Do you think Game Companies take us for fools?

Firegod

Firegod

Firegod

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I just thought I might start a little debate here, but I've been thinking while waiting for my patch for BF2 to download. Why oh why am I sitting here for 2 1/2 damn hours waiting for a patch to be downloaded? 530mb! That's almost the size of a small demo! :confused:

Is it a case now that companies recognise that the majority of people have broadband, 1mb+, and so spend less time on the development of a game just to patch it later? They'll probably think "it's not a problem as most people can download large amounts of data now quite quickly, so why bother spending longer on the game?" Is that an unfair assumption?

Then we have the other end of the spectrum which really annoys me more than the rushed out games, the whole, "it'll be done when it's done" philoshophy. What a load of bull! Anyone who knows the slightest bit on Project Management knows that is a bad route to take. If there is no set date, when are key deliverables meant to arrive? How do you know if you are working to your full potential? What gets done when? What agenda are the team working to? A game which should take 2 years to develop is then stretched out over 6 years plus?! (Hypothetical figures, not relating to any specific titles here, but you get my drift).

I only have 512kbps broadband at the moment :o , and it's just annoying thinking that I have to wait so long to get these "updates" for a game. What happens if we were all back on dial-up and a game needed a 200Mb patch! There'd be a lot of unhappy people for sure! Now though, it seems that because people have like 8mb broadband it's no skin off their nose. No one seems to care anymore... :(

Discuss?
 
Quite possible true

Seeing as I have a 2GB a month download cap, the BF2 patches take up a quarter of my monthly download!

/don't bother downloading at home anymore, do it at University on their 10MB download speed and stick it on my 1GB flash drive to bring home :D
 
Well games have got bigger too, i remember when a 2gb game was maooohsive and now I'm not surprised at up to 10gb, medieval 2 total war for example thats occupying just over 7.5gb on my hdd.

Its all relative to technology (hardware/software etc). 512k bb is considered the modern day dial up. :p
 
It is rather annoying when you get a game and a few weeks later a huge patch comes along. Having said that, I think large patches are to be expected these days. Just look at the size of some games. The last few games I have installed have been at least a gig or more in size. A patch that's a few hundred meg is nothing.

I think most developers try their hardest to get a game out that is as perfect as they can make it. That is harder to do these days as most games need a budget of millions and publishers want the game on the shelves yesterday!

Gone are the days where most good games were knocked by a few people in some guys garage :D

SiriusB
 
I like the idea of Neverwinter Nights 2 coming out, and within 24 hours there was a patch available! Nice!

I think most of us expect a patch these days... we never really expect a game to be totally finished. Every game I have in my PC collection, has an accompanying patch hiding somewhere in my game folder!

Thems the rules!!!
 
what I hate is when the patch is not relesed on a free unlimited download service. a lot of the time they just put them on fileplanet etc or dump them on bit torrent.
seems quite cheeky to me!
 
Firegod said:
Do you think Game Companies take us for fools?
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Yes they do and for good reason - we still buy the games they put out. The last 2 games I bought were gothic 3 and splinter cell DA. Both had massive problems that where not system configuration errors, but bugs that someone playing for an hour will see.
 
Pretty sure it's the fault of the publishers and not the developers. Generally the publishers have already given the devs a lump sum of cash prior to game release - and as such are eager to push the Devs to go 'gold' so they can make their return (and hopefully profit). Obviously this results in games getting rushed and buggy, hence the need for patches.

As for the "it'll be done when it's done" approach you can be certain the companies have internal targets to meet. They just don't want to tell the world's supply of "expert game designer geeks who knows how long it takes to make X" what those deadlines are.
 
Most 300 MB + patches contain quite a bit of additional content rather than just bug fixes - I'd say it's still pretty rare to get a file that big that's genuinely just a bug-fixing patch.

