Why Unfinished Games Keep Making Millions
Almost everything AAA you see now a days is buggy and unplayable. But why is this, and how do they keep making money?
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It was Arkane
Fromsoftware. Big company that still delivers
Can you make a video about mobile games, they generate more money than pc games. Pubg mobile has made more money in the past 5 years than call of duty has in the same timeframe. And more money than those fifa packs, 10 billion dollars in terms of revenue in just 5 years.
Not to mention Sony and Microsoft wanting to be in the mobile games industry, Sony is developing new games for mobile and Microsoft is wanting to build its own mobile game store.
Devolver Digital :D always great creative games with attitude and passion behind it
Reasons that many video games release unfinished: 1. Development teams are too many in one company, ruining communication efficiency and consistency. 2. Leaders of companies want money sooner than later, even at the expense of the game and development team(s), along with pleasing stockholders. 3. Crunch Time due to impatience and negligence with both devs and consumers. 4. Dumbass consumers who continue to pre-order no matter what.
5. Devs who think having tons of content is "overdelivering" There are devs who think the current modern model is good and want to keep doing that.
5. Dumbass consumers excusing and even recommending the same game later because they fixed it rather than outright abandoning the IP until it gets it right the first time, even if it kills it. People are actually excusing and recommending fallout 76 now. Think about that, instead of letting it die they're actively helping it live. Fuck modern gamers, y'all mostly deserve this, as y'all are actually asking for it.
6. Because it's more profitable to sell the game content as separate DLC's (e.g game characters you can only unlock with money instead of gameplay progress)
@@jurassicarkjordanisgreat1778 Devs take order from management who maximize sales for stockholders. People voted with their wallet to prioritize quantity over quality. There are some games with big enough budgets to do both, and some games that have people in the proper places to ensure a game is quality.
In Path Of Exile, there is another reason: Autism VISION of Chris Wilson
TotalBiscuit used to warn people never to pre-order, and that is a battle he lost. When people criticize a gaming company, they talk about "cancel your pre-order". People keep pre-ordering unfinished games, no matter how much they keep getting burned. Pre-orderers are the problem, become a patientgamer, take advantage of wishlists to get that 75% off sweet spot, and play through your backlog or older games in the meantime.
Only company i trust to pre order is Monolithsoft because they always release Finished games with the bare minimum of issues (e.g. bugs that dont affect the player unless they go out of their way to find them)
yes... older games on sale are actually better then pre orders!
Do people not realize you can litterally pre-order like 2-3 hours before it comes out and still get the bonuses? Or buy a day1 edition in most cases. The last game I pre-ordered was REMake, and only because they released a demo. And I only pre-ordered like a few hours before it came out so I could install it on ps5. But never again after Cyberpunk, you want me to pre-order? Well release a demo, free content for me to try.
Or you could just wait a year until it releases with all the DLC tell me one game what hasn't done that I would say Mass effect 2 but you got the legendary edition and it is also missing one of the dsu's from the first game but that one was just a shooting Gallery
I assume this goes for just about every industry. Early adopters should be the exception, never the norm.
that fact that fallout 76 still has the audacity to make dlcs is crazy
Given the game's enormous content, I don't find it shocking 🤔
You mean adding the act content like human NPCs and quests? Do you remember the way the game was when it came out? No human npcs, just robots, no factions, etc. The DLCs are free. Honestly the game is fun during peak hour and events, but just plays like fallout 4 now. All those "DLCs" were updates to the game. I think a lot of the people who bring up fallout 76, haven't played it in years. What is an audacity, is that they have a cashshop AND a "fallout 1st" pass (just a season pass). The cap/atom shop, it's so easy to get atoms for free in that game, I don't think I actually paid more then a dollar for anything (just got the 99% discounted starter bundle). That game should have waited 3 years to be released. The Pitt isn't even that good or utilized. The game 99% focuses on seasonal content, which is when it's fun. When a world even happens and everyone joins up to do the world event/quest. Great casual game, but it's just more fallout 4 stuff.
As a die hard Fallout fan, who deliberately never touched this dumpster fire that is F76,.... this amazed me too >_
@@OB.xthis. I started playing late 2020, and loved it.
What u mean fallout 76 is actually really good
It doesn't work for most things. You don't buy a car off the lot riddled with issues with the understanding that the dealership will "fix it later". You don't buy a meal at a restaurant with the idea that the other half of the meal may or may not be delivered to your table. It's actually amazing that this one exception is allowed for digital products, when no where else would anyone be okay with it.
Unless you buy a ford
Ofc it would be different with car or food on how they would deliver from downloadable online video games
It might be soon unfortunately. I heard some cars have speed limit and you can unlock it by paying more
Well probably because getting the rest of it back to you is relatively easy with digital products. In the first place it all began as a way to make an already acceptable product even better, especially with practical software products (as opposed to games). Or to iron out a few bugs that snuck past QA. But now game publishers just use it as an excuse to just release things unfinished on purpose, which as you point out nobody really appreciates.
Physical games exist as well.
Todd Howard once said this about Fallout 76, "It's not how you launch, it's what it becomes." They want the money on Day 1 while we want the game all good on Day 1 which failed to meet our expectations.
It becomes a wale milking machine.
