Do gamers expect a master piece everytime?

[Name]

We've just become too used to this episodic release 1 title a year crap...COD, Battlefield following suit soon, Resident Evil. FEAR, NFS.

I miss experiencing something totally new. Bioshock looks like a masterpiece purely cause we've not seen anything this ambitious in the last 4-5 years.

I'd prefer an array of brilliant games every 3-5 years, rather than a shedload of garbage titles being released every single year. Sadly, this isnt the way publishers and their targets/deadlines work.

 

[ArnieRambo]

who really cares

 

[Calin Banc]

They had ample opportunity through reviews/alphas/betas/demos to assess whether the product would fit their needs.

Not all the games have public/open Betas and even the Demo is mostly left out. Even with them on, they don't represent the quality of the final product. BF 3 had only one map - Metro. The performance and feeling of the game are quite different on other maps compared to this one.

Reviews can give a general idea about the product, but that's about it. Control system, performance, graphic quality, they cannot be experience by the reader. Of course, there is always the talk about the reviewers being biased towards some devs.

The only relative solid argument you can base a buy, is the past work of that studio or past games from the series.

Other than that... Steam sales and that's about it.

 

[HangTime]

I think the only time masterpieces are expected are when developers with a strong pedigree of producing classic games spend years working on a game with big overruns and a fair degree of hype. Examples being:

id Software
Blizzard
Peter Molyneux
Bioware

So essentially having produced 'masterpieces' in the past there is an expectation that anything new coming out of these studios will be at the same level, although I think id and PM's reputations have been tarnished somewhat on account of the fact they haven't really done anything that good in years.

Oh as for the earlier synopsis of the CoD series - personally I don't believe the majority bought the original game for the multiplayer, it was likely the SP that drove the initial sales [that's not to pass judgement on the MP btw].

On a more personal note I am fairly forgiving I think in that I rarely expect masterpieces even when playing massively hyped games that others consider masterpieces. Realistically the only games I've played from the past 8 years where I've expected a masterpiece have been Oblivion, STALKER, KOTOR2, Crysis and HL Episodes.

 

[nicktay2605]

No I don't expect a masterpiece unless it's from a well-known and well-respected developer with a history of making high quality games, developers like Bioware or Naughty Dog come to mind (though I am sure there are plenty more). Even then I'll make sure to read some reviews, play a demo/beta if there is one, read some previews, etc, to find out whether it really is worth buying. Day-one purchasers who have done no research whatsoever don't have any right to complain in my opinion. I think anybody with a little common sense will do some research and make an informed choice. The same applies to films, books, music, etc - if you fail to look into the product, you almost void your right to complain if it turns out to be terrible.

 

[HangTime]

When it comes to books many people will buy a book from an author they trust without doing a massive amount of research; there are a handful of authors that I read (i.e. 10+ books per author) and to be honest I don't think I ever bother reading any reviews. The thing is, even if a new book got mediocre reviews I'd probably want to form my own opinion anyway - it would eat away at me every time I saw it in a shop thinking "I want to read that". The one exception perhaps is 'co-authored' books where they use the author's name in big font on the cover to generate sales but it then says "with xyz", I tend to be a bit wary of those.

 

[Dauthi]

No I don't expect a masterpiece unless it's from a well-known and well-respected developer with a history of making high quality games, developers like Bioware or Naughty Dog come to mind (though I am sure there are plenty more). Even then I'll make sure to read some reviews, play a demo/beta if there is one, read some previews, etc, to find out whether it really is worth buying. Day-one purchasers who have done no research whatsoever don't have any right to complain in my opinion. I think anybody with a little common sense will do some research and make an informed choice. The same applies to films, books, music, etc - if you fail to look into the product, you almost void your right to complain if it turns out to be terrible.

+1 There are some devolopers i would cold hard cash down on their products just from reputation as stated above. I also think there are just so many games now we expect more from them before they are worth our time/money.

Thats said i think games today need do atleast 1 thing great or be good and fresh in some aspects be it story, atmosphere, moment to moment game play what ever. Marketing also feels a lot more misleading to today i.e Bioshock infinite's packaging to make to appear as a CoD or Battlefield game leading to people not getting what they wanted out of the game.

