Battlefield 4 Pushed Through QA to Avoid Call of Duty: Ghosts Release

GR said, "The QA team behind Battlefield 4 had to do everything in its power to at least make the game playable before the launch of Call of Duty: Ghosts."

[JokesOnYou]

"a newly discovered conversation between a Reddit mod and one of the game’s testers tells the tale of a project that was rushed to market.

-haha yep 2 rushed ports, cutting corners trying to get those holiday dollars quality be dammed. Is it possible for a studio to make a bad game not for a lack of effort sure, but for these 2 companies to risk the quality of their biggest IP for sales #s instead of a higher qaulity product is ridiculous, expecially with EA and Activisions resources.

[GarrusVakarian]

Being more concerned about getting your game out before the competition than giving your paying customers a quality product is a disgusting practice. Doesn't surprise me in the least that EA would do this.

And EA wonder why they get voted the worst company in America........

[pompombrum]

Was just thinking the same thing. Can't talk about the console versions but the PC version is so screwed up, I've given up trying to play on 24+ man servers.

[TekoIie]

Yup. And it just turned out that this time there was a game breaking bug in the most important portion.... The multiplayer.

Smh EA. Smh...

[Baylex]

The big question here is... why rush things up?? EA don't need to rush Battlefield 4... COD games have been losing quality over the years, just beacause Activision makes a COD game every F*K*NG year... it's ridiculous.. They should put their eyes on R* and GTA, just don't rush things up and the game will eventually make up for the effort of doing a quality title!

[Jovanian]

it wouldn't make sense for themt o put their eyes on rockstar and GTA, because EA is directly after the multiplayer shooter market and in that regard their biggest multiplatform contender is COD. regardless of quality, the numbers support COD

[Shake_Zula]

I think it's the fact that Activision releases a game every year. Also, I think that is why most of the multiplatform games are releasing before the next gen releases. Both BF4 and Ghosts are good examples of improved and expanded last-gen engines that function in the "next-gen" environment.

Also, you have to consider the launch as a reset point for these games. For EA, BF4 has quite a bit to prove especially since CoD apparently has the "crown", so for both games, it is better to have a piece of the pot from the jump than to try to pry away later down the road. It's a business decision rationalized by the PS3/360 launch difference relationship as opposed to a game development decision. And, I think they are making the right choice here.

[JokesOnYou]

Swadian yeah I get what you're saying but who cares, I mean as a dev why is the competition so important? I mean Im not naive sure its important because its about $$$, but as a studio Id rather make 50mil profit and be the class of the industry than make 70mil profit and be known to put out medicore products. Baylex is right they should look at R* as an example of the right way to make a quality product, if either of them care more about the competition selling more every year that mindset leads to a lesser product. I mean even Bungie, now 343 are good examples of taking your time with a IP that is obviously a big hit and is going to be around for a long time, sure you could call Halo milked but as long as gamers know its their best effort every time then games like that will always be known for quality.

Look I think both studio's will recover and based on the bad press at least put alot more effort into next years cash cow but its just obvious they are taking advantage of early adopters eargerness for next gen gaming.

Edit
vvvv Swadian yeah I agree GTA is always buggy no matter how long R* takes but even you would have to admit their games have huge worlds a fully fleshed out story and tons of quality work in so many other areas, I mean what they do on each gens hardware always seems to be stressing the boundaries.

[Jovanian]

@Jokes

I hate to be cynical about this but I suppose BF4 did imitate GTA5 in that they both had buggy, broken multiplayer modes upon release

[Baylex]

@Swadian_Grognard It's not about the broken multiplayer in the launch day, we all know that's always going to happen. It's about the whole game, how manny of us where eager to play GTA?? how many years have passed since GTA IV? you see, we were all diyng to play GTA V becayse we all knew that the game was going to be awsome!!
But for COD, well let's put it this way, I play COD Ghosts this year, and when the game is pretty much dead, I know that in some months another COD will come out and I will play some COD again... now this is just stupid. Activision should just make a quick pause on this, and stop thinking always about the $$$..
Imagine if this year(2013) only COD comes out, then in 2014 BF4 comes out, then again in 2015 another COD comes out, the hype would be much bigger, we would have a much better quality title and I'm sure they would sell like hot cakes... And you would play the first COD and then the BF4 and again the better COD in 2015..
It's just the way I see things..