“Launch day isn’t the finish line for us. It’s a starting line.” - 343 Industries
Those guys vote with their wallet and are fine with it and micro transactions 😂
Todd Howard comes from a different era, Morrowind, Oblivion. They got their boost from PC modding, etc. They've just been trying to monetize that forever (remember they tried with mods? on pc? for skyrim).
Common sense isn't common anymore. Imagine paying for a sandwich, then the waiter only brings you the bread and tells you that meat & the other fillings will be served later lol
As a indie game enjoyer and someone who buys games 6 months after release I see this as not my problem. It does sadden me that we can't have games like Portal or New Vegas anymore
I think Baldur's Gate 3 should be the exception.
@@TheTraveler980 Only in it's own genre maybe.
Tears of the kingdom
I beat New Vegas, and it was fun than any Fallout series. I hope it cam be remaked by original developer again 😭
@@muhammadiqbal99988 That would technically be The Outer Worlds.
7 years preproduction for Anthem??? My goodness, that’s what prototypes are for!! If there’s one thing I’ve learned as software engineer, YOU CANNOT PROGRAM ON A WHITEBOARD!!
Or improve a program when it has a metric ton of technical debt.
Once upon a time Larian Studios/BG3 was a small indie studio . They managed to buy the rights to the Baldur's Gate IP and found themselves with a choice, to shrink the game to fit the studio or to grow the studio to fit the game. They decided to grow the studio. They asked their players to fund the whole thing and the players responded, 2.500.000 copies sold at $60 each in Early Access, years before the game came even out. Larian Studios had the money to make BG3 into what it is so they did. They transformed from a small indie into a big indie to make it all possible. And larian is still majority owned by their founder Swen Vincke who multitasks as owner/founder/CEO/Creative director/bear wrangler/armor wearer. Keep out the big money(as much as you can), gain and keep the trust of your player base, work smart not hard, let your workers share in the glory. And always respect your customers.
its funny to think about it because in that way the early access route BG3 took is actually kind of similar to the whole preorder fiasco we have as the norm in AAA gaming with a couple differences like larian actually giving out a build of the game so ppl can see for themselves and larian actually staying true to their promise and delivering a truly incredible game and making all the people that trusted and believed in them happy little gamers. also i didnt know that that was the path they had taken to make that game, really interesting stuff thanks for sharing. i do hope that larian never gets bought out and ruined like so many other game companies that were previously trying to actually provide a good product were but its honestly hard to believe that it wont happen in todays entertainment industry. i feel like the shareholders would rather actually assassinate the CEO of larian than let someone make a good product.
As much as I like how Larian does things the things they do are sadly outside of the norm. I wish that we weren’t in the current present, but considering how the silent majority continues to purchase big games without complaint means it is too late for the industry. Sure it is nice to have games like BG3, but in the end it is just another game. The silent majority won’t care anyway since as long as the first few hours are good they’ll believe the entire game is good. So at the end of the day complaining won’t do thing unless people begin to suddenly care about playing more than a fraction of the content. Overall opinion: Gatekeeping is great! As much as I’d love to live in a world that can enjoy the things we love I can’t logically say it’s a good thing. The smaller the community the easier we can rule out behavior like this, so in the end if we gatekeeped games in the past we could do what we did to D&D! Anyhow if you read all this I’m sorry. I can’t lie I feel like all this banter is meaningless now. It’s already too late for the gaming industry.
Larian is backed by the biggest gaming company in the world. dont be misleading
@@KnucklesEmerald-wj9vo Misleading? Err no. "Majority owned", "keep out the big money (as much as you can)" that's pointing it out without detailing it. Now writing "owned" would have been misleading. Larian Studios ownership is public knowledge. 62% is owned by Swen Vincke. 8% is owned by his wife. That's a majority ownership of 70% which gives them total control of the Studio. 30% is owned by Tencent. Why Tencent? To finance the acquisition of the studios they needed to make BG3. Banks don't finance this kind of stuff, too risky and no collateral a bank can recover. The big platform holders were out since Larian does not want to be locked in by a platform(see Bethesda). No going public since that would be the end of indie. So that leaves a minority partner in the industry advancing the money for the expansion. If BG3 had bombed Tencent might have taken the studios and the IP's Larian owns. Now Larian might or might not be able to buy out Tencent, or not. It's all up to the majority owner. Lots of might there but then it's financing. It all depends on future performance.
I love BG3 and Larian, but it's a Larian Game, and like all Larian game it's not really finished until a little over a year later when the definitive edition comes out. The game is great, but also greatly buggy and with many threads unfinished or cut down to fit in the timeframe. So it's not that good an example, even outside the debate of if it's indie or not
I wish we could go back to the old way of buying games: begging your parents to take you to GameStop so you can play a new game with friends
i mean, i kinda do that, but only cause i like going with my parents
@@42seven wholesome
@@42sevensounds like you have some cool parents
drm really sucks
Playing SSB brawl on the demonstration Wii in the GAME store at the shopping centre until the teenager behind the desk chases you and your mates away
I was into Game Development for a long while, 15 Years or so- I don't mess much with it anymore beyond modding my own games to be how I want. I've always thought the best way to make a game- make the game in secret, only start advertising when the game is completely READY to release- then advertise finished game for a while as you begin the next game or DLC. Money People are freaking stupid though, they'd rather get a little now than make something great that could rake in x10 times as much if they just waited a little longer.
