that most gamers are selfish but as long as the games "have to" include the regular idiot sauce and "must" stay away from using "complex things" like several interlinked stories instead of an easy "big bad, save world, get girl" fast food stories, long time gamers will not think of any publisher as good.

 

%5 to %10 from each sale to developers rest for the publisher, Demands on content, demands and control on release time, demands of making the game more steamlined which usually boils down to "dumber, faster, more showy". Can you dispute that the teams that put out the most creative content are either big enough that they are their own bublishers or unknown wildcards that have more freedom to be creative, or gamble in corpspeak?

[Lare Kikkeli]

Publishing half finished or half assed products is the real achilles heel of the game industry. In no other industry is releasing a broken product and only repairing it if enough people buy it (or even then not) is considered standard practise. IMO less is more, and we could do without a lot of the ****ty games that get churned out yearly in exchange for more finished, polished and fully realised games.

[Morgoth]

Publishing half finished or half assed products is the real achilles heel of the game industry. In no other industry is releasing a broken product and only repairing it if enough people buy it (or even then not) is considered standard practise. IMO less is more, and we could do without a lot of the ****ty games that get churned out yearly in exchange for more finished, polished and fully realised games.

I can't remember when I bought my last game that was broken or had severe bugs. You must be buying the wrong games....

 

Also, back in the 90s, early 2000s, there were a lot more buggy games than today. QA standards, coding expertise and quality awarness have improved since then considerably.

 

Except if you buy some **** from Germany (Crytek is the exception) or Russia, but that's your own fault then.

Edited December 28, 2009 by Morgoth

[Lare Kikkeli]

Publishing half finished or half assed products is the real achilles heel of the game industry. In no other industry is releasing a broken product and only repairing it if enough people buy it (or even then not) is considered standard practise. IMO less is more, and we could do without a lot of the ****ty games that get churned out yearly in exchange for more finished, polished and fully realised games.

I can't remember when I bought my last game that was broken or had severe bugs. You must be buying the wrong games....

 

Also, back in the 90s, early 2000s, there were a lot more buggy games than today. QA standards, coding expertise and quality awarness have improved since then considerably.

 

Except if you buy some **** from Germany (Crytek is the exception) or Russia, but that's your own fault then.

 

You do realise that I wasn't talking about only bugs, right? Also releasing incomplete games (such as Assasins Creed, that really had no gameplay go to along with its nice visuals) is a huge problem.

 

As for buggy games:

 

Kotor 2

Neverwinter Nights 2

The 2nd NWN2 Expansion, can't remember it's name

Fallout 3

Oblivion

etc.

 

I disagree with your assessment that games are less buggy than they were in the 90s. While coding standards may have improved, so has the complexity of the games so that they'd need a lot more QA than they're given now.

 

I think only Valve and Blizzard release quality products for the PC market nowadays. And since it's now possible to patch console games, most of them are released with bugs that get ironed out only after the game has been released.

[Morgoth]

Those games weren't incomplete. I finished them all. Just because you don't like something personally doesn't mean it's the publishers fault. Grow up.

[Lare Kikkeli]

Those games weren't incomplete. I finished them all. Just because you don't like something personally doesn't mean it's the publishers fault. Grow up.

 

What the hell? NWN2 had some pretty crippling bugs and while it was "playable" it certainly wasn't optimized or even well made. Same goes for Oblivion and Fallout 3, they were kind of polished but had TONS of bugs. Fallout 3's DLC's messed up textures and generated a whole slew of other bugs that are yet to be patched. Kotor 2 was missing an ending, heh.

 

Mirrors Edge, Assassins Creed, the new Prince Of Persia and other games have recently been criticized widely for lack of content. There's just not a lot to do in those games, and seems like having stunning visuals at the expense of gameplay is a growing trend.

 

Just because you enjoyed a broken product doesn't make it a good one.

 

Dragon Age is another good example. Daggers have a bug so that your dexterity isn't calculated towards your attack rating, which affect rogues a lot (enough to make the class a lot worse than it could be?). Apparently just fixing the bug would mean that the game balance would get really messed up, making the game a lot harder. This should maybe have been noticed earlier? Maybe before the game was released, considering they had 6 years of development time.

Edited December 28, 2009 by Lare Kikkeli

[Morgoth]

How about you don't buy these game full-price at release then? Do it like me: Only buy on release day from renowned developers like Valve, Bioware, Blizzard....because you know you get much polished content worth your money. Any other stuff you deem as crap like Mirror's Edge? Wait a half year, year and get it on Steam for 75% off.

 

Oh, and last time I checked, Kotor 2 had an ending.

[Lare Kikkeli]

How about you don't buy these game full-price at release then? Do it like me: Only buy on release day from renowned developers like Valve, Bioware, Blizzard....because you know you get much polished content worth your money. Any other stuff you deem as crap like Mirror's Edge? Wait a half year, year and get it on Steam for 75% off.

