By Kieron Gillen on June 3rd, 2008 at 6:55 pm.
Two stories caught my eye. Firstly, Cryptic Comet – as well as revealing Solium Infernum – announced their next free content patch for Armageddon Empires. The innuendo-provoking Tip Of The Spear is primarily about increasing the utility of infantry troops through new advanced training cards. It’s due on the 17th of July, the anniversary of the game’s release. Which is nice. Secondly, Crytek announcing that the long awaited 1.3 version of the Crysispatch “almost certainly” isn’t going to come out. And not in a skipping straight onto 1.4 way. They’re just not going to bother. Which is less nice.
So… how much patching can a community actually expect?
And this is more about the debate than me having an answer. I’m interested in what you lot have to say. Perhaps clearly, in an ideal world, we’d expect a developer to work on patches eternally, making sure balance problems that come up are tweaked and new hardware is supported. But as anyone who’s seen my beard will know, it’s not a perfect world. It’s a cruel and limited world full of horror.
One common argument is that ongoing patch support is the thing which separates the best teams from the second-raters. There’s a reason why Blizzard is Blizzard, and it’s because they’re still patching Starcraft even now, y’know. Similar things can be said about Valve. The idea being, because they actually put this enormous effort into post-patch support, the community rewards them with loyalty and money.
But, at least from my perspective, I suspect the argument is almost completely back to front. The only reason why Blizzard and Valve can do things like that is because of their enormous success. If it was a choice – as it often is for some developers – between getting people to work on their next game or going bust, they choose the former.
Which leads back to the opening question. It’s easy to see what we would prefer – but what is actually acceptable. It’s easy to say “Until it’s perfectly balanced” – but considering how long balance patches stretch out after even something like Starcraft, you can assume that’s abstractly forever. Is it reasonable to make such a demand?
You also start to question the actual rewards for a developer doing so. Look at Tilted Mill, who have apparently rejuvenated their underwhelming Sim City Societies through a string of patches. However, as the comments thread to that previous piece shows, they’re not actually getting the rep for it. It’s just a game people have decided is substandard, rather than one which grew into something considerably more charming. I find Tilted Mill’s persistence on that game openly admirable. I suspect if I were a developer, I’d have said fuck it and got onto something else as quickly as possible.
(Which is one reason why you should be thankful I’m not in development. Were I Vic, I suspect I’d put all my energies on Solium Infernum rather than this post-sales support, because I like new things. And demons.)
There is that old developer saying: The game’s only late until it ships, but it’s shit forever. However, if you ship, and then fix… well, is the game still shit? Can you overcome the reputation like Tilted Mill are trying to do? If there’s any developers out there, I’d be interested in your take on the patch-issue.
So – yes. No answers. Just questions. Perhaps I’ll patch them in later, eh?
Before I leave, the full quote of Crytek’s statement…
At this time, there almost certainly will not be a patch 1.3 delivered for Crysis. We are aware that this news will disappoint many of you, and we would like to apologize profusely. There is a good reason for this and we hope you understand when you hear more about the reasons why in the very, very near future. Please realize this was an extremely difficult decision, but please do know that we are listening to your comments and are making more consistent community support a high priority.
We are confident that the things we are working on will be appreciated by the community, and we hope for your continued support. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact us.
Does make you interested in what the good reason is. If it’s an add-on pack which includes the patch content… well, that sort of thing, I suspect, falls beneath what I’d consider the Good Faith Patch standard.
And finally, Clarence Carter’s Patches, which should put our problems with games being a bit buggy in perspective. Remember: A rain may come and wash all your crops away.
03/06/2008 at 19:13 Jochen Scheisse says:
I would like to point to the situation for DOW: Soulstorm, where the developers (who went belly up half a week after releasing the expandalone) left some pretty game-breaking bugs in the game, especially for a multiplayer game: The 2 most important are probably an unlimited req exploit for the Sisters of Battle and a bug that makes you lose all your req when you use the Eldar Harlequin’s whip ability…but there are more. Relic has successfully avoided to adress these problems since promising a hotfix 2-4 weeks after release. People have waited fpr half a year so Relic would finally solve the problem they reportedly have with patching the versions bought online. But I have given up hope, and due to the insanely bad show of Relic here, I have decided not to buy any Relic games in the future. I guess Starcraft 2 and WiC will help me over DOW 2…but should they ever release Homeworld 3, I’d probably be screwed.
So my case contradicts your argument. Relic’s fans have been loyal, I have bought every game of the DOW series, but as I realized that Relic does not only let 3/4 done games go gold, which seems to be normal these days, but that Relic also doesn’t finish these games with patches, they lost my loyalty.
The special thing about companies like Blizzard is that they actually put so much work into the patches until the game is not only finished, but also balanced. That’s why I respect them tremendously as game designers and will buy every game by Blizzard without testing it. I don’t even expect that from most of the people who make games today. But at least let me have a finished product at some moment, that’s the least.
03/06/2008 at 19:23 Dan Forever says:
I think patches as additions to a game, rather than fixing what should have been working on release a good thing in general.
I think the success of games like Counter Strike is down to the updates the game receives, keeping the game (and hence, community) rejuvenated and fresh. With the move towards including adverts in games I think this will lead to additional sources of funding as people continue to play a game and see the in game ads.
For an mmo like WoW I think fixing bugs and adding new content in free patches will keep people in the game paying the monthly subscriptions where they would otherwise have left to find other distractions.
03/06/2008 at 19:28 Janek says:
Tip of the Sphere? That’s either a very strange typo, or a spellchecker being overzealous.
Anyway, I guess there’s significant publisher-developer wrangling when it comes to support post-release, which is why that support does tend to be better when it comes from more “indie” devs. It certainly generates goodwill, just look at Stardock etc.
03/06/2008 at 19:33 Troy Goodfellow says:
I really feel for the Tilted Mill guys since it’s not just that gamers aren’t giving them credit for it, but the mainstream gaming websites aren’t addressing the significance of these updates, either.
If your game is good and has a good sized dedicated community in place, like WoW or Civ or Age of Empires, then you can be sure that people who are interested in the game can easily find out about what has changed.
But if your game just isn’t very good (like Societies) or mediocre (like Combat Mission: Shock Force) then developers are really up against a wall in trying to regain any sales that they might have lost because of bad buzz or retrieve people who have moved on.
It’s funny, but just as the PC gaming world gets more complex with regular patches, lots of user created content and mods and the revival of niche areas like wargames and adventure games, most of the gaming media has decided to scale back on any effort to guide readers on this stuff. Maybe it’s because there are so many internet communities and forums out there that can serve this purpose. But it still seems like an abdication of responsibility in some way.
