Agreed. The only thing I would add is - we actually fucking deserved it. By preordering games we basically give our money for promises, and then being QA'ed for free. You know that EA fired their QA department? Guess who's doing their job now? The only game I preordered in my life was Survivor, more as a "thank you for the Fallen Order I bought with 95% discount, we're even" and it would be the last game I preordered ever. Everyone. Should. Stop. Preordering. Or. This. Will, Never. End.
Asobo did this with MSFS2020 as well. It's way too common these days to accept mediocrity and then fix it later. I blame the corporate push to appease shareholders but also on the development process where they are cutting out regression testing for speed and allowing the customer to become their testers.
I'm actually glad I haven't bought this game yet. Kinda learned my lesson from Hogwarts Legacy when that came out. Just travelling around Hogsmeade dropped my FPS to 15 or so before the official release and the week later performance update.
if you buy on day 1 or pre-order. you are a beta tester the only way to fix it is to not buy anything until after there is organic gameplay not some stupid gamming news company that was only given to them if they ignore all the bad.
Would you actually buy a game that is $130-150? Because that's how much a AAA title would need to realistically retail these days. But they are keeping them, artificially, around $60 for more than a decade now because the market showed that people won't pay more for a PC game (unless it is some de-luxe collectors edition or something), and between $70-80 for PS/XBox game. Not only would the yearly inflation dictate the rise of prices, but the AAA development has gone up in price substantially. It costs way more to make a cutting edge game today than it did 10 years ago. Remember how all of a sudden "Early Access" and a bunch of DLCs became a thing for games? That is exactly the reason - they could not go above a certain price for AAA game, but they needed to either cover or cut their expenses... or go bankrupt. Some studios cut up their game into DLCs (Notice how there are no actual expansions anymore? They were a thing in 2000's) in order to build up to a realistic price of a game ("base" game costs $60, then they sell you 4 DLCs for $15, that were already made for the base game but cut for release, so that they could have their $120 in the end), some decide to minimize testing (probably the longest and most tedious part of the development - costs a lot to do properly) and save money that way. So, if you don't know the current goings on in the industry, maybe don't comment on it. "I am a customer, I want a complete product that I paid for!" - it is all nice from your point of view when you don't know what's happening in the background. In reality, you are getting a game for a discount of 40-50% - it can't be a fully finished and polished product. And you are not paying for a fully finished and polished product, regardless of what you think. If they were fair, they would indeed charge a realistic price and then, if you get the unfinished game you'd have every right to be pissed. But no one is buying a AAA game that has its base price at $130-150. Indie developers, small teams and "lighter" games are in a world of their own. But AAA games are extremely expensive to make. If you were paying a full price, you'd have the right to bitch about them, but not when you are getting them at half the actual price. EDIT: That higher base price for a console game compared to a PC game is due to the fact that consoles are being sold at a HUGE discount, hardware in them is being sold at a loss for companies, which they then reimburse through games sold. That extra $10-15 per game actually goes to console manufacturers because you got a $1000 worth of hardware for $560-600.
I really appreciate this comment as it tells me things about the industry I wasn't aware of, I would never make a video where I complain about something without doing atleast some form of research before hand. I am glad you brought many of these things to my attention, but I do believe you still missed a critical part of the video, my main complaint is far from "A game can't have flaws" and it's more targeted at the shady practices that these big gaming companies throw at their customers, product which are not finished no matter in what shape or size are being advertised as if they were finished. I love Respawn Entertainment and fully believe that their reputation as great game devs is one of the big reasons that there is not a big assault targetted at them as we speak, unlike what happened with ProjektRED. To finish of my response in my opinion which one may disagree with. The developer of a game can't just be allowed to deliver broken products without any form of response just because "that's the industry" I fully understand triple A games are expensive to make and that we are lucky we get them deliverd at the price we do, but when I play a game on a PC which far succeeds the reccomended specs released by the publisher themselves, A priviliged position I find myself in, I should be able to expect a game where I do not constantly: Lag, Crash out of the game, have cutscenes skip audio, die to nothing or have my character randomly let go of buttons I am still pressing. Again, I really appreciate your comment and I will take your arguments into consideration the next time I make a video about this industry, but I believe a fatal part of my video was overlooked when you wrote this comment.
