Do gaming companies really ship out games that they know are terrible

[darkchrono]

We've all seen them and seen reviews of them. Games that are so terrible that they almost appear to be broken. But do you think in alot of these instances the gaming companies purposely shipped out a game that they new was either terrible or simply not finished. Or do you think in most cases the gaming company did work hard at making it a good quality game but creating games is such a complicated process often times that sometimes they don't put things together just right and the game ends up being really bad because of that.

So do you think gaming companies for the most part always try to put out good quality games but sometimes things just go array. Or do you think at times they do ship out games that they know is a sloppy sloppy mess and they just ship it out to meet deadlines or just to get as much money out of the failed project as they possibly can.

[escobert]

To tell you the truth I wondered this not long ago. I really don't know though. I have no clue. I mean part of me says bah they'ed never make a game they new sucked. Why waste the money? But then again, some games have REALLY sucked. So I dunno.

[BatChao]

I've worked at a couple game publishers, so this is what I've seen at my time there. Games are not made intentionally bad, of course. However, most of the time, by the time you can see that a game is going down the wrong path, it's already too late. This is because the engine is already in place and a lot of time and money has been spent on it. At this point, people do their best to tweak it as much as they can to make it better. Yes, many times, deadlines must be met and games must be shipped out before they have been properly run through all the cogs of development (usually, QA time gets shafted and games come out looking buggy). I worked on a PSP launch title, and that happened. It also depends on the profile of the title. Gaming is also a business, so publishers and developers have to balance quality and time and money and try to max out quality and money made while keeping time and cost as minimal as possible. Unless you work at some place like Rare, where your titles are expected to be perfect, it's very unlikely that a deadline will be missed in order to tweak the game some more. It's just the way it is... missing a street date will probably lose more money than releasing a product that isn't quite finished yet. Or in some cases, it's best to just release a crappy game and make some money off it rather than completely can it. You'd be surprised on how much work goes into making even a horrible game... Some ideas look great on paper, but don't turn out correctly and it's too late to turn back. Of course, if it is early enough in development, and things just don't seem to be going right, it may also be a better idea to can the game. It all depends on the situation.

[Markus. D]

what about that game where you have to steer a truck through an obstacle course... ovcourse you could drive elswhere till the mountain you were on ended... and then you started driving through the sky.... yep, it was amusing for like a second.

[darkchrono]

Ahh, you mean Big Riggs. Actually that was one of the games I was thinking about when I asked the question if developers still released games even though they knew how awful they were.

Batchao do you think Big Riggs would still fall under the category that you were talking about. Honestly though Big Riggs was so awful that you kind of have to wonder if the developers just made that game as kind of a joke. A game they made just because it would be humorous for people to see just how bad it was.

[Maxico]

YOU'RE WINNER!

Yes it looks like Big Rigs was taken out of the developers hand LONG before it was anywhere near complete.

[BatChao]

Haha. I don't actually have experience working on a game that's so bad it seems like a joke, but here's a thought - some games are made to just earn a quick buck. Resources are intentionally kept low and the game makes it from conception to store shelves very quickly. Under these conditions, it's probably impossible to turn out a quality title. But I still believe that the developers probably tried to make it as good as they could under the time and money constraints.

[Lionx]

And this is why when people say so and so game sucks even though its not the best, it still takes alot of work to do, i really dare them to even go half as far as that "crappy game". Psh..people dont appreciate anything it feels and rather write it off as sucky without a second thought of how it came to be more likely.

[bipper]

While game design is a tad bit challengeing, I think its true that alot of people do not understand how long it takes just to set up the simplest things in a game. Programming with any 3d Library is no real treat :) Just to incorparate a prerendered FMV on a title screen took me 2300 lines of code. Thie was to set up the basic aritecture to show the movie, and include the basic title menu. Thats a lot of work.