I actually do just that, but it's beside the point.

 

Oh, and last time I checked, Kotor 2 had an ending.

 

Stop being obtuse.

[Killian Kalthorne]

Nothing made by man will ever be perfect, Lare. You can enjoy life's imperfection, or be miserable seeking perfection.

[Morgoth]

Kotor 2 had an ending. Period. (It wasn't good though, but that's besides the point).

[Lare Kikkeli]

Nothing made by man will ever be perfect, Lare. You can enjoy life's imperfection, or be miserable seeking perfection.

 

What does this ham fisted philosophical advice have to do with anything? I'm not asking for perfection, I'm asking both publishers and developers to have some kind of standards or pride in their work not to release a broken or incomplete product. Maybe tone down the ambition if you can't get it done? This is what killed Troika. I'd rather play a full, complete and well designed game than one reached for the sky but came crashed and burned.

 

Kotor 2 had an ending. Period. (It wasn't good though, but that's besides the point).

 

Stop being obtuse.

Edited December 28, 2009 by Lare Kikkeli

[Hurlshort]

Kotor 2 had an ending. Period. (It wasn't good though, but that's besides the point).

 

Stop being obtuse.

 

He's not the one being obtuse. He's right, all your examples are playable games with endings and functioning gameplay. It may not be up to your standard, or even the standard of the average gamer, but they meet a minimum requirement for functionality.

[Lare Kikkeli]

He's not the one being obtuse.

 

He is, in that he took me literally when I said that Kotor 2 didn't have an ending when it's obvious I meant that the planned ending was cut and the ending that was put in was crap.

 

He's not the one being obtuse. He's right, all your examples are playable games with endings and functioning gameplay. It may not be up to your standard, or even the standard of the average gamer, but they meet a minimum requirement for functionality.

 

They're examples of badly made games that had too many bugs to be considered a full product. As I said, even if you enjoyed an incomplete game doesn't make it a good product.

 

Oh and if you're happy with games that barely meet a minimum requirement for functionality I guess you deserve all the Gothic 3's that get released these days.

[Hurlshort]

Oh and if you're happy with games that barely meet a minimum requirement for functionality I guess you deserve all the Gothic 3's that get released these days.

 

That's the thing, folks played Gothic 3 and enjoyed it. The developers took the good stuff and tried to improve on it. Now we have Risen, which is lot more stable and fixes some major issues. What else can you ask for? Not every game is going to be a home run.

[Lare Kikkeli]

Oh and if you're happy with games that barely meet a minimum requirement for functionality I guess you deserve all the Gothic 3's that get released these days.

 

That's the thing, folks played Gothic 3 and enjoyed it. The developers took the good stuff and tried to improve on it. Now we have Risen, which is lot more stable and fixes some major issues. What else can you ask for? Not every game is going to be a home run.

 

So you think it's justified to use the fans as beta testers? There were no guarantess that Riven would get released, or that they'd fix Gothic 3 when it was released. The same thing happened with Troika, only they never fixed their games.

 

Not every game is going to be a home run thats true, but it seems like it's standard practise not to even try to make a complete product because you can always patch things up later. If you can afford it. If not, well there's always the next game, right?

[SirPetrakus]

Lare, I understand where you're going with this. Yes, you could blame the publisher in case of rushed games (Atari for NWN2, LucasArts for KotoR 2 and especially JoWood for Gothic 3) that would otherwise provide for a much more polished and enjoyable game. I still managed to complete these games, in spite of their problems, without severe difficulties. Wouldn't I like to see these games 'as they should have been' provided the publisher invested a little more time and money in them? Of course! But it's not like the developers didn't want to make the games at their full potential.

 

I have no doubt that some developers really just want to hit a deadline and move on to the next project for a quick and easy buck, but I really don't think that Obsidian is one of them. Or BioWare for that matter. Some things will always slip under the radar, that's all we're trying to say here. Sure, I'd love to get a game that has no need of a patch or updates, but even Diablo II got another patch not too long ago. And we're talking a 10 year old game here!

[Slowtrain]

IMO, Publishers and developers know that gamers want immediate gratifcation and will pretty much buy anything the moment it's released if is hyped enough. So with that kind of captive audience why bother spending too much time on bug-fixing and fine-tuning? Just get the gane mostly running and kick it out the door. If it sells enough maybe do a patch.

 

So I agree with Lare for the most part, except I don't think its worse now than it was before. Games have alwaya been released in various states of incompleteness and buginess. It's something devs and publishers can get away with in the software industry pretty easily. Someday maybe will see more quaility contro, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

As an informed consumer all one can really do is not buy games at release. Wait a while and see what happens. Doing so has saved me quite a bit of money over the years.

[Volourn]

KOTOR2 had an ending. Whether you like it or not is absolutely irrelevant. Most games are completeablem and finishable at release. It's a very rare game that is such a mess that it can be considered in completeable.

Edited January 2, 2010 by Volourn