Buggy Games

[qaz156]

Buggy games don't matter, so long as their souls are pure gold. I'd rather play a buggy game with an awesome core than a mediocre, yawn-inducing game that runs without issues, but I'll forget in a few months. The former, you can fix with patches - not to mention, the community will probably patch it and continue to do so for years. If a great game comes out with bugs, I still buy the game, I just wait for a few patches, then I make the buy - at full price. The yawn-inducing game that runs like butter, however, may not be "fixable". Just sayin...

 

Granted, I don't play console games, so I don't know if those games can be updated.

[Starwars]

I obviously think bugs should be pointed out in reviews and whatnot, and devs should obviously try to have as bug-free games as possible. But it's not something that bothers me a whole lot unless it's actively preventing me from actually playing the game. Perhaps that comes from growing up during a time with games where it was considered a success to get them installed and running at all, hehe.

 

But yeah, I'll much rather take buggy but ambitious games that push the limits a bit over "polished products" that play it safe. So the whole "omg Obsidian's game are so buggy" thing has never bothered me personally. Same with Troika when they were around.

[Purkake]

I used to be a wide-eyed idealist like you a long time ago. These days however, having an unpolished glitchy mess is inexcusable for me, not to mention a financial disaster. You make it sound like there are only two options, but it's not a black and white world, there are plenty of good, interesting and fun games that are polished(and obviously the opposite is also true). I find that I have a better overall experience by focusing on those games and ignoring either extreme of the boring-unpolished scale.

 

Oh and general clunkyness/unresponsiveness/lack of polish annoys me a lot more than the odd bug or glitch. You can just feel it when a game had enough time in the oven or was just thrown out there half-baked.

Edited June 21, 2011 by Purkake

[qaz156]

I like points in all these responses. I'm bringing this up not because I believe there are only two options, but rather that even mighty Bioware wrestles with insane deadlines that make their games suffer in SOME way (cf. DA2). Not every company is Blizzard and gets to fine tune, polish and QA the thing to their hearts content. And other than massively supported AAA titles and flawless casual games (Plants vs. Zombies), it's difficult to produce a game in the middle tier that doesn't compromise in some way. But this brings up an interesting question: should obsidian games be shorter in order to make sure all elements are firing on all cylinders? and by how much? Should a 40 hr game be 30 hr. Or if hours cut doesn't equate to the same proportion of development time, what about areas? Should there be 3 large towns instead of 4? Should there be fewer bosses, fewer NPCs, fewer romantic options?

[Purkake]

Without naming any names(that will get bloody), the results vary widely from company to company even when given equal development time.

 

Moving on to names, I made some suggestions for Obsidian's future back on the DS3 board a few weeks ago. This is what I posted:

I'm not saying that I wouldn't like to have done things to make everyone happy, but I also have a clear understanding of what the realistic alternatives were in actually developing the game, which is a benefit of knowledge that a developer gets that fans don't. Not that it should matter to you guys, since you pay 60 bucks for the game regardless of the development circumstances.

This is a large part of the problem for the current AAA-driven industry. If you(I guess it was the publisher's decision, but still) make a $60 game that doesn't quite live up to other $60 games you'll get crushed in reviews and have meager sales as 80%+ of those games do. Now look at Torchlight, it's a fun self-published $20 game(now down to $15) that got near universal praise, sold well and almost no one complained about its shortness or other minor flaws(well, they did want multiplayer and they're getting in in the sequel...). My point is that moving away from the status quo, focusing on your strengths and innovating can go a long way sometimes.

Have you ever considered self-publishing or more budget-oriented side-projects?

 

As for big questions in terms of Obsidian's strategy, that's a better question for someone like Feargus.

 

I will say that 1) I think there is a market for lower-budget games at lower price points and 2) I think that there is even a market for 50/60$ niche games as long as you control scope.

 

I also think that things like Steam and the various App Stores really help lower the barrier of entry for self publishing, which make it even more attractive.

 

And yeah, you're definitely right that value is subjective. I spent 50 bucks on Portal 2 and I walked away completely happy, even though I spent about 6$ an hour on the game. Whereas I'd be upset to pay 60 bucks on a bad game - even if it lasted hundreds of hours

 

As for your middle-tier comment, I find it rather disheartening that you once again go for the two extremes. I'd like to point out that there is plethora of $10-20 downloadable games that range from pretty challenging to super hardcore. For example look up Frozen Synapse, Hacker Evolution, Terraria, Amnesia, SpaceChem, Fate of the World, Space Pirates vs Zombies, Flotilla, AI War and the billion different adventure games that get no press what so ever. This is off the top of my head in a few minutes, none of those games is some kind of a casual throw-away game and most of them have less bugs and more gameplay than your average AAA game.

Edited June 21, 2011 by Purkake

[Tigranes]

While I love Fate of the World, I wouldn't, not for a second, compare it in any way to the buggyness/polish/featurelist of AAA games. Making something like that polished and bug-free is a very different proposition than, say, Fallout:NV.

[Purkake]

There's a reason I brought up 9 examples and not just one.

 

But disregarding that, it is very much my point. Instead of trying to do everything and having to compete with all the rest of the $60 AAA games and do rather averagely(both financially and critically), you focus on your strengths, such as writing. You don't need a 70h open world experience with a shoddy engine, you make an innovative story-heavy RPG with a focus on C&C, make the combat interesting but sparse and publish it yourself as a ~$20 downloadable game on PC/XBLA/PSN. Then you ride whatever little fame you still have from Black Isle days to expectations-free critical success building up a reputation and gain an actual fanbase, instead of the shambles we have now. Oh and original IPs, no licensed crap, unless you can score cheap tabletop ones.

 

And bonus points for going as far away from the third person/isometric viewpoint as possible. Either go for a J/SRPG combat system or try something completely new.

Edited June 21, 2011 by Purkake

[vault_overseer]

I'd like to point out that I'm really liking what Double Fine are doing these days. Having released two commercially mediocre games, they're focusing on smaller XBLA/PSN titles and seem to be doing pretty good.

[FRED IS DEAD BABY]

I love obsidian, and i don't care about bugs. Some bugs can be pretty funny. But my problems are the bugs that make the games freeze and i am sure there will be a patch for the games that have freezing problems soon. Hopefully.

Edited July 15, 2011 by FRED IS DEAD BABY