Lesson Learned
Thursday, 4. September 2008, 13:29:27
It is with considerable smugness that I read the reviews of game developer GSC's latest not-quite-as-good-as-its-forbear addition to the excellent S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise, Clear Sky...followed by the bitter comments beneath the review of people 
bemoaning the bugs present in the game and settling in for the long, frustrating wait for a patch to arrive that magically restores the game to something like its intended glory.
I went through this with the original game, the stunning Shadow of Chernobyl. It took approximately four months and five or six patches to get the game stabilised and running without technical issues, which for many of us early-buyers were preventing us from enjoying one of the best games we'd seen in years. We knew it was there - we just couldn't get at it. And GSC, at least initially, seemed quite adamant that the fault lay not with their code but with our machines!
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky
This was not the first time I'd heard this, however.
Egosoft, a german games development unit, also pulled out the excuses (Your PC, not our game) when their hotly anticipated next-gen space empire-building game, X3: Reunion, arrived on PCs around the world in shoddy, early-beta form. Patch 1.4 - after around six months of waiting and testing successive patch releases, was the one that not only polished the game to a smooth and playable state but revealed those words to be utter nonsense.
X3: Reunion
On PC, When games don't work properly the usual result is for the game-player to then begin a long process of troubleshooting, tweaking and diagnostics, looking at the underlying OS, the hardware and any troublesome device drivers that might be acting up. Braver souls will also start fiddling with the games' configuration files. Thus it was particulary insulting to be told that OUR carefully maintained gaming rigs were the problem. And the fact that 99% of the other games we owned worked without the horrendous sound and graphical issues didn't seem to occur to either developer until much later (after many venomous comments left on their forums and message boards).
I bought both games on the day of release. The X3 experience stung in its own right, but when GSC/STALKER did the very same thing to me I decided enough was enough. No longer was I going to support developers/publishers releasing buggy, unfinshed code that we, the paying public, would be forced to test for them at the expense of enjoying our purchases: I would wait until the games significantly dropped in price or had even reached the secondary markets, like eBay or Gamestation's secondhand bins where I could both pick up a bargain and deprive the devs of their direct revenue. By that point in time all the bugs should have been squashed.
It is terrible that it has come to this in modern PC gaming; I'm actually beginning to envy the simplicity of consoles(!), and have learned to despise publishers who shift things out to market too early to make a quick buck. Looking at Clear Sky such hostility and cynicism towards the business end of my favoured pastime feels entirely vindicated.
Hallo, little boy. *hiss* Want to buy an unfinished game...?
bemoaning the bugs present in the game and settling in for the long, frustrating wait for a patch to arrive that magically restores the game to something like its intended glory.I went through this with the original game, the stunning Shadow of Chernobyl. It took approximately four months and five or six patches to get the game stabilised and running without technical issues, which for many of us early-buyers were preventing us from enjoying one of the best games we'd seen in years. We knew it was there - we just couldn't get at it. And GSC, at least initially, seemed quite adamant that the fault lay not with their code but with our machines!
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky
This was not the first time I'd heard this, however.
Egosoft, a german games development unit, also pulled out the excuses (Your PC, not our game) when their hotly anticipated next-gen space empire-building game, X3: Reunion, arrived on PCs around the world in shoddy, early-beta form. Patch 1.4 - after around six months of waiting and testing successive patch releases, was the one that not only polished the game to a smooth and playable state but revealed those words to be utter nonsense.
X3: Reunion
On PC, When games don't work properly the usual result is for the game-player to then begin a long process of troubleshooting, tweaking and diagnostics, looking at the underlying OS, the hardware and any troublesome device drivers that might be acting up. Braver souls will also start fiddling with the games' configuration files. Thus it was particulary insulting to be told that OUR carefully maintained gaming rigs were the problem. And the fact that 99% of the other games we owned worked without the horrendous sound and graphical issues didn't seem to occur to either developer until much later (after many venomous comments left on their forums and message boards).
I bought both games on the day of release. The X3 experience stung in its own right, but when GSC/STALKER did the very same thing to me I decided enough was enough. No longer was I going to support developers/publishers releasing buggy, unfinshed code that we, the paying public, would be forced to test for them at the expense of enjoying our purchases: I would wait until the games significantly dropped in price or had even reached the secondary markets, like eBay or Gamestation's secondhand bins where I could both pick up a bargain and deprive the devs of their direct revenue. By that point in time all the bugs should have been squashed.
It is terrible that it has come to this in modern PC gaming; I'm actually beginning to envy the simplicity of consoles(!), and have learned to despise publishers who shift things out to market too early to make a quick buck. Looking at Clear Sky such hostility and cynicism towards the business end of my favoured pastime feels entirely vindicated.
Hallo, little boy. *hiss* Want to buy an unfinished game...?
)
Feel free to chime in if there's anything you'd like to see more of.
WIDGETIZE