South Park: The Stick of Truth went through development hell and emerged a flaming piece of great entertainment. Several delays, the collapse of their publisher (THQ) were all meaningless when faced with the quality of the finished product. The Fractured But Whole recently received its second delay, pushing back from the original Dec 2016 date to a potential 2018 launch!
Disappointed? Maybe, but I wish more publishers would be willing to do the same.
Too often we see games released rushed and buggy. ReCore squandered a promising beginning with a literally unfinished back half. Star Wars: Battlefront delivered a gorgeous, but shallow experience that failed to deliver the expectations they set when cashing in on the name “Battlefront”.
The ability to slap day-1 patches onto “finished” games has changed game development for the worse. No longer does a developer receive a well-earned break after their game goes gold. Instead, they often get right back to work on the critical patch required before the consumer can even play the product purchased.
Not all companies do this of course, Nintendo may be all over the place when it comes to industry standards (online, specs), but at least they retain the tradition of a game being done when it’s done.
Of course, this isn’t an equal comparison. A South Park game could be delayed for years and still nail the visual look of the show with relatively under-powered tech. A big-budget AAA project touting bleeding-edge lifelike visuals however, can’t afford to wait as long. The Last Guardian started development on the PS3 and it shows. It provides a unique charm and experience not found anywhere else, but the presentation and performance is noticeably worse when compared to today’s best.
Publishers hoping to produce quality projects in a profitable time should take a good hard look at scope. Not every game needs to be open world, and not every game needs both single and multiplayer. I was more than satisfied with Rainbow Six: Siege’s lack of single-player (although Siege and other Ubisoft products are egregious offenders of broken launch games) and I would have been just as satisfied with Uncharted 4’s 15 hour campaign if it didn’t include a multiplayer component.
Release a great game late, not a bad one on time.
We’ll be here passing the time with unfinishable backlogs 😐
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South Park never had the fake E3 hype these other titles have. South Park's key to success was the attention to detail, and having it literally make u feel like u were inside the show. Also they don't depend on pre-release scams to make money off it.
Imagine if No Man's Sky didn't have the E3 fake trailers, they could have beta tested it and released it like a normal game without all the bs they got themselves caught up in.
These companies need to stop the fake hype preorder model, thats whats screwing up the industry.
In some alternate dimension No Man's Sky was voted "best surprise of 2016" as the little sci-fi game people felt cool to know about first. 'Sure it had problems, but look what it does" they would say. In this dimension you are absolutely right about the it getting caught on a hype train going too fast for their own good.
Pre-order shit and selling a season pass to DLC that doesn't exist yet are my big pet peeves.
Thanks for the comment