Being a game developer can be an
incredibly rewarding job, financially and socially; however, the rewards do not
come without hard work. Some may look down upon gaming as just a hobby or a
silly way to pass time, but big blockbuster games with multimillion dollar
budgets have much more to offer than that. There are global tournaments with
real cash prizes, large communities where people, including myself, can make
real lifelong friendships (and rivalries), and, yes, gaming is also a fun way
to pass time. But what happens when the release of one of those big blockbuster
titles does not go as expected?
Such was the case with Halo: The Master Chief Collection, a
game developed by 343 Industries. It is the culmination of all the previous
Halo titles, games that shaped first person shooters as we know them starting 13
years ago, all remastered and upgraded to run smoothly on the current
generation Xbox One console. Sounds great, right?
It should have been. The game
shipped with numerous game breaking issues, and it is currently assumed that
the developers knew it was broken when it went gold (they have denied this, but
evidence to the contrary makes their claims hard to believe). The most notable failure
is the matchmaking system. Matchmaking is where you can go online, solo or with
friends, and be matched up with other players around the world based on skill
for competitive gaming. At any time of day or night, no matter what my friends
are up to, I can go online and play intense competitive team or solo games, big
or small, whatever I want. Not only that, but it allows for me to make new friends
with some of these random people I've been matched with and foster the
community element of the game. In the case of the Master Chief Collection, this
was impossible. The game would most often search indefinitely for matches,
producing no results. When the search was actually successful, there would be
uneven teams, the game would crash, load improperly, or (best case scenario)
you would be matched with people way more (or less) talented than you, making
the matches fast and boring.
The matchmaking was not the only
issue with the game. There were other issues, one of which being the person who
came in first place would see “1th Place!” on their screen, a glaring error
that made people wonder how much effort really went into testing this $60
product for which millions of people were buying a $500 console.
The community was hopeful for a
quick fix at first, but when update after update came and went and the game was
still cripplingly broken, players began losing hope that their purchase would
ever fully work. Many people demanded refunds from Microsoft, or sold the game
back to the retailer. Others just stuck it back on the shelf to collect dust and
returned to the last game they were playing. Others gave up and just started
working on their homework.
You may ask, so what? Big deal, it’s
just a game. It will probably be fixed eventually. What does this have to do
with society?
The whole situation gives birth to
a range of new questions and topics separate from the technical details of the game. First, the community wonders why it is
okay for these developers to (allegedly) knowingly ship a broken product when
everyone else in the world simply gets fired when they do not meet their
deadlines. Why should exceptions be made for game developers? There were most certainly missed deadlines at 343. People also
wonder why it is okay to have spent $60 on a product just to find out that it
does not work as advertised, and then to get hassled when trying to get their money
back. Would people be happy if they bought a new coffee machine which just
happened to drip all the grind into their mugs? No, they would fight for their money
back. Same goes for Halo.
It also brings to question the
topic of preordering. Preordering is when you can pay for a game long before it
is released to be guaranteed a copy on the release date. There is now a large
initiative among gamers to stop preordering games, because so many people paid
for Halo under the assumption that it would work come release. They
think preordering allows for developer laziness, since they have already been paid for
the product before it is even finished. What incentive does this give them to
finish on time? They argue that if nobody preordered, word would have spread
about the status of the game before people got around to buying it. Since money
talks, the community is confident this would have resulted in a quicker fix.
Today, significant progress has
been made towards repairing Halo, and a big overhaul update is going to be made in the coming weeks
that should (hopefully) get everything working as it should have been in November. The developers have compensated the community with a free month of Xbox Live and tons of new
in game content. As for the game itself, however, gamers are worried that the damage
already done to the community is irreparable. The fear is that most people have
already moved on to greener grass, and that when (and if) the Master Chief Collection works problem-free, nobody will care. People say that they paid $60 for the community and experience of Halo, and that even once the bugs are worked out, if the experience is not there, they have not gotten what they paid for.
I'm confident that the game will be fixed and there will still be other people to play with when that time comes. There are definitely quite a number of drama queens in the gaming community, but in this case, they raise valid points. I have learned to be a little more cautious about paying for things before I'm sure they're going to work. Especially as a college student, $60 is a lot of money to pay for grinds in my coffee.
I think that your opinion on this matter is completely valid. In any other circumstance when something does not work people do get their money back more or less without any problems. Paying for something in advance that doesn't work should be addressed. I think that pre-ordering should still be allowed as long as the final product is functioning. I think that should be the end goal, that even if the deadline for the release of a game is not met the people who purchased it are entitled to having a fully functioning game.
