Slashdot Mirror
Delays Hurt Video Game Business
George Bailey writes "Wired.com has an article (No Room for Slacking in Game Biz) dicussing the damage game developers cause themselves via delays in releasing games to market. To quote from the article: 'As the games become more complex and sophisticated, less of them seem to meet release dates that companies initially tout. A few years ago, the fallout was usually just disappointment among fans. But as the video-game industry matures and surpasses Hollywood in size, more is at stake -- like marketing campaigns delayed and intricate positioning against competitors disrupted. What's more, missing a promised release date can bleed buzz, precious in an industry where many young buyers have to take the time to squirrel away $50 for a typical purchase.'"
saying that over 100,000 man-hours were spent on the game...
It would take less time to build a small shopping center.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
The biggest example I can remember though was Frontier: First Encounters. Random hangs and crashes to the point of unplayability. Gametek had to run a second advertising campaign to tell everyone that they had fixed it!
Imagine that! Not only do we have to download patches from the internet. They actually had the balls to tell operators to install new circuitboards so they could rush something out the door.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Maybe the price falls in the US, here (in Australia) you're lucky for it to drop by $10au six months after the game's released. And despite our dollar having risen from .50usd to .78usd in the last year, the games still all cost around $90au (that used to be equivalent to just under $50usd, now it's about $70usd). Bloody publishers, no wonder piracy's so huge here.
I actually think that more games should be delayed. Having worked on that side of the industry for quite a few years now (I am speaking almost strictly on the console side). As the transition into fully 3D games especially in the console arena has become complete the number of quality titles, and the quality of the overall marketplace has weakened significantly.
There are a number of reasons for this, first and for most is developers insistance on 3D games. Back in the previous generation of games there was still a good number of 2D, 2.5D and polygonal but not fully 3D games out. Companies spend far too much time trying to make fully 3D engines that look good while paying now attention to how they play. This is mainly with regards to adventure games, platformers, and first person style games. There is a big emphasis on reusing the same already flawed 3D engines rather then improving upon them.
Very few companies have the resources to release a "great" game in say an 18 month development perioid. The result is that many companies try and rather then miss their holiday season deadline rush bad games to the market.
I think you ment to say FFXI (FF11) since FFIX (FF9) was a singleplayer game only and was for the PS1.
Also, I don't think you made a fair judgement on FFXI. Don't forget the game is/was designed for PS2 gaming, so having too many seperate menus wouldn't be an option without turning the PS2 into a very rigid PC.
My father, an engineer, worked for Hughes Aircraft as a project manager for years. What he most often had to tell the engineers he managed was "better is the enemy of good enough". Engineers...always trying to make it a little better.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
having worked, and still working, in the the gaming industry for several years, a lot of the missed shipping dates arise from the marketing and biz people wanting to hit thier 'projected' sales peak timeframe (whatever that ambiguous time may be, however holiday release understandably being the only one which i feel has any credibility) -- anyhoo, biz/marketing people push for an unrealistic time frame, dev says it will be tough, though never saying 'Hell no we cant do it!' (even though this is what will happen) -- Dev checks off on the date, biz is happy for a while, slowly dev misses milestones, demos arent ready for mags, LOT checks and QA from the SONY/MS/NOA come back with a shit load of bugs causing further delay etc. etc. slippery slope created...some hooing and hollering, and boom -- youve missed unrealistic ship date -- I blame both parties however the dev will most likely get the short end of the deal if they say they cant do it...publisher will simply go find some other dev team which will give the publisher a hollow and fraile promise... i could go on writing further, but i will spare myself... --