game development...are they thinking of the people?

I recently brought the Witcher for a fantastic price of $20 and after putting in a few hours find it to be one of the better rpg's ive played to date.
but what i am very impressed with is with the developers of this title CDPROJEKT they released the game (i have the normal edition) and although there where some flaws and accasional bugs was a complete and so far satisfying experience, but the developers wernt happy with the final product and ended up releasing an enhanced version of the game....id imagine at conciderible cost to themselves....but they didnt forget the original customers and released a patch fix of around 1.5gb (1gb for graphics, gameplay loadtimes etc and 500mb for the language pack) which is a free to download and install patch ...you have to verify purchace online when installing....this is fantastic that in todays market where money is so important a company realise the importance of customer satifaction and support.
on the other side at the same time i brought gears of war a EPIC and windows game...and have had nothing but nightmares from the moment i tryed installing it, in the end i had to get a third party hack fix to allow me to even play the game......microsoft...and EPIC...just havent done what i would have expected to support and encourage customers with there product, the game could have been one of the best experiences i have had with a game, but after install and run issues constant freezes or crashes and having to download a checkpoint hack to allow me to skip certain checkpoints that refuse to load, i have been left with a very bitter and dis-satisfied experience(concidering this has been the most expensive game i have brought).

so what are other peoples thoughts on the way development is going, are games being pushed down our gobs unfinished to make deadlines and money only to be full of bugs and problems that require patchs or third party fixes to make playable? Or are developers doing everything they can to firstle release a superier product and support the customers after release?

 

I think these days developers care more about profit and sales than they do the customer. It used to be a decade+ ago developers actually supported a product longer than 6 months and actually cared about the customer.
Now, unless a game pulls in stellar profits, they forget about it and move on to the next. Many game companies have gotten very bad at releasing games prematurely, and most often never release a proper patch to correct the problems. Not to mention the draconian DRM measures being so rampant in games these days.
It's just simply not what it used to be.
I'll add, that I think the consumer in general cares more about flashy graphics and fast-paced action, than a decent story. I remember games that would take days to complete, now it takes just a few hours. The content just isn't there for the most part any more. All in all, I'm just not interested in new games, and I wont buy them. Especially when they include DRM. Game companies have totally lost my support, and they brought it on themselves.

 

It's all personal experience.

The Witcher, while a great game, runs poorly (bad framerates) on my system, and has a RAM leak problem where it will crash during a load screen after playing for a while (whenever it takes up more than the 2 GB normally allocated to a program). I managed to fix all the problems, but it was still annoying.

However, Gears of War for the PC ran flawlessly, and at great framerates for the graphics quality. Never crashed, never even stuttered.

 

I know Blizzard care's about the people very much, though sale's and profit too of course, they are a company.

So involved with the community.

 

yeap alot of companies do support and care for the gamer.......WoW for example is very well supported but if i payed amonthy fee id expect it to be very good TBH......and they see the value in doing what they can for the comsumer.
@ lithus yes i agree to some point, the witcher does have framerate issues but other than that and loadtimes i have been satisfied with the product....i just installed the enhanced version patch and am looking forward to seeing the improvements...gears of war has been a problem for not just afew gamers, there are hundreds of pages of people seeking help, and although i understand that you had a good experience, i would say based on the forums i visited to find fixes it was a problem that could and should have been addressed by the developers........thats the sad thing the game itself is awsome...could have been the best third person shooter ive played, but wasnt....
But thats just me having a gripe, i think all companies should be doing everything they can to support there customer.......its basic bussiness reasoning.
I wont buy certain products again based on experieces with some developers and if others have the same mentiality then the developer loses, the customer loses...we all lose.

 

This is very easy to remedy. Just stop buying from the companies that sell crap without support and buy from those that sell greatness with good support. Tell your friends about it and give reasons for your choices. Word of mouth goes a LONG WAY.

Want more impact, make some sort of appreciation for the good guys (video, editorial, photoshop picture, etc.) and one to denounce the other people. I'll tell you, if enough people do that, then someone will make the video or editorial or picture that would both create a great awareness of the good guys and one hell of a slander of the bad guys.

 

most MMORPG games are very well supported. weekly patches/updates etc.

many other non MMO type games are pump and dump games.

they hype it up so much, and once the game hits the shelves their mentality is "what is the next game we need to get out in 6 months?"

EA is typically like this with sports games.

other companies im sure are like this as well.

it is now mostly about profit. if they get enough sales, and met their goals, then they did their job. for the gaming community...well...we get shafted.

 

There are hundreds of pages on every game. The only way I knew that it was a memory issue was by searching Google.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=the+...Search&aq=f&oq=the+witcher+bug&fp=-dx2DTn7Pl4

 

yeap point taken mate......and i completly agree with your statement about there are hundreds of pages on every game......does this mean more games than not are being released prematurely.....full of bugs and problems that shouldnt be happening....YES.....

we are buying a product...we cant control weather it is a game we will like but we shouldnt have to worry about if the game will load or crash...thats not up to us to have to fix....
Im in india and i have a 6kb/s connection should i have to spend time and money to download fixes after fixes to solve a problem that shouldnt be there?...i say NO

 

I'm not sure I agree with this.

