As for the second question, Black & White anyone?
As for why games are released in a poor state? This is sadly nothing new, and the most common reason seem to be either publishers forcing a game out the door before it's actually done, or developers being overambitious and not being able to realistically finish the game in time. Judging by the issues that Arkham Knight has, the former seem to be the case, though the issues do at least seem to be of the nature that can be fixed with patches. Now if they actually fix them, or if this turns into another AC:Unity, that's an entirely different question (though Arkham Knight does not seem to be in nearly as bad of a shape).
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Don't forget however that consumers are still to blame....
The pre-order culture the the huge publishers have cultivated via hype and their shitty pre-order bonuses are the best bait in freaking existence....
The fact that milions of copies (Or if not milions then hundreds of thousands of copies) are being sold prior to the game even showing a gameplay footage is a huge problem which encourages such behaviour.
They simply do not need to care for the dev studio reputation or the state of the game at release... Excuses can always be made and people would still pre-order regardless....
Not to even speak that the amount of DLC they push to us on day 1 which feel like them literally splitting the game just to sell it to us in parts has been extremely successful despite the buggy state of the game at launch.
Look at Ubisoft >_> They've even had the nerve to "Make fun" of the people who raged on their twitter because with their 4 latest triple A releases they all were a freaking mess
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People who preorder games are at fault, definitely.
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This!
Stupid people who never learn are guilty.
Even if few people realize it - we are the ones who control the industry. If we always buy the shit they are pushing us - they will keep releasing it.
I recently started pirating Ubisoft games, and its not something i'm proud of, but they made me do it...
In my region all Ubisoft games have this note : "Purchases made in this region will only receive the Russian language."
And no, i don't live in Russia, so WTF ? Should i learn fucking russian language just to play a damn game ? Screw you. I'm gonna take a free multilingual release for free. And i will do the same for any publisher that tries to fuck with me. I don't ask mommy for money, i earn them myself, so i won't let any greedy publishers rob me.
WB released a piece of shit Batman™: Arkham Knight ? Well, i can understand everybody makes mistakes, so i'll give them times to patch the game and fix everything that needs to be fixed. If they won't do it and instead just abandon the game - they get in my list next to Ubisoft.
If all gamers would have such an attitude i guarantee you we would have only ultra polished releases. But since people are mosly stupid by nature - i guess we'll always have to see games with thousands negative reviews...
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+1
Stop preorder, stop early access, stop if the game has dlcs that cost more than the actual game, stop if the story is in the dlc, stop buying the same game each year (fifa, cod, bf, ac, batman, etc.).
Now with STEAM Refund probably things will get better.
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"stop if the game has dlcs that cost more than the actual game"
DLCs-hit
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yeah, consumers that only care about themselves are to blame here. saying "i preorder because i want to support the developers" is the dumbest idea you could think of. it's like sending $20.000 to Ford and waiting an year for them to release a new car that you only saw videos and read stuff about.
some people should learn to have some patience and wait for a finished product to actually pay for it.
btw, the "early access" plague that's rampant in the steam store is probably caused by the increasingly amount of preorders in the last few years. consumers are to blame for both preorders and early access abuse.
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+1
I agree, we as gamers fail to draw conclusions and just repeat the same mistake over and over again.
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My first and last preorder was Valkyria Chronicles. No regrets.
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I bet you will preorder HL3 :P
Mine was Rome 2 TW.
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this!
nobody would pay a used car 3 month in advance and without even seeing it, even if you give him a bottle of paint ontop for doing that.
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I don't think it's only on PC. As far as I remember, both Fallout 3 and Skyrim had serious issues on PS3, making the game unplayable even months after initial release. I believe PCs have it more frequently because (thanks to Steam) it is much easier to patch a pc game than a console one.
BUT on the main topic, I do work with software development (not games) and I know how things get a mess very fast when there is a hard deadline. Unfortunately for us gamers, games usually have very hard deadlines :(
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I read an interview that said certain companies actually penalize the dev team's pay if certain things arnt met. Deadlines where one, as were critic scores. So not only are you pushing the team to quickly toss out a game, but then they also will punish them if its a critic mess.
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This is standard practice, and not just in the gaming industry. Basically, from the publishers side, they want to make sure that the company that they hired to make their game is not sitting on their hands and leeching money. How it usually works is that at the onset of the project a rough timeline will be agreed upon, with certain milestones. Here the publisher & the developer needs to find a compromise, set a timeline that is realistic for the developer, but which produces results fast enough for the publisher. Either payment will be handled on a milestone by milestone basis (so they'll get a clump sum of money for each milestone reached) or payment will be continuous unless a milestone is met. Of course, not meeting a milestone happens, something that both parts are aware of, so at this point the developer still usually have a chance to plead their cause, explaining why the milestone was not met, and what they will do to get back on track.
