Africa's Toto
Banned
Is game development being held back by increasingly tight deadlines?
My opinion:
Games release with more bugs than they used to, and buggy, broken games are more common than they used to be.
Yes, games in the past had significant bugs on release, and yes, they were also horrible and game-breaking.
But it wasn't almost every single game. When a game went gold then, you could take that physical copy, store it, take it out after 5 years and have almost the exact same experience as someone who'd just bought it. A playable state, with few game-breaking bugs and systems working as intended.
And crunch is another topic entirely, but I think it's always been a part of game development. It's just worse these days.
Some of my guesses for why this is:
- Overambitious development goals
- Ease of digital patching making QA less prioritized
- Pressure from investors/shareholders in the case of public companies
Note: I'm not counting live service games as they're basically early access in all but name (to me).
Thoughts?
My opinion:
Games release with more bugs than they used to, and buggy, broken games are more common than they used to be.
Yes, games in the past had significant bugs on release, and yes, they were also horrible and game-breaking.
But it wasn't almost every single game. When a game went gold then, you could take that physical copy, store it, take it out after 5 years and have almost the exact same experience as someone who'd just bought it. A playable state, with few game-breaking bugs and systems working as intended.
And crunch is another topic entirely, but I think it's always been a part of game development. It's just worse these days.
Some of my guesses for why this is:
- Overambitious development goals
- Ease of digital patching making QA less prioritized
- Pressure from investors/shareholders in the case of public companies
Note: I'm not counting live service games as they're basically early access in all but name (to me).
Thoughts?