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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
You mean people aren't holding their breath waiting for DNF to get released? The YEARS of delays have damaged the possibility of sales? Gasp! Say it isn't so!
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Need I say more?
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".
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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.
fallout was usually just disappointment among fans
No way, the first Fallout was great! The second one was way too buggy, though, and I'm not just talking about the ants and the radscorpions.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
This story has got Dukenukem Forever written all over it. One can learn all the things listed in the article just by reviewing its developemental history. Throw in an analysis of Daikatana ad you've mastered the issue.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
>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!
I think it helps the game industry. By creating so much undelivered hype and anticipation the frustrated gamer will lose patience and buy another game. The only undelivered games people tend to care about are ones that have a previous track record. Doom for example is anticipated because of the first Doom. By not delivering Doom on time, the young gamer will try something else and give 'new blood' a chance.
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.
Physicists get Hadrons!
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.
I sent a response to the Author and the Editors of wired.com. Hopefully it'll show up in the rants tomorrow, but...
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"The process starts when a producer conceives of a project and then goes through an internal sales process that can include being wildly optimistic about budgets and schedules, [Gifford] Calenda said."
This is an interesting view, and yes, it certainly happens from time to time. However, as a former producer myself, I often find that I will present a reasonably budget, schedule, and feature list, only to see upper management tell me that the feature list is perfect, the budget is far too high, and the game needs to be done in half the time.
Producers usually don't want their games to fail. There's very rarely an incentive on the producer's side to cut the development time, unless the producer is bad at making schedules (not uncommon) or the game is tied to a particular release date. However, most games being released are not tied to a release date such as a movie or sporting event.
Upper management, or the publisher, if you're an independent developer, is significantly more likely to have a reason to cut the time and budget. Usually it's a) so the game doesn't cost as much; and b) so it gets out sooner, therefore generating sales revenue in a particular fiscal year. You can see why there will be pressure from management to either present a schedule that is unrealistic, or to cut a realistic schedule away from reality. Naturally, additional budget money is hard to get, and features could never be dropped, and those are really the only other ways of cutting the development time.
I will grant you that, to a point, reducing development time and slashing budgets is a perfectly acceptable way to behave. It would be poor management that simply accepted a producer's word at every turn, because then the producers might take advantage of the unwary eye of management. However, management needs to listen to the producers if they tell them that a particular project is 'unlikely' or 'impossible'. If the people in charge of making decisions tell the project team to go ahead with the hobbled schedule and budget, then the project will likely slip.
The worst part is when the development team has to take shortcuts to get the project out on time which result in more QA time at the end of the project. The ironic part is when the projects slips to meet the original schedule, but you had to do it the hard way, with lots of bug fixing and messy code.
I hope this is a trend that goes away sometime soon in game development. The three worst habits in the Game Industry are poor scheduling, mandatory overtime, and laying off the project team or studio when the game is finished, and usually those three go hand-in-hand. It's a shame when the producers are solely blamed for the process, when it is terribly unlikely that they are the primary cause.
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=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
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.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
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.
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.
While it's true that delays in shipping a title can hurt sales and alienate potential customers, I think what it really comes down to is a company keeping its promises, and the way it communicates with those customers. NeverwinterNights is the perfect example. Not only did they fail to deliver on time or as promised, they waited until the very last moment to give any explanation to customers, and even those explanations didn't make sense. They had to have known they weren't going to be able to produce way in advance.
You simply can't treat customers that way. Disney (despite it's current troubles) has made a mint on underpromising and over-delivering, and game companies need to start to take notice that they don't operate under a seperate rule system from the rest of their entertainment competition.
The culture of game development has a great deal wrong with it, and missing deadlines is really only the tip of the iceberg.
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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Another thing that really irks me after spending $50 of my hard earned cash is the fact that a lot of these games seem to have really bad bugs when they are released. The most recent example was Tiger Woods 2003 for the mac (yea, I know, I should be playing on pc, but it happens there too). I bought the game and it wouldn't play with my ATI video card (unplayable with crappy graphics settings). I had to wait for the first bug fix for a playable game. UT2003 for PC is another example of a PC game I had alot of problems with. You would think with all the xtra time that companies are taking to release the games, they would try and release something halfway stable. And, no on my PC I'm not running really out-there hardware.
