If your game sucks, SCRAP IT!

There is a great deal of backward thinking in the MMO industry.  I’ve written about (and plan to again soon) my thoughts on how we’re actually seeing games released that are not nearly as developed, fleshed out, feature rich, or on the same level as games of old.  In essence, we’re seeing games released today which should have been released as stepping stones to what released back in 1998-2003.   Another form of backward thinking, and the one I want to focus on today, is that bad games should be released regardless of their issues either by simply releasing them straight up or doing whatever it takes to cover up the blemishes long enough to grab the cash and run.

The fact is, good studios cancel games and the bad ones are akin to con artists.  When a game is that I was looking forward to canceled there is always an immense feeling of disappointment followed by an equally profound realization that it must have been for a reason.  That reason, whatever it may be, would certainly have impacted the game had it been released.

There are several lists out there that you can search for but there is one great example, the king of quality assurance: Blizzard Entertainment. Blizzard canceled Warcraft Adventures, StarCraft Ghost, and has delayed Diablo 3 (and likely will continue to like they do all their titles).  Regardless of whether or not you like World of Warcraft, if you try to speak out against Blizzard’s ability to control the quality by either delaying or canceling their games then you shall be verbally flogged.

Not scrapping MMO’s and releasing them anyway is a huge problem.  It’s doing several things.

1. Screwing players over who buy the game thinking that it’s going to be a quality title.

2. Inflating the industry by bringing in players to try games who would never have tried them before.  This problem directly leads to a player base that does not understand what traditional quality and stability are, so they run their mouths without a clue.

3.  Creating a false sense of failure in the industry leading players (likely the ones brought in from #2) to speak doom to the traditional style of MMO games and for the clueless corporate side of the companies to think that a change is needed — like a change to the F2P model.

The reality is that these problems can be avoided if these bad games, which I believe are known to be bad by the developers prior to their release, never make it to the shelf.

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  • It is a very hard thing to do, especially for studios that do not have the massive cash resources Blizzard accumulated after WC2, SC and WC3..

    Think about how many things were broken in DAOC was on release(they ran out of cash and had to release it). They did have a very stable server.. which CAN not be said of WoW on release, for atleast 2-3 weeks I could not loot anything and the server kept going down.

    DAOC on release.. no itemization past lvl 35 I think? Remember when we mids got Spindelhalla stuff and owned everyone? no RAs of any kind(no pvp rewards basically). Each realm had only few camps to actually get you to 50. The game was very unfinished, but the approach and design was so good that people stuck around for half a year or so it took them to get things going.

  • There’s a difference between a functioning, fun, and well designed game that isn’t finished or polished and a game that is just terrible that is being released to make any money it can to pay managers/investors or even to try and get more money to make the game better (assuming it’s not in a state where it’s even a good game yet). I say those games are better off never existing.

    I would rather the company close its doors than release a game. I have no sympathy for it being hard to cancel a game. What’s the alternative? APB? Tabula Rasa?

  • Im actually somewhat ok with a company releasing a semi unfinished game, or one that needs some polish.
    As long as they are completly upfront about it. What Im tired of is companies releasing these games knowing full well that they are not finished, covering up that fact at every turn, and then, worst of all, they do everything they can to fuel the hype machine out of control.

  • Yeah I am actually with you Sentry on that. As long as 1. server is not dieing non stop 2. You can not dupe gold 3. Game is fun. I can deal with unfinished stuff 🙂

    @Keen I agree mostly, just saying that it is a lot to ask for people not to try and make some $$ back for their investors. Only very reach studios can do this. What is not a lot to ask is them not spending the amount of money they do adn delivering stuff on much tighter budget.

  • @smthin: Siding with the idea of it being a right or an acceptable practice for someone to release garbage and charge people for it to make “some money back” doesn’t sit right with me at all.

    It’s like saying they know they’re selling you a Lemon and you think it’s okay for people to buy lemons to be fair to the lemon sellers.

