I feel like I'm the only one that doesn't like delays

[FakeSympathy]

Recently, two of Kickstarter games that I funded has been delayed.

First, a well-known project; Bloodstained: Ritual of the night. Originally set to release in March of 2017, it was delayed to sometime in 2018 originally, then in August of this year it was delayed again to "sometime" in 2019.

Then today, another project that I was looking forward to called "The Iron Oath: Dark Turn-based Tactical RPG" was originally planned for March of 2019 release but was announced that it was delayed to indefinite future.

Considering Unsung Story and other game projects on Kickstarter were delayed and failed, this had me question the effectiveness of these video game delays, whether it's Kickstarter or an AAA game release.

While I understand and appreciate developers taking time to polish their games, I get super annoyed whenever my most anticipated games get delayed to (insert time window here), which will probably get delayed again from that time window. It's like they are teasing me with a carrot on a string and making me reach for it, only to pull the carrot at the last minute.

And before you say "Oh, but longer development time = better game", That's not always true. Half-life 3 never came out, Duke Nukem Forever sucked, Spore bored the crap out of me, Perfect Dark: Zero made me genuinely mad, and No Man's Sky made me done with video game delays. Yeah, rushed games mostly end up being terrible, but at least they don't tease the ever-loving fuck out of you. Besides, some of those rushed games eventually get patched or modders try to salvage them.

Like I said, I want my games to be as polished as possible when I buy them. But the publishers or developers (or whoever's responsible for managing the release) need to stop doing this. Instead of giving us the random window which will probably get delayed again, give yourself a VERY long to work out the game. Tease the game when it's around 50-60% done, then show the gameplay at 60-70%, and then a release window around 80-90%. I know this is probably somewhat close to what they are doing before delaying the game yet again, but why not give yourself a plenty of time to work on the game?

 

[Elfgore]

It's such a shades of grey thing though in my opinion.

Yeah, Duke Nukem Forever is an example of a delay leading to god awful game. Where the developers just chucked in whatever sounded good and would remove them just as fast. I also wonder if we would've gotten No Man's Sky at all if they had to release it two years later. I'm a Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord waiter, I've seen first hand how obnoxious it can be when somebody says a release date and then it comes and goes.

But it's also hard to tell if a delay helped the game. The Witcher 3 had a few delays, but since we got the delayed version it's hard to tell if it improved the game at all. I can assume, but that's all it would ever be. Just an assumption. That goes for any game you can think of that did well after a delay or two.

Don't expect change either in how games are announced, the game industry seems to run on hype. If I could make a graph, it would shot hype going up over time. More hype means people are more likely to buy.

So I'm of the mind, I rather get a delay. Other games exist that I can play, I don't see the point in worrying about them too much. As for those Kickstarter games.... well.... you should pretty much donate to Kickstarter assuming you'll never get the product in return. Because you run that risk every time. This is coming from somebody who's earned a superbacker sticker.

 

[Saelune]

It's such a shades of grey thing though in my opinion.

Yeah, Duke Nukem Forever is an example of a delay leading to god awful game. Where the developers just chucked in whatever sounded good and would remove them just as fast. I also wonder if we would've gotten No Man's Sky at all if they had to release it two years later. I'm a Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord waiter, I've seen first hand how obnoxious it can be when somebody says a release date and then it comes and goes.

But it's also hard to tell if a delay helped the game. The Witcher 3 had a few delays, but since we got the delayed version it's hard to tell if it improved the game at all. I can assume, but that's all it would ever be. Just an assumption. That goes for any game you can think of that did well after a delay or two.

Don't expect change either in how games are announced, the game industry seems to run on hype. If I could make a graph, it would shot hype going up over time. More hype means people are more likely to buy.

So I'm of the mind, I rather get a delay. Other games exist that I can play, I don't see the point in worrying about them too much. As for those Kickstarter games.... well.... you should pretty much donate to Kickstarter assuming you'll never get the product in return. Because you run that risk every time. This is coming from somebody who's earned a superbacker sticker.

The issue is assuming that delays automatically mean they are making the game better.


If they delay is because they are still actively and properly working on the game, great! Lots of games were released too soon. But if they just are being lazy, or otherwise misusing their time and resources, then a delay wont help. Duke Nukem Forever is a shining example of that, as the development kept taking so long that the tech became super outdated, and they had to basically start over, multiple times if I remember correctly.


Really people need to just stop shushing people who are bummed by a delay by saying it will objectively be good for the game instead of just being optimistic that 'maybe it means the game will be better...hopefully'.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

It's so much of a grey issue like Elfgore said. It's probably the publisher most times that is pushing for a release window that really isn't realistic. But if you let the dev take all the time they think they need, then the game will basically be in development forever as you can never attain the perfection every creator wants to achieve. Also, most people are of the mindset that regardless of what the thing is, it takes X amount of time to complete with the assumption that everything moves along perfectly, and that rarely happens. Even devs I'm sure think, this feature will take 2 months to develop, that feature 4 months, and you run into issues that really should be allotted for time-wise, but never are. You rarely get projects that run ahead of schedule due to that exact mindset. Lastly, game devs really do work their butts off (in hours worked) to get these games out that is rather morally questionable.

 

[sXeth]

I mean yeah, I'd generally prefer for a game to be announced and literally up for sale the next day.

There are multiple cases of delays of course, and if you're hyped enough to be bummed out by the delay of a game, in this day and age its pretty easy to spot the bad ones.

Feature creep (where you keep hearing about more and more and more things being put in the game) is one big one that usually turns out poorly. Developmental strife or unclear game direction can usually be picked up on when interviews are contradicting themselves or emphasizing different portions of the game from each other (Fallout 76 PR has been rife with that, with Todd Howard seeming like he's on a different game then nearly anyone else from the team when they do get interviewed).

