Fixing Total War: The Bigger Picture

[Didz]

The issue is, that you buy software "as is", which you would know if you carefully read the license agreement. You have consumer rights in case of product defects, i.e. if the disc is damaged, but you have no warranty on content, the same way you can´t demand your money back if you didn´t like a movie.

Thats a 'red herring', at least in the UK. In the UK the Sale of Goods Act states that any product or service supplied to the consumer must be 'fit for purpose' and that this consumer right cannot be waived or overriden by any agreement or pre-sales statement.

Thus if you walk into a store which has large signs over the counter saying 'This store operates a non-returns policy' or 'Goods must be returned with 14 days of purchase' those signs are legally meaningless in the UK. In fact, I think I'm right in saying that by law such signs have to state that they do not affect the purchasers consumer rights. So, basically they are relying of consumers being stupid enough to beleive them and not bothering to try, e.g. the 'dumb' factor.

Quite apart from that the terms of license agreements are typically displayed during the installation sequence. As such they are terms being imposed after the 'point of contract' in that the purchaser and vendor entered into a legally binding contract exchanging goods for money in the shop, at which point the consumer should have been made aware of any conditions which affected his purchase and been made fully aware of the quality of the goods being purchased.

To put this into context.

You go into a garage and you buy a car, hand over the money, collect the keys and then get in it to drive off. As you go to turn the key in the ignition a sign pops up out of the dashboard which says.

'Please note the engine of this car may contain numerous technical faults which will cause the car to crash, stall, or stop without warning, if you turn the ignition key and start the engine you will be deemed to have accepted these faults and surrendered your right to any legal compensation arising from the poor quality of the engine. Thank you for choosing a Lada.'

That is patently ridiculous, but thats exactly what software companies think they can get away with, and thanks to the inept skills of consumer rights protection agencies its exactly what they do get away with. But its not legally correct.

Likewise, if we accept that the terms of the license agreement really can override our consumer rights then it would be perfectly feasible for a consumer to purchase a piece of software advertised as say 'An accurate real time simulation of the War in Iraq' go through the installation sequence and accept the license terms, press 'Play Now' and be presented with a 2 hour interactive presentation on 'Why George Bush is God'. Because in your scenario the consumer has waived all his consumer rights just by pushing the install button.

Incidently, in the UK you absolutely can walk out of a cinema and demand your money back because you didn't like the film. You can also refuse to pay of a meal in a restaurant.

[Kobal2fr]

That´s got nothing to do with being evil. I work for a finance company (in a different field, but still) as well, and I have to damn well make sure that the money we fork out (around one million € for a game, according to a recent interview) comes back in. Because it doesn´t appear on our accounts out of nowhere, either.

That's what I meant, yes : SEGA doesn't give CA pots of cash out of the goodness in their heart, nor do they patron CA's Michaelangelos to commission the best and most awesome game the world has ever seen. I think Pratchett worded it best when he said "every publisher's dream is to have so much money in his pockets that he'd need suspenders to keep his pants from falling down". But that's ok, I mean, don't we all ?

The "evil" part comes from the fact that they are absolutely necessary to gaming studios, and they know it, which gives them leverage. Combined with the fact that most of them wouldn't know a good game from a flying turd, and you have the basis for very, very wrong decisions when we players are concerned... and pushing for early releases is only a minor part in that. What sells better is not usually what makes a game more interesting.

Kind of like an "Anthony and Cleopatra" screeplay could end up set in the Bronx and include friendly aliens, a female rapper and lots of 'splosions after going through the "Hollywood producers" stage, see ? .

(EDIT : And that's not even considering the fact that "It's not evil, I do it too !" is not exactly likely to win the "most bulletproof of arguments, ever" award )

[Rhedd]

Kind of like an "Anthony and Cleopatra" screeplay could end up set in the Bronx and include friendly aliens, a female rapper and lots of 'splosions after going through the "Hollywood producers" stage, see ? .

I saw that movie!

No, wait, it was Romeo and Juliet... But it had Jet Li in it! ^_^

Actually, that wasn't all that bad a movie, but just because I like Jet Li.

[Kobal2fr]

I don't remember there being any aliens in "Romeo Must Die". That stupid fat guy might fit the bill though :]

[Tyrac]

Do we really need to have this thread done over and over and over like this?


Game is buggy.

No game is good.

<insert rediculous car purchase/other totally irrelevent analogy here>

Get thread to be ten pages.

Start new thread

celibrate another 5 birthdays.

Buy all the TW games as soon as they come out, plus the expansions.

Reread this same damn thread.



repeat

[Monsieur Alphonse]

I totally agree with Tyrac. Besides CA have already taken care of those who are responsible for all the bugs.