  • I think you’re idealizing the games of old. As long as games have been made, there have been crap titles. The real solution is for people to stop buying crap. How? With counter-marketing tactics, like these:

    1) Don’t pre-order. Pre-order bonuses are worthless.
    2) Don’t read previews. Or if you must, don’t believe a word they say.
    3) Do read reviews. You can trust these.
    4) Stop playing betas.
    5) Stop paying for potential, or the promise of a patch.
    6) Stop paying a premium for crap. Wait for a sale.

  • 1) Not always.
    2) okay?
    3) You sure about that?
    4) Why? If anything this is how I find crappy games 9/10.
    5) Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice.
    6) Lol… crap on sale is still crap.

  • 1) RDR’s golden guns? Brink’s spec ops outfit? Most of the time, it’s fluff.
    2) Previews are pure marketing, just trying to get you to buy something that may not be worth it.
    3) There are exceptions, no doubt, but there are enough review sites out there that you can get a pretty good feel for a game after it’s gone live.
    4) Again, pure marketing, just trying to hook you. Why waste time on it anyway? Let other people play the beta and fill you in after NDA drops. In the meantime, play something you know is fun.
    6) I skipped Blood Bowl when it was $55 and nabbed it for $10. It is okay, not great. I refuse to pay a $45 premium for “okay.”

    My point is, we can’t stop crappy games from getting made, but we CAN stop buying them.

  • Pre-order bonuses like early access to the game are not fluff. And even fluff is not always “worthless” as you call it.

    Previews are marketing – duh. Who cares? Irrelevant. Same can be said for reviews. Irrelevant. They’re after the fact. The game has already come out at this point when the entire point of what I’m saying is that it shouldn’t.

    Not all tests are marketing. Far from it. FAAAAR from it. Open Beta’s and stress tests, sure. Not the real tests. I’m in two alpha’s right now and they’re both VERY intensive tests to the point that It’s often difficult to actually play. Not marketing.

    Your point about not ‘early adopting’ (which is the term for what you’re talking about) stands apart as a pearl of wisdom for another point. I’m talking about developers pushing titles out that are far from the simple “unfinished” state.

  • “When a game is that I was looking forward to canceled there is always an immense feeling of disappointment followed by an equally profound realization that it must have been for a reason”

    One game I worked on, a first-person shooter based on a popular (at that time, anyway) television license, had quite a following going on while we developed it. Fansites, forums, people getting excited over every screenshot release, the whole ball of wax.

    The game never released. The publisher lost patience with the failure to satisfactorily meet milestones, pulled the plug on their involvement, and then the licensing situation between us, the publisher and the producer of the TV show was too complicated to refloat it with a different publisher.

    Naturally the fans were disappointed. Some of them probably took the sanguine view that it must have been for a good reason.

    But you know what? If you had been looking forward to playing this game on the PC, there was no good reason. The PC version was perfectly fine. It was the PS2 and Xbox versions that were in the weeds – largely because the engine we had gone with was frankly not fit for release on those two platforms. I still feel sorry for the PC fans who missed out on a game they probably would have enjoyed simply because the console versions were failing, and it wasn’t worth it to the publisher to fund a PC-only title.

  • @Anonymous: You failed to satisfactorily meet milestones — that sounds like a problem to me. Unless the publisher had astronomical and illogical expectations, not meeting them is a sign of problems. I won’t say always, but most of the time when a company is struggling to keep pace the whole development period and eventually releases the game, it’s a let down.

    @St.Pierre: Stargate Resistance was released… and it’s a prime example of something that should never, ever, have been. I thought about CME too, but the facts don’t line up.

  • “I’m talking about developers pushing titles out that are far from the simple “unfinished” state.”

    The thing is, it’s our fault in part. We as consumers eagerly participate in the degradation of quality by accepting things like pre-orders, beta access, and patch promises in exchange for unfinished product.

    None of us would go see a movie whose CGI wasn’t finished because the production ran out of money, nor buy a car with prior knowledge that the transmission system is faulty and will be recalled in a month. Yet we do the equivalent with games (and MMOs, especially), month after month.

    It’s a two-way street. The day we stop buying crap is the day they stop selling it. That day will never come.

