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Path: ...!Xl.tags.giganews.com!local-2.nntp.ord.giganews.com!news.giganews.com.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2024 17:51:56 +0000 From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action Subject: Bethesda Embraces Its Bugginess Date: Fri, 18 Oct 2024 13:51:56 -0400 Message-ID: <7b65hj5bffl0bi1e0ekbsmlo19pji3b6se@4ax.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 76 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com X-Trace: sv3-8NbtuzRvnxXdYuYz/mTBqKLE/DuNKJRPvqusj+ZSc9RV8uBRiPPuouRgNiSIcKJKwtyxNntl3YhNqYg!Ao2KR66o0MRnl0SJrowvwhcyhSkUujKy3aPajjXAOvMKcjWVnrGopwCrHeOurUP9xoQZHO9n X-Complaints-To: abuse@giganews.com X-DMCA-Notifications: http://www.giganews.com/info/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 5000 Well... at least a (former) lead designer of Bethesda does. Bruce Nesmith, who headed the Skyrim team, recently admitted that Bethesda games lacked a certain degree of "polish", but that at some point you have to release a game even if it still has "700" known bugs* and that players should just understand that a bug free release is impossible. Which, like the recent comment by a Paradox CEO, lacks a certain self-awareness. It's not so much that players are expecting a bug-free release. Rather, it's the sheer number of bugs (and the obvious nature of so many of them) that's causing a ruckus, and the obstinance of publishers to do anything about it. I get it; developing software is HARD. I mean, I can speak from personal experience in that, and I was never involved in anything as massively complex as a modern AAA video game. A typo can set you back for days trying to figure out what the ^#$%^#$ program isn't doing what it's supposed to, and God forbid you misunderstand the goal or use some deprecated technique. You might be looking at a huge rewrite of vital code that puts all the rest of the project on hold until you fix your mess. It's even worse when you're on the cutting edge and creating entirely new techniques almost from scratch. Except... there are solutions to these problems; solutions that are readily available to the multi-billion dollar publishers funding these projects. Sure, a little ten-person Indie studio might be forgiven for not having these options, but Paradox? Bethesda? EA? Better project management helps allot, allowing the development team --especially the programmers-- enough time to work out the kinks in the core systems before building your house-of-cards framework on top of it. Or just allowing enough time to better plan out what you're going to be doing with the game so it's a less rickety structure to begin with. A clearer vision, with a fixed number of goals. Stamp out feature creep which keeps adding neat but costly additions. And add plenty of time for QA... and give your developers the time they need to fix the problems found. But it's even worse with Bethesda, because their products are neither cutting edge, and some of the bugs gamers are dealing with date back DECADES because Bethesda keeps reusing the same cranky engine. Worse, these are issues that MODDERS have fixed yet Bethesda refuses to include them into its own releases. It isn't an inability to fix the game that aggravates players; it's Bethesda's outright refusal to do so, despite the work being already done for them. Sure, game development is hard... and its expensive. But with big AAA games already taking years -in some case /decades/ to release, that excuse wears thin. Publishers who can invest that much money into a game that gets developed for so long can afford to keep it in the oven a little longer so it doesn't come out a goopy mess. They don't, not because it means the difference (as it does with small Indies) between the company staying afloat or going under, but because it means the difference between OODLES of profit and only SOME profit. It has less to do with profitability and more to do with how the company is perceived on the stock market. The company will do fine either way; it's just the gamers -the customers- are held in lower regard than the investors. So I don't buy into these excuses that the C-levels are making for their buggy, under-baked products. Sure, I understand the problems that lead up to them, but their solution of "it's hard, so just suck it up buttercup because that's what games are now" just isn't a winning argument with me. YOU CAN DO BETTER. And now that more and more gamers are waking up to this, asking all of us to just close our eyes and accept the status quo of buggy games isn't winning you any favors, publishers. * interview here: https://www.videogamer.com/news/skyrim-lead-bug-free-starfield-impossible/