Burning Embers: The Problems With Releasing Games On Time
Would you rather a game come out later and have little to no bugs or be released later and have to deal with the glitches for a few months? Personally I’d like games to come out early with no glitches but it doesn’t seem like the world works that way.
In recent events a couple games of note have come out with very noticeable glitches: Arkham city with it’s console save file problem and the pc version with the DirectX 11 compatability issues and then there is Skyrim with lag issues, save file issues, texture issues, and much more that I’ve encountered myself. Why do these developers feel they can release these games and leave us to suffer with the consequences? We payed for quality games and all we’ve gotten is a ticket to play a sub-quality game until they fix the problems.
Also, let’s take a look at the quality of games. Skyrim is a high quality game, but you get fed the same lines over and over again by NPC’s. Some times NPCs who have moved don’t even realize that they’re not in Markarth anymore. Then you have the texture oopsies. These are areas that look “blocky”. Take for example a patch of grass next to a patch of snow. They look more like connecting triangles and squares rather than a seamless landscape. Then you have the partially invisible boulders or rock faces. This is something you would only stumble upon but it’s still something that the devs overlooked. There are plenty of other things wrong that I could go through but that would probably take a few more paragraphs and you most likely get my idea.
So I want your opinion. What do you think devs should do? Should they release games early with highly noticeable and annoying glitches? Should they wait to release the game until most of the glitches or all of them are addressed? Comment below and tell me what you think.
Comments:
I’ve always said, “I don’t want to hear about a game coming out until about a week before hand.” Mainly because if it a game I really want to play, it would take away the waiting part. ESPECIALLY when they push it back!!! So I think developers or whoever should give themselves plenty of time to work out all the kinks in a game and set a date that they know they can make while still keeping the game in good quality.
Some of those issues in Skyrim may simply be the result of a size capacity. I would imagine that the 360 disc is damn near full, and I don’t know how an open world game would work with two disks. So stuff like repeating phrases and burry/blocky textures could imply be the result of the size of the disk. For a world as big as Skyrim’s, lowering the quality of the textures even slightly would probably reduce the overall size fairly significantly. Of course, I don’t know the first thing about making video games so I could be completely wrong. Just my $0.02.