I don't think that marketing approach would work today. If you start talking about your game on release day you will have 5 downloads and a botched release - unless it's a sequel. You gotta build a community and excitement ahead of release.
@@Martinit0I think he meant ready to deliver but not release immediately, in the downtime you can take a sip of coffee and plan for the dlc or for another game. As it is the bar for a AAA title has gone down to the point as long as the game seems fun and ain't buggy could prolly make it to the mainstage (kinda like battlebit)
@@Martinit0Hi Fi Rush shadow dropped earlier this year and it was a pretty significant success according to Microsoft. Also it’s my personal Goty even though I know bg3 is gonna win it. But OP wasn’t referring to shadow dropping, Re-read his comment. Ad campaign happens after the game is finished and is released after the ad campaign.
I blame this entirely on the gaming community, we swallow up every thing the AAA publishers shoved down our throats, remember kids, we allowed games to become what it is today, we only have ourself to blame.
too many shills grew up on mobile games and accepted modern gaming as it is. instead of demanding for the best service that was to be expected.
@@DiamondGlow44 what music?
Music I don’t like, lol.
You are right, and it annoys me because I have restraint, I don't pre-order, I follow games whilst they're being made, I don't buy day 1 at all (baldurs gate 3 was an exception to this rule) because usually the games have major issues, so I wait and see how things turn out generally and I have dodged so many bullets by holding off. The problem is, there are too many gamers that are the complete opposite, and will pre-order anything, fall for endless bullshots and scripted trailers, and buy any and all dlc regardless of cost/quality/value and despite them being shoveled half assed release after release, they are always ready to repeat the cycle with the next game in their sites...and so the misery of buggy messes continues. Latest example for me was the new Jedi Survivor game...picked up Fallen Order on a steam sale a few months back, really enjoyed it, heard the next game was coming shortly...held off oddly, but did want it...glad I trusted my gut, game released in an absolute state.
You do realize you’re essentially blaming a spoiled, bratty kid for being spoiled? Sure, the kid has some fault, but so do the parents for not keeping their kid in check.
Since the dawn of game updates and Internet being a requirement games have been changed to a service business model. We don't own anything or have any control of the product in any meaningful way. Serious questions have to be asked about game ownership and the companies in control of these products. That includes free to play games and how they are designed to be predatory in terms of manipulating people to spend money.
This is why I mainly stick to the switch, the games come out complete or just needing a small update day one
'Release now and finished later' is acceptable only in early access games. That is literally why it exists and that's how Baldur's Gate 3 managed to release a full game. This is also how Slime Rancher 2 is being developed and they literally said in the description that 'we don't believe in crunching and we only gonna release the game when its ready'. When you release a game, people have high expectations, and it shouldn't be otherwise in my opinion.
One thing I will say in EA's defense, something I very rarely do, is Bioware spent five years not actually getting work done. EA should have delayed, yes, but they also didn't make Bioware waste all of that time either.
Which in retrospect means BioWare is completely at fault. Just like with tomb raider 6 & dmc2. It wasn't the publishers fault the dev team wasted two years doing FA.
Yea theres a point to where EA had to say "weve given you money fir this project for this many years. Either have a product for us. Or get out" EA had no reason to even believe that the devs would require time if they wasted years
Nah, they should have canned the project while in the preproduction stage. If they have not come up of a great and fun concept within 2 years, these people will need to be moved somewhere else.
@@trainman5675 yeah, but saying "have a product for us" means they have no incentive to make the game fun and engaging. They only have to release a product. If not a lot of people think the game will be fun, they just need to scuttle the game, rather than continue accruing losses.
One more thing to add: these companies have been over reliant on contractors because they drove out the people that could've actually had any kind of passion, hence why these new games feel so soulless. Instead these AAA publishers will stop to hiring anyone that's willing to implement their version of monetization hell while leaving a game floundering in dev hell. Activision/blizzard/EA/Bungie are not interested in making games, just money traps that gets interested people into sliding them $60-$70. As a consumer, if you enable corruption in your backyard, you get it everywhere in your life. These copmpanies have been getting away with these antics for 15 years now, and the fucked thing is kids are coming to in a day and age where all they see is this MTX hell and see so many streamers promoting them and think, the games might be cool. And the vycle continues.
Because people keep pre-ordering. It doesnt even matter if you only pre-order from game companies you trust, because it's not about you risking your money, it's about the company making money out of games they havent done yet. Pre-ordering is a bad, anti-consumer practice that pushes companies into greed and hurts the games and the players
Pre-ordering on its' own is stupid. You blindly buying piece of sowtwere you don't know how it will turn out
Pre-ordering in digital era is stupid. It makes sense in CD era because you want it to be shipped to you early and so you wont get fked by being out of supply. But in digital era, theres no incentives to pre-order where they only give you freebies and early access.