-- Is it a right to remain ignorant? -- Calvin
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?
Dr. Obvious says: games that are in shops make more money than games that aren't.
North Korea is reputedly working on a way to have 100 men dig a hole 100 feet deep in 1 minute.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
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!
Theres once were some games called Duke Nukem,
With lots of Blood, Gore, Guts, and Pukem.
But the constant delays
For infinite days,
Made us all so damn mad we've rebuked em.
(And just for the sadism's sake, as it is near Valentines day, I'll go ahead and shoot myself in the foot and post this logged in)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
I should state up front that I'm not interested and have never been interested in any of the sports or first person shooter games. So right off the bat I'm in the minority, and my opinion is suspect.
My two big beefs with console video games are:
1) Not milking the platform for all its worth. I loved all the Mario and Zelda games. But I will never understand why Nintendo doesn't create new variations of those games, with new puzzles, but using the same world.
2) Console wars. These game manufacturers are in a race to create the next console. But why? I don't want to buy a new console. I want to buy more *GOOD* games for the consoles I already have. Games are not starved for technology. They are starved for creativity.
-Rick
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
URU online* was just killed (laggy, unscalable design), SWG is trying to pull back all those who tried it and quit (great engine, no content), and I bailed FFIX (great content, poor user interface).
/. :)
Getting it out the door in a non-playable state is worse than getting it out late. Players will put up with some level of problems when a new on-line game is released. However, it there is not drastic improvement in the first month, they are gone for good.
Harvest started out shaky, but there has been so many positive changes that many are still hanging on.
The real problem is lack of communication with the customer base. Talk to us and we are very forgiving. Lie to us and we'll tell the world. (Or as least
* This one was wierd - They released the game CD's while the on-line version was still in Beta! Only, they never called it a Beta, the called it a "Prelude"! 30 player limit per server, expanded to 35! Would that be called a MicroMulti-Player Online Game?
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
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....
www.eFax.com are spammers
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.
Build your own website - full service homepage system your m
Or, to quote Sid Meier:
Being a games developer myself, one thing that winds me up is hearing the poor quality of games being blamed on 'lazy developers'. Now, it's true that many games developers may not have the best engineering skills in the world, or be any good at planning/project management, but trust me, having seen so many people work late nights/weekends for long stretches of time, the problem is not that they are 'lazy', or that they don't care about the quality of the product. Lay that particular blame at the doors of other people, where it rightfully belongs.
As for dates - that usually comes down to publishers, rather than developers, as has been pointed out. The publishers push for a date related to their selling peaks (i.e. Thanksgiving), and usually refuse to consider any other date, even though they'll be going up against almost every other game that is released that year. Developers are pretty much powerless to prevent this - unless you're Valve or Bungie or Blizzard, then the publishers have all the money, and they dictate the terms. (Speaking personally, I loved the fact that when Valve demo'd Half-Life 2 at E3 and blew everyone away, they responded to questions about publishers with "We don't have a publisher yet." Unless you've worked in game development, you've probably no idea how good it felt to hear that.)
Publishers also need stuff to give their marketing guys to take around and show buyers to build interest in the game. This usually comes in the form of some shoddy demo/progress build that the developers are harrassed into producing. The same goes for game demos - ever wonder why most game demos don't actually seem to do a good job of demo'ing the game, and have lots of problems that 'will be fixed in the final game'? It's because the publishers demand a demo before the game is finished.
On a game I worked on previously, we tried to avoid building up lots of hype for the game when it wasn't ready, and focussed on quality, because that's what we thought people would be interested in. Hell, no, the publisher didn't seem to care about that. They wanted screenshots, and they wanted them now! Never mind that the game wasn't even a game yet. The most important thing to them seemed to be when the profits would show up on their books. For example, they wouldn't accept a 3 month delay because then the income would slip through to the next financial year. I mean, the profits would be the same (actually, they would probably be significantly larger); they would just be appearing 3 months later. Now, I don't know much about accountancy/finance, but it seems to me that something somewhere is broken if that's how things are run. The best part was, in the trade mags, all we ever heard from games publishers was how developers were useless at business and couldn't see the bigger picture.
If your focus is always on the next quarter's results, at the expense of everything else, I think that's a good way of not having a long term plan.