What BatChao illueded to is mainly the problem. A lot of what I have been seeing is publishers using nothing but 3d Studio Max and maya to rush titles out there. Which brings me to my point. There has been a general huge lapse in the programming side of video games over the past years. Game making suites can create "bloatware" games quick and cheap. The end result is sacrificing product quality for cost. Considering just how long and tedious programming by hand can be, this is not largley a bad move.

This has been my biggest beef with many game design companies of late. While gaming mediums do not loose so much in the :bloatware" transition, control over the engine and general interaction does loose quite a bit. To me, the sacrifice is not worth it when you run into such occorences as a flying semi :P

Bipper

[NM]

Having spent 3 months working as a tester this year between August and November, I tested a fair few games and two everyone working on them agreed were terrible. One of which the review was photo copied and passed around the office for everyone to have a good lauge at. It scored an impressive 43% if your interested. :p

But the trouble is that once a game is nearly finished regardless of how bad it is, a lot of money has been spent making it. No company can afford to spend all that money on something to then just say "Actually it's abit rubbish, let's just chuck it in the bin!" Game's aren't designed to be bad, but inevitably alot of them turn out that way due to time constraints and the need to hit release date's.

[bipper]

What these companies have to remember though is that bad PR is more costley than the miniscule loss revamping a game or dropping it would take. Although, most industrilzed companies don't give a rats ass about PR anymore.

Bipper

[Markus. D]

And this is why when people say so and so game sucks even though its not the best, it still takes alot of work to do, i really dare them to even go half as far as that "crappy game". Psh..people dont appreciate anything it feels and rather write it off as sucky without a second thought of how it came to be more likely.

ive attempted to make games with scripting, programming etc....


i understand it takes alot of work, but.... its all in the end product that matters.

[Slothy]

What these companies have to remember though is that bad PR is more costley than the miniscule loss revamping a game or dropping it would take. Although, most industrilzed companies don't give a rats ass about PR anymore.

Bipper

That's not necessarily true. A great game generally does well on it's own merits assuming it's marketed well and the public knows about it. Everyone forgets most of the bad games eventually, and one great title can completely change a companies reputation.

I mean, come to think of it, I never remember the names of developers who put out a crappy title because I have no interest in it. But everyone remembers when a company like Capcom or Konami put out a bad title because those developers are already well known and have reputations for quality games. I guess you could say, bad PR doesn't hurt a company unless we actually expect better from them.

[bipper]

That's not necessarily true. A great game generally does well on it's own merits assuming it's marketed well and the public knows about it. Everyone forgets most of the bad games eventually, and one great title can completely change a companies reputation.


I would have to disagree. A bad game can horribly ruin a companies level of compantency. I beleive you do have a point when you talk about the public knowlage of a game. Horrid games can be marketed like hell, and sell good - whilst a great game can receive bad marketing and never get the credit it deserves. Though, marketing is getting out of scope. We are mainly talking about product quality.



I mean, come to think of it, I never remember the names of developers who put out a crappy title because I have no interest in it. But everyone remembers when a company like Capcom or Konami put out a bad title because those developers are already well known and have reputations for quality games. I guess you could say, bad PR doesn't hurt a company unless we actually expect better from them.

Kinda holding a double standard. On one hand you say that crap games do not damage a developer, then you say that you don't remember the names of the developers whom put out crap games. While I agree with you to a point, I think games that are rushed and made poorly will damage the company and even the industry, all for the sake of a quick buck. I am not even gonna try and say that this is a Game Industry only problem; Every industry has its dark side.

All in all, from a technical stand point, these games often suck for one root reason, money. Granted, a developer must make money, but sometimes to make money, you have to sacrifice money. (duh) It is like the investors who are so busy chasing money, and keeping track of expendatures, that they loose track of thier resources elsewhere. I have seen this happen too often. Some company may get a good deal on say publishing, but the quality publishing may suck. Where as paying a dime per copy for a better publisher than is exponentially more qualifiable than the first, is often a tabooed idea. Its usually a shame, because like we agreed on earlier, its the pr and presentation that make a game - not necessarily the quality.

Bipper

[Traitorfish]

I utter now those fateful words that caused a civilisation to burn and crumble...

