PC Games being released unfinished...An Opinion Piece

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MrSatan

Limp Gawd
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Jun 23, 2004
Messages
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What was the last game you bought that seemed unfinished and broken? For me it was the recently releeased Titan Quest from THQ. This game has horrible performance issues and lots of game crashing bugs. Even on very high-end rigs the game still runs choppy, I wonder what the devs used to test the game. What's even worse is the game effecting bugs. I have encountered numerous crashing and even graphical glitches. I read somewhere on the Titan Quest forums that one person experienced somewhere in the range of 200+ crashes before finishing the game. It is so bad that even people's saved characters are being corrupted and rendered unplayable.

I remember when I bought Battlefield 2 the game had many many bugs. It has had lots of performance issues as well. Performance issues really effect a FPS, so I was extremely unpleased with the result. PC Developers take for granted the ease of patching and bug fixing on their platform. If a game like Battlefield 2 was released to a console in such a state, the game would be a total failure. The problem is many devs see the ease of patching as a reason to release a non-finished game. I personally feel that if I am paying for a game, it should be solid out of the box. I ended up returning Titan Quest because I feel a dev that releases a flawed product should not be supported.

The PC gaming industry is constantly complaining about piracy and thinking of new ways to combat it. One of the reasons piracy is so rampant is because of the release of non-finished titles. The market is so flooded with so-so games that people become cautious about purchasing, maybe even resorting to bittorrent or other p2p for games. I believe the best anti-piracy measure is to release an excellent completed game. If a game is great people will buy it. Look at Oblivion, it has pretty much no copy-protection, yet it sold very very well. This is due to what a great game it turned out to be. Even with some bugs and gameplay glitches it still seemed like a complete product. With a vastly open-ended game like Oblivion a few bugs are going to be commonplace too, I am willing to live with that in exchange for free-form gameplay.

I urge everyone to think about which games they spend their money on. I am not saying kill the industry by not supporting companies, but there are way too many broken games out there. If the industry wants to expand, it should prove itself with quality titles, because as of right now it should be stripped of all the crappy games lining the store shelves. :cool:
 
MrSatan said:
The PC gaming industry is constantly complaining about piracy and thinking of new ways to combat it. One of the reasons piracy is so rampant is because of the release of non-finished titles. The market is so flooded with so-so games that people become cautious about purchasing, maybe even resorting to bittorrent or other p2p for games. I believe the best anti-piracy measure is to release an excellent completed game. If a game is great people will buy it. Look at Oblivion, it has pretty much no copy-protection, yet it sold very very well. This is due to what a great game it turned out to be. Even with some bugs and gameplay glitches it still seemed like a complete product. With a vastly open-ended game like Oblivion a few bugs are going to be commonplace too, I am willing to live with that in exchange for free-form gameplay.

I urge everyone to think about which games they spend their money on. I am not saying kill the industry by not supporting companies, but there are way too many broken games out there. If the industry wants to expand, it should prove itself with quality titles, because as of right now it should be stripped of all the crappy games lining the store shelves. :cool:
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Oh bullshit. And post in the right forum!
People pirate games because they are cheap bastards. Has nothing to do with "quality" of the game. It can be the greatest game (Lets use Oblivion for example) and it's STILL gets pirated. You act like PC games not working is a massive epidemic that every game you ever experience doesn't work. I buy a CRAP load of games all the time and Titan quest has crashed on me a few times after HOURS of playing it. So I can't say it's the worst programmed game.

And I think most of us did think about what games to buy from. Lot of us played the demo and liked it. We realized it didn't support starforce. This is a company that isn't known for screwing over customers. The game is a excellent quality game.
 
Titan Quest. Good game when you can play it.
Buggy buggy buggy. If you dont agree take a look at the forums they are overrun with people having crash issues among other things.

I do have to agree though that it has nothing to do with piracy. Reasons vary for why people do it but they do.
 
The PC gaming industry is constantly complaining about piracy and thinking of new ways to combat it. One of the reasons piracy is so rampant is because of the release of non-finished titles.
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Your dead wrong there, the reason piracy is rampant is because it is so easy to do now a days with P2P unlike 5+ years ago, where every joe blow had no clue about the stuff.


But i do agree, it is frustrating to receive a product that does not work, and why do people accept it ? and keep buying it.

The games i buy, they do work, or i just dont notice any bugs that affect me at least.

One would think companies would have a good base for testing, sure their are potential scenario's that they could not test for, and i think it is impossible for them to test on every possible configuration of hardware, perhaps that is the main issue.
 
