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In his article entitled "How And Why Do Bad Games Get Made And Published", ex-Activisioner David "Pyaray" Ray gives us an exclusive look at his work that investigates games from bad to worse.
Comments/questions welcomed here, or you may opt to contact the author directly.
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Dan; Apolyton CS
[This message has been edited by DanQ (edited January 27, 2001).]
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deleted
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formerly of Jack
Oct 2000
time: 05:12
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Great Article. I hope that everyone gets a chance to reads it. And if anyone gets the chance to read a comprehensive list supplied by PCData, they'll begin to understand the gaming industry; and understand the decisions made by gaming companies before shooting thier mouth off. I've done this a few time;-).
[This message has been edited by deleted (edited January 28, 2001).]
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threads for general gaming articles like this are placed here cause this still remains the "Community" forum
further more, if we didnt follow this and put in the ctp2 forum it would contradict with the wish of the author to make it clear that the article has nothing to do with ctp2
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It should really be in the "Other Games" forum or the "Apolyton" forum, I would think...
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Bereta_Eder
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Very Interesting. I knew the game industry was a big market but now I know the money that are needed for development are, well, a lot! thus the hard decisions.
Thanx for the article, very informative.
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000
time: 05:12
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I'm glad there is a gaming industry and that talented people like you, Pyaray, work in it.
But I'm with War4ever on this.
It is simply not on for a manufacturer to produce a defective product and then offer it for sale as though it is fit for its purpose and of the quality you expect from goods offered for sale.
That is as true for a computer game as it is for a motor car, a pot, a pan, a table or a chair.
And a manufacturer - or an industry - which ignores this will not last long.
I bought Braveheart when it came out. It has much in it to admire. But admiration does not survive the fact that it is impossible to play the game through to a conclusion and the most ambitious bits just won't run at all.
At the time I bought it one of the designer's (a really nice and honest sort of bloke) was responding to questions about the game's problems on a chat board and I thought, oh well, there'll be a patch.
But after a bit it became clear that there would be no patch. The tone of what was said by the nice designer got more and more apologetic and then he stopped posting.
Now, having an unplayable game for which I have payed money is irksome and I feel conned and insulted by Eidos. It is only because I am lazy that I do not sue.
They did not say, when the game was on the shelf and my money had not yet been transferred to their pocket, that the game is incomplete because their budget ran out on them.
How would it be for a motor car manufacturer to say, well I'm not sure the brakes work (in fact, I know they don't) but I've run out of development money so I must put the cars into production or I can't start taking people's money?
And for motor car substitute any good.
I will not readily buy another Eidos product and I am no longer part of the initial market for any game. Nowadays I patiently wait until there are some websites from which I can glean information about how buggy a game is and see whether the developer will support it with a patch or two. It is only when I am confident that the game can be played that I become a prospective purchaser.
The answer seems to me for manufacturers to be more realistic with the development budget. And cut down on the complexity of the games.
If withdrawing myself from the initial market means that businessmen make lower and lower estimates of their sales, spending less and less on development and releasing more rubbish - well so be it. I will give up gaming cheerfully if the alternative is to feed money to people who think they can sell rubbish just because it will recover them the bucks they have invested in that rubbish.
I don't buy other duff products and see no reason to make an exception with computer games.
If the industry produces nothing more it will deserve remembrance for Civ2, SimCity and Theme Park alone. But I hope one or two companies with a belief in good mercantile reputation and staying power get established.
They won't have staying power if they do not concentrate on good repute.
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another mail
quote:
Hi Mark,
The last paragraphs on Bugs in David's article are Hogwash. Looking at the history of CTP1 & 2, serious bugs have cost large unit sales losses. Serious bugs can be defined as either crash type or features that don't work as intended type. It is obvious that neither of these games were seriously tested before going 'gold'.
I've been a project leader in significant Hi-tech products involving hard and soft-ware. Firstly, it is true that all software has bugs, but the amount is directly related to the competence of the software design and management team. Most software people are creative and use good code design techniques. But, with experience and training, they gain the knowledge of how to produce bug free code. I believe training is minimal in the video game industry because of the high turnover rate and fast track projects. Also, the whole team has to test the product after the first internal release. Primarily this testing should take place at the customers point of view and not just reading the lines of code in a large printout. (Note: feature improvements must be frozen) Up front, individual people should be held responsible for their code and for the feature area they tested. Using these kind of techniques will minimize the amount of serious software bugs that end up in the product.
