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Delays Hurt Video Game Business
Posted by
michael
on Fri Feb 13, 2004 06:33 PM
from the whooshing-noise-as-deadlines-fly-by dept.
from the whooshing-noise-as-deadlines-fly-by dept.
George Bailey writes "Wired.com has an article (No Room for Slacking in Game Biz) dicussing the damage game developers cause themselves via delays in releasing games to market. To quote from the article: 'As the games become more complex and sophisticated, less of them seem to meet release dates that companies initially tout. A few years ago, the fallout was usually just disappointment among fans. But as the video-game industry matures and surpasses Hollywood in size, more is at stake -- like marketing campaigns delayed and intricate positioning against competitors disrupted. What's more, missing a promised release date can bleed buzz, precious in an industry where many young buyers have to take the time to squirrel away $50 for a typical purchase.'"
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Delays Hurt Video Game Business
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hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.peterswift.org/)
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Message to marketroids: Complex software takes time. It's fucking ready when it's fucking ready - deal with it.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Sunday April 16 2006, @09:28PM)
Which is what the guys from 3D Realms keep saying.
wbs.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday July 07 2004, @10:51PM)
There is an old cliche, "It is time to shoot the engineers and move into production:
And yes, I AM AN Engineer, and like all engineers, I have the same tendency:---->
Fact of life: Many engineers, given the chance, will keep polishing the helmet because there is another speck of dust on it.
Real world fact: No product is ever perfect to every customer, and there comes a time when you have to stop farking around, finish up, and ship the product!
The alternative is to bankrupt the company, throw everyone out one the street, screw the shareholders and people who have given you credit to buy all your equipment, and start over!
And while we are at it, let us look at this timeline:
1400s: Astromony is too hard and takes time, plus the earth is the center of the universe.
1800s: The sun is the center of our solar system. Germs are a figment of your imagination, plus medicine is so hard.
2000s: Of course germs exsist, and with the proper percautions and drugs, are not a problem. Software is so hard. It will be done when it's ready.
2300s: We have the methodology to write bug free software on time and under budget. But those matter-antimatter transporters are so hard...
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.meddlingkids.com/)
Maybe I'm dumb but what on earth would have motivated you to go to the store and buy the game after you'd already completed it?
I've heard this argument again and again that 'if it's really good I'll buy a copy just to put on the shelf to reward the developers.'. It's bullshit. Once in a blue moon I believe you might do that for a very special game but the prospect of paying $50 for something which you won't use makes a game's chances of getting onto that shelf, well... let's just say slim. The fact that you played the game through to the end, then found a bug and said
Patch or no, failing to catch bugs like that is simply unacceptable. I pay for games that are worth my money.
suggests to me that you were never serious about buying it. Even though you extracted its full purchase value from it. That's not try before buy that's just getting the game for free. I'm not judging you for that - I couldn't give a crap - but don't lie to yourself and especially don't lie to me.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
You're so right : I've just bought Xenon II for the Atari ST (excellent gameplay under the STonX emulator) and they actually payed me to buy it!
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Unless you're planning on waiting a long time to get the game, you're better off buying it right away, as there's a decent number of stores that will give you a discount for preordering, or will sell it at a cheaper price for the first few days.
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Monday August 11 2003, @06:07PM)
Which begs the question, is the industry not mature enough to manufacture these sales, or are the games themselves not mature enough?
Duke Nukem' Forever! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.howtobeinvisible.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 04, @07:42AM)
-Charles
Re:Duke Nukem' Forever! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Duke Nukem' Forever! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.dragonswest.com/ | Last Journal: Monday November 05, @07:35PM)
One problem is, missing the strike while the iron is hot. Duke Nukem was hot, now it's cool, now it's cold, and finally it's a dead fish on your doorstep and you wonder where it came from, now that you've moved on.
