Zoned in

September 21, 2007

The rush to release hurts the industry more than it drives it
By Michael Lafferty

Economics drive release dates where pride in the product should be the determining factor

There is a precedent, you know. Many years ago Sierra had a sports dev branch, Front Page Sports. At the time, there were two top dogs when it came to sports games for the PC – EA Sports and Front Page Sports. Sadly, the latter is gone, but during its all-too-brief run (in company terms, they did have several great years), the company made a decision that was could have turned the industry on its ear … had it been really listening.

Front Page put out an NFL football game (NFL Football Pro ’99), then decided that the game was too buggy and not up to the standards carried by the name brand. So it recalled the game. It sent out press releases that any owner of the game could send in their copy and receive, in return, any title in the Front Page Sports library.

Certainly, the dev team was going to try to patch the game, but when they realized that would not work well, and the game would still be lacking the quality they hoped to deliver, they recalled the game.

While it may have contributed to the demise of Front Page Sports, it was a significant move.

A couple of years ago, Mythic – when it was Mythic Entertainment and not Mythic/EA – was promoting a new massively multiplayer game called Imperator. It was shown at a couple of the Electronic Entertainment Expos (E3) in Los Angeles and there was a decent amount of buzz about the game. Then Mythic cancelled it. Years of development time, and the associated financial resources, flew out the window. Why?

In a statement, Mark Jacobs, the president and CEO of Mythic, stated: “This was the most difficult decision that we have ever had to make. However, our tremendous success with Dark Age of Camelot set the standard for Mythic of releasing nothing less than triple-A games, and Imperator was simply not meeting that standard."

While there have been other such decisions, what overshadows it all is the rush to release that many developers and publishers seem to live by. The “we can fix it and patch it after it ships,” seems to be all too prevalent. And that is simply wrong – no matter which way you look at it.

Sure, there are a few developers that enjoy the upper hand and release games only when they say they are ready to release, despite the worries of publishers about hitting this retail date or that one. But what makes these developers stand out is not their obstinance in releasing to a publisher their labor of love when they know it is ready to go, but rather the quality of the work that is associated with their name. When they release a title, you know there is quality attached to it.

The business end of the video-game industry is most certainly driven by the dollar. Publishers have investors and those investors want to see a profit from their investments. That is only reasonable. But a balance must be struck.

It is primarily in the PC genre that we see games run out the door with the inevitable patches to follow. Honestly, it gives the industry – as a whole – a black eye.

Let’s look at it from another perspective … Ford builds and sends out a new car (this is hypothetical) and it hits dealerships throughout the world. ‘Oh, by the way, if you push the gas pedal too hard, there is a good chance you will throw a spark through the gas tank and the whole car will blow up – but don’t worry, we are working on a fix for that and as soon as it is ready, we will call you in to fix it. But hey, doesn’t it look nice now – when it runs.’

If something like that happened, and frequently, Ford would be out of business. While that may be apples and oranges, it still comes down to the same principle – pride in the product.

When a consumer buys a product, they have the reasonable expectation of purchasing a completed product. This should not be a case of ‘ooh, that looks good. I’ll buy it now and after the patches, this may be great fun to play.’ You buy the product for what it is, not what it might be. And publishers know when a product has problems. The onus is on them to make sure that when that box heads to retail, it is ready. This should not be an unreasonable expectation.