Here are some of the CA employees that were responsible:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[IMG][/IMG]

[Fußball]

No. Never. I'd quit and play checkers before paying a monthly fee, without regret or a second thought.

With so many posts and not so much time to chime in. Doug, I think your idea is the most rational. Mind if I join you in a friendly game of checkers?

Tschüß!
Erich

[Razor1952]

No to monthly fees!


I would however pay a subscription to CA say once a year which would give you access to all patches and updates AND to the new TW games that are developed. At the least there should be an expansion or a new game every year.

The advantage to CA is that they would get a virtually guaranteed ~$75 / year plus a client base that can obviously be traded with their products. That makes CA more powerful when dealing with Sega or other distributers leading to a better deal for them and better value/quality games for us.

You gets whats you pays for!

[Budwise]

1) CA offer game 'licenses' on a monthly renewal program. To run the game, you log into their secure server instead of inserting the CD. Licenses should be affordable, say $10 per month, with reduced fees levied for periods with less activity.

2) Licensed gamers are automatically eligible for all patches and upgrades.

3) CA invests the additional income into bug fixes and enhancements, at least one patch per month!

4) CA uses login fees to maintain their own patch servers, instead of foisting this onto third parties.


Your comments are invited.

Are you insane. I NEVER have played an MMO because of subscription fees. I feel that its the developer's JOB to finish what they have produced and FIX what they have made. I work in a food processing plant and we pack FlavRPac (and other brand names) frozen vegetables. If the bags are not sealed properly or the date code isn't on certain bags, we have to strip all the vegetables out of the bag and reprocess them. This cost labor time and material fees (new printed bags needed to be processed as well as waste removal from the old ones.)

Another thing is console game makers CANNOT TO MY KNOWLEDGE RELEASE PATCHES TO FIX THEIR GAMES. If they don't work then the recall as well as the bad press could be catastrophic. I on the other hand believe that we should hold producers accountable for what they do.

1. A game should NOT NEED TO HAVE A PATCH TO DOWNLOAD, much less a HUGE ONE TO MAKE A GAME FUNCTIONAL.
2. A game designer should be more concerned about the finish product being enjoyable than what it looks like. For instance, I would rather have the vegetables that we produce taste good than have a pretty package and have it taste like .
3. I should not be charged EXTRA for this to happen. Personally, I think this is why computer games although vastly superior, is DECLINING to consoles. I think its our job as consumers to not have to put up with this kind of . Anyone agree with me?

[Budwise]

This deserved its own reply. I AM NOT RICH, I am an educated laborer in a food processing plant with a morgage and raising children. I feel that I do NOT have extra money to throw out just because you all do. Please CA, just fix your products and make them work from the start. The next TW game, we do not need a new graphics engine, we need better improvements. Use the same engine again and "solve" the issues this game has. I would like to say that it works for Rockstar Games with the GTA series.

[Fußball]

Well said Budwise.

Tschüß!
Erich

[Budwise]

This is my view, a view shared by many others.




Hah, stop whining. If it was overwhelmed, you wouldn't be able to play it at all. I personally am able to play the game and find that almost all units are bug free, and nearly everything works as it should.



And yet we are on patch version 1.2. Kinda defeats your argument.



You need a working game to carefully stage screenshots. It is illegal to advertise features that are not in the game.



You mean you are horrified. I personally, like thousands of others, will be enjoying the game.



And we get them. Do you know how many campaigns are going to be in factions?



I am sick of hearing people whining about how the game is filled with bugs and is unbalanced. How can you possibly expect every bug to surface in the beta testing period if some bugs take months of careful combing of the game by a forum viewed by hundreds? I was suprised when viewing the bug list - I hadn't noticed any when playing myself. But then, I wasn't specifically looking for any.

Word!

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Maybe someone can enlighten me but I have never ever seen any evidence that suggests if we pay more or by introducing a monthly subscription that the quality of games will improve or get more regular (working) updates.

Total Fantasy. Smells like another way to milk an already bloated cash cow for an industry thats already got the reputation of a used car salesman.

Now consider that M2TW took 3 years to develop, and that's using much if not mostly Rome's code. To release M2 pristine would most likely have taken two, three more years.

Your joking right! It took them only six months to deliver patch 1.2 using only 1-2 people.

Who feeds CA during that time ? I'm sure they're all great guys who are utterly dedicated to the quality of their work, but they still have metabolisms. And mortgages.

A common misconception that patches are free. They are not as their costs are estimated and incorporated into the final cost of the product. I am sure that CA are not starving nor will they starve if their games were of a more satisfactory level.