There was some game, back in the day, I waited for eagerly on the Amiga. It looked like the be-all, end-all RPG and I wanted it so bad I'd scream in frustration each time I heard it was futher delayed (for quality control, etc.) Well, eventually I gave up. I don't know if it ever came out. I was onto something else.. NetHack, IIRC
Re:Duke Nukem' Forever! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://arcterex.net/)
People are waiting for Half Life 2 and Doom 3 to be released however. A good example of the 'late release == sucky game' can be seen in Daikatana. When it was released it was a very advanced game..... for two years ago (or whenever their original ship date was). Sadly they released it in the present, not the past, and therefor it sucked donkey balls.
Hopefully Doom3 and HL2 get put out RSN and aren't subjected to the same fate.
A Message from Dr. Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.spinningatom.com/)
Derek Smart (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.tubgirl.com/)
Not just games (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 28, @05:15PM)
Re:Not just games (Score:5, Insightful)
While what you say is true, it doesn't take into account other realistic scenarios. This isn't so much about fan disappointment from overzealous announcements, as about dealing with sensitive timing when it comes to outside collaborations with non-gaming companies(movie, toys, mags, etc). Tons of money is tied up into these collaborative schedules and unfortunately, game development (or software dev in general) isn't as condusive to predictive scheduling as other areas.
Saying "No comment" or "It'll ship when it's done" is a lame-sounding option when partner companies have money tied up in your success too.
Re:Not just games (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it seems obvious to anybody ("delays hurt business? You mean if we don't have a product we won't have sales? You mean baseless hype irritates people? Well there goes our business model."). It's just especially noticeable in video games because they are notorious for delays (and have previously gotten away with them). For whatever reason it seems to me that movies and music generally come out on time, or are delayed well in advance.
I was skeptical about video games being a bigger industry now, but it's true that video game sale [cnn.com] did surpass box office sales [boxofficemojo.com] in 2003 (interestingly, the CNN article also discusses video game delays). It feels like it's the result of the industry advancing too quickly and not knowing the general timeline for releases, or what they can expect to accomplish.
Too often you hear about games trying to include/do too much or use technology that is too advanced. With music, for example, they know they're looking for 60 minutes (even 40 minutes these days?) of produced, committee-written whatever, a warm, silicone body to sing it and move it out the door. Gold album.
For my money, wired is a fun interesting source for gadgets and stuff, but it's too sensationalist technology. It feels to me like it treats tech still as some miracle or black-box that is to be possessed but not truly known. It is just like wired to treat this like some groundbreaking news when video games and technology are, at heart, just like any other industry. Not a flame or a troll, just my thoughts.
Re:Not just games (Score:4, Insightful)
How does this relate to business? Well, IANAM/MP (music/movie producer), but my feeling is that they have a pretty good idea of how long it takes to go from conception to packed theaters (and if not they have a clever tactic called "Coming Soon"). Same with music.
Don't get me wrong, I love good music (I lean to folk, indie rock), movies (Magnolia is up there), and games (good old WC3), but for a lot of the music and movies out there it's as scientific as anything else.
The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real problem (Score:5, Insightful)
A more complete statement would be that Blizzard doesn't owe you or me, or their publisher, any money, and hence can take as long as they need to to ensure that their game is actually finished when they release it.
Financial pressure is the real reason for most optimistic release dates, and the insane pressure of creating an up-to-date working awesome game on the schedules alloted to the dev teams is the reason that many games do not meet those optimistic release dates.
Consider the statement "If we don't go gold by November our publisher is going to stop paying our operating costs and we're all going to be out of a job." and you have some idea why some games are released when they are.
Fallout (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
No way, the first Fallout was great! The second one was way too buggy, though, and I'm not just talking about the ants and the radscorpions.
Come on... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday October 02 2003, @03:54PM)
Re:What they should do... (Score:5, Insightful)
They should just skip using the calendar all together and set a release date of "when it is done". It would save so much pain and agony.
Never heard of a little thing called marketing, have we? It takes time to build an ad campaign. It takes time to get ads in magazines, on billboards, in front of people. It takes time to get distributors to carry the game. Companies can't afford to develop a game, finish it, and then spend a few months convincing people they want to buy it. They need to have fans hungering for it as soon as its released: that's how you get huge sales numbers.