[nukeitall]

@jap:

"Being more concerned about getting your game out before the competition than giving your paying customers a quality product is a disgusting practice."

Not getting the game in your customer hands means reduced funding next year. It is a pretty disgusting practice, but a necessary one I'm sure.

Both financials and game quality is somewhat interlinked.

[theXtReMe1]

So much for being discreet and not posting it Word for Word. I don't think that guys going to be talking to them ever again.

Testers are the grunts of the industry. They get the weight of the world thrust on their shoulders. Basically, making sure everybody elses work is competent. There are only so many bugs they can catch, before a game is released. Especially if the game is being pushed out before its ready. So it's basically up the gamers to find the rest of the issues and report them back to developer.

That is the problem, as games become more and more intricate… So do the issues. God bless the game testers of the world and everything they have to go through. They don't get paid nearly enough for everything they have to put up with.

[FunkMacNasty]

wow, I can't believe people actually disagreed with you! Whoever diagreed was a complete idiot, as they obviously don't understand that it's not the fault of testers. The broken-ness of the game lies strictly in the hands of EA exects, who made the call to release the game when they did. I'm sure the devs and testers at DICE don't want their name on some junked up glitch fest of a game. But EA exects don't care. EA execs are only concerned with taking CoD's crown ("crown" equals "dollars" to them)

Playing BF4 on ps3, and though I'm enjoying it immensely, the lack of quality control is pretty apparent, specifically in graphical and animation glitches... oh and theres that whole "no audio" thing when you jump in a vehichle...

[theXtReMe1]

I think people disagree sometimes, just to disagree. Regardless, it doesn't matter to me. How anybody can disagree that the testers are some of the hardest working people in the industry, basically catching the issues that the programmers caused. Think of how many lines of code are in games like Battlefield. There are limitless situations which could cause bugs. So I'm using the AK-47, riding in a jeep and I shoot a stop sign along the road and the bullet bounces off and hits a vehicles tire, which causes the game to freeze. How could I ever think in my mind to test for that? This is what the testers have to go through 10, 12, 16 hrs. a day, every day.

They have to test limitless different situations, to make sure there's no issues from A to B to C to D, whole way to Z. To make sure that the games that we play are as bug free as possible. It is impossible in a five-year time period, to test for everything. You just have to do the best job you possibly can and hope that was good enough, so there is as little bugs as possible in the game.

That's why my hat always goes off to these testers. They don't get any of the credit and take the brunt of the negativity when something goes wrong, even though they didn't program one line of code in the entire game.

[mhunterjr]

Of the two titles, COD appears to be the one that is rushed. The fact that it performs horribly, regardless of platform, leads me to believe that.

[DirtyLary]

Which is incredible considering it's the same engine for 6 years. At least DICE is trying to advance their game and push the boundaries with a new engine.

[Jovanian]

probably would have been better to just take their time and let their opponents make the mistake, which they certainly have been doing

[TheGreyWarrior]

This.

http://static.fjcdn.com/com...

[STK026]

Seeing how I played with 4 friends yesterday on PC, and not one of us did not crash at least twice at some point leads me to believe this is true. Random crashes and disconnects in addition to Battle log having what I consider to be one of the worst server browsers I used in the last several years are really hurting my game experience with Battlefield 4, so much that I might not buy DICE's future games.

[iRocket]

Oh dear...

This is what happens when big publishers take over. They want the devs to rush their games to meet deadlines before the competition, instead of taking their time and making the best possible product. Nowadays it's "the best possible release we have the time to make". Which is really sad. I'm sure most of the dev team wants to make it as smooth when it's launched, but simply they don't have the time. They have to work after the game release even faster, so they could fix the game as soon as possible, which has to strain the people making these fixes. This also shows why annualising hurts games.
I really wish that games could co-exist peacefully even in the minds of the publishers, who see everything as a race to the dollars/euros/whatever, rather than making a satisfying and as bugless game they can. People who play CoD, and people who play Battlefield will buy their favourite games when it releases, a game doesn't necessarily "steal" the competitors players, as some people wouldn't buy CoD or Battlefield in any case.

Just my 0.02 $

[windblowsagain]

I haven't bought BF4 for this reason atm.

Beta worked fine for me, but too many stories of bugs etc.

I'll wait till patched.

[sovietsoldier]

somehow i can totally believe they rushed it, but i would still rather play it while crashing every match then a smooth game of cod.