Spore to Ship 'When It's Done' And Not Before

Citing the sheer potential of the title, EA executives John Riccitiello and Frank Gibeau stated in a conference call yesterday that Spore will not ship until it is finished. Next Generation reports: "'It's one of those breakthrough products that might come across the industry every three, five, seven years ... We could not be more bullish for the potential of the franchise as we are right now,' said Riccitiello. He said that he still expects the game to ship in the 'March, April, May' 2008 timeframe. However, Riccitiello said, 'We will make the choice of shipping a better game than an on-time game given the high potential for this franchise.'"

Balancing act

[PieSquared]

Well, the delays for Spore are starting to get frustrating. On the other hand, after all these delays it better be a pretty freaking good game... which it won't be if they rush it to put an end to the delays.

Obviously no game is ever perfect, so it is up to the developers to decide the proper balance between time spent improving the game and delays before release.

That said, nobody wants another "Duke Nukem Forever." If you spend too much time on the whole "revolutionizing videogames" someone will take the lessons presented at all these talks Wright does and actually *finish* a game that heavily utilizes procedural generation or whatever before Spore comes out, and it won't be revolutionary anymore.

Here are a few

[Moraelin]

I wonder where I've heard this here "We'll ship it when it's finished" rhetoric before?

For example, from Epic, Blizzard, and a few others who are now the big names of the industry for it. It turns out that, surprise, more people buy a game which is finished and polished than something shoved out the door to meet an arbitrary deadline. Much as a couple of publishers still hope that if they believe the opposite really, really hard, it will somehow become reality.

Re:Here are a few

[EggyToast]

Exactly. People like games that are on time. What they hate about games that are pushed back is that arbitrary deadline in the first place. If your game is probably NOT going to be ready in a year's time, DON'T say it is!

But yeah, the only thing worse than a moving deadline are patches and bugs. And last 1/3 of a game that's just tacked on and unfinished.

Re:Translation:

[the dark hero]

"Spore will ship when it is actually fun to play, instead of feeling like a session of tweaking a very complicated spreadsheet."

Then, why is Eve Online successful?

Re:Hypocrisy

[shish]

Everyone is always...

Protip: the vast majority of generalisations are horribly flawed.

the SAME people are bitching

Can you provide a list of usernames? I would think it far more likely that person A is bitching about one thing, and person B is bitching about another -- just because persons A and B visit the same website does not make them hypocrites for saying different things...

Re:Balancing act

[Knara]

Well, the delays for Spore are starting to get frustrating. On the other hand, after all these delays it better be a pretty freaking good game... which it won't be if they rush it to put an end to the delays.

I would suggest that if the delay for a game is actually *frustrating*, that you need to diversify your hobbies a little bit.

Spore is dead

[MobyDisk]

Most games must be done start to finish within 2 years. If you write a game and it takes 5 years, then the game is usually obsolete by the time it comes out. The longer the development cycle, the more difficult it is to target the hardware that will be available when you ship the game. And as the code base grows in complexity it becomes harder to maintain, test, fix bugs, etc. I think too many people say "Will Wright knows what he is doing!" and conclude everything will work out. But history shows that when a game is ambitious, overhyped, and delayed multiple times -- that the odds are not good.

I really hope Spore works out. But I think they may have become subject to high expectations and scope creep.

From The Man himself:

[El_Smack]

A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever. - Shigeru Miyamoto

Re:Spore is dead

[fullmetal55]

Most games yes, however now we're hitting a wall technologically. There's a point where current graphics, are good enough. look at half-life 2. it's still going strong, look at the sims. these are games that are older than 2 years and are still selling very well. Writing an ambitious game like this will take more than 2 years to work out all the bugs. there is a ton of gameplay in it. And they not only have to write all this gameplay mechanics, but playtest, re-work, fix bugs, make it fun. for most games a 2 year dev cycle is ample time for that. mostly because they're already on tried and true game mechanics. FPS, RTS, RPG, MMORPG... all tried and true principles, each with their own challenges and ability to customize to make your game unique. throw in a game like spore, and you have a game that spans genres, spans gameplay styles, developing that game, will take time. and I actually think that right now is the best time to do it. yes the hardware it was targetting may be the previous years, and you have a better system when it's released, that really doesn't hurt sales any, in fact it allows people who have a slower box run it fine. it expands your audience. take Doom 3 it had really steep requirements, not many people had the box to run it well, and there were many complaints. some people even going as far as to say they should have delayed until the hw was available. You say history shows that when a game is ambitious overhyped and delayed multiple times the odds aren't good, I think delays are actually sometimes good for the game. as long as the people working on it care about producing a good game. They'll take the extra time to make the game great. this has been shown in history too... Everyone throws in Duke forever... I really don't think spore can even be considered in the same class... as for the release date of "when it's done", Doom3 had that, half-life2 had that, tons of games have had that be the release date from the dev team. Marketing drones are the ones who kill games, they're the ones who kill the games that have been delayed multiple times. after all it's the marketing drones who announce the release dates. and set the deadlines. sometimes deadlines simply can't be met. is that the developer's fault? maybe, but most likely the deadlines were too strict and too soon. especially since I know how hard game devs work.

Re:Hmmm

[sdaemon]

Valve/Vivendi delayed on Half-Life 2, citing this same reason as well as the alleged hacking and source-code-stealing incident (did that ever get prosecuted?).

Frankly, I'm glad they waited. When Half-Life 2 arrived...it was *perfect*.

Like a good video game junkie, I lost about 48h of my life in one fell swoop to that game, playing it through 3 times in quick succession. I do not consider those to be wasted hours.

More companies should release products that are "finished".

Re:Despite what they say

[WilliamSChips]

"Generation" has a different meaning in the video game culture.