Thank you for writing my post for me.

FNV was buggy, people [censored]ed like hell, here its buggy as hell. And now 2 months after skyrims release have passed, its still the same thing. Obsidian got the games serious issues fixed pretty quickly. I also dont remember them relesing a patch, that broke more, then releasing a patch for the patch. Hell the patch didnt even fix anything big, just crap like bookshelves iirc. Vital to the game, just ignore the people who want trigger quests, or who have severe fps drops.

Im also willing to bet Bethesda had more time/resources into skyrim than Obsidin was able to get for NV.

So a patch in January. Its Jnuary, do people even know what might be fixed yet ? (im interested too see how much it will fix after 2 [censored] months)

Probably nothing important. Remember how much priority they gave to fixing the Vampire Cure bug in Oblivion, for the PS3?

Haha, reminds me of a time during New Vegas release when people complain that Fallout 3 is better then New Vegas just because Fallout 3 was "bug free" ignoring the fact it took many months for Beth to get a patch right and the horrible implication of Games for Windows LIVE for the PC users.

I dont pay on ps3 what was the glitch ? I know on 360 you ept getting money after competing it. I also know my megaton citizens are still commiting suicide last I checked, they miss Walter. Im betting he left persuing that BoS paladin, who breaks into your home AND STEALS ALL YOUR STUFF!

Betehsda didnt fix that last issue, a landmine did.

I don't have a PS3 myself, but it was bad enough that I heard of it anyway. The questgiver that could cure your vampirism would not accept one of the ingredients, leaving you unable to finish the quest and stuck as a vampire. It was fixed (after a long time) but the bug reoccurred on the PS3 with the release of Shivering Isles and Bethesda never bothered fixing it. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Cure_Vampirism#PS3_GotY_Vampirism_Cure_Notes For American players, the only option involves using another, non-GotY disk (in other words, paying for your game twice).

The PS3 version of Oblivion was already patched when it came to PS3. And it has still today an uncurable vampirism quest.

In the tough economical world, publishing a game 'when it's finished' isn't possible. You have a set amount of money and thus work-hours you can spend on a game and if you after that run out of money, then you simply have to publish the game as it is.

The reality of industry economics may be partly to blame, but I think those same pressures existed before patches were there to wipe up your mistakes. They may have the ability now to push harder deadlines and release unfinished games, but that doesn't make it right.

Most People wised up about that years ago and always wait.

With the console versions, maybe. The PC version was terribly optimized, I can still play games releases today with higher required specs that run more smoothly.

I can attest to that as well; my Radeon 5870 (granted, it's mobile) should have no trouble playing a 2006 game on the highest possible settings.

Tell that to the Blizzard team working on Diablo III. They seem to be ignoring this

Well not every developer has a mountain of solid gold and printing cash to work with. Blizzard has literally unlimited money.

The reality is that developers didn't have the chance to try out new things. They had to stay within the 100% sure limits of the tech without pushing it. Now, thanks to patches, they can push that limit and fix it later if the tech can't handle it.

I''m sorry, but that "reality" is just wrong.

http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/2011/02/04/making-crash-bandicoot-part-3/

"While all this art design was going on, I, and then in January 1995, Dave, struggled to build an engine and tool pipeline that would make it possible to render these grandiose cartoon worlds we had envisioned on paper. "

"Our motto was “bite off more than we could chew, then figure out some crazy complicated way to make it work.”"

"So we decided to use an entirely SGI and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX based tool pipeline. In fact the game itself even ran on the SGI (with terrible keyboard control). This meant buying programmers $100,000 SGIs instead of $3,000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_computer. Gulp again. No one else did this. No one. And at the time, when a 50mhz Pentium with 8-32 megs of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random-access_memory was typical, our 250mhz 64 bit SGIs with 256 or 512 megs of RAM opened up totally different computational possibilities. By 1997 I had 4 gigs of ram in my machine!"

"And the even crazier – way crazier – virtual memory system required to shoehorn the 8-16 meg levels the artists created into the Playstation’s little 2megs of RAM. Dave meanwhile had to invent insane bidirectional 10x compressors to help get the 128meg levels down into 12, and figure out some tool for managing the construction of our gigantic 3D worlds.

Our levels were so big, that our first test level, which never shipped and was creatively named “level1” or “the jungle,” couldn’t be loaded into Alias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerAnimator even on a machine with 256megs. In fact, it had to be cut up into 16 chunks, and even then each chunk took 10 minutes to load!"