THANK YOU. As a dev, I'm getting tired of hearing from gamers everything is the devs' fault, and trying to explain to them it's much more complicated than that. In my experience, there are two big parties to blame: 1) the people with the money. They don't know shit about how to make games, but they keep forcing us to follow shitty decisions because that's what they think is best. I've spent hours arguing in meetings trying to convince these people we shouldn't do it their way. This is so fucking tiring, and the devs are the only ones to lose is situations like this. 2) the people who buy games before they are sure what they're getting into. The capitalist market works as long and the consumer makes educated decisions on how they should spend their money. The consumer should buy what they think is worth their money. This way, companies are incentivized to give the best product possible so they become competitive. But in the gaming industry, this doesn't happen. Gamers are moved by hype and expectations, not by brains. They buy whatever products they are hyped for, and THEN they go yelling on the internet demanding the game to meet their expectations. But by then it's too late - investors already made their money, and we devs are left on the battlefield to clean up the mess and deal with an angry mob of internet nerds. And this incentivizes investors and publishers to keep repeating this toxic cycle that gives them more money for less effort. Really, people. PLEASE. Stop spending money on games so early. Stop buying games that don't meet your standards. Become responsible adults and control your spending impulses. Yelling on the internet won't solve ANYTHING because it's not the investors who will have to deal with your complaints - it's us, devs, who know *very well* how shitty our games are.
Those are some valid points! This is exactly what happened with Forza Motorsport 2023. The people were hyped for this game (I was one of them), and once it came out, it failed to meet their expectations, resulting in them leaving negative reviews about the PC version having graphics that are just like in the Xbox One. Apparently, what Microsoft did, after seeing the game got a score of 1.9 out of 5 stars on the Microsoft Store, they deleted most of the negative reviews to make sure the game gets its positive recognition (was 847, now 406), but they did a bad job at it, because the game's score increased by 0.5, thus 2.4 out of 5 stars, with 45% of reviewers giving it a one-star review, and fans were furious, some even calling the company "petty", some even stating that the game's launch was a disaster, and others demanding Xbox's CEO Phil Spencer to be sacked.
Sadly alot of the adults these days aren't responsible. I cant imagine why they want to give money without any proof or security that they'll actually get what is being advertised
People really are idiots. They can'twait literally one day for terrible reviews to come out. They'd rather spend 80 bucks on a preorder.
@@commandertoothpick8284 Sounds like crypto buyers. 🤣
There is also another major flaw in AAA game companies. While software companies can choose from millions of types of software, because AAA games are too expensive to make these major companies funneled themselves in only few tried and true categories, and because of that if a new game comes out bugged gamers won't tolerate it because it would be just another open-world adventure or an FPS game, in which case gamers can ignore it and move on to a better game
When you see a gaming company increase 40 bucks PER YEAR for their subscription service but nothing is added not even first party game on day1, I am not surprised this happens
I blame investors and the very laws that make this happen
Yeah Larian Studios pretty much proves it
@@fr0ck360 I know it's more than investors but man that's a big part of it
@@dissonanceparadiddleFr
i blame the people who keep happily gurgling this trash. in no other industry is it acceptable to release an unfinished product. why are video games the only place where this is acceptable?
@@zidan40o0 gurgling as in buying from companies that do this or?
I'm curious what a company like gamefreak is doing wrong then when the team is much smaller (169) than average AAA team and encounters the same issue of quality standards for their games
They are trying to make more complex games than in the past, but under the same deadline and time constraints. They’ve had roughly the same release cadence for Pokémon since Gen 3, but if you look at the scale of something like Scarlet and Violet versus the DS or Gameboy games, it is vastly different and could not possibly take the same amount of time. The only way i could see them returning to releasing finished games is if they skip a release cycle. But they won’t do that because the company makes too much money on the card game, merchandise, and anime to skip game releases. Their products are too interconnected for them to stop without losing profit. Businesses are greedy
Their issue is releasing a game every year? Just because they are a smaller dev team doesnt remove them of criticism.
Remember that call of duty needs many many devs to release every year and usually those arent broken messes but their issue is another thing, cookie cutter gameplay.
GameFreak is doing a lot of things wrong... they have a smaller team, but still try to make ambitious games, AND have a _yearly_ release schedule. They try to release a full game EVERY YEAR with a small indie-sized dev team, all while trying to have an entire set of new gimmicks and Pokemon for each new generation of games. They've also only done simpler games on handheld devices like the Gameboy and 3DS for most of the franchise's lifespan... Now they're dealing with full on consoles like the Switch, and they don't know how to adapt to the bigger demands that a main-console game requires (hence the bugs and lower graphics of the more recent Switch games).
@@lasercraft32 Gamefreak cries about the small team but they have had EVERY chance to expand. They have all the resources and time. It's a choice to be the worst developer in the industry.
there should be a flat out penalty or a consumer protection law to stop this greedy companies from doing this shitty business practices. i believe only then will they probably stop doing it because it will negate the "easy profits" they can earn from selling half baked games and also never buy early access and pre-orders
It is legal becuz consumer aware of unfinished and company have more right than individual.
@@rexomi17 best we can do is not buy their crappy product and say no to early AcceSS. sadly people are too blind and selfish themselves to see the bigger picture a lot of people only start caring once they are part of the victims
You can't outlaw stupid.
The problem is people still expect the games to be FINISHED when they buy them. Companies know this. Consumers are just slower to catch up, because even if some people figure it out, not everyone does because "consumers" consists of a group of millions of people all over the world, of all ages. If parents who aren't gamers get their kids a game for their birthday or christmas, they aren't going to notice how buggy and unfinished the game is. The company still makes profit from that.
