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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 $50 for a typical purchase.'"
I take it a step further - ignore the game release dates altogether and buy them after they've been out for a month - the previously priced 50$ video game is now $10.
The anti-salmon
The real problem is companies that delay games... and the finished product is still buggy or just plain sucks. Some game companies have earned the right to delay a game to ensure quality, and game buyers/players expect that. If Blizzard says they need more time, then we're willing to give it to them.
When these development teams are moved to India and their sizes are increased, delays in release will be the exception, not the status quo.
>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.
Sounds to me like it wouldn't be a problem if the price weren't something they'd have to "take the time to squirrel away".
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I really wonder if this will be true 20 years from now when gamers like me who grew up playing games and have pay checks to buy what we want become a larger portion of the people who buy video games then teens. Of course, teens have much more time to play video games then people with jobs do, so perhaps this will never be true. I do hate playing MMORPGs -- not because I don't enjoy them, but because I can't compete with a 15 year old who can play the game 8 hours a day!
The games companies aren't ickle teenagers in their bedrooms any more... I've just had 'Baldurs Gate Dark Alliance 2' (fantastic game, btw) which has a splash screen saying that over 100,000 man-hours were spent on the game...
You have a release plan, you have a risk assessment, you have risk management. It's not a one-day's-brainstorming which ends up with 'ok, next Christmas then...'.
The larger games companies are starting to seriously challenge the film industry for revenue, sometimes you get the film of the game (Tombraider) but most of the time you get the game of the film (everything else) - that should indicate where the power distribution lies; but it is dynamic, and a lot of effort will be put into maximising return on the large investment. Just like films. Big expenditure brings big risks and big rewards. Just like films...
Simon.
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The poster alluded to this, but not enough. Announcing the product before it ships is very important for the people who are deciding between buying a product now and waiting for a better product in the near future. The announcement of the game is saying "Hey, look how cool this is going to be. It beats all other games on the market now, so save up your money and use it for this instead of the instant gratification that won't last as long"
The speculation and occasional leaks of information are vital towards feeding the anticipation of the game, and in many cases even surpass the actual quality of the game once it is released.
If a company decided to not advertise a game until its release, I guarantee it will not meet with the same success that an eagerly anticipated game will see.
Delaying game releases seem to work well for Blizzard. Of course their games are always backwards in terms of technology but their story and gameplay are excellent. Maybe we should worry less about sophistication and technology and more about the non-visual aspects of the story? Then again, their FMVs are excellent, same with SquareSoft's. An interesting story with nice FMVs as reward for completing each stage seem to be the common theme here.
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Had Half-Life 2 been released about 6 months ago when it was planned for, I know lots of people who had intended to buy it... and these are even people who never buy anything, since downloading games is so easy.
HL2's graphics would have been so very advanced had it not been delayed repeatedly, but by now it won't really have much advantage over other games' graphics by the time it comes out this summer. I expect it'll still be a great game, with pretty exceptional graphics, but a lot more people were excited by it before.
I think it has a lot to do with the whole franchise aspect, they don't want to ruin a namebrand permanently by rushing it out with horrible flaws. If it's a one-shot game then a bunch of people will buy it and be pissed but as long as there's no follow up it won't hurt the company too bad.
They should just skip using the calendar all together and set a release date of "when it is done". It would save so much pain and agony.
Never heard of a little thing called marketing, have we? It takes time to build an ad campaign. It takes time to get ads in magazines, on billboards, in front of people. It takes time to get distributors to carry the game. Companies can't afford to develop a game, finish it, and then spend a few months convincing people they want to buy it. They need to have fans hungering for it as soon as its released: that's how you get huge sales numbers.
You know, if marketing would just STFU until there was a good solid date for a game, and not one that they pulled out of thin air, there wouldn't be nearly the number of problems there are.
Sure, there are engineering slips, but the majority of those are because marketing (or worse, engineering management) gave the CEO a date he WANTED to hear, not the date he NEEDED to hear.
Engineering slips because the date was unrealistic, marketing points the finger, and never gets the blame.