So, I completely understand why Crytek has decided to just not bother. They figure that they’ve gotten the sales they are going to get, and there’s no point helping out those who waited on the bargain bin if no one is going to give them any credit for it.
03/06/2008 at 19:34 Jochen Scheisse says:
It’s probably obvious that the DOW Relic story majorly pissed me off. That’s because playing multiplayer is effectively all the game is good for.
03/06/2008 at 19:40 Alec Meer says:
I’d be interested to see Sim City Societies sales figures – I’d imagine the Sim/Sim City branding means it’s actually selling quite well despite poor reviews, which would make meaty patches for it that much more viable.
03/06/2008 at 19:43 Homunculus says:
Two games I’ve shelved, awaiting forthcoming m-m-m-monster patches that promise to elevate them, one official and one as a giant fan-produced mod; the Witcher and Knights of the Old Republic 2.
I don’t see this as either good or bad, I’m just happy that some folks have taken it upon themselves to extensively enhance a couple of games I was already enjoying immensely.
03/06/2008 at 19:57 Leeks! says:
Jonathan Mak said something interesting on one of those video ‘specials’ 1up has become so fond of this week. Basically, he said he doesn’t want his games to be perfect, because so much of their charm is in their quirky shortcomings. This is why level 3 on Everyday Shooter is so god damned hard for no reason, apparently.
03/06/2008 at 20:00 Troy Goodfellow says:
I’d imagine the Sim/Sim City branding means it’s actually selling quite well despite poor reviews
I think the SimCity branding could cut both ways. The name is very recognizable and with Societies EA was consciously targeting their large Sims audience to broaden the appeal even further.
But as the series started get more complicated, it became a more hardcore product and a higher proportion of those SC4 sales, I think, were to an audience that was taking a wait-and-see approach to Societies.
I’m sure EA’s definition of strong sales would be very different from ours in any case. They probably expected this game to be huge, able to cross both the city builder and mainstream audiences in the way that The Sims draws from a range of play styles.
03/06/2008 at 20:29 cyrenic says:
I think Stardock might be a good example of a developer without a wildly successful product achieving success by patching their games liberally. Though looking at their wikipedia page they have other products that might have allowed them some financial breathing room with their games.
As far as Crytek ceasing support for Crysis, I’m sure they’re moving on to the next game in the series. They have to hurry up and develop that cross platform version to make up for the dismal 1 million plus sales from Crysis.
03/06/2008 at 20:37 CitizenErazed says:
Patching – it’s an issue as old as the hills. And people have been shouting about developers releasing half-finished games and finishing them via patch for YEARS. Look at this, for example – that was ten years ago. Some developers will do it, some won’t. And generally that falls down to ‘If we don’t release this game now we go bust’ (Iron Lore, for example, who did go bust, but probably had a discussion about that regarding Soulstorm) or ‘we’ve got lots of funding, we can develop forever’ (hello Valve/Blizzard).
So, are patches a good idea, and do I look to developers for them – well, yes and no. I don’t mind patches, but quite often it comes down to something the multiplayer community is whining for that completely kills the singleplayer game. If a game is released with a potentially game-breaking bug that’s never patched, that’s obviously a bad thing, but when a patch comes out because the vocal multiplayer forum hordes have been shouting about how their favourite unit was nerfed AND I’LL NEVER BUY YOUR GAMES AGAIN and that patch fucks the rest of the experience, that’s also a bad thing.
What it comes down to, though, is a) do the developers have the money/time to patch the game, b) is the patch needed, and c) is the patch going to change our game for the better for the majority of gamers. If the answer to all three of those questions is yes, then by all means go for it, and I certainly think Tilted Mill have done themselves a great service by being willing to admit that their game wasn’t all they hoped, and fixing it (although if that was the case, why did they release it? They had EA’s backing on this one, and it’s not like EA is going to go out of business any time soon…). On the other hand, Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces REQUIRES three patches from a boxed copy before you can EVEN PLAY THE FUCKING THING. Singleplayer or anything. Bad move there.
03/06/2008 at 20:37 Larington says:
I tolerate patches because I have to. And I regard the fact its become perfectly acceptable to release broken games merely because they can just be patched later as a travesty which should never have been allowed to happen.
Ok, so maybe you missed one game breaking bug and lightning struck twice on that particular game project, but this happening should be the exception to the rule, not a common occurence. Heck, one of the reasons consoles are so popular is because you can just chuck the disc in the machine and play without having to wait for a patch to download, but I understand even that is changing now.
Frankly, I regard broken games leaving the printing press as a sign of deeply unprofessional conduct which shouldn’t be allowed to happen by any large modern games publisher (Or any party who has an interest in a game selling well).
I’ve even run into a case where the patche executable for a game didn’t bother to check the version number of the game breaking both patches as a result (Because the 1.2 patch didn’t bother to make it clear that you first needed to install the 1.1 patch, thanks Blacksite, you’ve made me hate the game even more, and the publisher that forced development to use alpha code in the release candidate, if the information I saw was correct).
All that said, expanded content patches are a very nice thing which I tend to applaud, unless they break the game.
03/06/2008 at 20:41 Dinger says:
First, Crytek’s “good reason” is going to be their next product, using the same engine.
Patches either fix broken stuff or add new stuff, or do a bit of both.
Fixing broken stuff is now part of the equation: games are complicated things, and no QA can catch everything, especially in MP titles. So continued patch support is an obligation.
It also helps for games with copy-protection schemes. While pirates will go after patches for “high value” targets, many mid-range games don’t get the same attention from pirates: their whole ecosystem is built around downloading and playing the newest thing, not the flavor of last month.
adding new stuff does build up good will, but let’s face it, it’s usually because the developer likes the game. Besides, there´s all that really cool junk that didn’t make the cutoff for the initial release. And in any case, you need something to keep the testers motivated.
Oh, and if you plan on keeping the code around, why not bring some stuff out in patches?
There is of course a crass economic argument for patches: for games, especially those available via digital distribution, I’m certain that to every patch corresponds a spike in sales. How big of a spike is a different question.
Still, no amount of patching is going to fix the impression left by a half-finished or fundamentally busted game. “put it in a patch”, I suspect, is often an expedient of the committee design table with disastrous results.
03/06/2008 at 20:51 BobJustBob says:
Anecdotally, I’d be surprised if Simcity Societies sold very well. It was discounted by $10 within just a few weeks of release, and seemed to hit $20 faster than any game since Beyond Good and Evil. Not the signs of a game with a healthy retail presence.
03/06/2008 at 21:02 eyemessiah says:
Sure, we can say that Blizz can only afford to patch their games to perfection because they already have megacredits coming out the arse, but surely they made some of those megacredits by being the sort of organization that cares enough about their games to look after them & the players properly?