@@kantje I understood your main point - I tried to explain to you why the things you are expecting can't happen. Those problems you mentioned are a part of every game ever developed, and should be fixed during the testing phase. That costs, a lot. So, the company has essentially two options at that point: 1. Finish the game properly, do a complete QA, and release a game at the full price of $120. And probably pay fines for the release extensions and breach of contract with the investors. 2. Cut most of the QA out to save the money and time, release the game for $60, let bug reports accumulate and give people free fix over the course of the year. Which one do you prefer? And more importantly, which practice earns the company more money? I ain't paying $120 for a game, no matter how good and polished it is. And neither are you - not because you don't have that $, but because psychologically you are not comfortable with paying that much for a game. So they can't sell it for that price. You can demand a polished game for $60, but there is no chance of you getting it. It is unrealistic. Not because company is doing something shady, it is simply not possible for you to get it and them continuing to work and pay their employees their worth. Even current prices are strained, developers are in the constant crunch and almost all are pulling overtime that can't be paid. I am a game designer, I know what I talk about. One thing is marketing where you could have some right. They could indeed market the game on release as "Early Access" and sell it for $60. Because that is the truth. And to be fair, many companies do exactly that. Baldur's Gate 3, Pathfinder, Subnautica just to name a few - stayed in Early Access for years! So yes, they COULD be a bit more truthful in the marketing - but that's marketing, it is never really truthful. Coca Cola is nothing but carbonated sugar water, and you will never hear them advertise as such. So yes, there IS a problem with unpolished AAA games on the market. But that is not something that happens because the company is shady or something - it happens because the market shows that people are not ready to pay the price required by a polished out game. Story about CDPR is a whole different beast. The state of Cyberpunk 2077 was as such because half way through the development CDPR went on the stock market so investors can buy shares. Company grew fast and it needed to sustain itself between releases. And half way through development of a third person Witcher-style RPG set in Cyberpunk universe, shareholders demanded a first person looter-shooter because "that is what kids play and pay for the most these days". And since they were contractually obliged to obey the investors, they basically had to remake the entire game in half the original time... and they could not postpone the release anymore because, again, contract with the investor stipulates that you will honor the dates set. In short, CDPR had enough time to make one game and deliver it well, but instead they practically made two. If they stuck to their first idea, investors would not only pull out their money, CDPR would be sued for the breach of contract and the entire studio of ~400 people would go bankrupt. So they delivered unpolished game as per contract, sold a lot of units that they spent two years fixing and polishing, and still were sued (though for less $) because the end product underperformed.
@@Wustenfuchs109 But doesn't this just shift the entire argument to the investors and the way that the industry is structured? It sounds like the industry is getting less and less passionate with the way you worded it mostly due to a result of contracts and investors. It could also be as you say the demand for a game to be the average price they've stayed at for this long now. Regardless I do really appreciate the insight you've given me!
Excuses. Your math doesn't add up. If this were true most games wouldn't be profitable at all. Over the lifetime of a game release the average price per unit is a lot less than the $60-70 they're asking for at launch with discounts. Games are split mostly to catch even more revenue, not necessarily because they're accounting for that in the base development. You want to recoup all your development costs with the base game hopefully at launch and then consider everything else profit. Not everyone buys DLC. I'd wager only hardcore fans of a particular game do and most other people wait for a sale to grab them (if at all) considering very few games even keep people's attention span long enough to keep them invested through DLCs as well. If you couple that with the fact that most big games end up on PS Plus and Game Pass and there's even less incentive to buy a game at full price anymore. Right now, if I'm not really sold on a game (especially one from EA) I will happily wait until it's on EA Play to get it via Game Pass through my subscription. I'm not the only one doing this either and studios know this. By that point licensing the game out is also icing on the profit cake. I get your point though. Making games is expensive but technology has also improved and made game development more efficient as well. Over time the costs even out. You have small studios now cranking out AAA experiences with very little upfront investment and tiny teams. Most of the money spent on the last leg of AAA games goes into marketing, not even necessarily development.
