The importance of getting it right the first time (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Monday, August 08, 2016, 16:51 (3038 days ago) @ Cody Miller

But it's not… it's what people bought in the store… If you go and BUY a copy of the game, I think you are allowed to judge.

Not before the game's launch date. Especially not if you know you aren't playing the finished product.

There are so many things in this day and age that can affect your gaming experience from bringing if you start playing before the official launch. Matchmaking which might work well a few days later might be horribly slow and give bad matches in a FPS if only the few people who broke the launch date are playing, for instance. And you think it's fair to judge a game based on the bad experience those few players had? That's crazy!

You act like these cert things are unique. They aren't. In my industry you have to go through CQ just the same. There are standards that have to be hit for everything. There's standards for theatre and for broadcast. Day one patches are not allowed in the movie industry. If say, your film has an MPAA rating, the film that is shown must be a bit for bit (or frame for frame if it's still on film) copy of what the MPAA saw. Literally. You cannot just show them a bluray of your film; they must see the actual cinema DCP that will be sent out the theaters. If you so much as change out one shot, or adjust the color or add a single sound effect, it must be reviewed again. What goes into the theatre is not allowed to be altered.

But, do you judge a movie based on what you see in the theater or based on where it was like two months before that? Obviously we judge the finished version of films, so why do you insist it is ok to judge the unfinished version of games??

That's a reality, and that is worked into the schedule. If cert on the consoles is such a time consuming process, then the game developer needs better milestones and planning by allowing time for cert. The game should be ready for cert far enough ahead of launch to allow for any issues to be fixed.

I linked you an article that explains why that is anywhere from difficult to impossible. You ignored it in favor of:

I'm allowed any expectation of game developers that I want to have, and I think day one patches are bullshit.

I agree, no one can stop you from having bad opinions, Cody. You've made that extremely clear in this discussion.