I’m sure that lots of good studios can’t afford to throw so much good money at their games after launch, and so they can’t achieve the sort of rep that Valve & Blizz have but they sure as hell aren’t going to get anywhere without trying.
Maybe some studios can get away with not bothering and still make truckloads of cash, but the PC market is like a runty, snarky, cynical little orphan who’s only wish is that it had some REAL parental figures that would give it some love. I have to believe that those who abandon broken unfinished games end up paying for it and those who put in the overtime reap something of a reward for it. Sure Blizz & Valve had some other advantages but I don’t believe that they didn’t give a damn until the got crazy ass rich.
Also, as Dinger says, games are starting to stick around a lot longer, what with the whole digital distribution thing. I am just about to sign up to gametap pretty much for the sole reason of having a go at some previous generation (possibly B list) games that I skipped the first time round.
In a way its worse for a game to still suck after all this time rather than just sucking at release!
03/06/2008 at 21:18 egg says:
I swear to god I read “next content-free patch” instead of “next free content patch”. Gee.
03/06/2008 at 21:21 Galbrezu says:
The company that made Crysis seemed only interested in graphics honestly and it showed. The story was weak and only about 50% of the game was fun and I don’t even bother to play a multiplayer FPS game unless that’s it’s primary focus.
Most the people who I’ve talked to have echoed the same things and I don’t even think Crysis deserved the accolades it got.
My point being is that i really don’t see this game as one that was going to spawn a strong multi community or even foster a lot of the replay value I’ve gotten out of other single player FPS games like Bioshock that warrants the continual patch cycle, so long as the bugs are worked out and the single player experience is solid and bug free, the developers goals for a single player game have been accomplished.
On a side note I REALLY don’t think that Starcraft, Half Life 2 and Sim City Societies were very good games to compare Crysis to. All three games have a very solid multiplayer component (Referring to CS/CS:S/TF2 with HL) whereas Crysis felt like it had the same 32 player deathmatch mode that all FPS games have tossed in.
Offtopic Edit: Whoa, cool comment editing system, not often I see AJAXy stuff done right.
03/06/2008 at 21:36 ReturnToNull says:
Moar MOAR! I demand more patches. It could be a perfect game, but I would still want to see those patch notes.
Maybe I just enjoy reading patch notes too much. I recall Lord of the Rings Online’s patch notes. The developers were really cheeky with them, and it was great. Then there’s Valve with TF2… come Wednesday or Thursday I start compulsively checking every once in a while for the patch that just might come. It’s like a weird metagame waiting on patches seeing what’s changed in the notes and then finding and confirming it in game. Sometimes they’re necessary, but disappointing where they fix some server side issue, or funny bug. The truly interesting patches are balance, or content related. One day I might get lucky and be playing a game where they patch out the entire core of the game by redoing it from scratch, causing the forums to explode! Hilarity, new stuff to explore, and stuff to examine abound. Le sigh.
03/06/2008 at 21:57 steve says:
There are scenarios where developers are unable to patch a game because the publisher refuses to allow it. That is, the dev is contractually bound to fix certain things, and publishers are bound to test the fixes. But if the publisher decides the testing isn’t worth the time/money, the patch will never be released.
03/06/2008 at 22:03 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
If Crytek wanted to get away with this easily, they should just have shut up in the first place. No announcements and no cancellations. Just tell us what will be published in the next 7 days.
03/06/2008 at 22:12 Legandir says:
Will we see an rps verdict on the “new” Simcity societies? I doubt many places will re-review it and i’d be very interested to see how much of a difference the changes make
03/06/2008 at 22:20 restricted3 says:
So, the guys from Crytek keep shooting themselves in the foot.
I read somewhere (sorry, don’t remember where) that there was an expansion from Crysis in the work. If that’s the reason, they should confirm it or shut up.
If it’s simply because they’re abandoning everything PC (bwahhhhh piracy, mommy!!!), they should wonder why people don’t want to spend their money on them. First, sky high hardware requisites, and now lack of support because they *think* they didn’t sell enough?!?!?
(and, again, we’re speaking more than a million units sold for a game with really high requisites and nothing special apart from the graphics)
Why can’t companies learn something from Valve?
03/06/2008 at 22:33 Alec Meer says:
Legandir – I’m planning to take a look at it myself soon, at least, though that may be for another publication. Even if we don’t cover it here (though I hope we will), bear in mind the Destinations expansion is out soon – which should mean a whole bunch of places take some kind of second look at the game.
03/06/2008 at 23:51 Radiant says:
‘Patching’ or updates are also the main reason why people stick around playing and checking out a mod.
A well maintained mod will easily overcome an underwhelming first release if ready maintenance is in the pipeline.
Is anyone really upset that Crysis isn’t being patched?
I mean we’ve already played through the game once what have they done with the patches in the interim?
Saying that one game which was heavily patched and added to that still gets a play through is the og Ghost Recon on the PC [not GRAW the original one].
That game fully patched and with the add on packs installed is one of my all time favorite pc strategy/shoot em up games.
04/06/2008 at 00:02 malkav11 says:
The only patches I expect from a developer are whatever patches are required to get their game 100% functional, with all intended content playable and complete. Ideally, of course, that’d be the case right out of the gate and we’d all go home happy. But it doesn’t happen much. Balance? I don’t really give a rat’s ass as long as all of the singleplayer content is fun. Added content? Sure. Lovely. But *expecting* that from a publisher, especially for free, strikes me as being a bit greedy.
04/06/2008 at 00:04 Nimic says:
If you want someone who won’t stop patching until it’s a good game, look no further than Paradox Interactive. I don’t think it’s more than a year or two since they released the last patch for Europa Universalis 2, and that was released in 2001.
Of course, it’s a well known “fact” that Paradox games often contain huge bugs out of the box. That was certainly true for the first games, but the reputation has stuck with them still, even though their games now mostly have the small bugs that almost every game has. Oh, and they keep patching them, of course.
04/06/2008 at 00:14 steve says:
“Why can’t companies learn something from Valve?”
If by “learning” you mean, “having a multi-millionaire leader who can fund development forever out of his own pocket if he chooses to do so,” then yeah, all developers should learn from Valve.
Seriously, it isn’t fair to use Valve or Blizzard as examples of “how it should be.” They’re both so beyond successful that they’re in some alternate universe. If you want to argue that it’s because of their development, well… Valve had tons of money, and now has money coming in from Steam to fund continued development. And Blizzard wasn’t really “Blizzard” as we know it today until WarCraft II took off… and it hasn’t been an independent developer since 1994-ish.