@@kantje Well, times did change. 20-30 years ago game market was fairly small (relative to today) and was driven by passion of small teams of people. Today, you live in capitalism, and gaming industry became a huge business, bigger than the film industry. So yes, it is basically all in the hands of investors, outside managers and contracts. They are the ones dictating what will be made and when in the AAA world. That is why good games come out of the indie dev studios for the last decade and why Kickstarter and similar platforms exploded when the game changed in the industry. Game dev legends like Tim Schafer, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky - all had to move out the mainstream industry in order to actually make quality games and out of passion and love. And they were crowdfunded for their projects. Smaller indie studios can do that, and they do that. But big teams are slaves to the capitalist market and big investors - who usually don't even care about the games and don't know anything about them. Hedge funds and investors diversifying their portfolio, they just throw money at things that make money and don't give a damn about the games themselves. In the case of CDPR investors and top managers outside of the company made their profit and left, leaving CDPR with all the bad rep and lawsuits due to the underperforming game. Even though CDPR did not want to do it, their slogan was "We leave greed to others" and were known as developers that go above and beyond when it comes to game design and quality. When everyone was charging for DLCs, they were giving them for free in Witcher 2 as a part of a patch. And in Witcher 3 their DLC add more content than most games have out there. Plus, their games were one of the most polished ones on the market, ESPECIALLY RPG titles since they are known to be next to unplayable on their release as they are the most complex ones out there. But, for Cyberpunk 2077 it wasn't their call. The fact that they managed to do what they did in just a bit over 2 years, rebuild the entire thing from scratch to meet the contract - is down right amazing. But to do that, they basically had to be in constant dev crunch, turning 12 hours per day on average. If you talk to ANY game dev that works for some higher end company, AA or AAA they will tell you it is NOT a nice job. Making games is rewarding, they do it out of passion and love, but it is not a nice job. Huge burnout rates, people just can't handle the pace. So yeah, if you want to blame someone, blame the rich guy with stocks in oil and pharmacy that comes in with $ and demands that a game be made a certain way because "his economic advisors and lawyers told him that this type of game sells better with youngsters today".
6:37 YOOOOO THATS ME ON THE RIGHT
NO WAY
Damn, 3:58? Scared the hell out of me when your voice blasted out of my speakers.
Agreed. The only thing I would add is - we actually fucking deserved it. By preordering games we basically give our money for promises, and then being QA'ed for free. You know that EA fired their QA department? Guess who's doing their job now?
The only game I preordered in my life was Survivor, more as a "thank you for the Fallen Order I bought with 95% discount, we're even" and it would be the last game I preordered ever.
Everyone. Should. Stop. Preordering. Or. This. Will, Never. End.
Preorders felt too big of a topic to fit in this rant, but maybe a new video dedicated to it could be good?
Asobo did this with MSFS2020 as well. It's way too common these days to accept mediocrity and then fix it later. I blame the corporate push to appease shareholders but also on the development process where they are cutting out regression testing for speed and allowing the customer to become their testers.
THIS!!!!
All recent issues with game releases lie with QA... studios are skimping on the QA staff and this is affecting releases.
I don't have any problems on PS5 so far. Its really sad to hear this, because Fallen Order is one of my favorite games.
Yeah exactly, I really want to enjoy this game but it's hard atm..
I'm actually glad I haven't bought this game yet. Kinda learned my lesson from Hogwarts Legacy when that came out. Just travelling around Hogsmeade dropped my FPS to 15 or so before the official release and the week later performance update.
if you buy on day 1 or pre-order. you are a beta tester the only way to fix it is to not buy anything until after there is organic gameplay not some stupid gamming news company that was only given to them if they ignore all the bad.
Would you actually buy a game that is $130-150? Because that's how much a AAA title would need to realistically retail these days. But they are keeping them, artificially, around $60 for more than a decade now because the market showed that people won't pay more for a PC game (unless it is some de-luxe collectors edition or something), and between $70-80 for PS/XBox game.
Not only would the yearly inflation dictate the rise of prices, but the AAA development has gone up in price substantially. It costs way more to make a cutting edge game today than it did 10 years ago.
Remember how all of a sudden "Early Access" and a bunch of DLCs became a thing for games? That is exactly the reason - they could not go above a certain price for AAA game, but they needed to either cover or cut their expenses... or go bankrupt.
Some studios cut up their game into DLCs (Notice how there are no actual expansions anymore? They were a thing in 2000's) in order to build up to a realistic price of a game ("base" game costs $60, then they sell you 4 DLCs for $15, that were already made for the base game but cut for release, so that they could have their $120 in the end), some decide to minimize testing (probably the longest and most tedious part of the development - costs a lot to do properly) and save money that way.