Early Access is much better than pre-orders for an unfinished game getting fully released. Early Access lets devs present their game early while acknowledging it is unfinished but can work like a demo and fund further development if people choose to do so without enticing players with monetization, which is the route BG3 went as it was available with only Act 1 of the game years ago in Early Access and despite the game being a buggy unfinished mess, players knew what they were getting into and could see the passion from the devs and what is possible with the game for full release. Early Access allows them time to build up their game to make it meet all expectations before the official release and helps devs figure out what they need to do in the development cycle as feedback from Early Access players can give crucial insights for the dev team that in-house testing can't provide. It is very rare for an Early Access game to be heavily monetized and marketed during EA and equally rare that the developer releases an unfinished product by official release. Early Access reviewers also let potential buyers of the full game know whether the game may be worth their money or not. Pre-orders give you nothing and tell you nothing about the game. Sorry this is so long I had a lot of thoughts I wanted to write out. TL;DR Early access helps developers to release a polished game and work with players/consumers closely
At the very least not all AAA game studios crunch their devs Nintendo for instance gave the developers for super Mario bros wonder as much time as they needed to work on the game without a deadline
Indie games have been shining for awhile. It's just now the masses are starting to notice.
Beamng, its been 10 years now and the game is still 0.29 and far from finish. The game cost 30$ and at this date I didn't have to put anymore money. The game is the best simulator of car games with crash the most impressive! If you watch a video of when the game first came out and now its insane how it change. Too my eyes that what a compagnie that make video game should be!
Fat Shark did this with Darktide. It's such a shame because they've been doing so well with the software model in previous releases, but those games were pretty fully-featured when they were first released. i.e. not broken.
Good shit, subbed my dude, keep on keepin on!
See this is why company's like Valve consistently produce AAA Games, they don't pressure their employees and tell them that they can do whatever they want in their own time. Imagine telling Leonardo Da Vinci to finish the Mona Lisa in 5 weeks of crunching. The Mona Lisa took 4 years of Top Tier commitment to fully complete.
And this is why I chose the switch, Nintendo has couple of wizards in there development studio (almost) every release/port is a absolute banger
Should you really get a list of broken games on Switch started with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet?
@@slawasaporogez6581Gamefreak is not Nintendo. Nintendo is just one of 3 shareholders in it. I wish Pokémon would stop getting lazy though, it’s ridiculous, and should be ridiculed.
I chose an Odin Ayn. Nothing says this game is done like a ten year old rom hack of a game.
imo Nintendo is pretty middle of the road although they don't release incomplete games as much as some other companies they are known for abusing copyright at even their own expense especially when it comes to smash and there general stance in not allowing tourneys unless there sanctioned by them
Loser
I'm not an industry insider, but as a technical lead in data delivery and visualization, I think problems with expectations (those expectations being from, in this case, the publishers) are caused by two major issues: 1) As mentioned, an increase in team size rarely - if ever - means an immediate increase in work capacity and output. If my team goes from two engineers to four, it does not mean that next month we will deliver twice the features/KPIs/visuals. If anything you will see 20-30% less for the next several months, because the experienced engineers will have to take time out of their days to train up the new engineers and introduce them to the technical architecture, our ways of working, solution design philosophies, etc. And even when those new engineers are trained up and ready to handle tasks, it will still not mean a doubling of output because creating technical solutions is not like stacking boxes. When stacking boxes, the more people you have, the more boxes stacked per minute because the task is simple. But in technical builds, things have to be done in a certain order, some of those tasks can only be done by an individual because of technical limitations, etc. If I ever ask for an increase in team size, it is usually to relieve the engineers that likely have too much on their plate to work a normal work day or to make sure there is more distributed knowledge on our solutions - not because I expect more output. 2) People who are removed from technical realities often have unrealistic expectations about how long it will take to complete an ask of theirs. I understand that to them a KPI is just a number on a page or a point on a graph, but making that figure become a reality is more often than not a complex process. Do we have the source data? Is that source data ingested and exposed? Is it exposed in the right way? Can we connect it to the right dimensional assets? Can we add it to the downstream layers and tools? And much, much more. Those who work with our team but refuse to understand the nature of our work often find themselves frustrated when I tell them that something they expect to take a week will take months (almost nothing can be done within a week because we have a strict release schedule - still they don't listen). Trust me, I would love for it to be done within a week. But this is not a reality when we work in an organization with thousands. This is why the roles of business analysts are so important when it comes to interfacing between technical and non-technical teams, but unfortunately people in these roles can be looked down upon because they are not management. It's so stupid, and it can lead to businesses decreeing tasks in timelines that are impossible, and if they aren't willing to listen to the red flags that teams raise then it leads to crunch.
What would be worse for these kinds of games are the meatriders that would be coping a lot and take their anger out on the consumers for the reason on why the game is bad, like it's definitely the consumers fault and not the developers.