Re:What they should do... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday October 26 2004, @09:56AM)
And it's impossible to say they fail to generate hype. WoW beta got 400,000 signups. And, come on, the start date for the beta hasn't even been decided on yet!
Re:What they should do... (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest example I can remember though was Frontier: First Encounters. Random hangs and crashes to the point of unplayability. Gametek had to run a second advertising campaign to tell everyone that they had fixed it!
Price? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://beamon.ca/ | Last Journal: Wednesday December 15 2004, @09:55AM)
Sounds to me like it wouldn't be a problem if the price weren't something they'd have to "take the time to squirrel away".
What about old gamers? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 10 2004, @02:36PM)
I really wonder if this will be true 20 years from now when gamers like me who grew up playing games and have pay checks to buy what we want become a larger portion of the people who buy video games then teens. Of course, teens have much more time to play video games then people with jobs do, so perhaps this will never be true. I do hate playing MMORPGs -- not because I don't enjoy them, but because I can't compete with a 15 year old who can play the game 8 hours a day!
Re:What about old gamers? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.dragonswest.com/ | Last Journal: Monday November 05, @07:35PM)
You won't. Take my word for it. You'll spend the money on rent, toys (like bikes, telescopes, computers), tickets, golf, golf, big screen TV, sports car and dozens of other things. And despite the fact that you're reading this, you might even hook up with a woman and that'll be the end of your disposable income.
Re:What about old gamers? (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Tuesday October 26 2004, @09:56AM)
Buddy, your problem is that you've somehow come to believe that 8 hours a day is a lot.
Why sleep when you have so much item-hunting to do?
I disagree. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday May 05 2004, @10:21PM)
Big business. No problem. Move along. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Friday April 27 2007, @02:20PM)
You have a release plan, you have a risk assessment, you have risk management. It's not a one-day's-brainstorming which ends up with 'ok, next Christmas then...'.
The larger games companies are starting to seriously challenge the film industry for revenue, sometimes you get the film of the game (Tombraider) but most of the time you get the game of the film (everything else) - that should indicate where the power distribution lies; but it is dynamic, and a lot of effort will be put into maximising return on the large investment. Just like films. Big expenditure brings big risks and big rewards. Just like films...
Simon.
Re:100,000 man hours? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/ | Last Journal: Saturday July 10 2004, @03:34AM)
North Korea is reputedly working on a way to have 100 men dig a hole 100 feet deep in 1 minute.
Re:Big business. No problem. Move along. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that, 100,000 hours is a little over 11 man years so it's probably more a case of using silly units to make a project appear more impressive here.
Good point (Score:4, Insightful)
The speculation and occasional leaks of information are vital towards feeding the anticipation of the game, and in many cases even surpass the actual quality of the game once it is released.
If a company decided to not advertise a game until its release, I guarantee it will not meet with the same success that an eagerly anticipated game will see.
My response to this (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.thefoodgeek.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday February 26 2004, @02:34AM)
------
"The process starts when a producer conceives of a project and then goes through an internal sales process that can include being wildly optimistic about budgets and schedules, [Gifford] Calenda said."
This is an interesting view, and yes, it certainly happens from time to time. However, as a former producer myself, I often find that I will present a reasonably budget, schedule, and feature list, only to see upper management tell me that the feature list is perfect, the budget is far too high, and the game needs to be done in half the time.
Producers usually don't want their games to fail. There's very rarely an incentive on the producer's side to cut the development time, unless the producer is bad at making schedules (not uncommon) or the game is tied to a particular release date. However, most games being released are not tied to a release date such as a movie or sporting event.
Upper management, or the publisher, if you're an independent developer, is significantly more likely to have a reason to cut the time and budget. Usually it's a) so the game doesn't cost as much; and b) so it gets out sooner, therefore generating sales revenue in a particular fiscal year. You can see why there will be pressure from management to either present a schedule that is unrealistic, or to cut a realistic schedule away from reality. Naturally, additional budget money is hard to get, and features could never be dropped, and those are really the only other ways of cutting the development time.