04/06/2008 at 00:24 matte_k says:
@ Homunculus- would that be the Sith Lords Restoration Project you mention for KotOR 2? That’s been going for so long, it’s killing me waiting for it. If it works, there’s a broken game restored to the developer’s original vision before Lucasarts got shirty about the release date…
But then again, Neverwinter Nights 2 was buggy as hell, requiring some considerable patching, which makes me wonder who the hell works in Obsidian’s QA department…
04/06/2008 at 01:02 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
If Tilted Mill could get some [read: any] press for their hard work with patching Societies, it would be nice to see them rewarded for their ethical sticking point. It’s a bit sad that I’m not a city builder/manager sort of person, else I’d give it a second look based on word-of-mouth. It’s always nice to reward companies for sticking to principles you personally hold dear–like Stardock, for example.
I had intended on commenting without saying anything relevant, and now I feel a failure for breaking with that intent. In the spirit of it, though…
Kieron, in a perfect world, your beard would be insured and endorsed by the finest sponsors–whoever they may be over on your side of the pond. And it would also have streaks of dignified grey.
04/06/2008 at 01:15 Y3k-Bug says:
@steve – What makes you think Gabe Newell would have the means to fund Valve in perpetuity, and if he could, why would he want to? I don’t doubt he put in some of his considerable wealth into the development of HL1, but they haven’t needed it since. HL1 sold like gangbusters.
It seems odd to say that you can’t cite Valve and Blizzard as examples because they are wildly successful. Isn’t that kind of the point?
@restricted3 – Did Crysis really sell a million copies? I was under the impression it sold less than 100,000.
04/06/2008 at 01:37 Y3k-Bug says:
@restricted3 – Sorry, maybe I should actually look that stuff up before posting, PC Gamer reports over 3 million copies sold.
04/06/2008 at 01:55 steve says:
“I don’t doubt he put in some of his considerable wealth into the development of HL1, but they haven’t needed it since. HL1 sold like gangbusters.”
I didn’t really mean Gabe Newell would fund Valve out of his own pocket forever, but having a wealthy owner probably gave Valve more independence than most start-up developers. They probably got a better deal, and they were able to delay the game without fear of shutting down. Most games are released half-baked because publishers refuse to pay a developer more money, even if they choose to delay the game’s release. (So that six months or year of extra work may be done by the developer for free.)
(I’m assuming a lot here; I could be totally wrong, that maybe they were close to missing payroll when it shipped or something.)
“It seems odd to say that you can’t cite Valve and Blizzard as examples because they are wildly successful. Isn’t that kind of the point?”
My only point is that the successes came first, not necessarily the long-term support. You may buy a Valve game today knowing they’ll support it for years, but did anyone know this when they bought Half-Life at release?
(Once past the initial success, however, the support gave it a much longer tail than most games. Who knows what would’ve happened if Half-Life tanked.)
Blizzard mostly developed its reputation for support with Diablo and StarCraft, not WarCraft and WarCraft II. And if you’re talking about developers, Blizzard’s a weird example to use too, since it hasn’t been an independent developer since 1994.
04/06/2008 at 02:02 Burgerboy says:
Ignoring the fact that major game-breaking bugs should have been picked up before release (Hard I know, but there are many companies out there that manage to do it). I personally expect, and demand patches until the major bugs are ironed out.
Developers which go the extra mile to fix the minor bugs and spelling errors are the ones that go into my good books – and the ones that I keep an eye on whatever type of new game they’re working on.
Those that dump whatever game they’ve just released to go work on their next whizz-bang buzzword laden project are the ones that get dumped by me :)
04/06/2008 at 03:01 Andrew Armstrong says:
That extra mile is important – any multiplayer game won’t be worth playing if it contains the “Up down left right auto-win” bug.
But what if a game is released and is already nearly bug free? It happens less and less nowadays – thus the patch mentality, and it’s creeping into consoles. However, some rare games go without patches, sell well, and simply don’t need them.
In this case, if Crysis is fairly well patched (I can’t say!) I bet Crytek are working on the next instalment. Wasn’t that the plan all along? more “Episodic” like games? They are either going to release an expansion for this game, or an episode for it, or a new game based on it – which will be “good for fans” if that means, shockingly, they have to pay out but get a…well, I guess a game which will be patched a bit more then it is currently, heh.
Just my take on it. However, some companies are better at bugfixing then others – or provide enough end-user tools to do their own fixing (and not necessarily of bugs, but balance and the like).
It is a problem however; if a developer leaves games unpatched, their next game will not be as well received. People will assume bugs will go unfixed, leading to less initial sales anyway. If they can’t do the QA, and work, to get the main bugs removed before release then patching is a necessary evil – one that if ignored, really gets up peoples nerves.
04/06/2008 at 03:03 Mo says:
As a small-time indie I’m not sure how relevant my developer take on patches is, but here it goes anyway …
What is fair for the player to expect post-release? IMO, a game free of (major) bugs. I think that for the most part, developers want to provide this, but they aren’t always given the opportunity to do so.
If your game is multiplayer, I think there is a certain responsibility to eliminate major unbalances/hacks. But the problem here is that, like Kieron said, 10 years later and Starcraft is *still* being re-balanced! Balance is a bit subjective at times, so it’s difficult to know when to stop.
Looking at it from the other side, what is fair for the developers? This isn’t addressed too often, but patching isn’t an easy job. In terms of code, the tweaks are often simple to implement, but there’s a tonne of overhead that goes along with it. Infact, I’ve had a patched version of Smiley on my computer for almost a week now … it hasn’t gone live simply because I want to test it a bit more, I have to repackage the game, update the website, virus scan the files, etc, etc …
Another aspect is that developers want to move on to other creatively challenging endeavors, ie, new games. :) Consider that I’ve spent the last year of my life working on Smiley and only Smiley, while I’m thinking of a tonne of awesome game concepts I’m dying to implement, you can understand why we are a bit reluctant to go back and fix up our old games.
But as I said above, it is our responsibility to provide a bug-free experience whenever possible, so whenever possible, a balance must be created between working on “the next big thing” and patching old games. I think that is reasonable, but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect every developer to put as much time into patching their games as companies like Blizzard and Valve do.
Mo
PS: steve is right about Valve. HL1 was awesome because of Newell. Well-known fact: HL1 was written twice: first, as a bog-standard FPS, and then from scratch as the revolutionary FPS we know and love. Would not have been possible without Newell’s money.
04/06/2008 at 03:07 roBurky says:
I think constant updating is kind of necessary to keep a multiplayer game maintain its following. See counter-strike, etc.
And Valve says they always get a flurry of sales whenever they do one of the free weekends for their multiplayer games. So keeping TF2 etc fresh through updates, then ‘advertising’ with their free weekends allows them to keep selling their multiplayer game well past the point most single-player games stop being sold.