ReplyDeleteYou've highlighted a massive issue with game development and publishing that has really begun to rear its head in recent years. Starting with the PC and spreading out to home consoles with the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, the practice of distributing patches and bug fixes for games via the internet has proven itself to be a rather convenient system. With older consoles, game developers and publishers couldn't distribute patches so widely, so they had to be extremely vigilant of issues while play-testing their games and hope to find and eliminate them all. With the PC and today's consoles, the ability to buy a game on its release day with confidence that any bugs will be discovered and ironed out makes the buyer feel safe; however, as the issues pointed out in this post would indicate, it also seems to allow developers to feel safe. I have personally noticed with some games that some developers don't seem to take their games' day one performance very seriously anymore. The kinds of issues I’ve seen weren’t nearly as game-breaking as the matchmaking problems of Halo: The Master Chief Collection; most of them were purely aesthetic bugs and glitches. However, it does still affect the buyer’s experience with the game, and raises some of the same questions as The Master Chief Collection and its issues did. Did the developers really test their game thoroughly enough to ensure that day one buyers got what they paid $60 for? Or did they just figure that, since releasing patches via the internet is so easy, they can sell their rough draft and make fixes to it later on without consequence? With today’s quick-fix system for patching games, many developers seem to be perfectly fine with releasing an unfinished product and slapping a big fat price tag on it, and approaching bugs and glitches – whether aesthetically sloppy or completely game-breaking – with the mentality of “we’ll get to it later”.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the message you are focusing on. There have been many game companies who create deadlines and release dates and neglect the polishing and refinement of their game. I recently experienced this lack of performance testing after buying and playing a video game called Watch Dogs for Playstation 3. I soon found out after a mere hour of playing how terribly the game performed. There were many times when the game would crash or cause the Playstation 3 to freeze with the only solution being a complete restart of the game console. Other times the video and sound would be out of sync during a scripted cutscene. I wish game companies took more responsibility for their laziness or inability to produce a product that performs as advertised and instead focused on creating a better game just as a coffee machine manufacturer focuses on creating a functional coffee maker.
ReplyDeleteI think a great point that you brought up is the concern that comes along with preordering a video game nowadays. Preordering used to be a tool to assure that you would receive a copy of the video game you wanted when you went to the store on launch day. Nowadays with digital copies, most of the time preordering is a dangerous gamble. There's no longer a need to pay in advance for a copy as the digital version is always available. However, video game developers are still trying to secure as many preorders as possible before their game launches to maximize revenue. They reward customers with "preorder exclusives", which could be exclusive in-game DLC or an actual object like a t-shirt or piece of concept art. They also put a large budget on advertising at conventions such as E3 to try and make their game look as epic as possible to the gaming audiences. As you said, the dangerous thing with this is that sometimes the product isn't as advertised. It seems scummy for companies to put so much effort into securing preorders when their game may not even work as intended. I think the solution to this as many people online have pointed out is to simply stop preordering games. There is no downside other than losing out on some exclusives, and you reserve the power to speak with your money once the game reveals what it's truly like after launch.
ReplyDeleteThere was a time when development teams were tiny. The original Super Mario Bros had a programming team of three people. Super Mario Bros was small enough that if there were any large, game-breaking bugs it would only take a few hours to tell. Video games are getting bigger and bigger every year. Games now are so large and so complex that they take weeks to complete. Game of the Year Dragon Age: Inquisition takes anywhere between 100-200 hours to finish. That's insane.
ReplyDeleteWhen we hear that something is going to happen on a certain date, we get excited for it. It's part of the hype. Having a release date is an important part of the marketing process. Companies do it all the time. And when release dates get pushed back, we are disappointed. It kind of throws a wrench into the whole momentum of excitement. Companies, it seems, would rather release a broken game than push games back.
But I would not put the blame on lazy developers. They, too, are victims of the publisher's demands. During crunch time they face eighty-hour work weeks as they struggle to meet the bare minimum requirements in the time they are given. Sacrifices have to be made. Sometimes the product is a game that passes as working, but really does not. Not only is working eighty hours a week unhealthy, but it's also bad for your product. Careless mistakes are made. Someone comes in 1th instead of 1st.
The problem is that games are getting bigger and bigger and companies don't understand that games are needing more and more time for development and testing to compensate for that. I hope they figure it out soon, because this needs to stop.
I can see where you're coming from. As a fellow video game player, I too get frustrated when games aren't up to par. However, we have to understand that developers are business minded. They will release games that they know are incomplete for the sole purpose of release DLC packs or such for us to pay for and for them to make money. These packs have new stuff in it but also fix old problems that we complain about. In my opinion, no amount of petitions or boycotts can stop this problem for within every human is a desire to make more money.
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