To turn the whole issue on its head, I'd say that the gaming public now expect patches and, regardless of whether a game is buggy or not, feel like it's not being properly supported if there isn't a 100MB+ patch with some extra levels available for download.

Not only that, but your opening line says something in itself - "500 MB is nearly a small demo!" - just a few short years ago and that would be a completely ridiculously enormous size for a demo. Not all that long before hand, demos came on a floppy disk with a magazine - it's really all a matter of relatives, for most people 500 MB doesn't take long to download anymore!
 
There is no such thing as finished software. I wrote a programme a while back that was a simple 200-line section of code. Worked everywhere, "great" I thought. I had to write a fix for it today. I can't think of a simple bit of software that is bug-free. Yeap, consoles have fewer problems but every console game still has bugs *AND* they can't be fixed.

Most game companies are fine. EA, on the other hand, do tend to rush things.
 
AmaTeX said:
Well games have got bigger too, i remember when a 2gb game was maooohsive and now I'm not surprised at up to 10gb, medieval 2 total war for example thats occupying just over 7.5gb on my hdd.

Flight Sim X is 14GB! (and runs like a dog)
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WatchTower said:
Do companies have the patches on the main installer on later co[ies of the same games?
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from my experience yes, when they release like game of the year editions, etc they generally have the newest patches to the date of manufacturing the disks. there may still be newer patches out.

Pablo72 said:
I like the idea of Neverwinter Nights 2 coming out, and within 24 hours there was a patch available! Nice!

I think most of us expect a patch these days... we never really expect a game to be totally finished. Every game I have in my PC collection, has an accompanying patch hiding somewhere in my game folder!

Thems the rules!!!
Click to expand...

I would think thats simply because it takes months to manufacture the disks, package them and distribute them. in the meantime if they find a problem, they make a patch for it hence you see it on the shelves and get a patch at the sametime or a few days later.

there will almost always be issues with most games (especially with the size and interactivity of current games), if you look at the scale of testing, relatively small Q&A and beta testing compared to the generally what thousands/millions of players? bound to find much more problems.

to me not really a big issue. oblivion only needed a small 1.6mb patch? but like 1gb of mods to make it play really nice :D
 
Azagoth said:
If I remember correctly, didn't BF2142 have a patch out even before the game was released over here? Now that's what I'd call worrying.
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Battlefield 1942 did as well, dont think bf2 had one till a few months later (an ea record).
 
EA are the WORST game developers in the world. They cut corners to rush a release just to maximise profits - from a business point of view, they probably do realise that most people can simply download a huge patch, but from a consumers point of view, they're just awful. That patch takes the mick, 530mb and it takes 45 mins to install the bloody thing. What would they do if I wanted to play on ISDN? I would almost certaintly be writing to trading standards over the size of that patch if I had had to wait 1day+ to get it.


Idiots, EA. I could do a better job with an Amstrad and Turbo Pascal.
 
With regards to the issue of releasing an "unfinished" game, remember that shelf-space (especially for big-budget franchises like the Battlefield series) has been bought months in advance of a game's expected release date. If the game doesn't make that release date, the shelf space (and the money) has been lost.

Publishers like EA have a big influence over the release date of their studios titles, regardless of the stage these games are at.
 
Rhyzz said:
EA are the WORST game developers in the world. They cut corners to rush a release just to maximise profits - from a business point of view, they probably do realise that most people can simply download a huge patch, but from a consumers point of view, they're just awful. That patch takes the mick, 530mb and it takes 45 mins to install the bloody thing. What would they do if I wanted to play on ISDN? I would almost certaintly be writing to trading standards over the size of that patch if I had had to wait 1day+ to get it.


Idiots, EA. I could do a better job with an Amstrad and Turbo Pascal.
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530MB does take the wee a bit, although it depends on the size of the core programme(s) and data changes that need to be made. As per the patch install times, 45 minutes? Please tell me that's a joke?

I'll ignore your last line as it sorta offended me too.
 
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