Do you want an unfinished game?
I know it seems a little contridictory for me to be asking this, right after talking about how awesome some early access games can be, but it's a legitimate question. When a major gaming studio sells you a game for fifty, sixty dollars, are you expecting a fully polished project? Or, perhaps, were you expecting this?
Not every game is supposed to be nightmare fuel... but broken games can make it feel that way! Above is perhaps the most iconic images of recent worries in the game industry about AAA games: many of the games that are being churned out from major publishers are shipping with huge glitches and errors in code. This isn't an issue where a game takes a long time in development, left unfinished in an early access stage, but of games being released to the public as if they were finished products.
We call mainstream, largely funded projects AAA games for a reason. They're supposed to be the cream of the crop, the polished perfection that game standards are held to. They have the money and resources funneled into them, so why is that in this last year, it seems as if they've started to fail so completely?
Brian Williams wanted to tackle the subject in his podcast called DLC, and I was more than happy to join in on this. It's a really interesting, and somewhat troubling development in the gaming world, that the games with the most money and traditional projection values seem to be the ones most likely to have issues on arrival. What's causing this problem? Is it publishers that are pushing for more content, but not giving as much time to proof that material?
It could be. Gamespot just recently put out a fantastic video that showcases the problem in a very short amount of time. While indie and small studio games are getting the chance to experiment and help crowd-source their games into full production, the publishing studios are putting more and more restraints on their developers. The underdogs are thriving, while those on top are getting squished between higher demands and tighter leashes.
Brian, myself, and Ron spend over an hour talking about the situation; something needs to change, but what? Are indie games getting a huge blessing because of these sudden issues in mainstream development? Take a listen, and feel free to tell us what you think!
Here is the link to the DLC Apple Podcast page. Enjoy!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/downloadable-content/id416702129