While I generally feel that companies have an obligation to provide support for the game after release with patches, I don't feel that every game should be released with 0 bugs, and I also don't feel that the goal should be to ultimately have a game with 0 bugs even with patches. Resources are scarce, and time and money spent on fixing bugs quickly run into diminishing returns. The cost of creating a "bugless" game is prohibitively high, and a responsible game company should recognize that its developers' time is better spent elsewhere once a game reaches reasonable playability. For example, I am sure that everyone would agree that they would much rather Blizzard spend its resources on releasing Starcraft 2, instead of going back to fix Starcraft 1 today, even though there are undoubtedly minor bugs that still exist in Starcraft 1.

If the developers of the Witcher actually spent the 1 year to "patch" the game for "free", then I would say wholeheartedly that it was a bad idea and consumers--future purchasers--are hurt by this "generosity".

However, I don't think the developers of The Witcher are "thinking of the people". Merely releasing the EE creates interest in the game and would generate sales of the game. This allows CDProjekt to bring the game up to the market price of a "new" game, when the market value of the original game had already dropped significantly due to time.

Sure, there are, even today, some stores out there that sell the original version of the game (for less than the EE), but those are basically discontinued inventory, and the few lucky people (such as yourself) who manage to get the original version get the benefit of both worlds.

In effect, the new purchasers of the Witcher EE, buying the game at the higher inflated price, are forced to subsidize the past owners of the Witcher to allow them to get the new content "free". A new purchaser of the Witcher EE should be outraged that he's being forced to pay more for the same content that prior purchasers have gotten for free (since the fair market value of the original Witcher will have decreased substantially by then).

Hence, CDProjekt gets intangible goodwill from past purchasers and tangible sales from new purchasers at the same time. Now, whether or not goodwill, an intangible noncurrent asset, is worth a slight decrease in sales is a matter of business judgment, and clearly CDProjekt chose this route instead of simply charging $10 for the patch. They may merely have decided that they might get more sales from renewed interest in the original game than from just the existing customer base buying a cheaper expansion. This doesn't mean that the decision had anything to do with some altruistic concern for CDProjekt's customers, other than to the extent that this would generate more sales in the long run.

 

Very good points ^^

and yes weather CDProjekt had the customer in mind or not the enhanced game was as i understand it released for the same price as the original with alot of extra content so i wouldnt be upset as a new buyer of the game...the fact that they addressed the issues is what made it important to me.....a fact that wasnt possible with the EPIC release.....they released patches but not ones to correct the issues alot of people where having...i wont buy a game from them again...and im not the only one.
I dont need a game to be perfect but why release a game that is faulty.....isnt that the same as microsoft releasing faulty 360 machines....they took responsiblity and offered to repair the units.....for sure they basically had to otherwise lawsuits would have developed...but we as pc gamers deserve to have our needs taken care of....im very loyal and buy every one of my games....so when i buy a product that doesnt do what its expected too...i feel robbed.
Im not saying bug free......but come on be reasonable...and give us something acceptible.

 

GoW might run better than The Witcher but the point is GoW had installation problems(took more than an hour to install on my PC). Also it had save game issues where save games used to randomly disappear. Add to that the DRM issue where the game ceased to function after a particular time period.

So I would say, The Witcher is a better quality product than GoW PC.

 

i wasnt trying to create a war against certain games, i was just starting a topic to see if others felt that enough attention to us the consumer was given with regards to pc gaming, its my view that although its a business, the business should be looking to please the consumer and in this way gain a reputation and a steady flow of business, after all if developers complain about piracy in pc gaming yet do nothing to encourage the consumer to buy the product we all lose, developers go out of business, gamers dont get the products they want.......it cant be attributed to one cause but after my experience with gears i really felt like i had thrown my cash away....and thats a real shame because gaming gives my such pleasure.
anyway.....

 

Infinityward cares about their customers with coming out with MW2

 

lmao......well thats very true......when MW2 is released im going to be a very happy camper again...but until then ill continue to gripe away lol ;-)

 

I'd rather have developers in the vein of CDProjeckt and Ironclad studios (Sins of a Solar Empire) than ones like EA and Creative Assembly (I like the Total War series but their support for their first two products is abysmal).

 

thats exactly my point mate, if developers spent the time making a top class product, that product would sell a heap.....if they then supported that product with fixes and update to smooth out problems quickly and affectively that would bode well for them in future sales.....everyone wins and isnt that the way it should be, we get a great product and win because of it, and the developer get continued support so they win....

 

Valve is one of the better developers when it comes to listening to the customer and achieving high customer satisfaction.

All one needs to do is look at their recent releases such as TF2 and L4D, but especially TF2, they keep adding stuff to the game and they actually listen and take action on the costumer feedback they receive.

 

Cool i havent heard about TF2 before but i was real keen to buy left 4 dead until a friend said that unless you play online its a waste of money.....hmmm still looks good though, and its good that valve support there customers so well, its common sense to listen to us we are playing the games so we know whats working and not working and thats who they are trying to target with sales isnt it?!

 

Yes L4D is only wortplaying for online. Blizzard realy cares about the customer and also valve, but profit is always the first target on a company. I also agree that infinityward cares about their customers and I wait for modern warfare 2.

You know companies sometimes wont hear our opinion because they know that there are people out there that will buy the game they will publish only because it is made by a famous company and they dont make a check for the quality of the game before they buy. This is my opinion.

 

Yeap and its true mate ^^...
Take the need for speed series imo the games have gotten worse and worse recently.....they are pushing out the titles instead of slowing down a bit and making a quality game that with really be enjoyed by the consumer........ *disclaimer* no offence intended to be given the any NFS fans......