I will grant you that, to a point, reducing development time and slashing budgets is a perfectly acceptable way to behave. It would be poor management that simply accepted a producer's word at every turn, because then the producers might take advantage of the unwary eye of management. However, management needs to listen to the producers if they tell them that a particular project is 'unlikely' or 'impossible'. If the people in charge of making decisions tell the project team to go ahead with the hobbled schedule and budget, then the project will likely slip.
The worst part is when the development team has to take shortcuts to get the project out on time which result in more QA time at the end of the project. The ironic part is when the projects slips to meet the original schedule, but you had to do it the hard way, with lots of bug fixing and messy code.
I hope this is a trend that goes away sometime soon in game development. The three worst habits in the Game Industry are poor scheduling, mandatory overtime, and laying off the project team or studio when the game is finished, and usually those three go hand-in-hand. It's a shame when the producers are solely blamed for the process, when it is terribly unlikely that they are the primary cause.
------
=Brian
I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.evilcon.net/)
Re:I don't know... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday October 02 2003, @03:54PM)
HL2 (Score:4, Insightful)
HL2's graphics would have been so very advanced had it not been delayed repeatedly, but by now it won't really have much advantage over other games' graphics by the time it comes out this summer. I expect it'll still be a great game, with pretty exceptional graphics, but a lot more people were excited by it before.
It's All In What You Promise (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.thedanaan.com/)
You simply can't treat customers that way. Disney (despite it's current troubles) has made a mint on underpromising and over-delivering, and game companies need to start to take notice that they don't operate under a seperate rule system from the rest of their entertainment competition.
The culture of game development has a great deal wrong with it, and missing deadlines is really only the tip of the iceberg.
Marketing is the real problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, there are engineering slips, but the majority of those are because marketing (or worse, engineering management) gave the CEO a date he WANTED to hear, not the date he NEEDED to hear.
Engineering slips because the date was unrealistic, marketing points the finger, and never gets the blame.
Re:Marketing is the real problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Trust me on this one.
Slashgaming, on the frontlines (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.dreamops.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 02 2005, @10:05AM)
NEWS FLASH!!!
EXCESSIVE DELAYS HURT ANY INDUSTRY!!!
Please move along, nothing to news here.
Story and gameplay vs visuals (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://pyscrabble.sf.net/)
Games with bugs... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.azbay.net/)
Again with the stereotyping (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://manyrobots.blogspot.com/)
Haven't we already seen tons of consumer data that shows that almost all money spent on games is by people over the age of 25? And aren't both Half-Life 2 and Duke Nukem Forever going to be rated M?
Delays can be a "good thing" (Score:3, Insightful)
For example: Let's look at a case where the title released "on time" but sucked ass. The definitive example of this was Ultima 9. This was supposed to be Richard Garriot's 'swan song' for the Ultima series. The final chapter in a very successful and much loved 20 year old franchise. Immense pressure from the EA suits forced Garriot (against his pleas) to make sure U9 "shipped by Christmas". It met the delivery date expectation: at the expense of the consumer's expectations. The game was virtually unplayable. Bugs ranging from annoyances to full blown "quest killers" were rampant. Add that to the fact that you'd need a fully "state of the art" (+$2500) system to even load the thing. U9 entered the marked at $60 dollars. I never even saw it hit the $9.95 rack. It just disappeared.
Now for a company that consistantly delivers late, we need look no farther than Blizzard. Starcraft, Diablo (1 & 2), Warcraft 3 were all "vapor" for many moons. They also rank as the most successful titles in PC gaming history, with longevity and replay value that is unsurpassed. WC3 is nearly three years old, and it still sells for $40+. Diablo 2 debuted in 2000, and was on the top 10 seller list no later than 6 months ago.