04/06/2008 at 03:13 Sucram says:
If broken games aren’t patched customers are lost.
If a company is prepared to offer long term support to a game adding quality content they will gain customers.
It’s not just about the sales of a single product, it’s about company reputation.
04/06/2008 at 03:22 MeestaNob! says:
Yeah Crysis sold 1M … I don’t see that as a failure at all. I imagine the development costs would have been well in excess of the usual (PC) game, but they (read: EA overlords) would have already budgeted for console revenue in the future (only a matter of time).
And for the record, I think it was a very GOOD game, aside from an obviously rushed final level.
I’m actually looking forward to Crysis 2, but I wouldn’t pay for a Crysis MP add-on. Those sorts of fixes are most certainly the domain of the patch.
EDIT: Wiki sources PCGamer UK July issue as saying Crysis has sold over 3M? I doubt that is correct. EA shareholder reports show over 1M according to Wiki.
04/06/2008 at 04:10 Dinger says:
When we were teenagers, my brother tried to convince Robert Silverberg to donate his beard so he could get “extra credit” in his English class.
If Valve’s lesson is ‘start with a ton of money and use RAD so the version you release is 2.0, not .89,’ then it’s still a damn good point. But I think the intended ‘lesson’ avered to was ‘make a game that most gaming PCs will play well.’
Turning a patch into an retail opportunity can kill a game (joint ops:escalation?).
‘content patches’ are extra credit: they give the developer an opportunity to express passion and pride in her work, and to put revenue aside. But just because fans demand your beard too doesn’t mean you have to give iit to them.
04/06/2008 at 04:44 minipixel says:
> There’s a reason why Blizzard is Blizzard
Yep. Let’s not talk about the sorry state of Diablo 2 Ladder, major bugs, duping and lack of balance still 8 years after the release :(
04/06/2008 at 05:01 Thiefsie says:
I’m on the fence with this. I think Crytek are being piss poor going back on their original intentions obviously for an alternative retail opportunity. But then again, does anyone play multiplayer Crytek? How rarely does a single player game successfully maintain a multiplayer fanbase and vice versa? (I suppose Half/Life is the exception?)
On the otherhand, I did not buy the Witcher even though I did intend to play it, but by god I am definitely buying the redux version now just in support of their move to fix some problems with it in a substantial way.
I’d be more happy if more games were released with proper SDKs and other mod developing stuff, unlike say Oblivion, Thief 3, etc etc. Let’s hope Fallout 3 is a bit more moddable off the bat.
That addon to COH was a total joke, and doubly so for Australians who couldn’t authenticate right of the bat. Patching was slow and rather pathetic for a brand new game.
BF2 was a prime example of patching being done pathetically bad and minimally as possible, you could easily tell once it shipped EA locked up one sole programmer in a room to look after the game for the rest of time while everyone jumped in to re-skin BF2 for 2142, which still is buggy, albeit less so than BF2 thankfully.
Then of course there is the weirdness of Vampire the Masquerade, and it’s splintering of fan base depending on which patches you were using. Wierd!
What am I getting at? I don’t know. I suppose in summary it is a lot easier to come up with pathetically poor examples of patching than really good ones. And that possibly is the problem right there.
04/06/2008 at 05:18 RichPowers says:
Yep, lack of post-release support is one of the (many) reasons why I loathe EA. They release shoddy, buggy, unoptimized games with such frequency that you can’t blame it on coincidence; EA either hates us or has pitiful QA or both.
BF2, BF2: Special Forces, BF2142, the C&C First Decade Collection…all of them EA games that’ve caused me headaches. The First Decade Collection is the most shameless, since you can tell EA barfed every C&C game onto a DVD in about 10 minutes without giving two shits whether or not any of them work.
04/06/2008 at 07:41 malkav11 says:
The Vampire splintering occurred after Troika had already folded, leaving a game that was still significantly buggy. Everything since then has been two competing schools of fan patch. And fan patches are interesting, but you can’t rely on them happening.
04/06/2008 at 07:41 UncleLou says:
I’d be interested to see Sim City Societies sales figures
I’ve hardly ever before see a game hit the bargain bins so quickly. It was half-price literally two or three weeks after the launch, dropping even further afterwards.
Interesting to hear that they improved it a lot.
04/06/2008 at 07:41 Howard says:
Kieron your view is, as ever, right on the mark. I am a little tired of companies like Valve and Blizzard being hailed as the standard to which all competitors should be held. Sure Starcraft, WoW and the current STEAM games are patched free of charge to within an inch of their lives but that is because they have financial security, not because they care.
Diablo 1, for example, DESPERATELY needed a patch or 9 but never received it because back then, Blizzard were small potatoes. The same could be said for Starcraft even when it first shipped as the multiplayer was badly unbalanced. Valve are somewhat different as their start in life was quite the oddity. Everyone forgets they they were essentially nothing more than a small time Quake 1 mod developer (HL1 was just a project written in the freeware version of the engine) and but for Sierra taking an interest in them we may never have seen their games. Sure their succes was deserved, Half Life 1 was awesome, but had the world not been so geared toward FPSs at the time it launched, thus ensuring success, we may never of heard of Valve again.
Upshot is, patches are great but I only expect them as long as the game is not functional (if it is offline) or as long as the bugs are still gamebreaking (if it is online). Extra “free stuff” long after release is always gravy but is not always to any avail.
04/06/2008 at 09:38 Fat Zombie says:
Beard… beard…
04/06/2008 at 09:45 Freelancepolice says:
Matte_k
“But then again, Neverwinter Nights 2 was buggy as hell, requiring some considerable patching, which makes me wonder who the hell works in Obsidian’s QA department…”
This is wrong wrong wrong. Granted there’s probably a couple of instances of this being true but more often than not it’s simply angry consumers blaming an area of development that is such an easy target in this case.
QA can’t decide which issues to fix, they can’t decide when to release the game, they can’t allow for a few extra development months. The fact of the matter is QA often get a raw deal and are easy to blame for something that’s out of their control.
can you tell I used to work in QA?
04/06/2008 at 10:30 The Sombrero Kid says:
from a programming perspective tweaking, bug hunting/fixing and patching are BOOOOOOOOOOORIIIIIIIIIINNNNNG! i’d much rather get into something new and exciting which is why i’m writing this instead of porting this game like i’m suposed to.
04/06/2008 at 11:27 Crispy says:
@Howard.
Kieron your view is, as ever, right on the mark. I am a little tired of companies like Valve and Blizzard being hailed as the standard to which all competitors should be held. Sure Starcraft, WoW and the current STEAM games are patched free of charge to within an inch of their lives but that is because they have financial security, not because they care.