"But the craziest thing I did was create a new programming language – with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language) syntax – for coding all of the gameplay. It had all sorts of built in state machine support (very useful with game objects), powerful macros, dynamic loading etc. It was also highly irregular and idiosyncratic"

For once a well written editorial on gaming.

I agree with your points, and yes the industry is using the internet (or the end user to be more precise) as a development "crutch" so to speak, and this month to month patching is one of the key issues I saw coming with Bethesda's love affair with steam exclusive for PC. Their Sony and MS markets were sealed tight as a drum skin, but the PC market was the last renegade of the bunch.

But in defense, as an experienced production manager (seafood not gaming), I was often forced a gambit on the front of a shifting and unstable market, new tech, and a much broader customer base (sound familiar?); i.e. reducing labor, material and overhead costs by cutting what was considered "old school" and introducing "the new" in the same package and at times with increased costs to my customers.

My only hope is that video game companies will eventually be held to RICO statutes or CAA as any other industry. DRM + Internet = the "wild west" of fair trade. It's Laissez-Faire all over again...

No it's not, as you can even see from your own quote there. "No one else did this, no one."

The CB-crew's motto wasn't a general view of how to make a game. Quoting one game developer from 1994 doesn't prove that risks were taken in the same amount as it is today.

There's an underlying sentiment in these kinds of articles and arguments that just rubs me the wrong way.

Developers are lazy.

I disagree with this sentiment so much that it almost invalidates everything else in the article on merit of being present. Laziness? Really? Dozens and even hundreds of people work on a video game, make it into a real product, and get it to market, and they're all lazy.

Lead artists must be lounging around on their sofas eating cheetos, and voice actors must be friends of the family called in on a slow day. But then every day must be slow, right? I mean when you use teams of programmers that copypaste code all day long and can't be bothered to even lift their pinky finger.

You'd think that with all the lazy no-good deveopers out there making a video game would be the easiest no-brainer job in the world.

Yeah. They're just lazy. Shame on them. They shouldn't be in the video game industry at all. They should be making hamburgers at McDonald's, right?

I'm going to have to agree with Steampunk, calling the devs lazy couldn't be anymore opposite of the truth.

That would be an exaggeration though. Lazy doesn't need to be lounging on the sofa all day. I can be lazy in my work by keeping to the bare minimum just as long as the work is done, which is pretty much how most people do their jobs. Game development is no exception.

Heck, working with a lot of people enhances this - free riding.

It's hardly fair to compare games like Metal Gear Solid or Ocarina of Time to Skyrim, considering that the first two were made for one specific console and were rather small, whereas Skyrim was made for the PC, XBOX360, and PS3, and is about a hundred times bigger than both games with far more detailed AI going on all the time. The article neglects to mention how the PC and XBOX360 versions are fully playable.

You tell me, buddy.

The whole article just reaks of "guy who got angry and looked for excuses to make an article without any solid point."

Has the internet ruined gaming? No, it hasn't. Are patches a bad thing? No, they aren't. Accept that the industry is changing and that not all change is bad.

Nah, not angry at all. Just upset that you can't buy a complete, finished game anymore.

If you aren't upset by that, then I believe you're mistaking the "winds of change" for something that none of us should be "accepting".

Neither does saying that they weren't.

At least I brought a quote.

This. The people who buy the game shouldn't have to be the ones who test the game.

Push the release date back if you have to, but don't release a buggy unfinished game just because you can patch it later.

Only Bethesda is taking the piss with the patches. Gamebreakers siince day one, and nearly 2 months later still waiting for a patch to actually fix, some of the big issues.

Also I bet Todd regrets the whole "the game is the earliest from announcement to release we have ever made". As if rushing to get that deadline is something to be proud of. I want a quality product, not [censored] pumped out ASAP.


And yes devs can be lazy. See valve as a good example. People may say they take their time, but all I have to say to that is L4D2.

Not true :
1) NEVER pre-order a game that you know will be buggy
2) Wait to buy game AFTER it is fixed : this has the added advantage of a cheaper price paid, since it seems to take game devs 6 months to actually get "most" of the bugs out, and by then the game is on sale

I just bought Skyrim for $40 and only because it was Christmas, otherwise I would have waited for at least 1 more patch (probably 2 or even 3 before it is truely stable)

Money talks, and the developers will listen (or go out of business)