BREED

This was a game that was deliberately crapped up by the publishers, for some inexplicable reason. The developers didn't notice until one of them bought a commercial version of the game (until then they'd all used their own versions). They ended up sueing the publishers, and I'm not sure what happened in the end. I don't think it was resolved.

[Dreddz]

I did wonder at one point if the people actually play the games before hand, they know its gonna suck, but ship anyway. Lazy assholes........

[Slothy]

Kinda holding a double standard. On one hand you say that crap games do not damage a developer, then you say that you don't remember the names of the developers whom put out crap games. While I agree with you to a point, I think games that are rushed and made poorly will damage the company and even the industry, all for the sake of a quick buck. I am not even gonna try and say that this is a Game Industry only problem; Every industry has its dark side.

I didn't explain myself well enough. I mean that developers that aren't well known will likely never be known for making a bad game. Either they make nothing but bad games and go out of business, or they eventually make a great game and then they're known, and more is expected. I'm not saying a string of bad games isn't a bad thing for a company. Eventually you either make some great titles or you go out of business obviously. I'm just saying from a PR standpoint, a few bad titles from an unknown developer isn't going to destroy their reputation if the public doesn't really expect anything from them to begin with. It may lead to some skepticism from the media if the company is making a game that genuinely looks good, but great games tend to stand on their own merits with the gaming public, not be torn down by the prior failures of a company. Of course a few rushed titles isn't the greatest thing for a companies reputation, I just think in the long run, one or two crappy releases won't do too much to a company as long as they can turn it around with some great titles.

[Destai]

I did wonder at one point if the people actually play the games before hand, they know its gonna suck, but ship anyway. Lazy assholes........
Did you read anything in this thread about how detailed and complicated and expensive any game is to make?

[Tifa's Real Lover(really]

We've all seen them and seen reviews of them. Games that are so terrible that they almost appear to be broken. But do you think in alot of these instances the gaming companies purposely shipped out a game that they new was either terrible or simply not finished. Or do you think in most cases the gaming company did work hard at making it a good quality game but creating games is such a complicated process often times that sometimes they don't put things together just right and the game ends up being really bad because of that.

So do you think gaming companies for the most part always try to put out good quality games but sometimes things just go array. Or do you think at times they do ship out games that they know is a sloppy sloppy mess and they just ship it out to meet deadlines or just to get as much money out of the failed project as they possibly can.
same thing happened with Square Enix with final fantasy 1, they named it final fantasy because if this game didnt do good, it was gonna be their final game

[darkchrono]

For those of you that have never seen any footage or reviews of the game we were initially talking about (Big Riggs). And don't have any idea about how bad it really was. Just watch the video footage in the video review. You don't have to read any of the write-up on it to find out just how awful it was and why we were saying earlier that we wondered if the developers just made it as a joke.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/bigrigsotrr/review.html?sid=6086528

[omnitarian]

If you want my honest opinion, I genuinely believe that Big Riggs was released under the hope that the game's horribleness would cause word of mouth advertising, and spike sales for this otherwise faceless title.

I mean, c'mon, what would they have to lose? Considering how... unpolished the game is, it must have had a budget of negative 2. It would have been a simple, risk-free scam.

[bipper]

I didn't explain myself well enough. I mean that developers that aren't well known will likely never be known for making a bad game. Either they make nothing but bad games and go out of business, or they eventually make a great game and then they're known, and more is expected. I'm not saying a string of bad games isn't a bad thing for a company. Eventually you either make some great titles or you go out of business obviously. I'm just saying from a PR standpoint, a few bad titles from an unknown developer isn't going to destroy their reputation if the public doesn't really expect anything from them to begin with. It may lead to some skepticism from the media if the company is making a game that genuinely looks good, but great games tend to stand on their own merits with the gaming public, not be torn down by the prior failures of a company. Of course a few rushed titles isn't the greatest thing for a companies reputation, I just think in the long run, one or two crappy releases won't do too much to a company as long as they can turn it around with some great titles.

