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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.'"
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.
>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!
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.
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.
Message to marketroids: Complex software takes time. It's fucking ready when it's fucking ready - deal with it.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
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!
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.
You don't play games do you? The real world fact is that I'm tired of shelling out $50 for an unreturnable product that isn't finished. Yes, some bugs are to be expected but have you ever played a $50 game that is completely broken? The game industry has a lot of problems and unrealistic release dates from publishers is one of the worst.
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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