Quote Originally Posted by sapi
Does it really matter who is to 'blame' for the supposed faults in the game?
Heh, for what its worth, *we* (i.e. the game buying general public) are to blame for rushed/bugged games as much as anyone else.

(1) Market forces dictate that a game has to have a certain amount of graphical 'wow factor' in order to sell well. Please lets not kid ourselves that anything else matters for a large majority of gamers.

(2) When designing a modern PC game, you have to decide how good your graphics are going to look at the start. Graphics take just as long to produce as the game code. You have to plan for how technology is going to advance in the (say) 2 years it will take to develop you game.

(3) If you delay your release by too long, your game will start to look old hat. You will have missed your opportunity for the 'wow' factor to be of use. You could always re-do all of the graphics again, and recode the engine again, but thats just going to make you even later.

Case in point : look at those old duke nukem forever screen shots, i seem to remember that they were state of the art at one point. How many times do you think theyve had to recode their engine and redo all of their graphics?

(4) If your game doesnt sell well enough the company *will* go bust. Just take a look throughout the history of game development to see how many fantastic game studios have gone under. Great games are not enough to ensure your survival on their own.

(5) Delaying a game by 3 or 4 months is often not an option. M2TW came out just in time for the big christmas shopping frenzy. Is it reasonable to rush a slightly bugged (but still playable IMO) game out the door to meet this date? Yes, IMHO. If they'd delayed by 3 months they would have missed it - and thus they would have sold far fewer copies of the game. If they'd waited till *next* christmas the game technology would start to look out of date. Meanwhile what are the programmers going to use to buy food with?

So unfortunately the dirty business of market forces and making money is often more important than shipping the 'perfect' game (as if there would ever be a way of making all of your customers 100% happy anyway). Welcome to the real world - anyone who thinks that the bottom line doesnt matter is deluding themselves. You have to deliver great games at the right time. You have to do it to a tight schedule. You have to make enough money to fund the next round of development so that you can get the 'wow' factor for the next game in the series - so that the incredibly fickle and shallow game buying public will notice it's existence for long enough to part with 30 quid for a copy.

And if you get it wrong - no more CA, and no more Total War games.

Just something to bear in mind next time anyone bashes either the devs *or* the 'suits' for rushing a game out.