  • It does take some balls to suggest to Anonymous that his game was appropriately not released for the PC platform when you don’t know anything about it, don’t you think?

    It isn’t necessary to try to win every argument to make your point, including the ones that you base completely upon assumption…

  • He said it himself. His company could not meet the milestones. That is never a -GOOD- thing. Tell me when that’s ever been a good thing for a game? I also gave an out by saying that the publisher could have had unrealistic miltestones (in which case there’s more to worry about than a game in that situation).

    Let’s look at examples where publishers released games that were clearly not ready and one that was clearly a scam. I’ll choose 3 MMO’s that people should be familiar with:

    Vanguard – Not ready
    Warhammer Online – Not ready
    APB – scam

    There’s no argument to win here. This is common sense.

  • Wow!

    I’ve been reading your blog for about a year now and I usually respect your view greatly, but this post reads more like a forum flame than a well thought out argument.

    1. Define “sucks” – almost every game out there from good to bad has a core audience, who are looking forward to its release and potential to be the game they dreamed of. Are you talking about games that you just don’t like, or games where you disagree with the design choices they made, or buggy nightmares that wouldn’t pass an Alpha milestone?

    2. Comparing just about any other studio (or publisher) to Blizzard is unfair – no one has their resources or level of independence. It’s your post – why do we have to search for examples to make your argument?

    The problems:

    1. “Screwing players over” There are almost always “demos”, reviews, etc. (as already mentioned). I never buy anything I haven’t thoroughly researched – if someone wants to throw their money away on useless products, let them. Short of setting up MMO consumer agencies, I don’t see how this argument applies.

    2. “Inflating the industry with players who don’t have a clue about standards” This goes back to – what is the definition of “sucks”. And who sets the standards?

    3. This one I really didn’t understand at all. What false sense of failure? Games fail, movies fail, products fail – sometimes it has nothing to do with budgets or quality, but just not finding their audience. If this is all just a rant about F2P, then I really don’t get it. F2P is just as valid a business model as subs are – as long as it is implemented in a way that finds your target audience and supports the continued development of the game.

    I worked for an independent dev, we put out a couple of 1M+ selling titles (non-MMO), we canceled a few projects as well – almost never because they were bad, but because we knew we couldn’t sell them to a publisher (read – publisher marketing budget). There are a lot of factors that go into canceling or not canceling a game, some of which have nothing to do with their quality.

    Finally, missing milestones does NOT = bad game or bad dev. Even Blizzard misses milestones. It’s very rare when a large team with an aggressive schedule can hit every milestone – especially when developing an MMO.

    Apologies for the long post, but I wouldn’t of made it if I didn’t respect your opinion.

  • Well, to be bluntly honest, I think that is a very audacious and rash statement.I don’t think you understand just how much some small game companies put on the line in the effort release a game.

    Some instances personal assets are thrown into mix too, it’s all or nothing for the smaller studios.Then you come along with
    “If your game sucks, SCRAP IT!”

    Of course they are going to try and recoup some of the investment, and strangely I am ok with that, because in some strange way there will be people who adore that specific game not to mention post release patches that could improve it immensely.

    Not all game dev companies have the resources to simply “Scrap” a game, for some its release the game or many peoples career will end or in some extreme cases, their houses taken.

    So I’m sorry to say this since I do follow your blog regularly, but sometimes you simply need to think about what you say before releasing whatever pent up anger you have inside from whatever game has dissapointed you, before you come across as slightly conceited.

  • I’m not sure if your exactly right on this one Keen but your not all wrong either. Standards have changed over the last 20 years. If a game like DAOC was released today, like it was so many years ago, it would have died real fast.

    For those of us who have been MMO players for years, know exactly what is good and what is not good. The Devs should know as well or one would think they should. There are a couple who tricked me in the past but only a few.

    Good are the games that have pretty good graphics, an open world feel, some instancing where needed, pretty good crafting, story, good combat, PvP / PvE, end game content and a half ass good launch. These are the basics that a game has to have on release. If a game is lacking in any of these areas they will not last for long.

    There will always be a player base that has so much time and emotion invested that they will play the game regardless how bad it is.

