Why Release Unfinished Games?

Why does an unfinished game get released? There are several reasons. Surely many of you are aware of some. But to be fair, let's delve in to the game development process a bit, shall we?

[Troll_Police]

Because people get mad if you delay the unfinished game. They get mad and criticize Media Molecule for delaying LBP2 to work out the bugs but praise Bethsaida for releasing an unfinished Fallout New Vegas.

[lzim]

But better they release it and keep working on it in the background (as sequels) instead of being idiots like PD and just never release the title, holding it back for an entire console generation.

[rdgneoz3]

They did release prologue and the PSP game, not like they have done at all nothing at all. And seeing how massive it is compared to other racing games, you won't find anything close to it for a long time. Also, I prefer delays over game breaking bugs and crap that should have been fixed in the first place.

[juniordee]

Let's not forget Tourist Trophy.

[King-Leonidas]

dude are you f*****g serious? How are PD idiots? I dont think they coulda achieved those graphics without seriously working their asses off. I just don't think that it's possible to release such game every 2-3 years.

[ExplosionSauce]

Yes because PD finished the game in 2006 and held it back "for an entire console generation".

/S

[JimmyJames70]

That's just not right.

[NewsForMe]

New Vegas isn't unfinished, it's unpolished. Everything is there content wise, there are just bugs/glitches.

[number47]

Honestly... vegas is severely buggy. Thats just not a glitch here or there. I'd imagine the bug/gltich QC isn't finished.. thus

unfinished..

[Ares84PS3]

The real reason is money.

It's much more profitable to release some parts of a game as DLC that could have been on the disk day 1 but wasn't (or is just locked).

$$$ iz dolla son $$$

:D

[NYC_Gamer]

its for the quick dollar

[lzim]

and to keep the franchise fresh and relevant without burning money on marketing.

[JimmyJames70]

A quick dollar that they won't get a second time when they continually release buggy games.

[kneon]

You would think so but it doesn't seem to work that way, people buy anyway.

Fool me once, shame on you
Fool me twice, shame on me
Fool me thrice, I must be a gamer :)

[lzim]

money and time constraints. It would cost more to continue working on it, especially QA if the game isn't projected to do that well anyway.

Plus for years the rule has practically been release it as long as it is functional and patch it later. All platforms support such update paths in one way or another.

[kube00]

I think of a great example Fallout New Vegas, its also so companies don't miss deadlines

[JimmyJames70]

Even with the bugs, I still want to play New Vegas. Hopefully, they will have some patches before I finally get to it.

[RyanDJ]

Missing a deadline = Duke Nukem Forever. Killed an entire company!

[rmedtx888]

Releasing unfinished games is a bad business practice. But they are doing it because we are allowing it. We should not buy broken games. If we read reviews that says that the game has a lot of bugs we should not buy it. We know it will get fixed later but that's not the point.

[SpinalRemains138]

Its a good thing they don't do this with hardware.

[RyanDJ]

You could say they did. Red Ring of Death?

And honestly, I know they're cool, but how many iterations of handheld devices need there be?

I remember seeing an original DS, with the dotty touch screen, that's "improved" in the next iteration...

[radphil]

It's a little late for that....

[JimmyJames70]

For the buggy games, just rent 'em or get 'em through Goozex. Tell the publishers you're not going to pay $60 for a buggy game.

[RyanDJ]

why I think the market moves too fast. Technology in general is too fast for its own good. If we made a deal to slow down and not make anything "new" at all for a year or two, we could catch up. Like nobody would put out a Mario-1 level game with bugs now, we have features that can catch that stuff obviously. Everyone tries to be too cutting-edge. Just give me a game that's solid...I don't care how pretty it looks.

[RyanDJ]

Plus the almighty dollar....I hear people complain about sports games that have no innovation. They come out once a year, as per requirement. I think they should make every other year DLC so they can improve the engine and game instead of tweaking the necessary yearly things over and over. But they won't, because every year the game makes money. And every year, you can find last year's title used for 99 cents.

[divideby0]

because dumb gamers will still buy the crap.
I didnt buy FallOut and Fable because of the problems with these games.
I have the $$$, both were pre-ordered, but I am not gonna spend $$ on meh and broken games.
Gamers have just become fanboyish sheep and toss $$ away on unfinished products.
I will wait till the games are patched and by than the games should be hopefully finished and of course cheaper.
Next week GS will have a bunch of used Fables

[jha1223]

Agreed. I think that, on a subconscious level, we evaluate a game and decide if we would rather play the game with bugs or not play the game and miss the experience of the game as a whole.

The sales of a game set the standards. If a game that has great content and overall great gameplay, but is laden with bugs, sells well, we are essentially telling the game companies we are ok with it - no matter how much we bitch on the net.

While I agree, I don't think it is realistic to believe that the entire game community will stop buying buggy games and that will require the game companies to raise the standards.

[Nadger]

Anyone else find this entire article pointless? The headline made it seem like the most obvious reasons are not always the case as to why an unfinished game hits the market. Only to read the whole thing to find out that yes, its only stretching the reasons everyone already knows into a long article.

You may as well write an article explaining why murder is bad.

[RyuDrinksTheDew]

if they delay it, people get pissed. if they release a game with glitches, people get pissed.

me, if its good, i look past the glitches, because where i live, in reality, nothing is perfect.

[AlienFodder]

Does anyone know what game the screenshot they chose to illustrate the article comes from? It looks like Assassin's Creed but I can't say for sure...

[N311V]

Looks like AC2 to me, Ezio has his head up a horses ass.

[kamehamehaftw]

Nice article. Throughly enjoyed reading through it.

[Vortex3D]

If you don't like playing new games that are buggy, don't rush to buy the new games on day 1. Read reviews and forums to see the types of bugs in the new game. If the game is reported to be too buggy for your taste, don't buy it.

If you do like to buy the game, wait for a while until the patches have fixed most of the nasty bugs.

That is how I buy most of my games now. No day 1. Wait until the patches have fixed most of the bugs. If I don't do this, I'm just telling the game publishers that I'm too dumb to buy into unfinished buggy games.

Even I say this, too many gamers simply have no patience to do it. Many rather play at day 1 and then complain why the game is so buggy. Reality is who is the dumb one here, the game publisher or the gamer?

As for time and cost for making polished games, if gamers refused to buy buggy shipped game, then quality has be part of the game development cost. If gamers are like today that willing to buy buggy games, the game publishers see that as the cost saving in the game development. Just need to budget the QA part way and it's good enough to ship the game half baked in quality since there are enough gamers that will buy the games anyway.

With game publishers need to make maximum possible profit and gamers keep demanding to have the game as soon as possible, this is the direction games are going and will continue to get worse. It's all supply and demand. In this case, supply poor quality quickly because demand is high.

[Trroy]

Quarterly profit reports, and lack of insightful game development knowledge at the high levels in publishing companies.

That's the reason.

[scar20]

Mw2 anybody.