It's like AAA Game Companies Aren't Interested In Making Games Anymore

[darthhawk]

I'm talking about games in general. Victoria 3 is not bad but in my opinion should have been much more polished upon release.

EA releases good looking garbage, Super Power 3 came out pretending to be a geo-political sim but was actually a character creation demo for The Sims, Stardock did a cash grab with their new Sins of a Solar Empire 2 game which seems to be a graphically enhanced Sins of A Solar Empire, and what the heck was Imperator: Rome?

I left the AAA game company I was working for and went back to being an indie dev as they had no coding standards. They also threw away the design documents after a few years of development and when I asked for more clarification on what they wanted for what I was working on I was told to just make it work.

One of the higher ups took someone away from the team I was on to work on some part the higher up thought would be "cool" (their words) even though that "cool" new addition had never been discussed/planned and the foundation needed for this "cool" new feature was not coded yet. It's like building a bathroom on the second floor of a house when the foundation isn't finished and the plumbing for the entire house hasn't been planned.

Code I uploaded was deleted and replaced by a co-worker because they wanted it to be coded in a way they understood. Or maybe they wanted credit for that part of the game? The way I coded it did take up less RAM on the end player's machine. That's important when you have software with a lot of moving parts, so to speak, and the final product is going to be over 50 GB on the player's hard drive.

At the time the Unity engine was being used and it seemed the majority wanted to spam the Update method with everything on every class. "Just put everything in the update method." I was told over and over again. I didn't do that. I'm not some super coding expert but I take pride in my work and want it to work well.

Before I left they had a meeting about why the game was slowing down and wanted to figure out why. Maybe they will eventually make it work. it looked really, really astounding graphic wise. They had top of the line artists and 3d modelers. But if it doesn't work who cares? NDA so can't say what title or what company.

My point is it shouldn't be this way. Games should work upon release and those in early access should have what's included work as expected.

[Mango]

The whole industry is in a ♥♥♥♥ place it's going to crash soon and hopefully it fixes its ♥♥♥♥. The biggest issue with most companies is that the people on top don't actually understand games or gamers and only exist to produce more money so of course they are going to push for a game they think it's a safe bet. Its honestly so stupid, cause it's like we haven't learn anything but I'm hoping this changes for the better in the future.

[BandAid]

I am one of those old people who remembers the good old times when games had to work at release because there was no way to patch them/it was very inconvenient to do so.

Guess what, gamebreaking bugs and crashes where a rarity. And the companies still made money.

[KFC-AI]

To be fair, Terra Invita is even now extremly unpolished , but I give them a lot of credits since it comes from small studio who are doing this kind of megaprojects for the first time.

Victoria 3 is okay in terms of bugs and polishing, but it is strange how they failed to include important features such as installing building in vassals.

They have clearly beta tested it a lot, so I do wish next time they can take another week or too to make sure that is fixed.

It is for this reason why I have given this game a bad review.

[Airborne Troll]

To play a little bit of Devil's Advocate here, I suspect most devs would like to release their games with better QA. However, some bean counters in the relevant department have long ago determined that (especially with OTA updates making hot patching very easy), in most cases it is more profitable to release a buggy game than it is to delay off on release and fix all the bugs. After all, all those QA devs need to be paid, office and/or server space needs to be maintained and during this time the game isn't making any actual money and may perhaps be forgotten by too many people if they bugfixing takes long enough. It may be kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ when you look at it as an outsider, but games releasing buggy is kind of the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ conditions at game dev studios.

As long as games are an industry where a profit needs to be made (or until somebody steps in and determines that maximizing profit is no longer the only fiduciary responsibility of corporations), this will likely continue be the case.

[TasteDasRainbow]

It's endemic in the entire entertainment industry. Once the art becomes widely profitable, publishers will monopolize/oligarchize the studios that develop games, and apply their own deadlines, quotas, etc. on them that largely inhibit the dev cycles that games used to have in favor of pump and dump asset flips that turn significantly more profit.

The same thing happened with movies, music, etc. Artists become property of labels, producers, whatever the relative industry standard is, and either meet these demands or are replaced by brands/development that will.