As a consumer, I'm not going to spend my $50 on crap or a mediocre product. If I'm curious about a game, I'll wait till it hit's the $10 rack anyway (about 4-6 months after the release date - gotta love the irony). But if it's a hot title from a company with a record for Quality out of the box, not after "patch1.4", I'll drop the $50.
The real problem... (Score:3, Funny)
See, this wouldn't be a problem if they were just taking the money out of their mother's purses like they're supposed to.
Another example of a rushed video game (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Wednesday October 22 2003, @03:09AM)
Imagine that! Not only do we have to download patches from the internet. They actually had the balls to tell operators to install new circuitboards so they could rush something out the door.
Um not if it's from a good Developer.... (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.morbidgames.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday November 30 2004, @07:38PM)
Blizz "hay were making a game"
Kid "OMFG when is it going to be out? Is it out yet?"
Blizz "STFU you'll get it when it's done"
ID "Hay were making a game"
Kid "OMFG when is it going to be out? Is it out yet?"
ID "STFU you'll get it when it's done"
Neither of those companies will hurt for sales...they have a loyal fanbase, just the same as SE does with it's FF series...the good companies own our souls and we can't not give in to them.
OH wait this is slashdot so maybe your talking about those open source games that are announced and then never come out or are released in varying alpha and beta stages over a 6 year period and never finished...yeah I guess that would hurt your company.
Leaving Money on the Table (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://home.comcast.net/~rickrich1/)
My two big beefs with console video games are:
1) Not milking the platform for all its worth. I loved all the Mario and Zelda games. But I will never understand why Nintendo doesn't create new variations of those games, with new puzzles, but using the same world.
2) Console wars. These game manufacturers are in a race to create the next console. But why? I don't want to buy a new console. I want to buy more *GOOD* games for the consoles I already have. Games are not starved for technology. They are starved for creativity.
-Rick
Ahhh! Urrrghhh! (Score:3, Funny)
Hurts more than the gaming industry (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.peoplesrepublicwashington.blogspot.com/)
Bass-ackwards. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
The real problem is the hyping of games. They're hyping games that won't be out for over a year. I'm constantly surprised by games that just came out (I thought Chrome came out months ago, based on the hype back then). I suspect other people are, too.
For on-line games - too early is too bad! (Score:5, Interesting)
(https://equoria.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 18, @03:17PM)
Getting it out the door in a non-playable state is worse than getting it out late. Players will put up with some level of problems when a new on-line game is released. However, it there is not drastic improvement in the first month, they are gone for good.
Harvest started out shaky, but there has been so many positive changes that many are still hanging on.
The real problem is lack of communication with the customer base. Talk to us and we are very forgiving. Lie to us and we'll tell the world. (Or as least
* This one was wierd - They released the game CD's while the on-line version was still in Beta! Only, they never called it a Beta, the called it a "Prelude"! 30 player limit per server, expanded to 35! Would that be called a MicroMulti-Player Online Game?
What If It Was Movies? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://members.shaw.ca/myklgrant)
Ship when done = Never ship (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/~wowbagger/journal/87552 | Last Journal: Monday September 03, @08:07PM)
Back off that flamebait, friend - I *AM* the engineer.
If you adopt a "We will ship this when it is done" then it never will be done, for a variety of reasons:
Sometimes having a firm deadline is a wonderfully focusing motivator - the engineer will say "This is a cool idea - I will save it for AFTER the release", the marketing guys will say "Well, the customers want this really cool feature, but the return on investment isn't enough to jepordize the ship date, so we'll put it in later", the Q/A guys say "We'd better check this NOW, so any problems can get fixed before release data", and you actually make progress.
Of course, when the deadlines are not set with the buy-in of the engineers, the marketing people, and upper management, but rather are set for some highly arbitrary date....
total disagreement from here. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.enel.ucalgary.ca/~whelan)
As I sit here, after just playing a bit of halo on my xbox, I'm thinking about how the release of halo 2 has been pushed back to fall of this year. It doesn't bother me so much, as long as the game itself is good. One could say that it would be better for bungie to release a half-cooked halo 2 now, in the hope of selling more units, but I think that if bungie wants to release one of those games that are pretty much immortal and that I'll remember for a long time (such as the first halo), then they should release it when it is properly finished.