"Delays Hurt Video Game Business"
NEWS FLASH!!!
EXCESSIVE DELAYS HURT ANY INDUSTRY!!!
Please move along, nothing to news here.
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Companies should develop a solid storyline and some good gameplay characteristics before announcing a game. Id rather have a fun game that doesnt require the latest and greatest than one that has all full motion video but no real substance. Hell i still play Quake 1/2 and Duke3d. Those games have stories and they are fun to play!
I don't think the game delays hurt sales. When Duke comes out, I'll buy it, no doubt. If it's a big name game, it will still sell.
On the other hand, the thing that pisses me off about the game release delays is the the developers are 'debugging'. I think that's bull.
How many games don't release a service pack/update/bugfix within a couple of months of the game release anyway?
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an industry where many young buyers have to take the time to squirrel away $50 for a typical purchase.
Haven't we already seen tons of consumer data that shows that almost all money spent on games is by people over the age of 25? And aren't both Half-Life 2 and Duke Nukem Forever going to be rated M?
Look, delays hurt *all* kinds of businesses. This is why most companies who know what they are doing do not comment on future products, and some (like Apple) go to great lengths to keep folks from knowing about projects in the works. Other companies who are less capable try and build enthusiasm by pre-announcing products to say, "Hey, look how cool we are".
While what you say is true, it doesn't take into account other realistic scenarios. This isn't so much about fan disappointment from overzealous announcements, as about dealing with sensitive timing when it comes to outside collaborations with non-gaming companies(movie, toys, mags, etc). Tons of money is tied up into these collaborative schedules and unfortunately, game development (or software dev in general) isn't as condusive to predictive scheduling as other areas.
Saying "No comment" or "It'll ship when it's done" is a lame-sounding option when partner companies have money tied up in your success too.
For example: Let's look at a case where the title released "on time" but sucked ass. The definitive example of this was Ultima 9. This was supposed to be Richard Garriot's 'swan song' for the Ultima series. The final chapter in a very successful and much loved 20 year old franchise. Immense pressure from the EA suits forced Garriot (against his pleas) to make sure U9 "shipped by Christmas". It met the delivery date expectation: at the expense of the consumer's expectations. The game was virtually unplayable. Bugs ranging from annoyances to full blown "quest killers" were rampant. Add that to the fact that you'd need a fully "state of the art" (+$2500) system to even load the thing. U9 entered the marked at $60 dollars. I never even saw it hit the $9.95 rack. It just disappeared.
Now for a company that consistantly delivers late, we need look no farther than Blizzard. Starcraft, Diablo (1 & 2), Warcraft 3 were all "vapor" for many moons. They also rank as the most successful titles in PC gaming history, with longevity and replay value that is unsurpassed. WC3 is nearly three years old, and it still sells for $40+. Diablo 2 debuted in 2000, and was on the top 10 seller list no later than 6 months ago.
As a consumer, I'm not going to spend my $50 on crap or a mediocre product. If I'm curious about a game, I'll wait till it hit's the $10 rack anyway (about 4-6 months after the release date - gotta love the irony). But if it's a hot title from a company with a record for Quality out of the box, not after "patch1.4", I'll drop the $50.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Love them or hate them, but id software probably has the best solution to the problem. They have always set their release dates as "when it's done" and it has always been for the best. I'm not referring to the (nearly) total lack of storyline but the fact that you don't go out, buy the game, and go home and download a fix for it. As far as I know, sales for id games don't suffer from delays. Perhaps the bigger problem is lack of quality products: you aren't nearly so ticked off when a game is delayed but it turns out to be fantastic.
Velox Versutus Vigilans
Blizzard is a fine counter-example to this. They suffer from far more delays than most companies, but none of it ever gets bad buzz--because the release date just changes from 'kinda sorta soon' to 'approaching soon-ness' and they never need to explicitly say so. This allows them to carry out their 'release it when it's done' strategy and never get anybody upset.