I won't be buying anymore battlefield games until they actually fix all the remaining bugs in BF2.

While BF2 is one of the best multiplayers of recent times it's so crammed full of bugs, performance issues and balance issues (for guns etc) and probably most importantly stability of the servers, that at times it's actually really irritating to play.

Buying BF2142 is only going to encourage them to think along the lines of abandoning old products which still have issues, and release new products quickly and unfinished. I think a lot of people in the BF community are pretty much publicly stateing that they will not buy BF2142 until BF2 is fixed (at this rate it never will be)
 
Netrat33 said:
I buy a CRAP load of games all the time and Titan quest has crashed on me a few times after HOURS of playing it. So I can't say it's the worst programmed game.
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Low expectations of users doesn't help much either, a few hours wow, thats fantstic! :rolleyes:

I really first realised how bad the situation was when I saw people talking about BF2 servers being up for more than a day, at first thinking they were just joking, but turns out that a BF2 server is damn lucky to be up longer than 24 hours, and we're talking about default set ups here...

The server should NEVER go down, short of a hardware fault or a power cut, for a server to go down any more frequently than about once or twice a year without it being planned/scheduled is a bad enough but not actually lasting 24 hours without having to restart is just a joke.

We should expect the same from our game clients (and singleplayers) as well.
 
Curiously enough, I beat the game and only had Titan Quest crash once, and it didn't corrupt my character. But I was playing on a Dell Inspiron, a very common laptop and no doubt a platform they thoroughly tested. I'm with you 100%.

Personally I think piracy is rampant for a lot of reasons, unfinished games not being very high on the list. In no particular order is my list:

- No innovation. I'd pay $50 for Spore, no doubt. But do I really want to pay $50 to get my usual FPS fix?

- You can't rent. A lot of times the demo is inadequate, there is no demo, or the game would only take you a weekend to beat. In all these cases, you'd rent with a console game, a feat impossible with PC games.

- Over aggressive protection. Yes, sometimes people pirate games just out of spite for the copy protection. Coincidentally, I bought GalCiv 2 out of spite for Starforce :D

- Price is too high. Seemingly not a non-issue with the console space being what it is, and PC games dropping fast usually. But it used to be more of an issue. Not so much anymore.

- Too many CDs. This one is pretty low on the list of reasons. I hate CDs. I hate dealing with more than 2 install CDs. I love games on DVD. I bought Sims 2 just because it came on DVD, and I didn't even especially like the Sims!

Overall I'd say the most important reason is the no renting one and the lack of innovation. Back when I used to pirate, those were my reasons. I'd download Postal 2, realize I didn't like it and delete it. Same with Master of Orion 3. And the same with Unreal 2. And the same with countless other titles. Sometimes I'll buy the game (Doom 3, Baldur's Gate 2) and pirate the expansion pack (Ressurection of Evil, Throne of Bhaal). In the case of Doom 3, I played Doom 3 several times over, but its expansion barely did it for me once, it would have been a rental. And as for Throne of Bhaal, I never even got all the way through Baldur's Gate 2 again to GET to that content :p

The games I've really liked, I buy. I bought Titan Quest, GalCiv2 and Darwinia (even before it came out on Steam) all because they had great demos. I'll probably buy Prey and maybe Darkstar One for those same reasons. Or maybe I'll just rent Prey for the 360, its sort of feeling like a weekender. Hopefully you get my point. I'm sure their are plenty of pirates out there, and they are just cheap bastards, but if they are so cheap, do you really think they'd buy the game if they couldn't steal it?
 
Frosteh said:
Low expectations of users doesn't help much either, a few hours wow, thats fantstic! :rolleyes:
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Wow...you didn't just complain about HOURS of playing did you?

:rolleyes:

*hint* after the crash, simply load it back up
 
Netrat33 said:
People pirate games because they are cheap bastards. Has nothing to do with "quality" of the game.
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There are basically two kinds of pirates when it comes to games:

"I don't want to pay for it, but I want to play it": These guys suck.

"I want to play it before I buy it": I get this. Demos are increasingly NOT representative of what you'll actually see in the full game. Since buying a PC game generally means that you're stuck with it and out $40-60 for a new title, a lot of people want to be able to try a non-demo version just to see that it works and is fun before they spend money on it.

I'm not saying that justifies the piracy, but I do understand the logic. I've simply taken another approach: I don't buy new games. I wait til they've been out for a few months and people report back on problems with the games and patches are issued and the hype has worn off. I waited til I saw Doom 3 for $20 to buy it because of all the "flashlight simulator" comments I read; rather than shell out full price, I waited for it to come down to something I thought a "decent" game is worth.
 