If a system like this was not in place, then it would open up the possibility that devs simply sit back and let the money flow in, without actually having anything to show for it. This has happened in the past, the first Warhammer MMO (not the one by Mythic) for an example had this very issue, where the developer would take money and invest it in other projects than the intended one.
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PS3 had major issues on release with Skyrim, I almost broke my system over that game. Nothing like having a save file so large it causes your game to break...when you're about 30% through the game.
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Can anyone tell me what is the problem with Arkham Knight? I was considering to buy the game soon.
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Terrible how? Terrible like GTA IV, or terrible at a more acceptable level like Watch Dogs?
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Seem to be somewhere between the two. Major frame drop and sound stutter when much is going on, even on very beefy machines, but not entirely unplayable. I've not played it myself though, I got it with my new graphics card, but I've decided to wait for a patch due to the reports.
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Poor optimization I guess. You need a very high end PC to run the game. The developer already increased the minimum required specs. Performance is worse for people with AMD graphics, too.
Here is a video that shows the video stuttering/ low fps during gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ9H8KpywM4
The dev already got updated drivers out trying to help people with performance problems, which is a good sign that they care about fixing the problem in a timely manner, but still no telling how long it will take to really improve performance. Some report that the drivers helped them, others no.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/208650/announcements/detail/207511695917042396
I've just been reading because I too was interested in the game, but people with better PCs than me are having problems so I know I couldn't run it.
I recommend waiting for patches and updates to be released, if your PC meets the recommended specs, that is.
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can you link any review how port is bad?
cause i don't want to play bad-ported game, even if it is batman or other aaa title.
just read few reviews on steam... and lost of them are stating that port is bad, but none of them explain what specifically is bad in port? :O
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I wasn't even made by rocksteady either, the pc port was outsourced. It also had denuvo drm which wasn't listed on the store page. A lot of people wouldn't have touched the game if they had know about it beforehand. It has locked fps by default and terrible motion blur. You can disable the 30 fps lock in a config file but if you try to disable the motion blur, you will get around 30 fatal errors till you turn it back on. It's pretty awful.
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I blame the consumer who preorders everything. 100 $ for Premium edition,why? Just because it has a few exclusive DLC skins, packs if you pre-order it, it won't make your game any better with it, nor is anyone going to say that's cool and that you're awesome. Some people shouldn't have financial independence in the first place. I mean just because you have the money and can afford to preorder, it doesn't mean that you have to.
You wouldn't preorder 1 kg of Batman stones for 100$, right?
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If they actually spent $100 then they bought it on steam and they can refund. Pre-order is less of a problem now that steam does these unconditional refunds. Most people bought it for far cheaper ~$20 or got it for free with nvidia cards. In the end though, people can do whatever they want with their money and I still think they have a right to complain when a company screws them over. Pre-order is pretty dumb though, but the game will get fixed and luckily it's a great game once that happens.
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Well said, it's just I can't remember even one recently released game that wasn't released bugged or had day 1 patch fix.
And every time someone preorders a AAA game one indie developer hangs himself, haha.
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Rocksteady had a good reputation, so does warner brothers. Shadow of Mordor PC version was outstanding. People do pre-order far more than they should, but I don't think anyone expected it to be this bad. I also never expected them to outsource the pc version or slap denuvo drm on it. Witcher 3 had a day one patch, but it actually launched in good condition. I never would expected a game of that size to have as few bugs as it does.
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Well, if you think about it, Steam could easily abuse the refund system by putting higher price tags on games - "hey, you can easily refund money so pay more dumbass".
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It's a fine line for them, I can see people buying on steam just to have the option for refund and refunding the game even if it's good to buy it cheaper somewhere else. They just buy it overpriced on steam so they have a demo first. Valve can't get too greedy or it will backfire. Unconditional refunds is extremely pro consumer and I commend them for it, even if their hand was forced by EU laws, but they have to tread carefully.
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Accountants.
No seriously. You'd be surprised how much control over a company an accountant can have and a fair number of them just do not understand the product they are trying to sell.
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I agree, but let us call them "economist" or "financial advisers".
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They just don't care for PC gaming. Console gamers are more stupid and then they allow them to earn more.
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I cant even download it, steam only download the redist folder.
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just a discussion.
who do you think is responsible for all these fiascos with so many AAA games?
and why does this happen? do u think companies are greedy as fuck, just dont care about pc gaming or there are other reasons?
personally i think they dont even run the game on pc before the release. cant explain this mess in another way
also, which game do you think had the most hype and got the most people disappointed?
I think its Watchdogs
let the discussion begin
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