Actually the reason Valve has financial security is partly due to the fact they patch their games regularly. The more you patch, the harder it is for pirates to keep up and the happier your customer base. The happier your (multiplayer) customer base, the more people playing and the more popular the game, which translates to more new players being introduced and more sales generated. The less piracy, the less lost revenue.
—
Maybe EA pulled the plug on Crytek’s patch testing because Crysis hadn’t shifted enough units for it to be financially viable?
Anyway I think there is a growing trend to fix games in post-release patches instead of releasing them ‘when they’re done’. This is now especially affecting the next-gen console market (now downloadable content is possible), where Sony and Microsoft will give publishers provisional passes on titles with the assurance that their list of fixes will be implemented in a patch soonafter release.
I think it’s more understandable for multiplayer games to be patched post-release. Single-player patches should primarily be fixing hard-to-find bugs that slipped through the net (as opposed to bugs already located by QA that get waived to hit a financial deadline), and perhaps adding minor extra content that may have had to be sidelined for the initial release.
More companies should be working on proper releases. This is the true sign of a good developer/publisher. If this is what you want to see more companies doing then the answer is simple: reward the good developers by buying their games and ‘boycott’ (interpret that as you may) games that are obviously rushed releases.
04/06/2008 at 12:58 Okami says:
@Freelancepolice: Sometimes the QA is to blame.
I’ve worked with great QA departments in the past and with… well.. let’s not go there, ok?
Of course, if you’ve got a bad QA department, you probably have really bad project managment, otherwise you’d just fire the sorry bunch and get yourself some good testers, so it’s still kinda lame to just blame the QA.
04/06/2008 at 14:09 Freelancepolice says:
Yeah that point’s fair enough, I do say though that usually it’s not the single fault of QA.
04/06/2008 at 14:11 Howard says:
@Crispy
Now this is where we have a problem. Valve fans are convinced that Valve are great because they patch regularly and because their products are more safe from piracy. Both are utter nonesense. Valve patch regularly (HL2 being the poster boy for this, not really talking about online games) because their codeing is AWEFUL! HL2 at launch was virtually unplayable, most noteably due to the “stutter bug” which took them over 5 years to iron out. And as for piracy: STEAM is the single greatest thing to ever hit the piracy community. Every game on Steam is instantly cracked with virtually no effort. What is more funny is that STEAM actually caused piracy of games that were previously uncrackable. X3 is a classic example. It had the most fearsome version of Starforce 3 strapped to it and no pirate was ever able to crack it. Soon as it is put on Steam however, the copy protection is removed and the game, freshly patched an bug fixed, propgates like wildfire.
Patching is not always the sign opf a good developer. Sometimes it is just a sign that they could not get it right to start with.
04/06/2008 at 16:09 Dean says:
I generally don’t play a game until the first patch is out. I’m still waiting for the KOTOR 2 Restoration patch before I start that – it seems to be tantalisingly close now but has been for about a year.
Multiplayer games are a whole different issue – they’re things that are played in-perpetuity. The same games, levels, maps are played over and over again. So patches to fix certain issues and imbalances make sense (in fact there’s an argument for introducing new imbalences, thus upsetting the meta-game and keeping things constantly interesting without having to add new content).
But for single player games, there must be a cut-off surely? Crysis is primarily a single-player game. And if your game is already off the shelves or in the bargain bin, and everyone that bought it has played it already and – lets face it – the vast majority of people only play a game once (unless it’s something like Civ or Weird Worlds) there’s really little point in tweaking and improving the single-player game. Anyone just coming to the game will have probably bought it second-hand off Ebay anyway, so there’s likely little desire for the developers to support them. Crysis sold 1 million. I bet less than 5000 would have actually re-played it after another patch – catering to the whims of an angry forum minority doesn’t benefit you much. Kieron touched on it with the whole Soulstorm debacle – to your average Joe it was a perfectly playable game with a few bugs. Go to the Relic forums and “OMG THIS GAME IS SO BROKED!!!”. But the vast majority have bought it, played it, had a few multiplayer games and moved on.
The KOTOR2 fan patch is sort of a shame too – it’s been close to completion for almost a year, with the devs taking a ‘when it’s done’ approach – which is fair enough. They’re doing it in their spare time for free so we can’t complain. But it’s a shame. Because it’s going to come out 3.5-4 years after release. No-one cares any more. Mass Effect is out on Friday. Had it been released even 18 months ago it’d got a lot of coverage and been a lot more popular because KOTOR would still be vaguely relevant. As it is now it’ll likely just trickle out to little fanfare. A shame.
04/06/2008 at 18:04 Deuteronomy says:
Crysis is one of the few SP FPS games out there I feel can be played more than once, especially the first half. It’s one of the few games I’ve finished multiple times. As of 1.2.1 the game is pretty much rock solid, aside from a few physics oddities. The MP game still has a couple non-showstopping bugs but overall it’s also stable. I say bring on an expansion and larger, more beautiful explosions. And an NPC schedule ala Stalker.
04/06/2008 at 18:51 KingMob says:
Here’s hoping Vic Davis will continue adding content and patching AE until he comes up with an AE 2.0.
This is still a brilliant strategy game and I don’t think all the people who should have bought it did.
04/06/2008 at 19:04 Crispy says:
@Howard
So, for the purposes of your argument, you’re completely ignoring Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, and Team Fortress 2 as examples where lost revenue was reduced because of regular updates, despite of the fact they are massive games for Valve?
Single-player games published on Steam post-release are prone to piracy as your example proves, but zero-day piracy prevention for new releases still prevents a lot of lost revenue.
Let’s not forget that your original quote was about the companies, as was my response. I said part of the reason Valve are financially secure because they are able to patch regularly and make it harder for pirates to keep up. Now you’re talking about why people think Valve is great, which is not only another discussion entirely but a matter of opinion.
04/06/2008 at 19:06 Hypocee says:
…And the topic of this post, as opposed to dragging ZOMGP in by its hair.
04/06/2008 at 19:20 Howard says:
@ crispy
But I must disagree. There have been ZERO games, not one, that remained unpirated by the day of official release. Every single thing from the HL2 episodes to other publishers works has flown straight out the door thanks to Valve’s “copy protection”.
As to the other point about MP games: Yes I am ignoring them. You know why? They are not Valve’s games. The only franchise Valve created (beyond inflicting the Source engine on the world) was Half Life. CS, TF and even the wonderous Portal are all external products that Valve simply bought and threw cash at. I therefore exclude them from discussions regarding Valves programming ability and their commitment to their customers.
04/06/2008 at 20:10 dhex says:
for what it’s worth, i’ve run hl2 on several setups, including my first, which was a 5500 nvidia card. the source engine, at least in my experience, is pretty durn tight.