Sorry to pick on you but you made it sound as if CA have got it hard when infact its the consumers that are being shafted. lol

By the way SEGA are not simply publishers. SEGA own CA and CA I guess is something like a semi-autonomous division concerned with only the Total war franchise. SEGA does the beta testing, marketing, distribution, publishing etc.

Someone else here said that you get what you pay for. Absolute and utter nonsense. Only the smart shopper gets what he pays for.

[HoreTore]

Your joking right! It took them only six months to deliver patch 1.2 using only 1-2 people.

Make that 1-2 thousands. Yes, only a few were used to fix the bugs, but the difficulty(and time consumption) lies in finding them. A big part of that job was done by us(ie. the community). If that would had taken part exclusively at CA, it would have taken a very long time.

[crpcarrot]

i would just like to include my point of of view that its utterly riculous that any consumer must accept a half complete product. i know it is prevelant in every software that we buy but just cos it exists doesnt make it right and doesnt make it an excuse to abuse our rights as a consumer.

all the people who seem to think anyone who is agrieved at paying his hard earned money on somehting that doesnt work as it was intended to is a bit need to learn to respect other peoples views.

although the analogy to the car may not be perfect its the point that everyone is trying to make that matters.

consumer rights groups have always been slow to catch up with the current market, but they will eventually. i hope to see the day when i buy a game and then dont have to stop playing till the patch comes out.

to the poepl who can continue playing a broken product, good for you. but i personally would like to enforce my right to get what i pay for. in a way i campaign for this with my wallet. i only baught 3 games ever within a month of release Rome TW, Civ 4 and M2TW. afetr the RTW experience i was never going to buy a CA game on release again but got in with all the hype with M2. i hope it doesnt take 5 patches to get the game right like it did in Rome.

games are priced at market conditions and i dont agree with the argument "its only &#163;30 u cant expect the CA to do everything for that". well if CA didnt factor in the the cost properly that CA's fault not the consumers. bad business and bad managment decisions is not our fault and we shouldn't pay for it (although we probably do all the time).

[Ciaran]

(EDIT : And that's not even considering the fact that "It's not evil, I do it too !" is not exactly likely to win the "most bulletproof of arguments, ever" award )

That is not how I meant my statement.

@Ditz:

Incidently, in the UK you absolutely can walk out of a cinema and demand your money back because you didn't like the film. You can also refuse to pay of a meal in a restaurant.

I´m no lawyer, much less for Britain law, but that might as well be accomodation. I have no idea what precisely might be covered by warranty (bugs, by the way, might, under certain circumstances, like causing crashes), but I´m rather sure that not liking the content is not.


All things considered, I´ll go with Tyrac.

[Kobal2fr]

That is not how I meant my statement.

Don't worry, I know that. It just struck me as funnily worded afterwards

[Whacker]

I'd just like to add that your sig is both priceless and precious kobalt.

[Didz]

I´m no lawyer, much less for Britain law, but that might as well be accomodation. I have no idea what precisely might be covered by warranty (bugs, by the way, might, under certain circumstances, like causing crashes), but I´m rather sure that not liking the content is not.

Well the basic and fundemental test in English Law is whether the product or service provided satisfied the reasonable expectations of the consumer.

What is a reasonable expectation is a judgement based upon the way the product or service was described by the vendor prior to the contract of sale and what 'any reasonable person' would expect from a product or service of that type.

Thus if one paid to go and see a film called 'Arthur: The true story of King Arthur.' and 30 minutes into the film it was apparent that it was a pile of dog's turd and not historically accurate at all you could quite reasonably walk out and demand your money back. The cinema might refuse to give you a refund, in which case it would be up to a court to decide if your objections to the content of the film were justified, but for the most part a cinema will simply pay out, unless you decide to sit through the entire film before complaining.

As far as restaurants are concerned I've actually witnessed a family on a table next to us in a 'Little Chef' eat and entire meal and then flatly refuse to pay the bill because they did not enjoy the it. Personally, I thought it was a damned cheek but they got away with it. The manager wanted them to leave their names and addresses so that he could follow up their complaints but they refused and just walked out.

Getting back to computer software, it seems to me that any reasonable person buying a peice of software would expect it to be fully functional and capable of being used for whatever purpose it was purchased. So far every CA game I've purchased has been capable of being played, but I've certainly bought others which were not, the most notorious being Napoleon 1813 and Lords of the Realm 3.

Usually, there is no problem in the UK if you decide to take these games back to the shop for a refund. Most Uk gaming stores operate a 'no questions asked refund policy' and HMV even offered a full refund on my Blizzard: Burning Crusade Collectors Editions despite the fact that it had been signed by several lying Blizzard employee's.

