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From: JAB <noway@nochance.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Stupid gamers, expecting games to work!
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2024 08:30:36 +0100
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On 11/10/2024 17:01, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
> 
> Deputy CEO at Paradox recently lamented that modern players these days
> have too "high expectations" and are weirdly less trusting that
> developers will fix problems in their games. This from the company
> that released "Cities Skylines 2" onto the market in very rough shape
> (and, a year later, still hasn't been completely fixed). He uses this
> as an excuse why "Prison Architect 2" is being delayed indefinitely.
> 
> Yeah, it's the players who are to blame here. How dare we buy a game
> and then gripe when its full of bugs and missing features?
> High-expectations? That a product function as promised? Excuse me,
> that's _ordinary_ expectations.
> 
> And I don't think that attitude is new to gamers. This has been an
> issue with games since day one; I think the big difference now is that
> gamers now have more of an option to be vocal about it, and we have a
> lot more evidence of how common the problem it is, and how little
> publishers care. More so, gamers now have more options; there's such a
> glut of games that if one is a buggy mess, you can more easily move to
> the next (especially since, with the plethora of free options, the
> price of moving to the next title is often incredibly low).
> 
> "But we need to release the games early in order to get player
> feedback and balancing just right" is a common counter-argument... and
> it would hold water if gamer's weren't paying for the privilege of
> being beta testers. Once money changes hands, there's a completely
> reasonable expectation that the product will work.
> 
> To be fair, Paradox is apparently trying to take these lessons to
> heart, and -as the recent delay of Prison Architect 2 shows - aren't
> depending on fan's devotion to make up for shoddy releases. But that
> attitude that fans are somehow in the wrong for decrying a buggy and
> incomplete product just shows how broken the industry is. For decades
> publishers have foisted bad products on gamers, and expected them to
> just take it. Only now that players have an option to say 'no, I don't
> think so', they're crying foul.
> 

With the complexity of modern games/PC hardware I do kinda accept there 
will be some bugs on release. The problem comes when you think this 
isn't some minor thing that may have been overlooked or not 'worthy' of 
being fixed in time for release but instead it's getting into game 
breaking territory.

It reminds me of a model kit company called Dragon. They are notorious 
for having instructions that are just plain wrong (their nickname is the 
destructions) and parts that fundamentally don't fit without a lot of 
work. They literally released a kit where the tracks were about 3/4 of 
the length required. It doesn't help that they are not cheap but instead 
at the higher price point.