 

[HangTime]

I agree about misleading marketing and something that really annoys me is the 'not actual game footage' stuff you see in trailers these days - Assassin's Creed series is pretty terrible in this regard.

I suppose taking a step back and appraising the video game industry one key difference from films/books/music is that because it has traditionally been a fledgling industry with a heavy dependence on technology, we have this inherent expectation that games should improve over time because that is what has happened for the past 40 years. So the bar is continually being raised making it harder and harder for developers to reach or surpass those expectations except for when they can take advantage of new technology.

In other words, the majority of AAA games released today would be considered masterpieces 20 years ago. Something like Black Ops 2 or Medal of Honour Warfighter would have blown me away back then, probably even 15 years ago too. The same can't be said for blockbuster films, books or albums.

 

[LateX'Dog]

Peter Molyneux
Bioware

Those 2 wouldn't even be on my purchase list, let alone watching them develop.

 

[silversurfer]

Peter Molyneux is a legend, its possible his recent stuff is not as good but still

 

[badcompany]

Cod, bf3 sim city and any game that gets a lot off press.

Top tier games that didn't meet the hype machine hype they thrive on?

 

[oll3h]

Reading through the threads and some of the hate dished out to devs and publishers is unreal. Have we gamers become to demanding or have we just become too unreasonable in demands?
I don't see people in the film section dishing out hate to warner brother or directors. I mean if its a bad movie we watching once and thats it but gamers play a game don,t like it but then plough another 50 hours into it.

COD is just the same game and engine reskinned for the last 5 years+ so it deserves all the hate it gets imo. That horse has been flogged, flogged some more, beaten, flogged, buried, dug up, shipped to Hungary, flogged, ground down, mixed with beef mince, shipped back to the UK and turned into lasagne.

BF3 is visually excellent, audibly excellent and generally very fun to play. Was it a massive step forward from the previous game? No. Did it feel like playing a different game? Yes, yes it did.

SimCity and EA/Maxis deserve all the **** they get for the complete mess they made of the launch. Then they continued to lie about the game and offered **** poor reasons for the always on MMO play (Read; DRM).

Its not unreasonable to, as a paying customer, expect a product to be fit for use. I personally hope when a sequel to a game is released that some enchantments or improvements (graphically or story telling etc) have been made. Suspect I am in the minority here though with the amount of people that keep buying Call of horse meat.

 

[FoxEye]

I don't mind bugs and glitches, as long as it doesn't take to much away from the game, in some cases it adds to it (GTAIV)

What I do expect, however, is bug fixes. As many as it takes to get the game working.

Just tonight I was playing Deus Ex:HR, and there is a quest-breaking bug present that was found and brought to the devs attention *at release*, almost 1.5 years ago.

Clearly, post-release bug fixes aren't that high a priority anymore. And for me that's totally unacceptable.

 

[HangTime]

Ubisoft are one of the worst for that I've found.
Far Cry 2 has a game breaking (as in genuinely gamebreaking as it is a primary quest) bug reported many times and talked about on forum that still to my knowledge hasn't been fixed more than 4 years after release (88% bug).

 

[uncle_rufus]

Ubisoft are one of the worst for that I've found.
Far Cry 2 has a game breaking (as in genuinely gamebreaking as it is a primary quest) bug reported many times and talked about on forum that still to my knowledge hasn't been fixed more than 4 years after release (88% bug).

This!! I ran into this bug as I tried to push past Far Cry 2's many other flaws and finish the damn thing... Suffice to say I never bothered to replay the entire game just to get past it. I'm glad Far Cry 3 doesn't seem as shoddy (so far!)

 

[Divinious]

Far Cry 2 has a game breaking (as in genuinely gamebreaking as it is a primary quest) bug reported many times and talked about on forum that still to my knowledge hasn't been fixed more than 4 years after release (88% bug).

