Well, at least Cliffs Of Dover became a standard of sorts. Whenever people have discussions of this kind, you know you have a golden (shower) standard example that defines what an incomplete game means. Or what "disaster on release" means. Or that analogy with the poo and rectum in it.

and this one too...




...CloD..*shudder* it really has set the bar for me as far as sims go. Luckily i live in Australia so i only paid $110.00 for it ..i could have seen Titanic in 3d at least four times for that, and had popcorn at every viewing, large.

Cliffs of Dover. Seriously, the biggest most borderline rip-off in the history of games. It has nearly single handedly ruined the reputation of the industry with not just its initial state but its present state.

Somehow, games like War in the Pacific, etc. manage to be built, released and continually supported. So, it's not just big places that make quality. Out of the Park Developments is a guy in a shack in Germany. Yet, it is one of the best baseball franchises around. I think there is a lot of evidence that demonstrates that it is less about initial capital and more about the culture of the seller of the product, and what they value. Most businesses outside of government contractors don't condone using the customers money to finance their product, provide a very lousy, incomplete and non starter of a product, let alone years (literally) later do what CloD did to its customers and continues to do, all the while talking down to them and telling about how they are going on "holiday." (am I the only one who hates that phrase and thinks many game developers take more "holiday" than anyone on the face of the planet??? What is the standard work week where they are anyway? Standard hours in a year? I know my business, which I own and which employs several hundred now, requires me to put in around 2200 hours a year, which until about two years ago was around 2700 hours/year.

As long as games are still built with codes, and not voodoo, bugs are inevitable. But yes, there has to be a certain limit of "bugginess" that can be considered acceptable. The way I see it, most unacceptable games these days come from big dev/publishers. I rarely seen one game from indie dev that's even close to being unacceptable. At least, among those that I bought.

Yeah, developing complex software is not easy, but I personally think one of the biggest culprits is the publishing industry. They often have unrealistic and unmoveable release dates, put tremendous amounts of pressure on dev teams and 9/10 times decide whether broken games are even worth fixing in the first place.

Well lets look at FSX again on this one. The ACES team were only contracted (well before release) to only 2 patches. So the first was to get fsx original playable out of the box and the second was thrown in the "paid patch" called FSX acceleration.

So even before the game was finished, microshaft already limited the progression of FSX which i can't understand, as previous fsx versions have sold loads and fs9 is still being widely used today.

I remember (foolishly) purchasing FSX on day dot of release. The minimum specs said i could run it, so i bought it. Well, the minimum specs was a blatent lie and microshaft knew it. Making people think it will run fine on computers that really can't handle it due to poor coding.

Talking about coding, who remembers the classic f*ckup by the aces team on the FSX release of the head turning memory bug.

"What was this?" i hear you say...

Well it was a simple error in coding where the wank aces team stuck in a figure for memory way to low which resulted in about 5 fps if you panned your view in cockpit. Yep, this 5 fps was felt all accross the community and made the game unplayable if you wanted to turn your head. But this bug made it to release, past the devs, past the beta testers, past quality assurance.

It took a community member to point out a simple fix via notepad to increase the memory value number (which was absurdly too low). Hey presto, we can now pan with an acceptable frame rate. WTF were the aces team thikning? doing? researching?

Buying FSX on release was like sitting under an elephants rear end who has chronic diorhea, feet tied with only a straw to get out. It left a really bad taste in my mouth.

UBI - well, they shafted us time and time again with silent hunter and failed features (that even appeared on packaging) that were not and never intended to be implemented in game - Milche cows anyone?

But what is the problem here? I was an avid member on the ubi-zoo forums and whilst everyone (rightly) moaned and groaned over the sh1te state silent hunter was in, the time it took for basic patches, the missing features, the lack of polish.............. well these people bought SH3, SH4, SH5.

I had enough after SH3. i refused to buy any more. What message are we the public sending to publishers if we cannot show any self restraint but mindlessly buy every next iteration of a game even though we prolifically poo-poo it?

The publishers are just laughing as the joe schmo local public have set a precedent that says we cannot control ouselves and we will accept rubbish and happily pay for it.

Clod - well don't get me started. I was one of the most avid die hard fans of IL-2. I have refused to pay for clod and i am glad i didn't. I am sorely dissapointed and they lied to us on release, as it was not no where near completion.

The day we are allowed to get our money back from shoddy, incomplete games, the standards will rise again.

If there is some downside to digital distribution channels, is their no-money-back clauses. (Even though Steam will return your money on pre-sales).

But mostly, they hook the fans on release day, or worst, with a pre-sale, and when the gold chariot turns out to be a turd covered in gold colored foil, you are shafted.

This is why I wait for user reviews (mostly on SimHQ) before I decide to whether or not buy a new game. I've been burned a few times before and I hope to prevent myself from being burned again **cough** CLOD **cough**.

I remember years ago there was a game that when you uninstalled it it deleted your whole hard drive. Now THAT was a serious bug.


Terry

Kinda wish I had found another thread to read....as I download Day 1 Max Payne!