Delays Hurt Video Game Business

George Bailey writes "Wired.com has an article (No Room for Slacking in Game Biz) dicussing the damage game developers cause themselves via delays in releasing games to market. To quote from the article: 'As the games become more complex and sophisticated, less of them seem to meet release dates that companies initially tout. A few years ago, the fallout was usually just disappointment among fans. But as the video-game industry matures and surpasses Hollywood in size, more is at stake -- like marketing campaigns delayed and intricate positioning against competitors disrupted. What's more, missing a promised release date can bleed buzz, precious in an industry where many young buyers have to take the time to squirrel away $50 for a typical purchase.'"

Re:Big business. No problem. Move along.

[cubicledrone]

saying that over 100,000 man-hours were spent on the game...

It would take less time to build a small shopping center.

Re:What they should do...

[Analysis Paralysis]

This can backfire seriously if the game ends up being released without proper testing. Take Temple of Elemental Evil as a recent example - still buggy after the first patch (one of the bugs fixed was gems in a treasure chamber turning player characters into chairs...) and now a second patch is in testing (written by the head developer in his spare time). Pools of Radiance (Ruins of Myth Drannor) required four patches - one to fix a serious installer problem that could result in system files being deleted.

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!

Another example of a rushed video game

[rock_climbing_guy]

Does anyone on Slashdot frequent video arcades? I think the height of rushing unfinished games out the door was when they released the Mortal Kombat 4 ARCADE game. For those of you who are not familiar, Mortal Kombat 4 shipped without all the fighters in the game. They actually patched the game by sending out new circuit boards.

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.

Re:hmm...

[Yoda's Mum]

Maybe the price falls in the US, here (in Australia) you're lucky for it to drop by $10au six months after the game's released. And despite our dollar having risen from .50usd to .78usd in the last year, the games still all cost around $90au (that used to be equivalent to just under $50usd, now it's about $70usd). Bloody publishers, no wonder piracy's so huge here.

I actually think that....

[MysteriousMystery]

I actually think that more games should be delayed. Having worked on that side of the industry for quite a few years now (I am speaking almost strictly on the console side). As the transition into fully 3D games especially in the console arena has become complete the number of quality titles, and the quality of the overall marketplace has weakened significantly.

There are a number of reasons for this, first and for most is developers insistance on 3D games. Back in the previous generation of games there was still a good number of 2D, 2.5D and polygonal but not fully 3D games out. Companies spend far too much time trying to make fully 3D engines that look good while paying now attention to how they play. This is mainly with regards to adventure games, platformers, and first person style games. There is a big emphasis on reusing the same already flawed 3D engines rather then improving upon them.

Very few companies have the resources to release a "great" game in say an 18 month development perioid. The result is that many companies try and rather then miss their holiday season deadline rush bad games to the market.

Re:For on-line games - too early is too bad!

[MMaestro]

I bailed FFIX (great content, poor user interface).

I think you ment to say FFXI (FF11) since FFIX (FF9) was a singleplayer game only and was for the PS1.

Also, I don't think you made a fair judgement on FFXI. Don't forget the game is/was designed for PS2 gaming, so having too many seperate menus wouldn't be an option without turning the PS2 into a very rigid PC.

Re:hmm...

[Dun Malg]

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.

My father, an engineer, worked for Hughes Aircraft as a project manager for years. What he most often had to tell the engineers he managed was "better is the enemy of good enough". Engineers...always trying to make it a little better.

True in some regard

[funky_vernacular]

having worked, and still working, in the the gaming industry for several years, a lot of the missed shipping dates arise from the marketing and biz people wanting to hit thier 'projected' sales peak timeframe (whatever that ambiguous time may be, however holiday release understandably being the only one which i feel has any credibility) -- anyhoo, biz/marketing people push for an unrealistic time frame, dev says it will be tough, though never saying 'Hell no we cant do it!' (even though this is what will happen) -- Dev checks off on the date, biz is happy for a while, slowly dev misses milestones, demos arent ready for mags, LOT checks and QA from the SONY/MS/NOA come back with a shit load of bugs causing further delay etc. etc. slippery slope created...some hooing and hollering, and boom -- youve missed unrealistic ship date -- I blame both parties however the dev will most likely get the short end of the deal if they say they cant do it...publisher will simply go find some other dev team which will give the publisher a hollow and fraile promise... i could go on writing further, but i will spare myself... --