[TRENCHES] Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - Intensity
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Intensity
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/intensity
Back-Asswards Testing
AnonymousSeveral years ago, I worked on a AAA title that was fast approaching it’s release date, but still had issues both minor and major. The company decided that rather than fix the problems before release, that they would go gold with a version of the game they knew didn’t work.
When I say it didn’t work, I mean it was actually impossible to complete the game because of a major glitch that would crash the game EVERY TIME you got to a certain point. They figured they would make the release date and just issue a patch quickly to resolve the issue.
Needless to say, the reviews and forums ripped the game a new one. The company was under intense pressure to release the fix, so once again they do the logical thing - released the patch without having QA test it first. We found out from Blues News that our own patch had been released, and were told by development to download and test the patch from the public link.
It had to be re-patched.
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As for the story: could be so many games other than the Fallouts. The Codemasters F1-games with their corrupt save bugs each darn release spring to mind. The story unfortunately clearly shows an imho dangerous mentality shift thanks to game consoles having network connections nowadays: rather than squash as many bugs as possible, devs now just plan to release day-one patches for the games. All the wile journalists are issued the final release version sometimes up to a month ahead of release for review, and they deduct points for serious bugs (and are right for doing so since gamers without a network connection will play this unpatched version).
On the other hand, that doesn't mean developers are never lazy and that publishers aren't greedy.
Downloadable patches allow games to be way buggier. Back in the 80s, if you shipped a broken game, that was it. Sure you could fix it for future copies sold, but people would savage you for it and return the games to the store. But now the fact that you can patch allows you to risk having bugs. You can gamble that you'll have fixed them by launch and have a day 1 patch. The very fact that it is an option means publishers will sometimes pick it.
kingworkscreative.com
kingworkscreative.blogspot.com
I won't presume to guess what game it was, but the reference to Blues News tells me you probably need to go back at least 5-10 years before New Vegas came out :P Does that site even still exist? :P
/read scroll
The scroll says, "You are reading a scroll."
/say How meta.
Right you are.
Go'n get 'viscerated by them graphics son!
Weird QA cycles also seem to plague MMOs, especially the ones that aren't backed by a million subscribers and huge studios. I could rattle off seven or eight off hand that had major patches in testing for months, finally getting somewhere good, then a last minute update goes from the devs to the test server to live servers between about 10 PM the day before launch and the 10 AM launch and everyone wonders "WTF!? It wasn't it like this on the PTS?"
Apparently, yes, and it was even updated today.
http://www.bluesnews.com/
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Just compare the previous generation with the current generation. Team sizes have grown a bit, but not *that* much and budgets have grown too. However, a clear mentality shift has occurred, with console games now indeed shipping with breaking bugs on the disc, which was deemed near-unthinkable just one generation ago. Developers can now somewhat afford shipping games with bugs and it shows.
In the previous generation cutting content into DLC to meet deadlines was also rare if not nonexistent. If the cut content did get released eventually, it usually was in a special re-release of the game. An example is Fable: The Lost Chapters, which eventually made it to the Xbox too under the Classics label.
Probably Gabe and Tycho: remember last week, Cora's Dad references Franzibald, so he and Tycho have a common literary enemy.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Released unexpectedly after apparently just a few weeks of beta testing. Unplayable at release. Day one patch which caused as many problems as it fixed. Subsequent patches introducing major issues which even cursory testing would have revealed (like creatures being unable to cast any of their spells). Only fully functional after about a year and a dozen or so patches.
I'm starting to wonder about that myself... maybe he's outsourced all of the development to someone?
There always were gamebreaking bugs. And cut content.
Ultima VIII had a fuckton of cut content. Ultima VII part two was a buggy, weird mess of rushed content in the final third. Even Ultima VII part 1 had several bugs that could kill your game if you broke certain sequences. Both games were buggy as fuck. That third Elite game was the buggiest mess humankind ever saw. Fallout 1 and 2 had all kind of weird glitches. Metroid Prime had a whole speed run community build upon glitch exploiting and sequence breaking. Need I mention Elder Scrolls Daggerfall?
There's plenty of examples of fucked up games on any generation. The PS1 had its fair share of them.
Games get more complex every year, in terms of coding, features, graphics, content. Maybe some aspects of design got simpler, such as the levels in an average FPS. But other than those amazingly complex levels, Doom was simple as fuck, compared to CoD. Guns were a lot simpler in how they interacted with the world, multiplayer was simpler and there weren't any classes or anything to balance, no jumping, no actual Z axis, so on, so forth.
The tons of cut content from those days ended up in some landfill, or forgotten in some basement. Now we actually get the chance to see things that get cut.
People who complain about those things are usually people who know very little about game development. There is a limited amount of time and money to make a game. Most companies simply cannot afford to work on a game until it's 100% perfect. Sure, sometimes publishers indeed butcher games that could reasonably be developed for a longer while, but they also did that back in the beginning. Like Pacman on the 2600, or ET. Or Superman 64. The list is long.
Rushed jobs are not something new. Broken games are not new. It's just that, before, games were a lot easier, a lot cheaper, a lot quicker to make and test.
I see this issue the other way around. Nowadays, a good game with bugs can get a fair chance after patches, but back then, a good game with bugs was dead on arrival.
And I didn't even mentioned how patches made online multiplayer balancing a reality. Starcraft and LOL wouldn't be so popular in a patchless world.
A lone hero standing on a hill, the wind whipping his robes, is not exactly a meme invented by Patrick Rothfuss (nor I guess whoever did that illustration). I'd buy it more as a reference to that specific illustration if the angles and wind direction were the same.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Haha yeah, it's more meant as a reference to All Fantasy Shots Ever. The guys said to draw something fantasy and that was the first kind of shot that came to mind.
are they gonna hire developers?
how did they get the trailer made
are we gonna meet devs?
You have no idea how often that movie comes up when discussing my job with friends/family/loved ones.
It is more about the Trenches. We're probably not seeing them because it's sort of like infantry in the trenches (back when we used trenches) seeing the armored division. Doesn't happen often and most of the time they just gallantly ride along while the footsloggers look on in envy*.
*looseinterpretationofhistorymetaphor,notmeanttobeentirelyaccuratetohistoricalbattlecircumstances
PSN ID: fearsomepirate