Here lies the problem with patching out problems after release, companies are not required to provide them, I have brought a number of games that were not considered successful for whatever reason, games I liked that just did not sell that well & if they fail in the eyes of the Dev's they are perfectly within their rights to stop supporting that product.
That is why I feel we need regulation that states that all games must be released in full working order & any know issues must be resolved within a reasonable time after release regardless of the success of that product or the customer is entitled to a full refund.
I don't care if it means deveopment takes longer IMO gamers could do with having a bit more patients anyway & if it means we get a higher standard of games I'm all for it.

 

[uncle_rufus]

Here lies the problem with patching out problems after release, companies are not required to provide them, I have brought a number of games that were not considered successful for whatever reason, games I liked that just did not sell that well & if they fail in the eyes of the Dev's they are perfectly within their rights to stop supporting that product.
That is why I feel we need regulation that states that all games must be released in full working order & any know issues must be resolved within a reasonable time after release regardless of the success of that product or the customer is entitled to a full refund.
I don't care if it means deveopment takes longer IMO gamers could do with having a bit more patients anyway & if it means we get a higher standard of games I'm all for it.

That's all well and good but in reality it's not really possibly to release something on the scale of modern titles in "full working order"... I worked as a QA tester for EA (*shudder*) and then at Lionhead Studios (when they still existed!) for a bit and during our training they outlined how they go about the testing process. They have an estimate of the number of bugs the game will have before testing (based on something simple - most likely number of lines of code or similar) and then they test until around 90% or more of that number have been found, then the game is "ready". It sounds as crazy now as it did then, especially since some of the 10% they leave in the release could be like the Far Cry 2 game breaking 88% bug... But I guess they need some method of determining when to stop testing.

 

[Divinious]

That's all well and good but in reality it's not really possibly to release something on the scale of modern titles in "full working order"

I'm sorry but I don't agree with this, they set the release dates & are able to push that date back when it suits them, for instance games are held back oftern because they don't want to compete with a AAA tittle also being released on that date, yet they will release a unfinished game on a set date & patch it later, before you say a lot of game bugs don't appear until consumers get the full product, I know compatability problem crop up but that is what patches should be for not adding in things that should have been included at release.
To say it's not possible to release a game in full working order is not true, they can do as a few reputable dev's do & say it's out when it's finished & not before, I for one would rather have an honest answer like that than get a game that is sub-par on a specific release date.

 

[uncle_rufus]

I'm sorry but I don't agree with this, they set the release dates & are able to push that date back when it suits them, for instance games are held back oftern because they don't want to compete with a AAA tittle also being released on that date, yet they will release a unfinished game on a set date & patch it later, before you say a lot of game bugs don't appear until consumers get the full product, I know compatability problem crop up but that is what patches should be for not adding in things that should have been included at release.
To say it's not possible to release a game in full working order is not true, they can do as a few reputable dev's do & say it's out when it's finished & not before, I for one would rather have an honest answer like that than get a game that is sub-par on a specific release date.

Don't get me wrong I completely agree with you that devs should take as much time as they can to to try and ensure there aren't problems, but some devs clearly just hit that 90% (if they use that model) and go "Great, 90% found, get that product out the door!" where others might continue testing for longer to really try and get everything right. There are other factors too - maybe the games of the devs that seem to not have these problems are just developed in a better way in the first place (i.e. better coding + development practices) which results in less possibility for issues to come up. I'm not defending the practices, just thought it was interesting to highlight how it was presented to one dev's QA testers

 

[Haggisman]

That's all well and good but in reality it's not really possibly to release something on the scale of modern titles in "full working order"... I worked as a QA tester for EA (*shudder*) and then at Lionhead Studios (when they still existed!) for a bit and during our training they outlined how they go about the testing process. They have an estimate of the number of bugs the game will have before testing (based on something simple - most likely number of lines of code or similar) and then they test until around 90% or more of that number have been found, then the game is "ready". It sounds as crazy now as it did then, especially since some of the 10% they leave in the release could be like the Far Cry 2 game breaking 88% bug... But I guess they need some method of determining when to stop testing.

That's understandable - however that doesn't excuse or explain the practice of not bothering to fix bugs which are subsequently found and reported.

Although, I'm surprised anyone played Far Cry 2 long enough to find that bug!