I agree that when the game doesn’t work it doesn’t matter how creative it is, what I’m saying is that when it’s fixed and it does work that doesn’t make it indefinitely worse.
The late-game thing you’re talking about is a good example of why I think prioritization habits are a bit busted. I do think it makes sense to say that hey, this part of the game is only going to get seen by a small portion of players, so it’s a lower priority than the parts that are going to get seen by everybody…
…but if a bug is a major showstopper that prevents any amount of players from going through the game, then it’s a major showstopper, you can’t just push it to a patch and call the game shippable.
I’d even make a big distinction about minor bugs… and minor bugs that do something peristent. You’d be struggling to convince the average producer to do a late fix for a minor visual glitch, but if the inor visual glitch stays there forever it makes the whole thing look unacceptably broken (which is where some of those BG3 glitched quests would fall for me, btw).
We’re getting into the weeds now. The point is that yes, revenue and money are a factor, but I think the current issues with reliability and technical polish in games are coming from more places than that. There’s a culture of prioritization that is looking at things that will block shipping externally or that are software-end dealbreakers where the whole game crashes. This has to do with both applying only software development logic to game creation and from having historically relied on first parties to draw the line of shippable quality and a period there in the early 2000s where people were getting very mad at eternal delays and vaporware. That culture needs to change and producers and QA need to start being rated on how clean the game ships, not just on whether it ships on time. Again, the weeds… but it’s relevant that it’s not as simple as “greedy publishers”.
Oh, also to be clear, when I say “prioritization” that also means what gets shipped versus not fixed. That’s also a prioritization choice, not just which bugs get fixed first or later. Especially if the dev cycle doesn’t end at ship and instead ends five patches and several years down the line.
I agree that when the game doesn’t work it doesn’t matter how creative it is, what I’m saying is that when it’s fixed and it does work that doesn’t make it indefinitely worse.
The late-game thing you’re talking about is a good example of why I think prioritization habits are a bit busted. I do think it makes sense to say that hey, this part of the game is only going to get seen by a small portion of players, so it’s a lower priority than the parts that are going to get seen by everybody…
…but if a bug is a major showstopper that prevents any amount of players from going through the game, then it’s a major showstopper, you can’t just push it to a patch and call the game shippable.
I’d even make a big distinction about minor bugs… and minor bugs that do something peristent. You’d be struggling to convince the average producer to do a late fix for a minor visual glitch, but if the inor visual glitch stays there forever it makes the whole thing look unacceptably broken (which is where some of those BG3 glitched quests would fall for me, btw).
We’re getting into the weeds now. The point is that yes, revenue and money are a factor, but I think the current issues with reliability and technical polish in games are coming from more places than that. There’s a culture of prioritization that is looking at things that will block shipping externally or that are software-end dealbreakers where the whole game crashes. This has to do with both applying only software development logic to game creation and from having historically relied on first parties to draw the line of shippable quality and a period there in the early 2000s where people were getting very mad at eternal delays and vaporware. That culture needs to change and producers and QA need to start being rated on how clean the game ships, not just on whether it ships on time. Again, the weeds… but it’s relevant that it’s not as simple as “greedy publishers”.
Oh, also to be clear, when I say “prioritization” that also means what gets shipped versus not fixed. That’s also a prioritization choice, not just which bugs get fixed first or later. Especially if the dev cycle doesn’t end at ship and instead ends five patches and several years down the line.