The Updating Games Trend
- Thread starter Mar
- Start date
- Feb 12, 2009
- 607
- 63
1. /\ What Shmitz said. Halo was revolutionary, and I like it, but there is a reason I play games with only my circle of RL friends.
2. I realize that games are becoming more complex today, but grazr, your making it sound like there doing us a favor. Which they are, since they are part of the entertainment service industry. It's there job to keep on coming up with new stuff for me to enjoy, that's what I'm playing them for, and that's why the makers of Rock Band (2 dudes) got 500 million dollar bonuses.
3. Since they're supposed to entertain me, I want to be entertained and not getting bug ridden games. Imagine if you say a movie where in a few scenes the green screen appeared instead of the CGI background for a few seconds, and the sound sync goes off from the lips. Or you read a book with typo's in it. That would ruin the experience.
4. The problem now with games, unlike movies and books, is that they can patch their mistakes after the game comes out. Which means that they are allowing a lesser degree of polish on the initial product. You cannot patch movies or books (well maybe you can with kindle) some when they come out they need to be perfect. Video-games should be held to the same standard.
5. Now look at Zelda Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Mario Galaxy. They've received zero updates due to the nature off the Wii and they don't need them! I've yet to find a glitch in any of them except for a few minor graphical ones, and 0 that make you want to bash your head into a TV. All of them are 30~+40 hour long games right out of the box.
6. All big multiplayer FPS games (CoD, Halo, Gears) keep on having ridiculously over priced multiplayer map packs that have 2~3 maps that usually stink and people keep on buying them! And especially for a subscription based system ($50 bucks a year of live) updates like that should be free. I get pissed by that becuase it's not like the actual game came with that much and it's almost as if they held it back just to milk the cash cow.
Crackdown did it wrong too. It allows you to enter a cheat mode of the game where you can spawn whatever you want (think Halo forge mode) and it gave you a few extra vehicles for $10!
Fable 2 was a short game that now has DLC which is unlocking another island! Pisses me off.
7. My experience with fallout 3. 2 hours in Fallout 3 I need to re-boot the game TWICE becuase I got stuck in terrible player clipping in pretty obvious spots (top of the back shelf in the robot room of the Super mart anyone). In the first 2 hours. In a tiny room that was designed just for one mini quest. It's really obvious, really easy to fix, clipping glitches and other stuff that pisses me off. And the rest of the game if f***ing amazing, and very well polished. This just makes it extremely apparent that they just released it on it's release date that was determined by marketing, not when the game was actually reddy.
2. I realize that games are becoming more complex today, but grazr, your making it sound like there doing us a favor. Which they are, since they are part of the entertainment service industry. It's there job to keep on coming up with new stuff for me to enjoy, that's what I'm playing them for, and that's why the makers of Rock Band (2 dudes) got 500 million dollar bonuses.
3. Since they're supposed to entertain me, I want to be entertained and not getting bug ridden games. Imagine if you say a movie where in a few scenes the green screen appeared instead of the CGI background for a few seconds, and the sound sync goes off from the lips. Or you read a book with typo's in it. That would ruin the experience.
4. The problem now with games, unlike movies and books, is that they can patch their mistakes after the game comes out. Which means that they are allowing a lesser degree of polish on the initial product. You cannot patch movies or books (well maybe you can with kindle) some when they come out they need to be perfect. Video-games should be held to the same standard.
5. Now look at Zelda Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Mario Galaxy. They've received zero updates due to the nature off the Wii and they don't need them! I've yet to find a glitch in any of them except for a few minor graphical ones, and 0 that make you want to bash your head into a TV. All of them are 30~+40 hour long games right out of the box.
6. All big multiplayer FPS games (CoD, Halo, Gears) keep on having ridiculously over priced multiplayer map packs that have 2~3 maps that usually stink and people keep on buying them! And especially for a subscription based system ($50 bucks a year of live) updates like that should be free. I get pissed by that becuase it's not like the actual game came with that much and it's almost as if they held it back just to milk the cash cow.
Crackdown did it wrong too. It allows you to enter a cheat mode of the game where you can spawn whatever you want (think Halo forge mode) and it gave you a few extra vehicles for $10!
Fable 2 was a short game that now has DLC which is unlocking another island! Pisses me off.
7. My experience with fallout 3. 2 hours in Fallout 3 I need to re-boot the game TWICE becuase I got stuck in terrible player clipping in pretty obvious spots (top of the back shelf in the robot room of the Super mart anyone). In the first 2 hours. In a tiny room that was designed just for one mini quest. It's really obvious, really easy to fix, clipping glitches and other stuff that pisses me off. And the rest of the game if f***ing amazing, and very well polished. This just makes it extremely apparent that they just released it on it's release date that was determined by marketing, not when the game was actually reddy.
Zelda Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, and Super Mario Galaxy are nothing to cry home about. Exactly why these games can manage to be polished by release. They don't break new boundaries and don't challenge the gaming engine they are built on.
Plus your film analogy seems mightily flawed. A film requires animation, and although animation of incredible detail, simply animation. A video game requires animation plus all the things i added previously. AI coding, scripted sequances, interactive environments/items, optimising, player testing. I havn't even scratched the surface of game design with this list. You can have a team of animators 5 times that of the work force of Valve (that are working on everything, animation, art design, level design etc).
I'm only saying patches will always be necassery, and even more so for the more "amazing" a game is.
Games that possess extreme amounts of quality will always suffer from a general lack of content and a couple bugs. But a team of X amount of play testers are only going to find so many bugs in a limited period of time.
I agree that releasing content later comes as a "wtf" moment, why was this not simply in the game i purchased in the first place. I'd certainly be hacked off if i had to purchase this in order to play the game again (as if it wont let me play the game until i purchase the update as othewise it's incompatable with the current release).
The map pack situation (and other console related releases) is an odd one because packs like that would otherwise be free on the PC and available on any third party mod/map related site. But because of how console content works it is charged. You are charged simply because of policy's in place on the console and it's usage of "live" access. You should take your issue not up with the gaming companies but the corporate business's themselves that have supplied you with your Y-Box180 or Nintendoh-poo entertainment systems.
Plus your film analogy seems mightily flawed. A film requires animation, and although animation of incredible detail, simply animation. A video game requires animation plus all the things i added previously. AI coding, scripted sequances, interactive environments/items, optimising, player testing. I havn't even scratched the surface of game design with this list. You can have a team of animators 5 times that of the work force of Valve (that are working on everything, animation, art design, level design etc).
I'm only saying patches will always be necassery, and even more so for the more "amazing" a game is.
Games that possess extreme amounts of quality will always suffer from a general lack of content and a couple bugs. But a team of X amount of play testers are only going to find so many bugs in a limited period of time.
I agree that releasing content later comes as a "wtf" moment, why was this not simply in the game i purchased in the first place. I'd certainly be hacked off if i had to purchase this in order to play the game again (as if it wont let me play the game until i purchase the update as othewise it's incompatable with the current release).
The map pack situation (and other console related releases) is an odd one because packs like that would otherwise be free on the PC and available on any third party mod/map related site. But because of how console content works it is charged. You are charged simply because of policy's in place on the console and it's usage of "live" access. You should take your issue not up with the gaming companies but the corporate business's themselves that have supplied you with your Y-Box180 or Nintendoh-poo entertainment systems.