04/06/2008 at 21:14 Fumarole says:
A five year old bug in a less than four year old game? Now that’s something.
04/06/2008 at 21:49 Howard says:
@Furnarole
Yes it is, isn’t it? Thus is the skill of Valve.
I am aware that it is only 4 years old but I was making reference to the fact that it shipped nigh-on 2 years late after, what, 4 years development? So, in all that time, they couldn’t iron out a game breaking bug? Nice!
But nevermind. I have learnt long ago that this forum flies the Valve flag high and speaking ill of your gods earns me nothing but bruises. 8-)
04/06/2008 at 22:12 Hypocee says:
Evidently not, Smiley For Irony.
04/06/2008 at 22:41 Dinger says:
On the internet, you will always doubt your success, until the moment you can’t be sure whether he”s a troll or an astroturfer.
Rock on, dude.
04/06/2008 at 23:20 Radiant says:
Apparently the Crysis patch has become Crysis: Baldhead.
04/06/2008 at 23:32 Frida K says:
The release-beta-patch-later mentality is one of the things which drove me away from PC gaming. I understand it’s very difficult for developers to release a PC product with zero bugs, unless you have Microsoft Game Studios and their epic QA centre behind you, but many don’t even seem to try.
Unhappily, I departed for the consoles right about the time they became internet-connected and the contagion spread to them – and if you’re developing for a console, you have literally zero excuses for shipping a product with bugs, glitches, dodgy framerates and so on. Patching post-release is a sign of a bad dev team, whether in their time-management, their coding or their QA. It’s not much better on the PC, but at least they have more of an excuse…
And patches which add content are generally a good thing (Valve’s TF2 changes debatably so, extra maps almost always so). Look at Soldat (www.soldat.pl); that games been kept alive mainly by constant patching adding new modes, new features, new maps, and the occasional bugfix. And that’s ONE GUY.
RPS should look at Soldat. I’ve never, ever seen it mentioned in any reputable site…
05/06/2008 at 09:35 Iain says:
I think Sucram had it right upthread: patching shows that you give a shit about your customers. If you support a title post-release and make it better, that can only enhance your company’s reputation and makes it more likely that people are going to come back and buy your next game.
If you *must* release a game that’s not finished (and there are plenty of circumstances that can force this – see KotOR2 or Frontier: First Encounters) then post-release support should be mandatory, if only to maintain good will with the paying public.
I was horribly disappointed with the poor quality, rushed ending of KotOR2, yet despite my better judgment, still bought Neverwinter Nights 2 and its expansion pack, hoping Obsidian had learned a few QA lessons, only to find that they were horrible, buggy, inefficient messes. That’s really put me off buying future Obsidian titles, especially because their post-release support hasn’t really fixed a lot of the core problems.
I’m sure a lot of developers just see patching as a time and money sink, but they genuinely can learn something from the Blizzard and Valve models of post-release support. Give your customers what they want and they’ll continue to be your customers. Treat them like organic cash dispensers and watch them walk away…
Of course, there is another option: release games that don’t need patching in the first place. You have to go back a long way for examples, but I can’t think of any LucasArts in-house games (circa TIE Fighter – i.e. the early-mid ’90s golden period, before they out-sourced development and became rubbish) that ever needed any significant patching. Granted, PCs are a lot more diverse in terms of components these days (different combinations of OS, CPU, GPU and soundcards, etc) but using that as an excuse for not testing or optimising a game is not really acceptable. Either do the job right, or don’t do it at all. Or at least don’t expect us to keep coming back to pay for it…
05/06/2008 at 12:35 Crispy says:
@Howard:
There have been ZERO games, not one, that remained unpirated by the day of official release.
I’d like some sources for these claims before I’m inclined to believe you, interested as I am. Reputable media coverage will do.
Also are you talking about the day of release (day 1) or the time of release (day 0)?
CS, TF and even the wonderous Portal are all external products that Valve simply bought and threw cash at. I therefore exclude them from discussions regarding Valve’s programming ability and their commitment to their customers.
Pity the discussion was about whether anti-piracy measures have helped secure Valve’s financial security or not, and not about their programming ability, which seems to be an axe you want to grind into the discussion whether it directly relates to the point at hand or not.
As far as the ‘commitment to customers’ argument goes, while I’d agree that CS, TFC/TF2 and Portal are either derived from or began life as non-Valve ideas, I’d say that in most cases (except DoD:S and CS:S) Valve have actually improved these games. Although dumbed down, Portal was injected with humour and carefully integrated into HL2 lore. The TFC guys came direct to Valve from Quake TF via their commercial Quake II TF2 mod which was never released (it’s possible that Valve gave them the golden ticket to make their TF2 a reality – oh you’re so evil, Valve!). This in turn has spawned Team Fortress 2, which is undoubtedly a clear refinement of many of the ideas from the previous games, if a departure from the previous playerbases. Counter-Strike arguably got better, although this is a more tenuous point. In short with these games I’d argue they’ve done more than just throw money at them, they’ve actually helped the game grow into something that is certainly bigger and -in most cases- better than its forebears.
Is it possible that you’re more pissed off with Valve releasing products with bugs in it because you can’t update your pirated copies? In my experience Valve had a pretty high turnaround for fixing bugs. In fact, if you look at this blog you’ll see that Valve were fixing the stutter bug you mentioned for more users, year upon year. This shows a fair amount of dedication to their users, wouldn’t you say?
05/06/2008 at 13:15 Howard says:
@Crispy
Hard to produce “figures” to prove what I wrote as no one really reports on it, do they now? I can assure you though that it did/does in fact happen.
Do I have an axe to grind with Valve? Sure do. Can’t stand ‘em. Not one jot. Do I think they took ideas like Portal and TF2 (and here I speak as a veteran QW:TF player of MANY years) and made them better? Sure do: they did a grand job. Do I still think they are the scum of the earth and that these few demonstrations of decency and business accumen have done nothing to redeem them? Sure do!
As to being a pirate? Well I guess I am guilty as charged… kinda. I have acces to VERY fast unlimited broadband so yes, I pirate most every PC game that comes out. However as my bank balance, irrate partner and 7 shelves of boxed games will attest to, if I like something I buy it. If you would like my STEAM ID so you can come chat with me and see the 35 games I own on that platform alone (yes, the irony is sticky-thick here today) then I will happily provide it. I just see my piracy as a “try before you buy scheme”. I give the game a day in court and then if its good I lay out my cash, if it’s not, I delete my image (as I have just done with GRID)
Does that make me a bad person? Probably, but I really don’t care.