So, if you don't know the current goings on in the industry, maybe don't comment on it. "I am a customer, I want a complete product that I paid for!" - it is all nice from your point of view when you don't know what's happening in the background.
In reality, you are getting a game for a discount of 40-50% - it can't be a fully finished and polished product. And you are not paying for a fully finished and polished product, regardless of what you think.
If they were fair, they would indeed charge a realistic price and then, if you get the unfinished game you'd have every right to be pissed. But no one is buying a AAA game that has its base price at $130-150.
Indie developers, small teams and "lighter" games are in a world of their own. But AAA games are extremely expensive to make. If you were paying a full price, you'd have the right to bitch about them, but not when you are getting them at half the actual price.
EDIT: That higher base price for a console game compared to a PC game is due to the fact that consoles are being sold at a HUGE discount, hardware in them is being sold at a loss for companies, which they then reimburse through games sold. That extra $10-15 per game actually goes to console manufacturers because you got a $1000 worth of hardware for $560-600.
I really appreciate this comment as it tells me things about the industry I wasn't aware of, I would never make a video where I complain about something without doing atleast some form of research before hand.
I am glad you brought many of these things to my attention, but I do believe you still missed a critical part of the video, my main complaint is far from "A game can't have flaws" and it's more targeted at the shady practices that these big gaming companies throw at their customers, product which are not finished no matter in what shape or size are being advertised as if they were finished.
I love Respawn Entertainment and fully believe that their reputation as great game devs is one of the big reasons that there is not a big assault targetted at them as we speak, unlike what happened with ProjektRED.
To finish of my response in my opinion which one may disagree with. The developer of a game can't just be allowed to deliver broken products without any form of response just because "that's the industry" I fully understand triple A games are expensive to make and that we are lucky we get them deliverd at the price we do, but when I play a game on a PC which far succeeds the reccomended specs released by the publisher themselves, A priviliged position I find myself in, I should be able to expect a game where I do not constantly: Lag, Crash out of the game, have cutscenes skip audio, die to nothing or have my character randomly let go of buttons I am still pressing.
Again, I really appreciate your comment and I will take your arguments into consideration the next time I make a video about this industry, but I believe a fatal part of my video was overlooked when you wrote this comment.
@@kantje I understood your main point - I tried to explain to you why the things you are expecting can't happen. Those problems you mentioned are a part of every game ever developed, and should be fixed during the testing phase. That costs, a lot. So, the company has essentially two options at that point:
1. Finish the game properly, do a complete QA, and release a game at the full price of $120. And probably pay fines for the release extensions and breach of contract with the investors.
2. Cut most of the QA out to save the money and time, release the game for $60, let bug reports accumulate and give people free fix over the course of the year.
Which one do you prefer? And more importantly, which practice earns the company more money? I ain't paying $120 for a game, no matter how good and polished it is. And neither are you - not because you don't have that $, but because psychologically you are not comfortable with paying that much for a game. So they can't sell it for that price.
You can demand a polished game for $60, but there is no chance of you getting it. It is unrealistic. Not because company is doing something shady, it is simply not possible for you to get it and them continuing to work and pay their employees their worth. Even current prices are strained, developers are in the constant crunch and almost all are pulling overtime that can't be paid. I am a game designer, I know what I talk about.
One thing is marketing where you could have some right. They could indeed market the game on release as "Early Access" and sell it for $60. Because that is the truth. And to be fair, many companies do exactly that. Baldur's Gate 3, Pathfinder, Subnautica just to name a few - stayed in Early Access for years! So yes, they COULD be a bit more truthful in the marketing - but that's marketing, it is never really truthful. Coca Cola is nothing but carbonated sugar water, and you will never hear them advertise as such.
So yes, there IS a problem with unpolished AAA games on the market. But that is not something that happens because the company is shady or something - it happens because the market shows that people are not ready to pay the price required by a polished out game.