Fair enough. I would agree that a third rate company can definatley get away with a few crappy releases. ITs like the old saying, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Also, budget is not everything for a game. I am working on my own project and I have hardly spent a dime. I have gotten a web server, webpage, forums system, C++ Compiler, 3d modleing/animation suite, graphics suite, music maker, and graphics API all for free. Can't beat that :) OF course, I don't have to pay myself :( I am such a chincy bastard

Bip

[BatChao]

Also, budget is not everything for a game. I am working on my own project and I have hardly spent a dime. I have gotten a web server, webpage, forums system, C++ Compiler, 3d modleing/animation suite, graphics suite, music maker, and graphics API all for free. Can't beat that :) OF course, I don't have to pay myself :( I am such a chincy bastard

Woooaaaa there, buddy. You just listed off a bunch of things that would probably cost a few thousand dollars together. Do you mean that you got it for free like from school or something or that someone else (like parents or something) bought them for you. Either way... SOMEONE coughed up the money... that stuff doesn't come cheap, ya know. Heh. So I guess technically YOU didn't spend a dime... but SOMEONE did. Man... I wish I had all that good stuff at my disposal. I'll have to say that while budget isn't EVERYTHING, it is a HUGE chunk of the pie that makes up game development.

I just watched that Big Rigs video... and I'm speechless. I have no idea how a game like that could have made it onto store shelves. It looks like it's in pre-alpha state... it's horrible! Something must have happened during development to make this game get pushed out before it was ready... maybe the devs or publisher went bankrupt or something...I dunno. Just so you guys know... there is no way in hell a game like this would ever get to be released for a mainstream console. Because publishers do their own certification for PC games, they can pretty much release a game in any state they want. Nintendo, MS, and Sony all do the certification for every game released on their consoles. And while they will let some bugs go... there is no way a game as shoddy as Big Rigs would pass.

[bipper]

For starters I am a Cvangelist programmer. Anything I don't have, I can attempt to make or mod somthing else. I work with all things C. I use the ever portable MingW compiler and Dev C_++ ide. I prefer Open Gl, but can use DirectX or lingo for some projects. For music I work with Audacity, can't beat it really. Images are mainly done with tjeGIMP. And 3danimations and models are childs play with OPENFX - though i tend to take the poly-programmer route. Web server uses Linux, with Apache/php/MySQL setup and phpBB boards. It's all free.

Atari had this same issue where crap games would make it onto thier system. The genius Nintendo boys release a serialization chip in thier NES that made it so games 'had' to submit and go through their verification, and get aproved. It was either tiger, or a daughter company of thiers that learned how to bypass this code legally, and became the first company to really do so.

Fun fun industry.

Bipper

[darkchrono]

Don't you think there would be a point to where companies could get in trouble for releasing a product so bad that it would practically be like stealing money from the people actually bought the game (and I am sure there are some people out there who actually bought Big Rigs). I would think there would come a point to where some legal action could be warranted if a company releases a game so bad. The courts could force the company to refund everyone who bought the game their money back.

Maybe big rigs isn't quite bad enough to do that. But I think it would be pretty darn close.

[Lionx]

Well it depends, gaming enjoyment is VERY subjective, i mean i cant possibly sue sport games for being bad because i am not a fan of them becuase there is obviously a fan base for them. There might JUST be one too for that horrible game. Its not like a fan is so bad it screws over that you can take lawsuit over, games are too subjective in terms of entertainment.

[bipper]

Don't you think there would be a point to where companies could get in trouble for releasing a product so bad that it would practically be like stealing money from the people actually bought the game (and I am sure there are some people out there who actually bought Big Rigs). I would think there would come a point to where some legal action could be warranted if a company releases a game so bad. The courts could force the company to refund everyone who bought the game their money back.

Maybe big rigs isn't quite bad enough to do that. But I think it would be pretty darn close.

No. If there was such a law, I would move. People get ripped off, that is the way it works. I would hope that people whom fall for the scheme or know of it, would be smart enough to hadnle the situation on thier own.

Bip