And it's impossible to say they fail to generate hype. WoW beta got 400,000 signups. And, come on, the start date for the beta hasn't even been decided on yet!
this won't matter. Right now a big part of PC Sales are people like us ( geeks more or less) that check up on gaming websites , subscribe to gaming forums etc. Soon the game industry will be as big as the movie industry ( not in terms of money , in terms of popularity around the globe) , and the largest portion of sales will be normal people buying/renting a game they see on a shelf. It won't matter if it has been delayed 3 years, because they weren't waiting for it. Just like Kill Bill. This movie has been delayed for 2 years or so , for Uma Therman to have her baby. I am sure there were some movie fanatics that were all " OMG DELAYED bS" etc , but for 95% of the audience it didn't matter. The movie is out , it's good , so you watch it. It's just a matter of time before this is the case in games.
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Gotta disagree with you there. Diablo 2 came out in summer 2000. It had no 3D accelleration, and couldn't display in resolution greater than 640x480. Dated graphics can be looked over simply by a game being "fun". Just look at the sales of the lates Tetris title. Even on modern consoles, it's not all that flashy, but people buy it anyway. Compare that to the masses of games that are flasy, gorgeous, visually impressive, but about as much fun as plucking your nose hairs.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Yes, file this under "duh".
Of course it seems obvious to anybody ("delays hurt business? You mean if we don't have a product we won't have sales? You mean baseless hype irritates people? Well there goes our business model."). It's just especially noticeable in video games because they are notorious for delays (and have previously gotten away with them). For whatever reason it seems to me that movies and music generally come out on time, or are delayed well in advance.
I was skeptical about video games being a bigger industry now, but it's true that video game sale did surpass box office sales in 2003 (interestingly, the CNN article also discusses video game delays). It feels like it's the result of the industry advancing too quickly and not knowing the general timeline for releases, or what they can expect to accomplish.
Too often you hear about games trying to include/do too much or use technology that is too advanced. With music, for example, they know they're looking for 60 minutes (even 40 minutes these days?) of produced, committee-written whatever, a warm, silicone body to sing it and move it out the door. Gold album.
For my money, wired is a fun interesting source for gadgets and stuff, but it's too sensationalist technology. It feels to me like it treats tech still as some miracle or black-box that is to be possessed but not truly known. It is just like wired to treat this like some groundbreaking news when video games and technology are, at heart, just like any other industry. Not a flame or a troll, just my thoughts.
After playing the demo, I am seriously doubting if I should be buying a game that could as well be made as a Mod for UT2003.
And yes, of course UT2003 had alot of revamped stuff out of UT, but in the end the whole new look of the engine gave it a totally new feel : Now I just don't know if it's gonna be worth my precious money once the big games are about to release (Doom3 and HL2)
That theory is all well and fine except for one small problem. Games can be released according to the published releaste date and not be buggy as hell and a decent game. It's not the tradeoff, it's just that very few companies set realistic release dates. I can't even begin to imagine the whole process, but something is wrong with it if so many companies are pushing back release dates.
I disagree.
Even when it would have been released 2 years ago it would've sucked donkey balls.
There is too much WRONG with that game to list, even though it would be technologically ok on the original release date.
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It was business marketing and managers with dictated and unrealistic schedules. No plan, no strategy, no vision, no reality check - just a knee jerk. Now if management started sooner and the schedules were balanced with resource the story may have been different.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I had planed to buy HL2 and then upgrade my hardware to run it if I had to. So no HL2 no new hardware. I dont think I am the only one that does this, and it would hurt the hardware people as well.
The delays don't kill a game. A bad game, released early, will still not sell. A good game, released late, will still sell. While a good game can become bad if forced to release early (*cough* Temple of Elemental Evil *cough*), I'd rather have the delay and have a completed game.
The real problem is the hyping of games. They're hyping games that won't be out for over a year. I'm constantly surprised by games that just came out (I thought Chrome came out months ago, based on the hype back then). I suspect other people are, too.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Oh, I'm not ragging on music, but one thing that you will have to admit is that a lot of music (and further, a lot of the most popular music is produced to death and written by somebody else (towards the bottom of the link is a note that Britney writes some of her own songs, but the "successful" one was written for her). It is the same with movies when the top movie this year so far is Somethi^H^H^H^H^H^H^HAlong Came Polly (which we've seen before -- the ferret scene is similar enough to the dog scene to be considered "knock-off").