Story about CDPR is a whole different beast. The state of Cyberpunk 2077 was as such because half way through the development CDPR went on the stock market so investors can buy shares. Company grew fast and it needed to sustain itself between releases. And half way through development of a third person Witcher-style RPG set in Cyberpunk universe, shareholders demanded a first person looter-shooter because "that is what kids play and pay for the most these days". And since they were contractually obliged to obey the investors, they basically had to remake the entire game in half the original time... and they could not postpone the release anymore because, again, contract with the investor stipulates that you will honor the dates set. In short, CDPR had enough time to make one game and deliver it well, but instead they practically made two. If they stuck to their first idea, investors would not only pull out their money, CDPR would be sued for the breach of contract and the entire studio of ~400 people would go bankrupt.
So they delivered unpolished game as per contract, sold a lot of units that they spent two years fixing and polishing, and still were sued (though for less $) because the end product underperformed.
@@Wustenfuchs109 But doesn't this just shift the entire argument to the investors and the way that the industry is structured? It sounds like the industry is getting less and less passionate with the way you worded it mostly due to a result of contracts and investors. It could also be as you say the demand for a game to be the average price they've stayed at for this long now. Regardless I do really appreciate the insight you've given me!
Excuses. Your math doesn't add up.
If this were true most games wouldn't be profitable at all. Over the lifetime of a game release the average price per unit is a lot less than the $60-70 they're asking for at launch with discounts. Games are split mostly to catch even more revenue, not necessarily because they're accounting for that in the base development. You want to recoup all your development costs with the base game hopefully at launch and then consider everything else profit.
Not everyone buys DLC. I'd wager only hardcore fans of a particular game do and most other people wait for a sale to grab them (if at all) considering very few games even keep people's attention span long enough to keep them invested through DLCs as well.
If you couple that with the fact that most big games end up on PS Plus and Game Pass and there's even less incentive to buy a game at full price anymore. Right now, if I'm not really sold on a game (especially one from EA) I will happily wait until it's on EA Play to get it via Game Pass through my subscription. I'm not the only one doing this either and studios know this. By that point licensing the game out is also icing on the profit cake.
I get your point though. Making games is expensive but technology has also improved and made game development more efficient as well. Over time the costs even out. You have small studios now cranking out AAA experiences with very little upfront investment and tiny teams. Most of the money spent on the last leg of AAA games goes into marketing, not even necessarily development.
@@kantje Well, times did change. 20-30 years ago game market was fairly small (relative to today) and was driven by passion of small teams of people. Today, you live in capitalism, and gaming industry became a huge business, bigger than the film industry. So yes, it is basically all in the hands of investors, outside managers and contracts. They are the ones dictating what will be made and when in the AAA world.
That is why good games come out of the indie dev studios for the last decade and why Kickstarter and similar platforms exploded when the game changed in the industry.
Game dev legends like Tim Schafer, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky - all had to move out the mainstream industry in order to actually make quality games and out of passion and love. And they were crowdfunded for their projects.
Smaller indie studios can do that, and they do that. But big teams are slaves to the capitalist market and big investors - who usually don't even care about the games and don't know anything about them. Hedge funds and investors diversifying their portfolio, they just throw money at things that make money and don't give a damn about the games themselves. In the case of CDPR investors and top managers outside of the company made their profit and left, leaving CDPR with all the bad rep and lawsuits due to the underperforming game. Even though CDPR did not want to do it, their slogan was "We leave greed to others" and were known as developers that go above and beyond when it comes to game design and quality. When everyone was charging for DLCs, they were giving them for free in Witcher 2 as a part of a patch. And in Witcher 3 their DLC add more content than most games have out there. Plus, their games were one of the most polished ones on the market, ESPECIALLY RPG titles since they are known to be next to unplayable on their release as they are the most complex ones out there.
But, for Cyberpunk 2077 it wasn't their call. The fact that they managed to do what they did in just a bit over 2 years, rebuild the entire thing from scratch to meet the contract - is down right amazing. But to do that, they basically had to be in constant dev crunch, turning 12 hours per day on average. If you talk to ANY game dev that works for some higher end company, AA or AAA they will tell you it is NOT a nice job. Making games is rewarding, they do it out of passion and love, but it is not a nice job. Huge burnout rates, people just can't handle the pace.
So yeah, if you want to blame someone, blame the rich guy with stocks in oil and pharmacy that comes in with $ and demands that a game be made a certain way because "his economic advisors and lawyers told him that this type of game sells better with youngsters today".