Hopefuly, games like Baldur's Gate 3 blowing away expectations will send a positive message that "yeah a 5 years dev time pays off big time"
6 years. They started in 2017. Also, the game is out, but the late part of the game was released in a buggy state (that got fixed after released), and it feels quite incomplete. Also a bit shallow, especially compared to how rich and reactive the first act was. Overall, just like what happened for Divinity Original Sin 2. For which Larian released a Definitive Edition a year later. Hopefully Larian will do the same and release the full, final, definitive version of Baldur's Gate 3 next year. For now, it is not completely finished.
Or when game in pyshical (cd/dvd, cartige etc) form had game breaking bugs then fixed version of the game was released. Maybe there's chance that also old copies were recalled.
The problem with Crunch and Management is a lot of the top executives, like CEO, come from other industries were Crunch does work. Studies have shown that when people have to do SIMPLE repeatable task, like factory line assembly, time pressures and crunch can help improve performance. However when the task requires creative thinking and problem solving you get the inverse as increase pressure and long hours actually reduces productivity. There are several reason for this and has to do with how our minds work. First the mind is a muscle like any other in the body and just like if you try to keep running when you legs are exhaust to the point you can barely walk odds are you won't get very far. The same is true of the mind as once it gets exhaust it can't do much other than muscle memory and reflex oriented task which is why people can continue to push through in factory style settings. Second is how the mind reacts to stress. Studies have shown when under stress the mind doesn't expand with additional options but instead enters flight/flight mode which streamlines choices down to a minimum number of options. This is because in an emergency as a matter of survival you can't be debating your options as reaction time can literally be the difference life and death. While crunch isn't literally life or death it doesn't really matter to your brain and how it handles things like stress as it's just the way it functions.
First impressions are everything that's what I was Taught when I was a kid. These video game companies have forgotten that. Even if that broken game Released broken On launch Is fixed later down-the-line It's State during release is gonna haunt that game for the rest of time.
As a small game developer crunch doesn’t work for us at all as you said, I’ve made communication quite a good priority with my community, I tell them an update is gonna be delayed and their ok with it. We sometimes even give bonus compensation rewards.
I would say a big dev team not always hurt the product like rdr2 ghost of tsushima, spider man and some other AAA title turned out to be great
Thanks so much for the info about team size. I’ve been trying to convince my boss of this for ages and that’ll help immensely 🙏
That’s what I’ve been asking this whole time bro thank you 🙏
And this not only applies to AAA games, all kinds of developers do it.
I think part of the reason we keep getting unfinished games is that games are getting much more advanced better graphics, animations, more content, bigger maps etc. But companys aren't giving more support time to make up for the size increase, we get the same 1 year of updates on average when games are 10× the size now, indie titles tend to be much smaller with more time supporting and creating the one game.
But the tools also got better. That should make up for the increased complexity. We no longer draw graphics pixel by pixel. It looks more like the project management is not up to the task. If I hear 5 years in pre-production and only 18months production then you know it's gone wrong in pre-production already.
Nice to see a new video!
Glad to see this was a good thing to sub to. Got the backlog though😂 Hope we get to play StormGate's beta sometime soon, but only the beta. It's done when it's done.
Another Radical Video bro!
I vote with my wallet and playtime, not with words on forums. I’m not in a position in life where I can comfortably drop $70 on a game just to have it be unfinished and cobbled together with roadmaps and promises. I work $13/h, every dollar counts. So if I don’t like a game, I simply don’t play it.
From someone who was in the industry Crunch happens all games go through it and it is expected. Kind of like a tradition. It does stem from poor management but overall laziness is also a factor. Crunch time is not 40 to 80. Hours ramp up way before that. It might be 40 hours in the beginning but as soon as it gets to be like within 3-6 months of the deadline the hours go up from 40 -> 60 then when it is 1-2 months out you go from 60 -> 80 hours then possibly the last 2-3 weeks you are going from 80 -> 100 hours. VERY VERY few people survive this process. I think the QA attrition rate was like 90%. This is some serious serious burnout.
A Day with one of your videos is a good day, please keep up the great work
Nah Cults
I agree that many of these companies push out unfinished games for the quick buck and I hope customers will stop buying games from these companies so the companies can learn to make actual good games. I wonder what your thought is if some of these game companies decided to pull back the scope so the game can be fully polished I'd they're running out budget / time.
the new business model is to make sales based on pre orders, rather than release week
This was really interesting. Great video.
Summary for the video I didn't video: Companies have to ways - to pay testers and test the game before launching OR to launch the game and players will pay them to test their games. What would you choose?
I choose patiance "
You know the solution to games like Anthem, never ever preorder games. I also personally follow a 2 week law, wait the first two weeks after a game launch's so a. server/login issues have time to be ironed out b. get a decent number of players to try out and honestly review it.
Halo infinite reaally suffered from this. Years later the game is steadily going uphill. If it released as it was during season 4 the game would have been a muuuuuch bigger hit and wouldnt have died so fast
Well a one month crunch feels really bad and was really exhausting, deadlines will always be a part of any development ,but AAA titles are now on a complete capatalistic view where its MONEY MONEY THEN MONEY
Great video!!