Lastly, bugs need to be planned for by project management. Estimates on the amount and seriousness should be done as soon as the team is assembled. This should be added to the project timeline. Also, it should be made clear to upper management that the amount and seriousness of the bugs is a primary concern.
Serious bugs that get out the door are one of the primary reasons a product may not meet sales targets.
Dennis_caver
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DaveV
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USA - EDT (GMT-5)
Jan 1970
time: 00:12
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quote:
Originally posted by Pyaray on 01-29-2001 03:22 AM
What I wanted people to understand in that article is that it's not personal. People often assume that the companies are out to get them, and that's simply not the case.
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Why can't I banish the image of Marlon Brando mumbling "Nothing personal, it's just business"?
Thanks for your candor, Pyaray. Decisions will always be made based on money, but I hope someday we see a company that puts a high value on customer goodwill. Maintaining software, fixing bugs and adding new features is an expensive proposition. But surely there are ways to make money from ongoing fan devotion to a game: expansion packs, scenarios, new artwork, multiplayer leagues, single-player contests, strategy guides.
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shamrock
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Los Angeles, CA
Jul 1999
time: 05:12
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Okay, I'll be the dissenting opinion.
Throughout this article, I kept thinking to myself, "Duh, everyone knows that!" But after reading through the comments here, clearly I was wrong. I was quite surprised to see that many of you claimed that you found this article very interesting.
And it made me wonder why. What exactly surprised those of you that found this interesting? Are some of you so self-absorbed that you really think that the software companies actually give a rats a-- about you? Does anyone really believe that the software gaming industry is somehow different from other industries? For all businesses, it comes down to one thing - the almighty dollar!
And obviously none of these technological products will ever be perfect. From the digital camera I purchased recently that had a menu option missing to the F-22 with a whole host of problems, no product is perfect. There is no amount of money that you can throw at a product that will make it failsafe. Even NASA makes mistakes...
However, some manufacturers get close a lot more often than others. These are the manufacturers that tend to succeed in the long run (e.g. Honda). Quality is important! East Street Trader, War4Ever, and anybody else has every right to be upset when they pay good money for crap. Unfortunately, software is a lot harder to return than a bad computer (anybody still buying Packard Bell Computers?). The only consolation is that consumers don't quickly forget those companies that burned them.
It's all the beauty of Capitalism. Duh!!!
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Pyaray
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Santa Ana, CA, USA
Oct 2000
time: 21:12
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quote:
Originally posted by The diplomat on 01-30-2001 10:31 AM
Pyaray: Great article. I would like to ask you since you are in the gaming industry, what do you think can be done to minimize these so-called "bad games?
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If I had the answer to that question, I probably wouldn't have to work anymore.  The problem really is the fact that it's a "creative" job, the game is never (and I do mean never) the game that you invisioned it would be when you first start to create it. Changes get made to the design along the way, or you find out you can't do something the way you wanted, or you quite simply can't make something work. In addition to this, everything always takes longer than you estimate it will. Obviously we plan for problems when setting up the schedule, but even the best laid plans have flaws in them. You just can't predict every problem you will have from the beginning. And reading about a game in a design document isn't even remotely close to playing that same game. So you can't really predict ahead of time whether it will be fun when you get to the end.
Short answer, I don't have that answer. I have no clue how to change things for the better. I wish things were different, but I just don't see how they could be.
Pyaray
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East Street Trader
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London, United Kingdom
Jun 2000
time: 05:12
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I think one or two things can be said.
Designers may, naturely enough, be enthused at the notion of creating entirely new engines for movement or entirely new approaches to combat.
Actually though, from my seat, I have absolutely no doubt what I like - and it ain't novelty for it's own sake - or even technical excellence in, say, smooth movement.
It's best described as "immersiveness".
Do I get gripped by the game? Do I long to know what happens next? Do I find myself looking at the clock, disbelieving that 3 hours (or 13 hours) have slipped by unnoticed?
And what contributes to "immersiveness"? While I don't want to knock technical things I have to say that storyline, good acting, music well matched to atmosphere, all count more for me.