How does this relate to business? Well, IANAM/MP (music/movie producer), but my feeling is that they have a pretty good idea of how long it takes to go from conception to packed theaters (and if not they have a clever tactic called "Coming Soon"). Same with music.
Don't get me wrong, I love good music (I lean to folk, indie rock), movies (Magnolia is up there), and games (good old WC3), but for a lot of the music and movies out there it's as scientific as anything else.
Not that they didn't fix a ton, but there were still a bunch of bugs left after the patches.. this covers a lot in sickening detail, but it would take awhile to go through and just read about the bugs. That aside, it was an amazing game, easily the most innovative RPG I've ever played.
Simple solution is for marketing to get their act together. Otherwise the only alternative it getting games like the latest in the Tomb Raider series, games that shouldn't have been released.
How about waiting until the games in in post production? Either advertize games in production with unspecified dates or dates so far in the future that you can gaurantee it. Then only as development completes do you reverse the estimete in a conservitive mannor.
Back off that flamebait, friend - I *AM* the engineer.
If you adopt a "We will ship this when it is done" then it never will be done, for a variety of reasons:
Sometimes having a firm deadline is a wonderfully focusing motivator - the engineer will say "This is a cool idea - I will save it for AFTER the release", the marketing guys will say "Well, the customers want this really cool feature, but the return on investment isn't enough to jepordize the ship date, so we'll put it in later", the Q/A guys say "We'd better check this NOW, so any problems can get fixed before release data", and you actually make progress.
Of course, when the deadlines are not set with the buy-in of the engineers, the marketing people, and upper management, but rather are set for some highly arbitrary date....
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As I sit here, after just playing a bit of halo on my xbox, I'm thinking about how the release of halo 2 has been pushed back to fall of this year. It doesn't bother me so much, as long as the game itself is good. One could say that it would be better for bungie to release a half-cooked halo 2 now, in the hope of selling more units, but I think that if bungie wants to release one of those games that are pretty much immortal and that I'll remember for a long time (such as the first halo), then they should release it when it is properly finished.
Reminds of Diablo 2 being pushed back over a year from its initial release date. For that matter, most of blizzard's games get pushed back, but the proof is in the pudding, blizzard puts the finishing touches on the games, making them top notch, and hence they move huge volumes at the stores. Did any company ever make as huge a return by releasing a buggy, unfinished product?
What's the big rush anyways? There are so many games out at any given time, that are good and worthwhile to play, that it doesn't bug me for a second if a company decides to delay their game to make it a much more quality product. I'll pay for a quality product, I won't pay for something that was pushed out the door, simply because the game company needed to ship something.
As for duke nukem forever, I'll be interested to see what they will unleash on us after all that development time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a much cooler game than we all imagine it will be. But, that's for time to tell.
There are some companies, in my book, who can pull such delays off. Valve Software, id Software, just to name a few. If they want to delay a game, then good, take the time you need to release a quality product. In my opinion, rushing to meet a release date is a bad idea. Haste makes waste has always been true. But, delaying so long that your product (that at the time was a ground-breaking, barrier-pushing product) becomes out-dated pre-release is also bad (Diaktana (SP?)). With the industry moving as fast as it is, it becomes real difficult to keep up and still release a high-quality game (as far as PC is concerned). I believe that thats a reason as to why more and more games that come out are very dissapointing. And price will also have a lot to do with the problem. Some people really can't afford to spend $50+ dollars on a single game. Another reason why a game may suck is because of a lack of balance between the two sides of games (single and multiplayer). In todays world, multiplayer is a must. One reason why I thought that id's Quake III arena was not any good, was because it was just a deathmatch for $50 dollars. (Another reason why I didn't care to much for Q3 is because it was written in C but, that's a different story) A game needs a good single player game and have multiplayer on the side with room for mods to be made. That's were Valve did right with Half-Life. A good, mostly challenging single-player game with a multi-player game with a really good SDK for mods.