Netrat33 said:
*hint* after the crash, simply load it back up
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...and repeat steps 1 through 27 to get back where you were in the virtual world, or as is often the case in a single player game replay a significant portion of what you were doing because you didn't (or couldn't) save every few minutes.
 
It's too early for me to think about piracy issues, but I agree with the op: the trend is more and more to release an unfinished game early and then patch it later. This is a big part of why I don't play many pc games anymore (I just spent $3k on a new rig and only put a 7600gt in it). I recently picked up the full version of City Life on a whim, and more than once it's made me scratch my head and say wtf. I've had residents with perfect police protection saying that they want more. Whether you're making or losing money seems completely random. The game is not very well balanced - I always get to a point where the city needs something that I can't afford, but I can't make any more money without that one thing, so I just get stuck. I'd never heard of the developer before so I was willing to cut them some slack and not compare it to sim city too much, but it can be very frustrating.

This has happened to me a few times over the years: the original Outpost, Mechwarrior 2: Mercs, Black & White, etc...
 
Games like doom3 are 50 dollars when they come out and are now 20 dollars. Are these companies losing money now that it's 20 dollars? If they are making even 1 dollar on the game then they could easily start games off at 40 dollars. I will pay 40 dollars for a game, but that's as far as I go. When you can just wait for the game to go down to 20 dollars, why pay 50 for it now?

Demo's are a must for me. If I can't try something, there is no chance of me even spending 40 on it. Unless reviews can 100% convince me that i'm going to like it, no demo = no buy. I'm going to get SimCity4 this weekend :D It's an old game, but I havn't played a sim city game since simcity2000 and now it's 20 dollars or less so i have nothing to lose.

Price and try before you buy. That's how you will get my business. Oh, and not making a crappy unfinished game is totally unacceptable. More companies are going to start doing this for all games now that consoles are internet ready because they want their money NOW. Dumb. If companies would spend time making a finished game, release a preview for people to try (use it as a freaking beta by releasing it before the game and get bug feedback now instead of later), and then sell it for a reasonable price, I think piracy would go down a lot.
 
I agree...many games should have developed for a much longer period.

Everyone likes to call Darkfall (an upcoming MMORPG) vaporware because it is taking so long to make. The devs have made it very clear that they will not release the game until it is ready.
 
Having been buying games for many years - I think Loadrunner for our Apple ][ clone was the frist game I bought, or was it Wizardry... Anyway, I've noticed a trend over the last 25 years or so of game being releasd with some major issues on the PC platform. I think part of it has to do with changing hardware and drivers, which doesn't make sense if you correctly use AP!'s. Older games taked directly to the hardware, and there was less hardware to choose from as well.

Recent games that come to mine that didn't seen "done":
Half-Life 2 - it just "ended" with not that many hours of gameplay like the original
Doom3 - samething over and over and over again, and it too "ended" abruptly
Quake4 - crash / hang / crash / hang / patch / better - Singleplayer lacked alot
BF2 - bugs, bugs bugs (still love playing it tho)
Black and White 2 - did this even get beta tested?

I'm sure there are others but newer games do seem "rushed to market". I can recall opening the box on Unreal Tournament and playing for days without a crash or reboot, well, windows needed a reboot... I remember playing Masters Of Magic and XCOM: UFO Defense for months on end working through them and never a crash or hang, and yet they still patched them and they GOT BETTER. Maybe the hardware and OS was simpler "back then".

The variety of hardware that PC Game companies have to deal with is amazing - in my house alone I have 7 different chipsets, 7 different video cards (5 are nVidia... so that might help, different NICs, 5 AMD and 2 Intel CPUs. When you compare that to say a console where the hardware is identical, there's a big advantage (and gemes tednd to be the same - not all, just a majority).

Peace,
Tim
 
PC games and bugs and crashes. Such a dead horse.

Piracy, people pirate because they have deficiencies in character, people do have their vices; not because games are buggy. Please don't blame developers/publishers for piracy, thats like telling a rape victim that she asked for it by dressing sexy. We all reject the latter why not the former?

If you are a hard core pc gamer bugs and crashes are just a fact of life because of the lack time and money. Solve publishers and developers cash flow issues and you will solve the issue. Anything else is like pissing into the wind.
 
Namork said:
- You can't rent. A lot of times the demo is inadequate, there is no demo, or the game would only take you a weekend to beat. In all these cases, you'd rent with a console game, a feat impossible with PC games.