I picked up Heroes of Might and Magic VI from a bargain bin a while back. It has the bones of a good, if totally derivative, game in it. But the music ain't right, the intro makes you cringe and it's plain that no-one spent more than a very few minutes trying to put in anything approaching a story line.
It's grossly unfair to make a comparison with Civ2 because that is an inspired game. But some points can be made. Someone spent a while on those Wonder movies. I doubt they challenged the programmers but some money was spent on creative people who got them right. Casting is great throughout - again money was spent on a non programming but important element. The music is right. Same point. Tiny little quirky things, like giving the Egytians an edge to Masonry, are right.
In my view games are now an art form. No doubt early film makers were very interested in advances in cinematography. But they still knew that the artistic skills of the writers, actors, director, sound man and cameraman are vital to the final outcome.
So my conclusion is this. Aim for less technically complex games. Let the technical advances come at their own pace. Don't write programmes which are out at the forefront of the ability of modest computer set ups to play. Spend more, a lot more, on the style of the product, the game playing characteristics - the "immersiveness" if you will. And this will work commercially. Word of mouth is highly effective in this market and gets more so every day. If good wine needs no bush neither does a good game.
If developers can't, at the outset, be sure that the project is going to produce a bug free and playable game, cut back on the technical ambition until you can be sure and spend any money and time saved from the programming task on the artistic/game playability side.
"It is not in the beginning of any great matter, but in the continuing of the same, until it be thoroughly finished, where lieth the true glory".
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Pyaray
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Santa Ana, CA, USA
Oct 2000
time: 21:12
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quote:
Originally posted by Alexander's Horse on 02-01-2001 11:49 PM
I believe you David, though thousands wouldn't 
What I'd like to know is why Activsion shipped CTP II with such bad and obvious multiplayer bugs. According to your article we could assume they are un-fixable.
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People don't believe me when I say this either. I have played and finished multiplayer games before. So many people have said that it's unplayable I can't help but believe them, but that isn't my experience.
I don't know why this is, but I have a theory. When I play multiplayer, I am usually playing with someone else who is on my local network, not over the internet. My ping times are almost always single digit, usually like 2ms. Whereas over the internet, even with broadband, you're talking at least 50ms, and more like 80-300ms. And I think that may be part of the problem. The additional thing about multiplayer is it takes so bloody long to finish a game. How many multiplayer games could the testers possibly finish per day?
Unfixable is kind of a strong way of phrasing it. Financially unviable to fix is more like it. I know this is gonna cause more people to get irritated at me, but the simple fact of the matter is that if they spent the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would require to fix these intermittent bugs, they would not ever recoup that cost. And they are intermittent. They do not happen every time, making them harder to track down to fix. And of course harder to track down, means they cost more, because they take longer.
And once again I'm going to state it, just so nobody misunderstands. I do not work for Activision anymore. I quit after the first patch. I did not work there when the decision to not do another patch was made. I was not involved with that in any way, so I don't know their reasons. I am explaining it the way I percieve it. I think it would cost them way too much money to do what people are asking. I don't know that for a fact, as I have no insider information.
Pyaray
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:12
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I don't work for game development but do develop software for a living.
The spellchecking comparison is an interesting one to give an idea of the difficulty of solving bugs but it is often much more complicated than checking because things get very complicated when there are layer upon layer of people coding. So if someone believe it to be possible to track down bug responsibility down to one person, they dream. Who do you blame for a bad built house? The mason? The architect? The brick-maker?
Software is like that: If one person screws something at the beginning of a project, the costs can be multiplied by 2 or 3. Noone will ever admit having the responsibility of wasting millions of dollars (though I know people who have done just that).
The comparison with cars is flawed. First a bad car happens once in a while, you can replace it or fix it by the nexy series that you had planned anyway.The investment is usually much more important than in games. I'd like to remind people also that a company can change names. The first japanese cars were branded under now-forgotten names because Honda, Toyota etc. knew the first cars would be crappy, they used the brand name to learn their job and get started.
So even if you no longer buy from a bad-game-company, the company may change name, or its directors move to another one and you'll get crappy software anyhow.
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28-01-2001 09:37
plus why should i have to add two patches and mods to get any enjoyment out of it.
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