Fallout 76 was a total Zenimax corporate move to jump on the Game-as-a-Service bandwagon for persistent monetization of their IPs. They did it with ESO for Elder Scrolls and wanted to do the same for Fallout. It’s pretty suspicious that right in the middle of Starfield development which started right after Fallout 4 in 2015, suddenly all Zenimax studios pivoted to Fallout 76 (including even ID Software) to help finish and push it out as quickly as possible. Those poor ex-BattelCry bastards in Austin had to then piece it all together. Redfall, Blades and Youngblood were all byproducts of that time period too.
Because stupid people keep buying them! Just a guess... Now I'll watch the video
Steam already had the answer to this years ago, it's called Early Access. People are much more willing to forgive you for selling them an unfinished game if you tell them that it is unfinished. Of course, that also carries the implicit promise that the game will be finished at some point, and with how publishers are I can only assume that's why more AAA studios don't use Early Access.
This makes a lot of sense. Thank you for the explanation.
I honestly never experienced an unnfinished buggy game. I guess the kind of games I like are just not effcted by that problem fore some reason.
Insanely short dev cycles for unreachable goals and underfunded understaffed and over worked Devs.
Facts, bro. And yeah, nearly every AAA game is buggy and unplayable, but as usual, some game companies don't care if their unfinished games are bad, because as long as sales of the game is high, it's no longer a problem to them, which is what I absolutely hate about them so very much!
Unreal tournament 2 was a great game i remember me and my friends just having a blast fighting each other with the demo before it came out.
The only games that I’ve played this year that feel finished at launch are dead island 2 and elden ring
Scp sl was made by a single polish 17 yer old boy and he manages to have more player on average than most AAA games. Yea he expand the tema to update the game, but atleast is a good free to play and funny game to play.
The kid that made crab game gets more players and that game is a shitpost.
@@OdaSwifteyeDani.
@@OdaSwifteye welcome to reality mate
@@OdaSwifteyeyea but it’s fun and original and isn’t that what matters
First watch through that was a rough cut to Astroneer. "We've got our video on how bad games trick you into buying them" -> Astroneer Footage More on topic. Yeah I've been in AAA myself for about a decade, I've seen the company I'm at now grow from a full staff of ~200 to ~900. The inefficencies caused by team scale are obvious. What's not obvious is what to do about it. You can't deliver broad AAA scope with a small team (Larian had ~400 people working on BG3), but large teams are prone to just falling apart.
Oh god seeing Happy Wars, Airmech Arena and Defiance in one page hits me hard with nostalgia for the 360
The culture of pre-ordering needs to die...
Cam you are doing amazing keep it up
Needing more development time and needing to release it by deadline are some reasons, but it may be the fact that some of the reasons why AAA Studios don’t finish their game is because of using their game launching period as an early access step and the fact that they are focusing too much on updates thinking it would grow better or would be a better solution than just to release a full completed game at launch
11:03 then what about a one person development all of these in the lower budgets? Does that feel like I'm more focused to one specific thing after the other? Does this qualify mean anything for one person passion project? I'm not talking about video games
Yeah I ain’t falling for pre-ordering AC Mirage and Starfield. Just play Remnant, and Deep Rock Galactic
Rock and Stone Brother!
BG3 is unfinished. I love it but it is unfinished. Specifically act 3. Also as someone who has done software development, crunch is almost always the result of poor manager decisions.
I've heard this as well. It strikes me as curious that they bumped the release up a month with how buggy act 3 is
@@CasuallyFilthy. Starfield releasing about the same date is the why. The other why is because they have an ironclad reputation. They are known as an indie developer that is good at planning within the constraints of a limited time and budget. Their 3rd acts are always below the standards of the 1st and 2nd because of these constraints, but never bad. The game goes live, the money comes in and work on the Definitive version starts, free to all the owners of the base game. Everybody who knows Larian Studios is well aware of this and totally agrees with it. Players had no problems forking over $60 for the Early Access version years before release.
Crunch is ironic. *in greedy company voice* “So you’re telling me, we can hire like 200 people, and lose a lot of money, then hire like 50 competent people, and save/get a lot of money?” “Not when you’re me.”
10:56 it honestly reminds me how God of War was made; you'd have a team dedicated to each section of the game instead of all over the place.
Why do they make the teams much bigger? Probably because if they had a smaller number of developers, they would have to keep each person for longer, which means having to give them benefits and stuff like that. It's cheaper to have 300 people work part-time than to have 150 people work full-time.
No it fucking isn't. Especially because if you go through your teams you end up having tons of productivity lost just due to retraining. You won't keep part timers for a long time...
@SioxerNikita No. He's right. In America, working "full-time" legally entitles you to benefits at your employer's expense that part-time employees don't get. In Grocery Stores, it's extremely common to force employees to go home early because the difference in paying someone who works 29 hours a week and someone who works 30 hours a week is insane.
@@HunterStiles651Yeah, I'm aware, but for a programming team, this is actually not that beneficial due to the massive retraining required every time. Every company that has attempted this in the past ends up paying more for less overall. That's the issue. I am not talking about having more benefits, but in terms of a grocery store, turn around is not so bad for the company as the retraining time is much shorter.
Wait, what? Astroneer looks like indie version of No Man's Sky. Is anyone here who has played that game?
Haha at first glance it does, but I can assure you they are two very different games mechanically and visually! - Editor
@@GoingIndiebut seriously, the artstyle is freakin' dope. Hope I can buy that game soon when I have a good device.