    Players know bugs will always be in MMO’s but as long as they get fixed it shows the players that the devs care. If things are broken and do not get fixed or can’t get fixed then the game will not last for long.

    Being honest with the players. Just tell the damn truth.

    So in closing if your game plan does not have these miniumum standards don’t waste your time, my time, your money, my money and just shut it down now.

  • I disagree completely. Put yourself in their shoes. If they just managed to convince a large group of investors to just hand them millions of dollars, even if you know you have just created the worst game in the history of gaming, the only moral thing to do is to hype it as the best thing since sliced bread, spend all your effort and money to getting as close to lying as you can and not be convicted of anything, and try and recoup as much of the costs as you can as fast as you can with dirty tactics.

    I mean yeah, as a consumer it really sucks, but you can’t just expect companies to roll over for the good of their customers. They have a duty to their investors, and if the choice is a 50% loss of investment or a 100% loss of investment it’s only fair that they get a shot at tricking people.

    Caveat emptor.

  • Can we start calling it the microtransaction model? It’s 100% more applicable than F2P, and I think we can all agree that nobody’s fooled into thinking they’ll get a high-quality gaming experience for free.

  • I believe it was Ultima 9 which was the worst/best example of this. The game was pretty much unplayable at release. It was so bad that support was discontinued 6-9 months later and at some point a third party patch was released believed to be by a developer of the game as kind of an “I’m sorry” but I don’t know if it was ever confirmed. The game was a train wreck before it was out the door. I remember there was a DnD game (Pools of Radiance, I think) that was initially unplayable unless you went to a hacker site to get a no CD patch just to play the game. Gabe at Penny Arcade posted a news post to rake the company over the coals that he had to do something illegal just to play a game that he bought.

    I remember about the time that POR was released having a conversation with some guys about how it seemed that the quality of games had really been going downhill. I’ve often mused if the reason that many games are released buggy now a days is because the dev’s know that (because of the internet) that they can ALWAYS release a patch to fix stuff later.

  • @Caleb- Your statement is a shining example of what is wrong with modern society, bravo.

    To paraphrase what you said above…”Its ok to lie,cheat,steal if you are doing it to make up for your own shortcomings or failures.”

  • I’d prefer companies keep releasing their MMOs and let the customer decide whether the game is worth paying for.

    Obviously if a game is not functional it shouldn’t be released, but I believe that’s covered under the statutory legislation concerning providing goods that are not of “merchantable quality”, in this jurisdiction, at least. Short of that, however, why do we need anyone to second-guess what we might or might not enjoy playing?

  • Case in point the graphics in Mount and Blade SUCKED, my god it was 1998 standard – THEY SHOULD HAVE SCRAPPED IT!

  • ” Inflating the industry by bringing in players to try games who would never have tried them before. This problem directly leads to a player base that does not understand what traditional quality and stability are, so they run their mouths without a clue.”

    I’m sorry, but this is probably the single most haughty, narcissistic, egotistic, and elitist thing i’ve read on your blog keen.

  • If you’ve committed to a game to the point of getting investor funding, it needs to be shipped. There’s no benefit to not shipping unless you are EA/Blizzard who can write off a large loss on the books. Even busted games sell, look at some of the worst DS and Wii games. This way at least you pay the investors back.

    I agree with your list of three problems, but it would be better for devs to respond and fix the game rather than not release it at all. Unless your point is we need less MMOs overall, which I agree with.

  • Lots of replies for you guys. Find the ones relevant to you.

    @St.Pierre: That’s what we call a strawman argument.

    @Dblade: There’s no benefit to the small developer (huge benefit to the big devs like Blizzard) for not shipping, but there’s also no benefit to the players or the industry either. It’s a lose lose situation. I prefer they lose and not us.

    @Askander: I remember that too. I lump in Tablua Rasa, APB, and several other games which are still slightly afloat (many of which are subsidized on the Station Pass or kept afloat by big publishers (EA)).

    @Jezebeau: Sounds good to me.

    @Caleb: I’ll defer to Sentry’s (#24) comments as well as my own previously stated.

