Negatempest said:
And the Escapist forum members know exactly who I am speak of. I would love to say and used to say, "Hey, there is only just a few bad apples in the basket." What I have to say now is, "There is only a few good apples in the basket." It is just the culmination of so many bad moves done and so many people forgiving them for those moves that now, for myself, I just don't think highly of the developers.
It used to be just EA and Activision people would find fault it mostly just over milking franchises. Fans knowing that those franchises would die out early. That was the worst thing we customers spoke of in the beginning of the generation. But know, milking franchises is one of the least troubling actions the 3rd party developers have done. At the end of 7th generation we are facing so many bad moves done by 3rd party it is insane and we would of never have believed it in the beginning of gen7 if someone spoke out about the future.
We are now buying a majority of our games with bug issues or feel like no one ever actually tested the game for quality. We are finding unlockable content on the disk behind pay walls. DLC cost for simple skins, weapons or maps is getting out of hand. Every terrible choice 3rd parties make is quickly forgotten or forgiven by comparing the choice to other bad choices. Even though those choices were terrible to start with. We have also lost tons of developers in the 7th gen.
I kinda ran into the forum post from Neogaf.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=459131
Blew my freakin mind on how much we have lost in the 7th gen. We have far less the developer variety now than we have in the past and we are stuck with those that just don't care.
The Beta games, the PR speak, the overpriced and exploitable DLC from 3rd party is now, to me, out of hand. I very much believe they do not deserve the respect and reverence they have now. I would love nothing more now than to see Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo depend less on 3rd party titles and focus more on the IP's they have now. We all know Sony and Microsoft do have old IP's they can improve on or even use the studios they have now to make new IP's.
While many of the things you wrote are true,I don't like that you over-generalizing things.
Not all act this way.
I'd like to comment on two things,based on your post.
#1 First of all,it is about buggy games. The reason games end up being buggy is because not enough time is spent fixing them. This isn't though a matter of laziness from the developer. It's a matter of having to ship the game in a specific date,and trying to make the graphics as most beautiful as possible or most content until then.
Things work like this: The owner of the studio says "that's how much money we have to invest in this game. this money is enough to pay the salaries of X number of employees for Y amount of months. that means that we will have X people work for Y months and no more."
Of course the developers could spend that time focusing more on bug fixing than adding details on the graphics.
Or even better,the publisher,or the shareholders could invest more money,so there is more time so everything is made better. But shareholders doesn't need to be people who know of games stuff. They are not gamers. They also don't know how a game is made. They are just people who hold capital,and look to invest on something that will bring them more money.
#2 In recent time we noticed that publishers are trying to find new monetization methods. They want to make more money out of the same amount content,the same amount of investment. They are experimenting. Trying to see what they can do that won't frustrate people and make them make more money.
EA's ideas have been always online DRM,online passes,and day1 DLCs.Some of them didn't passed.
Microsoft's ideas have been always online DRM too with Kinect,no used game sales,and much micro transactions. Some of them didn't passed.
Valve's idea is monetization of user created content - mods. They are planning to make it so people who know how to make mods will sell them through Steam,with Valve and the Developer/Publisher getting royalty cuts for licensing, without making the content themselves.
My suggestion is: vote with your wallet.
Support those who do movements you like,and don't support those who you don't like their movements. Show them how you feel.
. I have also looked at their history and they have published far more games than they have made. Not a bad thing, but Valve is far more known as Publisher than a developer.