First video I’ve ever seen of yours My first thought on seeing your face was “oh hi Gale”
one important aspect: once a company becomes sock based it tends to have money more on the speculation of stocks than in actual products. also: big studios hard to manage, is hard to divide tasks betwen programers utilizing code that interconects. also: making games is actualy prety hard and there are lots of bugs and few people that can actualy make things work out nicely.
Animal Crossing New Horizons really taught me to just COMPLETELY give up on the AAA game scene and focus instead on indie games I actually value. I was skeptical enough at the time not to pre-order it or buy on launch, but I only made it a week before giving in to everyone around me adoring the game and yearning to get in on the latest animal crossing game as I've loved so many others. it was great at first, but it really wasn't a game meant to last. and once you got used to the shiny new additions you'd start to realize just how unfinished the game was. that had already taught me my lesson, but I learned it two-fold a bunch of updates later when it was basically confirmed that ACNH was never going to be truly finished. sure, there were updates that helped round it out and restore functionality that really should've been there from the beginning. but it's definitely not done, and it's never going to be. because what incentive do they have to finish a game so many years later? it's exactly the point of this video - they've already made their money some studios will care enough to try and finish their game, yes. there are games that do eventually reach the point at which they should have launched, where you can confidently say a game is done. but a lot of them just get left behind like ACNH and you realize that the game you bought wasn't even just an investment in something that'd be finished someday - you bought an abandoned game
thats why u hack ur switch
Because people keep buying them. The glorified snake oil salesmen online making excuses for clearly bad faith practices in the industry don’t help. Truly great big budget games nowadays are gems.
We have the same problem in the bridge design industry, fortunately safety regulators have really noticed ($$$ 😅)
Can you give a link of the unreal tournament foregone destruction ost version you can hear play in the background at 1:04 please?
Good thing insomniac aren't in that same boat... best AAA studio that's out there who KNOWS how to make a game finnished and playable at launch.
Dude indie Cults hate anything
Indie devs are amazing. AAA games are trash
You know what worse? Is if the game that was made by crunch will succeed. Because that will reinforce even more crunch time philosophy. But I guess the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing, over and over again, expecting things to change... Also I would argue that the philosophy of 'release now, finish later' is also destructive and even more dangerous in software than in video games. I think that mindset is wrong in the first place because when you release something unfinished to the public, especially critical software, the damage that it can cause at launch is gonna be very hard to fix. A bug in a video game is often just a gag, but a bug in a software designed for serious business is rarely funny.
It sounded like you were recording the indie game from your discord at 3AM lol
I think crunch exists because organizations will procrastinate as much as individuals. Also the final stages are inherently more intense as bugs that were acceptable during development need to be fixed.
As an employee, I love a larger team because I get more idle time rather than working my ass off for the whole 8 hours. I would break down if I have to be constantly be working the whole shift. The efficiency graph that having less people is more efficient is just a myth, and you'll be taking away a person's idle time and get them to be burned out even without overtime.
the main and main problem is multiple pc configes..it is hard as is to optimize a game for 1 system like xbox playstation or nintendo....but then throw in 1000s of personal config system with 1000s of gpus to run the same game...its nearly impossible to optimize it for every system ....however...there is an easy fix for this....EMULATION (1 virtual system running of all system) but since its not legal thus we have broken and unfinished games
From Software proves that you can make full-fledged games. Elden Ring also had bugs, I remember riding an invisible horse, and I even downloaded a fan-made bug fix. Then in patch 1. 04 it was fixed. Armored Core 6 was perfect. I didn't meet any bugs. Optimization top notch just can't be any better.
Its time developers start realizing that paying customers are not beta testers. Because that's what has become the reality.
At this point AAA gaming is only 10 years Behind hollywood in destroying itself, allnit takes is some general crisis that forces people to rethink their loney spendieren on ganes
Annnnnd subscribed.
The U.S. Navy did a big study on sleep and working hours, and found that extended periods of very long work hours, at some point, produced negative returns.
There should be a new law stating that a company can be sued for fraud if they release a broken game
Can u do a video on digital game prices v physical prices? I used to buy physical were i could, paying £10-£20 less than digital prices for the same game! I have started buying the occasional digital game recently. I just cant see the reason why digital games cost more!
I think Part of It has To do With steam. Steam takes A flat 30% cut, So games That otherwise Would be Cheaper, compensate For that Price. then That becomes Industry standard. In addition, I Recall Hearing somewhere That physical And digital storefronts Made an Agreement to Sell games At the Same prices, Because it Would start A cycle Of screwing Each other Over.
Astroneer is a really nice game. I still play it and still enjoy exploring planets.
I felt like No Man’s Sky popularized “release now, finish later”. It had the worst launch imaginable, but the developers worked hard behind the scenes. They fixed and even added content that wasn’t available at launch; gamers forgave them because the game *eventually* met Day 1 expectations. Yes, there were way more factors, but other studios and developers weren’t looking at that. All they saw was the wave of players who bought a game that was infamous for being unfinished at launch; they quickly adopted this model because NMS’s player base *eventually* praised the game. Like you said, games became mostly digital because it was infinitely cheaper than a physical release. Studios and their investors became obsessed with NMS model, despite that studio having the excuse of being indie.