Overall I'd say the most important reason is the no renting one and the lack of innovation.
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I don't know about that. I can rent PC games at my local Microplay to "try before I buy" if I am weary of a certain new title that has mixed reviews, no demo, and something I was excited about in previews. But I find, if there is a demo, it gives you a good opportunity to try the game out and see how it plays (technically and gameplay wise). I know why there are few places renting PC games, but they are available if you look.
 
MrSatan said:
What was the last game you bought that seemed unfinished and broken? For me it was the recently releeased Titan Quest from THQ. This game has horrible performance issues and lots of game crashing bugs. Even on very high-end rigs the game still runs choppy, I wonder what the devs used to test the game.
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Admittedly I have only gotten a little bit past the second city, but I have had only 1 minor issue with performance the entire time.

The game loads and launches properly for me, and plays very well without any crashes so far. It even runs at an almost constant 60fps (Vsync On) at 1920x1200 with everything maxed except shadows. This is with crossfire disabled too, so it's just running on a single X1900XTX. So far I have had no crashes in a few hours of play, and I am loving the game.

The only true issue with the game that I have seen is that the highest shadows setting causes stuttering that is independent of frame rate. When I maxed shadows I was still getting 45+ fps, but it was stuttering anyway. Clearly this is a separate issue that needs to be resolved, but outside of this one issue the game runs great. Besides, the second highest shadow setting looks better anyway because in real life shadows are rarely so perfect anyway.
 
The Temple of Elemental Evil was the buggiest I've played recently. Never did get fully fixed AFAIK and felt unfinished besides. Too bad, it was a blast to play.

Oblivion's MQ ended abruptly... But then again I didn't bother finishing it until I had > 200 hours on one character, so I'm not really complaining.

The only major problems I ever had with anything else was Ultima IX, and people who haven't even installed that game get crashes because of it. :D

Piracy? No point to it for me; I like single player RPGs on PC. Those are rare enough that I buy what gets released for the most part.
 
Namork said:
- Over aggressive protection. Yes, sometimes people pirate games just out of spite for the copy protection. Coincidentally, I bought GalCiv 2 out of spite for Starforce :D
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I did this also, but its actually a very fun game (sans the multiplayer aspect of course). I like when companies let me do whatever I want with my software, they deserve my hard earned dollars.
 
I bought it also, out of spite for SF.. I've never actually played it.. I don't like that type of game.. FPS, flight/racing/mech sims are all I play..

BOT.. I really think piracy, is a, "because I can" thing.. Having little or nothing to do with money or game polish.. That, and tv and schools are raising children these days and not parents.. Or that people no longer respect the hard work of others.. Or an idiotic belief that they are somehow sticking it to the "man"..

(Trust me on this, it always the "man" sticking it to you.. Never the other way around.. And even if you do somehow manage to stick it to him, you are really only sticking it to your peers, and not the "man"..)

I have a freind that pirates constantly and never actually installs the games he pirates.. What's the point of that???
 
Because to some people, doing the act itself seems to be more important than the actual product imho.
 
okay, keep to subject, this isnt about piracy so to say, but why can companies release a flawed product and we buy it...



would you buy a car knowning that a wheel could fly off going 100mph down the high way ?
 
The PC industry is no longer in control by the geeks and nerds with personal visions which is what made it so great back in the day. There really isn't any drive for the guys up top to "finish" a game anymore, they don't give a rats ass. They just see things like HOLIDAY SALES TIME, RELEASE PRODUCT NOW!

We are pretty much being raped for money at this point, just like the majority of the music and film industry. However many Japanese studios like Capcom, SquareEnix, Namco, Konami and others are still afloat so all is not lost. Just all the American studios... :(

Well, I totally can't wait until Halo 10, Star Wars: A Lost Hope, and Stupid Mainstream Action Game 2.
 
They don't finish them, because we still buy them.. It really is as simple as that...
BF2 is one of the buggiest games I have ever tried.. I still consider it to be a beta.. But why would they fix it?? They have already made their money and it seems like everyone is eagerly awaiting the next installment... They will push the next episode out the door, and people will buy it, whether it is finished or not..

Remember, it is the $ that decides.. As long as suckers put up with it, and keep the cash flowing, EA and the like have no reason to change how they operate..
Unfortunately, there are prolly too many suckers to ever change this trend with something like a boycott..
 
I'd have to agree that it seems many modern pc games are rushed. Furthermore I havent really had a game I was overly excited about since Warcraft III's release at this point, its starting to become disappointing. However I have to say, Im still looking foward to Duke Forever's release, whenever it is finally released. I looked back at the 2001 trailer again, it looked pretty good for a 5 year old game. Hopefully this one wont be underdeveloped or have a rushed feel, because theyve had enough time to pollish this game to perfection at this point.
 
