My new video is up
about BF 2042.
Long story short, wait for game to be finished its bad atm.
Like and sub and all that. thank you.
I wouldn’t be surprised if all 3 of the major FPS games (CoD, Battlefield, & Halo) releasing this year came with substantial bugs and incomplete features. The amount of development resources being put into these games is unprecedented, and all in an effort to release this holiday.
CoD: Vanguard is primarily being developed by Sledgehammer Games with from Beenox, Demonware, High Moon Studios, Activision Shanghai, and Toys for Bob assisting development.
Battlefield 2042 is primarily being developed by DICE with Ripple Effect Studios, EA Gothenburg, and Criterion Games assisting development.
Halo Infinite was delayed a year and will still be releasing without key mainstay features in order to release this year – those features being the Forge & Campaign Co-op. These features aren’t expected to arrive for months after release (3 months for co-op and 6 months for the Forge).
I’ve personally only played the Halo Infinite beta and it was really fun, but not without it’s issues (mostly technical – especially on the PC). I doubt all those issues are resolved by launch.
Another issue for all these games is that they are targeting so many platforms for launch; Xbox One/X, Series S/X, PS4/Pro, PS5, and PC (with only Halo excluding PS4/Pro & PS5). It seems highly unlikely that they can test everything, so I’m expecting several patches on release and afterwards – though that seems to be a given these days. They should just delay these games, but obviously they won’t for the sake of their stockholders/stock price. It’s quite unfortunate, but it’s the reality we live in.
Its unfortunately the prevalance of the “launch it now, patch later” mindset that seems to be the name of the game lately… all driven by the urgency for profits and shareholder benefits…
Apple iOS 15 is just another example, if the reviews of all the bugs and missing features are correct… and thats from a company that is generally known for its polish (and leaving things out till they are done) and effectively unlimited funds/resources…
I really wouldn’t disregard or downplay the effect of “we have a metric ####ton of debt that we need to start paying back we need to push something out the door” on a publisher/developer’s view on when to launch. I have no idea how much debt the companies take on (& TBH I’m not sure I can be arsed reading through their statutory accounts to find out) but it’s unlikely to be pocket change.
I’m just saying that there’s more to it than “greed”/shareholder benefits/profit. Plus, the profits from previous games are what pays for future games.
True… your points are definitely valid and could very well apply in certain situations (my comments were obviously a generalisation). but I am very cynical when it comes to trusting what companies tell us end users and milk us for as much as they can… I am very much a capitalist when it comes to succeeding in business but as an end user I have had more than my fair share of companies and products just taking us for a ride…
and lets be honest here, if they (the developers) have built up debt to the point where they are under pressure to deliver a product they know is substandard or not actually ready then they should probably not be in business and their investors should have understood the risks of doing things like this…
Oh I’m totally not saying they wouldn’t do that… There can, for some reason I don’t understand, be a disconnect in large corporates where “they” view “us” as customers (rather than people) & “we” view “them” as soulless corporate drones.
It’s more complicated than that though. But it’s a lot easier to ignore (or not know about in the first place since it’s usually confidential) the nuances.
I disagree… Having been involved in tech and working with development teams etc. its not actually that complicated… Assuming the devs know what they are doing (and in most cases they are the only ones that do), the issues are usually related to the people handling the money and selling snake oil and making promises no-one can realistically live up to - they are the ones that usually f up otherwise good intentions. Its not complicated… and from my experience, they know exactly what they are doing … The number of times I have had to sit in board meetings with people actively making decisions to offload the risk to end users / customers by selling/releasing things prematurely just to make sure shareholders are happy is astounding… Its one of the reasons I got the hell out of Dodge and refuse to ever go back into corporate life…
This is true, but even the ivory towers of developers need to bow to fiscal reality. If the company runs out of cash, none of y’all are going to get paid. And there’s always the possibility of senior management/directors being sued for failing in their fiduciary duty (as unlikely as I’m sure that is).
Thats a given… but I doubt anyone is going to sue a failed company for this kind of thing. There is no gain beyond having a director declared deliquent to stop them doing it again.
The key for me is that unless everyone involved are absolute morons and want to build a space rocket for 3cents and a pack of gum, then there are a lot of people making conscious decisions that create & mitigate risk for everyone involved - the issue is where this risk ends up… If a director decides its more important to launch something to keep the lights on and is open to all involved, thats different to a director who knowingly decides to launch something with a fix it later attitude so that a shareholder can buy a new beachhouse and knowingly transfers the risk to the end user or consumer.
This is probably something that is a little too close to home for me to be objective about… I have had some seriously frustrating periods in my professional life where this exact issue has reared its ugly head and tested my ethics/morals vs getting a paycheck… Because of my experience on numerous occassions both inside the confidential confines as well as on the receiving end of million dollar broken promises, I am very biased and tend to be VERY reluctant to give companies the benefit of the doubt when it comes to them doing bloody stupid things.
Granted, it would likely need to be an Enron-scale financial ####ery for it to go down that route which is unlikely in a game dev/publisher company.
Given we have incomplete information about the decision making within a company (short of Jason Scherier doing an expose) where we as people decide to believe the decision landed says more about us than them.
Yeah, I’ve worked for a company with a CEO who’s view on things could best be described as “moral turpitude” (a phrase that doesn’t get used anywhere near enough). Seriously, the company made an agreement with contractors & when he didn’t pay them the agreed rates they’d take him to court.
I also subscribe to the aphorism, “never ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence”.
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