Reminds of Diablo 2 being pushed back over a year from its initial release date. For that matter, most of blizzard's games get pushed back, but the proof is in the pudding, blizzard puts the finishing touches on the games, making them top notch, and hence they move huge volumes at the stores. Did any company ever make as huge a return by releasing a buggy, unfinished product?
What's the big rush anyways? There are so many games out at any given time, that are good and worthwhile to play, that it doesn't bug me for a second if a company decides to delay their game to make it a much more quality product. I'll pay for a quality product, I won't pay for something that was pushed out the door, simply because the game company needed to ship something.
As for duke nukem forever, I'll be interested to see what they will unleash on us after all that development time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a much cooler game than we all imagine it will be. But, that's for time to tell.
Isn't that what patches are for? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well Tough! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.rpgdl.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday December 19 2004, @11:35PM)
Some games have plot (and in exceptional cases about as good as your average fantasy book). Why shouldn't they be able to delay? Some (though not all) of the books we still read as great literature were edited and rescripted for 20 years. Screw cash flow and give me quality!
Well, as the man said... (Score:5, Interesting)
Or, to quote Sid Meier:
Being a games developer myself, one thing that winds me up is hearing the poor quality of games being blamed on 'lazy developers'. Now, it's true that many games developers may not have the best engineering skills in the world, or be any good at planning/project management, but trust me, having seen so many people work late nights/weekends for long stretches of time, the problem is not that they are 'lazy', or that they don't care about the quality of the product. Lay that particular blame at the doors of other people, where it rightfully belongs.
As for dates - that usually comes down to publishers, rather than developers, as has been pointed out. The publishers push for a date related to their selling peaks (i.e. Thanksgiving), and usually refuse to consider any other date, even though they'll be going up against almost every other game that is released that year. Developers are pretty much powerless to prevent this - unless you're Valve or Bungie or Blizzard, then the publishers have all the money, and they dictate the terms. (Speaking personally, I loved the fact that when Valve demo'd Half-Life 2 at E3 and blew everyone away, they responded to questions about publishers with "We don't have a publisher yet." Unless you've worked in game development, you've probably no idea how good it felt to hear that.)
Publishers also need stuff to give their marketing [guyswithtowels.com] guys to take around and show buyers to build interest in the game. This usually comes in the form of some shoddy demo/progress build that the developers are harrassed into producing. The same goes for game demos - ever wonder why most game demos don't actually seem to do a good job of demo'ing the game, and have lots of problems that 'will be fixed in the final game'? It's because the publishers demand a demo before the game is finished.
On a game I worked on previously, we tried to avoid building up lots of hype for the game when it wasn't ready, and focussed on quality, because that's what we thought people would be interested in. Hell, no, the publisher didn't seem to care about that. They wanted screenshots, and they wanted them now! Never mind that the game wasn't even a game yet. The most important thing to them seemed to be when the profits would show up on their books. For example, they wouldn't accept a 3 month delay because then the income would slip through to the next financial year. I mean, the profits would be the same (actually, they would probably be significantly larger); they would just be appearing 3 months later. Now, I don't know much about accountancy/finance, but it seems to me that something somewhere is broken if that's how things are run. The best part was, in the trade mags, all we ever heard from games publishers was how developers were useless at business and couldn't see the bigger picture.
If your focus is always on the next quarter's results, at the expense of everything else, I think that's a good way of not having a long term plan.
Re:A DEAN HAIKU (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.shadowsrealm.com/)
With lots of Blood, Gore, Guts, and Pukem.
But the constant delays
For infinite days,
Made us all so damn mad we've rebuked em.
(And just for the sadism's sake, as it is near Valentines day, I'll go ahead and shoot myself in the foot and post this logged in)