MrGuvernment said:
would you buy a car knowning that a wheel could fly off going 100mph down the high way ?
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A few years ago Dodge recalled several truck models that were losing front wheels. People didn't know, any more than they knew when they picked up the box that said "Battlecruiser 3000 AD" on the front what they were getting into.
 
A big part of the problem is the total lack of accountability. So long as they turn a reasonable profit before everyone discovers just how lousy their game is, they are happy. If you buy a car and it's missing a bolt, you can take it back and demand it be fixed. If you buy a game that isn't finished, you have no real recourse at this point. *Some* developers only issue patches to save face.
 
the bad taste left in my mouth from buying BF2 after being a hardcore BF1942 player had made me lose interest in the series....

BF2 for me was one of the biggest disapointments
 
Yay for Titan Quest, my last failure, before that was BF2, great times.
Both of those games crash like woah on EVERY computer I try and install them on
 
PopeKevinI said:
There are basically two kinds of pirates when it comes to games:

"I don't want to pay for it, but I want to play it": These guys suck.

"I want to play it before I buy it": I get this. Demos are increasingly NOT representative of what you'll actually see in the full game. Since buying a PC game generally means that you're stuck with it and out $40-60 for a new title, a lot of people want to be able to try a non-demo version just to see that it works and is fun before they spend money on it.

I'm not saying that justifies the piracy, but I do understand the logic. I've simply taken another approach: I don't buy new games. I wait til they've been out for a few months and people report back on problems with the games and patches are issued and the hype has worn off. I waited til I saw Doom 3 for $20 to buy it because of all the "flashlight simulator" comments I read; rather than shell out full price, I waited for it to come down to something I thought a "decent" game is worth.
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I agree. It has been a good 6 to 7 years since I have paid full boat for a game. I either wait for it to go on sale at gogamer or come down to the price that I am willing to pay for the game.
 
sacred and dungeon lords did the same thing. this time though, i didn't go out and buy it, and just waited to see what people thought. maybe i will when it gets its bugs worked out.

right now, for rpgs, im just waiting for neverwinter nights 2, because i know that probably won't be very buggy
 
PopeKevinI said:
A few years ago Dodge recalled several truck models that were losing front wheels. People didn't know, any more than they knew when they picked up the box that said "Battlecruiser 3000 AD" on the front what they were getting into.
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But is EA recalling your version of BF2 and replacing it will a fully %100 fixed working copy ?, nope.
 
Though I've tried on several occasions, I still have never gotten Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault to work.

Biggest piece of crap ever. Also made me avoid EA published games when I can.
 
Reasons for buggy games:

Games are getting more complex and increased complexity = increased bugs.

Cost of development. More complex games are more expensive. Creating games that meet most people's expectations now need a project of a similar size to making a movie.
You just need to look at the coverage of Oblivion to see what people are interested in - top graphics and grass waving naturally in the breeze. Just like hollywood movies there are endless repetitions of 'safe' themes with big budget special effects and a crap plot.
The money is spent on what people want and saved elsewhere - code quality and testing.

You buy them. If people don't buy crap software, it isn't cost effective to sell it. Don't buy it for the pretty graphics and ignore the lack of gameplay and instability.

Testing on a PC. Millions of combinations of components and system configurations. Not easy to test compared to a console with a standard configuration.

Lazy programmers. Why write tight, efficient code when you have so many resources to play with. Make 'em write on a 48k ZX Spectrum is what I say. Manic Miner anyone?
 
i too use to pirate pc games but now i dont bother because most if not all online multiplayer games cannot be played online using a pirate copy. plus pc games dont cost that much...
 
digitalman said:
I agree. It has been a good 6 to 7 years since I have paid full boat for a game. I either wait for it to go on sale at gogamer or come down to the price that I am willing to pay for the game.
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Yep, me too. I rarely buy a game at full price anymore. I wait for the price to go down and usually by the time it's reasonable to me, it's fully patched as well (or as much as it'll get). If I wait long enough, I can get an awesome game, with patches that fix most of the bugs, sometimes with expansion packs as well. I remember picking up the Morrowind GoTY edition a couple years ago for $30. Great game and two good expansion packs for less then the price of a good game. That was worth waiting for.

Of course, I'd love to see more games come out that are less buggy and more "finished", I just don't know how realistic that hope is... :(
 
I dont have this problem, because I dont buy a game right when it comes out. When I see it on the discount rack/ Walmart $10 rack/ previously owned/ etc, the patches are already out. ;)
 
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