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That's why you need to keep the information confidential between you and the other companies which is what Apple does. Remember how pissed they were when ATI sent out an early press release that blew the cover on some new G4 systems?
Second, you need to forcast realistically. In gaming, there is really no execuse for a marketer to draw a line in the sand and say that a product is irrelevant after a certain date. If it is a good game, it will do fine. The importance of forcasting the release date is so that you can coordinate other parts of the product release. So, my thinking is that you want to use normal software "good forcasting" practices to make sure you hit the date you pick. That starts with picking a realistic date - not letting it be dictated by marketing.
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Nintendo had this figured out when it had the monopoly back in the 80s. Nintendo Power, the Nintendo controlled magazine, was the most read magazine by kids.
Did they hype up coming products ever? They published tips, level guides, cheat codes, etc. They wrote articles about games you could buy and encouraged people to go buy games.
They also didn't have enough of that game in stock so you hopefully would buy another and come back later to get the one you wanted, but, hey, that's a monopoly.
Instead of talking about games you can't buy for a long time the focus needs to be more on games you can buy right now. Before a game comes out you read months of previews. Then one month of reviews and that's it, it's on to hyping another game.
The game industry is often compared to the movie industry. Sure, you can read a bit about a movie coming out with xxx staring in it once in a while, but 95% of people who go see a movie don't see hype about it a year before it comes out. They pretty much don't even learn about it until a couple weeks or one month before it comes out. In the game industry most people know about games long before they are close to coming out.
Some games have plot (and in exceptional cases about as good as your average fantasy book). Why shouldn't they be able to delay? Some (though not all) of the books we still read as great literature were edited and rescripted for 20 years. Screw cash flow and give me quality!
You try before you buy but you had already played right through to the end and still hadn't decided whether you were ready to pay for it or not?
Maybe I'm dumb but what on earth would have motivated you to go to the store and buy the game after you'd already completed it?
I've heard this argument again and again that 'if it's really good I'll buy a copy just to put on the shelf to reward the developers.'. It's bullshit. Once in a blue moon I believe you might do that for a very special game but the prospect of paying $50 for something which you won't use makes a game's chances of getting onto that shelf, well... let's just say slim. The fact that you played the game through to the end, then found a bug and said
Patch or no, failing to catch bugs like that is simply unacceptable. I pay for games that are worth my money.
suggests to me that you were never serious about buying it. Even though you extracted its full purchase value from it. That's not try before buy that's just getting the game for free. I'm not judging you for that - I couldn't give a crap - but don't lie to yourself and especially don't lie to me.
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Replay value. Often, I'll play through the game on 'easy' then work my way up through the levels of difficulty (good way to find easter eggs/etc), its also a good way to catch stuff you miss the first time around.
I've heard this argument again and again that 'if it's really good I'll buy a copy just to put on the shelf to reward the developers.'. It's bullshit.
Actually, it's far from bullshit. Recently I downloaded Call of Duty, played it through, and liked it to much I went out and bought a copy, because it was worth the money. The same thing I did with Battlefield 1942, UT2003, UT, Quake 3 Arena, C&C Generals, and Half-Life (and hopefully Half-Life 2 sometime soon!) All of these games impressed me enough that I decided that they were worth the $40-$50, and went out and actually paid for a legit copy.
The reason I usually download, play, then buy is because I once made the mistake of falling for the hype behind Black & White. I read the glowing reviews, interviews, etc; and ran off to the store to shell out $50 of my hard-earned money ($50 is a lot when you're a highschool student with a fast-food job). I installed the game, played it for a bit, and realized that it completely failed to deliver. $50 down the drain. Never again, I vowed. So now I download first, and the software developers can prove to me that their game is worth my money. Yes, when I download a game that have no intention of paying for, it is stealing. I don't deny that. But more often than not, if its good, I'll buy a legit copy.