Returning bug ridden software is probably the best solution to poor software quality. If software houses begin to get a poor reputation for returns with their distribution agents then eventually their credibility will suffer. Blizzard definately damaged their reputation with UK distributors over the BC collectors edition, not least becuase they left them unable to fulfill their legal obligations to their customers under UK consumer law and triggered an investagation into unfair trading practices by both the Uk and European offices of fair trading. Blizzard basically dropped their distributors in the doodah's and left them to it which won't be forgotten in a hurry. HMV's European Customer Service Manager was absolutely livid about the situation she was left to deal with thanks to their intransigence and stupidity.

[Kobal2fr]

Well, I don't know how things are in the US/UK, but here in France most video game retailers operate on a (completely moronic) "we won't accept returns if the box has been opened" policy, because of software piracy.

They have a point I suppose, since it was common back in my high school years to buy a game, copy it, then bring it back to the store, but it completely shafts every legitimate buyer... and I'd wager those are more common than pirates. Especially since, what with broadband and kazaa and everything, most pirates these days just dl. their games.

@Whacker : thanks, mate ! (It's one of Sinan's oeuvres, of course)

[Didz]

Well, I don't know how things are in the US/UK, but here in France most video game retailers operate on a (completely moronic) "we won't accept returns if the box has been opened" policy, because of software piracy.

Yes! I gathered that from French consumers caught up in the Blizzard rip-off. The UK used to be like that about 25-30 years ago but I think the distributors got their wrists smacked often enough to make them change their policies. After all, until you install a game how can to tell whether it works or not, fortunately English Courts still operate on basic principles of common-sense and justice, and our small claims court system makes it quite easy to sue retailers without the need for expensive lawyers.

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[Kobal2fr]

Your forget #6 - in the end it'd be more of an incentive to HAVE bugs than to fix them. Let your modern, materialistic cynicism think about it.

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[sapi]

And what, pray tell, would be the incentive for any company to abandon the current scheme in favour of this consumer-friendly one?

[Didz]

I suppose legally speaking, if a deposit was paid on purchase which, in effect, granted you a limited duration user license of say 30 days after which you were required to pay the remainder of the purchase price. Then the consumer would have a chance to evaluate the quality of the product and reject it if they felt it was poor, and the vendor would get a positive acceptance of the product and whatever terms and conditions were stipulated in the license.

[Kobal2fr]

CyanCentaur : Don't you know anything about basic human nature ? It's pretty simple really. "Instant result" is the basic human drive.

If you put up a ransom for rat tails, hoping to curb the number of rodents in the realm, pretty soon every Tom, Dick and Harry in the country will have a rat farm in the cellar. If you pay firefighters per number of fires they put out, they'll soon go around the neighbourhood in pairs, saying stuff like "oooh, dry pine !" and "that bookshop would go in a flash, don't you think ?".

Same principle applies for "you're paid by the number of bugs you squash, and the number of patches you publish".

And yes, people would still play the game, and would still pay up, at least for a time, for the exact same reason they go to Church or get their Party card, and for the exact same reason those "Nigerian Prince needs your help in exchange of huge pots of money" e-mail scams are still around : next time might be the one ! People are suckers .
Also, you know.. because like Oblivion Morrowind : no matter how huge and glaring the bugs, it's still a bloody great game.

OK, so maybe they wouldn't break anything intentionally, but what would stop them from fixing stuff at a deliberately sloooooow pace ? "Yah, finally ! Here it is, loyal consumer : no more shield bug ! That was a LOT of work, folks ! Next time, we'll fix the 2H animations. Check, please ?"

[unknown_user]

One has to remember that a large part of the reasoning behind having monthly fees on MMO's isn't just for fixing bugs. It's for server upkeep, continuously releasing new content, AND for fixing bugs.

In City of Heroes, they're on (i believe) content patch 10, meaning that they've put out 9 MAJOR patches that add large amounts of new things to the game: character classes and powers, new zones, new enemies, new story-arcs. That doesn't include the numerous patches between content patches where they fix problems that came up.

MMO's generally have larger teams working after-release, whereas most other games do not. I do not see a large dev. team working for CA, making more and more content for M2TW (not counting the expansion. ;) ). I see a small patch team. They don't have a huge amount of servers up and running. They don't NEED the online play options for people to actually experience the game world.

There's a huge difference between MMO's and other games, and I cannot justify spending money monthly on a game that does not require the sort of follow-up that MMO's generate.

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[Kobal2fr]

You suggest a monthly fee to promote patching. How is that not "paid by the patch" ?
OK, so it's really "paid no matter what, but if you don't put up patches people will quit paying". Which actually makes your scheme even worse than my example : more delay between marginal patches to capitalize on the monthliness of the fee - the carrot is further away, the stick's still there, and there's a nail in it. Thanks for the correction