    @Thomas: I agree with the general sentiment of what you’re saying. I believe you and I agree, on principle, 100%.

    @Pawn: There are times when I simply write entirely off the cuff. This is one of those times. I almost always write with the expectation that my readers have at least a general idea of where I’m coming from on topics. (IE: you all know I hate the microtransaction-funded business model).

    When I refer to a standard, it’s one that I have created in my head, but feel that veterans like myself will immediately identify with — so there’s no need to clutter the post with an explanation. I feel that the older games are a higher caliber of gaming. That’s the bottom line. So I will always push for the ideology of getting back to it. Yes, I’m an old guard in many ways.

    This is one situation where I have a strong opinion. I really do believe that if you’re releasing a game (talking about games here) that is well below the standard and not going to recover then you should have never released it. What standard? Well, I can only look at past examples. Better than APB, Tabula Rasa, and if we want to get really nitpicky we can throw Aion, Darkfall, Warhammer Online, and others in.

    @Joy-Energiser: You’re appealing to emotion though. You’re looking at the developers behind it and worrying about them as people, not an entity of a corporation making and releasing a game that will have an impact on the industry (see my #’d outcomes).

    Essentially this is the same as saying “Aww okay, I know you put a lot of time and money into what you made so go ahead and release it.” It turns out to be Auto Assault or APB and thousands of people buy it just to find out a few months later it shuts down because it was never going to make it. According to sources within the company, this was pretty obvious to people working on APB. According to my own personal experiences, I saw the red flags and avoided the game (and recommended others avoid it as well.)

  • Your assessment is missing a few modifiers.

    Big companies with lots of resources cancel project all the time. IBM probably canceled more projects during any given year in the 80s than most companies will ever start.

    Small companies with limited resources invested in that first project… they can’t cancel without shutting the doors. That is tough to do. When it is “ship or die” it is almost always better to ship and hope you’ve got something right.

    But those small companies are still vital, even if they have to ship crap products when things do not go right. The next game genre changing event is more likely to come from a small indy that has the whole company riding on one roll of the dice than it is to come from EA who has resources to burn.

  • Let’s not confuse indie companies shipping with the hopes of their game doing well with companies shipping games they -know- to be inferior and -know- more than likely will not survive.

    I’m speaking towards the almost malicious “let’s release to get money” mentality. Good companies will scrap titles they know are not up to par. Indie companies, or companies with low budgets, should stay in development until their game is worth purchasing.

    Regardless of how much I might see the point of “ship or die”, I would almost rather they die. Even with the future of the company at stake, I don’t think the strategy of releasing the game to recoup money as an exit strategy to be something I can get behind.

  • I think your sentiment is dead on, Keen but unfortunately I don’t think it will happen very often. The problem is that most games companies have to borrow vast amounts of money in order to fund development and their investors simply wouldn’t except them turning around after 2 or 3 years of development and saying “sorry, we made a dud, we aren’t going to release it”.

    I think Blizzard has been the odd exception (as was proved with Ghost and that Orc point and click game they wanted to do) because for most of their career they were self published and had more control over their games. It was a very smart situation for themselves to get into and allowed them to only produce incredibly high quality games that, surprise surprise, were very popular and sold very well.

    I’d love to see more companies copy Blizzard’s model and high regard for quality over everything else but unfortunately the people with the cash will never see it that way.

  • @St.Pierre: hehe, this was a few years ago now, before Cheyenne Mountain’s time. 🙂

    @Keen: yeah, we failed to meet milestones on the PS2 and Xbox. The PC version was going fine, but got killed in the fallout. That’s my point: if you’d been waiting for the PC version, saw it cancelled, and shrugged and said “oh well it must have been a disaster or they wouldn’t have canned it,” you would have been wrong.

    If you’d been hanging out for the PS2 version and reacted that way, well, you’d have been 100% spot-on. 😀

  • Oh, if I can be nerdy: Gandalf’s famous line “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life” applies very well to game releases, I think!

  • There are too many MMOs, and they are all too similar.

    Wake me up when someone makes a (quality) MMO catered to the Explorer. That’s when I’ll try it again.