Bug fix delays on the other hand studios tend to be pretty to the point and generally transparent on. They don't hide it (unless its some catastrophic failure at the base foundation) because its understandable and generally well received, but they also won't embellish on it constantly because its somewhat embarassing.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I?m usually too busy to be bothered by delays these days, but when I was a kid even a few weeks delays would?ve been excruciating.

 

[Trunkage]

I was appreciating Bethsheda for how they release/d Fallout 4 and now 76 just months after announcement. But they blew with Elder Scrols 6.

 

[SckizoBoy]

I generally make a point of not backing Kickstarters for stuff like games as a matter of principle.

They genuinely have a problem with forward planning and a lot of projects have been utter trainwrecks, like Unsung Story and Mighty No. 9, the studio that try funding this way are typically small and have no sense of what they're getting themselves into, so they like the idea of what they're working on, not the act of what they're working on itself, and because the funding is done purely by private individuals who have no personal influence over proceedings, there's zero production oversight (I mean, it's why producers tend to have prominent credits) and so almost nothing stopping them from royally screwing it up and running away with the money (as happened with US).

 

[Elijin]

I mean, what are you going to do?

That sums up my feelings on delays. Getting particular upset, annoyed or mad about them isnt going to make them take a delay back. No one really likes a delay, but whats to do about it?

 

[Squilookle]

How could anyone possibly think they were the only one who doesn't like delays? It's like the 3rd most popular game topic to whinge about on the internet.

Half-life 3 never came out, Duke Nukem Forever sucked, Spore bored the crap out of me, Perfect Dark: Zero made me genuinely mad, and No Man's Sky made me done with video game delays.

So what? Half Life 2 took 6 years to make, Team Fortress 2 was every bit the vapourware that Duke Nukem Forever was and turned out to be a smash hit, Civilisation does Spore better anyway, and Perfect Dark was delayed quite a few times as well, as were just about every one of Rare's masterpieces. Elite Dangerous has taken forever to come out and is regarded as a potential classic.

If a game gets cancelled after multiple delays, chances are there were things seriously wrong with it anyway. You only get to launch a game once, may as well get it right. I'm waiting for M&B Bannerlord too, and they can take as long as they like as far as I'm concerned. I've got a whole life to lead in the meantime, and Warband to play as well.

When it comes down to waiting a few months longer to play Driver San Francisco for the first time, or having a trainwreck like Driv3r rushed out the door to meet a deadline, it's not even a question. I'll wait for the more polished game every single time, thanks.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I don't understand the topic. When has anyone ever said they like delays? It's a necessity for when a game needed more time than they anticipated, that's all, this isn't some kind of tactic for some grand scheme or something, you delay a game when you need more time to finish it.

 

[Dalisclock]

I'm a fan of Kentucky Route Zero. That game has been in dev for 5 years and has released 4 roughly one hour long episodes and a series of smaller side mini-sodes. The Act 5 finale was slated for Early 2018, and then 2018 and now probably 2020 for all we fucking know. So yeah, I know the pain of delays. The only reason they get any slack is that it's a wonderful atmospheric....visual novel/game/walking simulator....thingy and apparently the whole team is like 5 people.

But yeah, I agree that delay after delay is annoying, but it's also annoying when a game is obviously rushed to meet some arbitrary deadline(needs to be out for Crimis) and the game suffers as a result.

 

[Satinavian]

Games are usually not delayed for further polishing or performance optimization or improvements of clunky subsystems or balancing issues. All of those can easily be patched later.

Games are usually delayed because of game breaking bugs or because whole, essential subsystems simply don't work or don't yet exist.


That is why i don't really have problems with delays. Unless they pile up in a way that suggests the whole project planning was bad.

 

[CaitSeith]

No, you're not; no one really likes delays. But you have to be keep yourself calm, and make sure your desperation doesn't lead to harassing the developers. Delays happen. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad reasons. Sometimes they bring good outcomes, sometimes not so good.

The worst case scenario is that there is no game and they ran off with the money (I don't know about The Iron Oath, but for Bloodstained it's very very unlikely).

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Those examples don't backup your argument. Half-life 3 has never been announced and has never been in development. Duke Nukem Forever was not in development for 11 years. It might have been a project a couple of times but failed to gain any traction. The game gearbox made was just a Duke Nukem game with a regular development cycle they gave the name Forever; whether it was a good or bad thing is a different subject. It had nothing in common with whatever DNF might've been way back when besides the obvious.

Ultimately, a delay to polish and bugfix a game will only be in the best interests of the gamer. For a similar reason that I try to avoid early-access titles, playing an unfinished, buggy or unoptimised version of a game will forever leave a poor impression. Consider how much crap Ubisoft got for AssCreed Unity for how bug ridden it was; that's the thing people will always remember about that game, even if it was later patched. Andromeda is another example of a game that was plagued by countless issues it almost killed the ME franchise.

You won't see the difference since you won't know what the version you might've gotten would've been like if they released on the day they first suggested. You'll not know what changed, what they fixed, what they tweaked, what they removed to better the experience. But when you do get it, you'll be getting a better game. Unless it's Watchdogs, in which case it will be worse.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Having said all of the above, I'm still holding onto a Star Citizen backer account that I'm very tempted to get refunded or sell on. There's a delay, there's a reasonable delay, and then there's 4 year delay (so far) with still no release date set. I think a year is probably as much as I'd be willing to tolerate patiently but up to say 6 months (f.ex to line up with a different sales window, avoid competition, fix bugs, test servers, etc.) I think isn't unreasonable. 4 years and counting is a piss-take.