05/06/2008 at 13:28 Al3xand3r says:
@Howard: Valve basically consists of a truckload of ex-modders or ex-independents or ex-whatever who were then hired by Valve. Why would you not include their latest talent (Portal devs for example) when you talk about Valve’s collective ability? They’re a part of it now so there’s no reason not to. Similar for TF, CS, DoD, etc. You can’t talk about Valve and exclude people just because they started elsewhere. Everyone starts somewhere else, they don’t get born there.
But I guess Valve are the devil for hiring this kind of talent and giving them the resources needed to create true masterpieces as opposed to concepts with great potential. We should all worship the likes of EA instead, with their armies of code monkeys which get no say over the end product or maybe Bethesda with their art asset factories producing content void of any personality. Yeah, screw Valve.
@Crispy: By the way how was Portal dumbed down? Narbacular drop was an impressive tech demo but I don’t recall seeing anything more complex done in it. Maybe the boulder puzzles were interesting but removing them hasn’t dumbed down the game, if anything it’s harder than any Narbacular Drop level I played so perhaps it’s been smarted up…
05/06/2008 at 13:34 Howard says:
@Al3xand3r
So because you don’t understand my opinion you simply mock it? Regretable that so many people on this site turn to that, particularly where Valve are concerned.
You like Valve. You all do. Fine I get it. I really do. But I loath them. I have my reasons for my hatred of them much as you have yours for your addoration; does not mean either of us are wrong (nobody bothers to notice that I never mock anyone for liking Valve, do I?), just that we have had different experiences and hold different expectations.
05/06/2008 at 14:11 Dinger says:
RPS Translation: Exploration = Oblivion. Patch = Valve, Piracy = Crysis.
No, I don’t understand your view. Google X3 and Starforce and you’ll see it was cracked well before it made it to Steam.
Nobody sensible is claiming Steam “kills” piracy. There will always be pirates. What they are claiming is that Steam presents a sensible solution to the piracy problem. Buying a game on Steam is easier that pirating it. You click a button, and the game arrives. A patch comes in, and it’s added. You pirate a game, you need to go to the proper source, find the file, install it, install the crack (in one of a half-dozen ways), and manually apply the patches, which may or may not work. You can still do it (and get patches for the big titles), but it’s more difficult. I’ll add that the procedure for pirating and maintaining a pirate copy is _easier_ than the procedure for doing the same with most retail games.
I like a good troll-and-flame as much as the next guy, but if you’re gonna go after Steam, go for its weakness. The Valve folks have claimed that Steam elevates the risk of piracy, since a pirate stands to lose _All_ Steam games. So what happens when Valve decides that a legitimate user isn’t legit? For that matter, what happens when Valve decides or is forced to cease supporting Steam on legacy machines? Five years from now, will your games work?
Trying to separate “What Valve does” from “What the people Valve throws money at do” is silly. “Valve” has always been getting talented people together and giving them the means to create something. They’d be “throwing money at people” if those groups were off-site and without access to other employees and tools.
Do you really believe Valve just discovered Narbacular Drop in a corner and said “we should throw money at these people”? Wouldn’t it make more sense for someone to see or to suggest that the team and Valve might be a “good fit”? And do you deny that all the Orange Box products share a common ideology in terms of gaming philosophy and art direction, layered on top of a common engine?
These aren’t hate or love issues, but issues of fact.
But I do so enjoy mocking.
05/06/2008 at 14:24 otakupaul says:
Im sure the excuse is going to be that they are skipping doing the patch in favour of putting more man power into whatever secret or big expansion will be sold next. No doubt because of EA.
EA’s entries into the gaming market really do show how little they know about this market. Battlefield 2 was a pretty good game at first but then the same thing happened. The fiasco’s with securrom have also helped to mess up average consumers gaming experiences and so I would not hesitate to suggest that in some cases EA have encouraged piracy. It doesnt seem so long ago that games a) didnt need the kind of patching we see nowadays in terms of size or frequency. (Is it just because of online balance? I suspect its the rush of EA to get the product on the shelves with a “fix-it-later” attitude)
b) Games were often given support for a long period of time after release including free content (Lucasarts for example or companies like Bioware pre-EA buyout).
The PC market has always struck me as more patient than the console one, for example, I tend to hit one game hard for a period of time and concentrate on that and completing that. On consoles however its a plug and play affair where I often swap a few times each session. Ea are taking the same console market mold and failingly trying to apply it to PC gaming: 1) Get game on shelf asap, 2) Sell online content asap, or if not possible goto 3, 3)Design and market sequel (preferably cloned from progenitor game) asap and ignore previous games.
The makers of Sins of a Solar Empire have impressed me with their knowledge of the market and really put EA games to shame.
**Edit** Sorry I actually wrote this before I saw that a sequel was announced for Crytek, not after. Do I get browny points for being right about the sequel still?
05/06/2008 at 17:29 Dean says:
A lot of modern Point and Click adventure games don’t need patching at all.
The anti-Valve guy is funny: “They’re only any good because they hire good people”.
05/06/2008 at 23:52 malkav11 says:
A couple of things – all of Valve’s own (singleplayer) Steam games were pirated day and date with release, save Half-Life 2 itself, which was pirated at that time, but not working properly until a day or two later – the pirates hadn’t figured out what they were doing quite yet.
This can easily be checked by cross-referencing NForce (the site that tracks pirate .nfo documents that accompany all the releases) with Mobygames. They have generally not released Steam rips of other games (Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Sin Episodes being the only exceptions I am personally aware of), I assume because cracked DVD releases are cleaner and more user-friendly.
I tend to agree that Steam’s real antipiracy benefit is making it easy and convenient to buy, download, and play one’s games without the risks and hassles of the pirate route or (mostly) the retail route.
Secondly – it’s a fallacy that only bigger releases get patch cracks. It’s true that Steam made it difficult to release cracked patches (although it happened anyway), but other than that…it takes a while, sometimes. But search a “reputable” crack site (i.e., one that only takes no-CD cracks and nothing that disables any other facet of copy protection) and you’ll find cracks of every update of pretty near every game on the market with a CD-check.
06/06/2008 at 10:52 Crispy says:
@Crispy: By the way how was Portal dumbed down?
It’s the incredibly gentle learning curve I’m talking about that meant that GladOS was the only thing stopping me from (both figuratively and literally) switching off and booting up a different game for the first 13 levels or so. The first 5 or 6 levels were utterly patronising, to the extent that I wish Valve had given me the option to skip them.
06/06/2008 at 12:26 Al3xand3r says:
Well for a lot of people it was a new concept and their audience isn’t exactly puzzle game fans so it makes sense to have it. Not having all that It’s got enough character to be a fun ride thanks to GladOS.
11/05/2011 at 06:55 kennycrown says:
Maybe EA pulled the plug on Crytek’s patch testing because Crysis hadn’t shifted enough units for it to be financially viable?