[Many-Named]

imo anyone can release another pacman without any bugs, games got more complex even tho the industry certainly has its problems.

[TigerRus]

More people are now playing Civ 6 than this. Doesnt bode well, but to be fair Civ 6 is a great game this isnt ( YET )

[witur]

Originally posted by Many-Named:

imo anyone can release another pacman without any bugs, games got more complex even tho the industry certainly has its problems.

Exactly. In the past, games were much less elaborate and complex. It is much easier to refine a Tetris than Vitoria 3 or EU4.

[Phyroks]

Its been the trend this since 2010~, nice of you to finally notice. And ppl just keep on eating the garbage and they keep on making money and it will just get worse. Some indies still make quality, but 95% of AAA games are garbage where money goes to hype creation instead of games.

[Phyroks]

Originally posted by witur:

Originally posted by Many-Named:

imo anyone can release another pacman without any bugs, games got more complex even tho the industry certainly has its problems.

Exactly. In the past, games were much less elaborate and complex. It is much easier to refine a Tetris than Vitoria 3 or EU4.

Nah they just have noticed that they dont need to refine it, by leaving that to later dlc and make game cheaper and get more money now and later on dlc Xnd time.

[Sorgal]

"KFC-AI a écrit :
To be fair, Terra Invita is even now extremly unpolished , but I give them a lot of credits since it comes from small studio who are doing this kind of megaprojects for the first time.

Victoria 3 is okay in terms of bugs and polishing, but it is strange how they failed to include important features such as installing building in vassals."



It changes so much things ...
What is the interest of dominion ? doesn't mine ressources u need, ( even if he has deposits ), doesn't care of your industries / production when making buildings, doesn't follow u in war..
Would say it's the major point to pay attention to at this moment.

Personnaly in 40 hours, had 2 embarassing bugs :

In war my general won a batlle and then went back at home in the middle of war and it took 55 days to making him back on another front next to the first ( 2 times ).

In one year i had about 10 times the event when u meet strangers in a colony and u must choose to say them to leave or if the country is for every body ( +12 infamy or -10 prestige each time )

[Heraclius Caesar]

I don't think they're interested in making solid games anymore either.

They're interested in making an attractive trailer to lure people in and cash out as much as possible with as little effort and quality as possible. Look at the game Dune: Awakening. The developers of that game put out a pretty great looking trailer and have done 10 artwork drops in a row but haven't bothered to provide any concrete information about the actual game, it's mechanics, systems, content, etc. They refuse to communicate or respond to questions. Why is this? Most likely because they want to wait until Dune Part II hits the theaters so they can drop an empty half baked buggy game and capitalize on the name.

Paradox at this point is cashing out on the goodwill they created with games like EU4 and CK2, which are probably their most famous and successful games. Hearts of Iron is perhaps a close 3rd but imo it doesn't have the same popularity and cult-like fans as CK and EU. I could be wrong there but Hearts just never appealed to me. They're still trying to milk what they can out of EU4 which is at this point visually dated and notoriously bloated. CK3 is essentially a prettier but more vapid and empty version of CK2 and for some odd reason Paradox is not only taking forever to release worthwhile, quality DLCs for CK3 but is raising the prices of current and future DLCs and pretty much just sporadically putting out these vague, out of touch, pat-themselves-on-the-back, victory lap type dev diaries.

Victoria 3 seems to be basically getting the CK3 treatment and I think that will become glaringly apparent as time goes on. It's unfortunate but Paradox just doesn't have a genuine competitor in the historical game market and since they've made great games in the past we freely gave them our trust and opened our wallets to them. Paradox took that trust and money and decided to become distant, aloof, dismissive, and honestly kind of lazy in some regards.

This is apparently what happens when a game developer with cool ideas and concepts becomes a corporate entity run by Wall Street rejects (or your country's version of Wall Street rejects) who do have a real duty to maximize profits for shareholders but who can't seem to figure out how to balance that with making a game that's high quality on release.

If this game had been high quality on release it would reflect that in the reception. 10k+ reviews in and even if we disregard the bombers and goofballs who were intent on not liking this game, it seems to be overall a disappointing release. A lot of the "recommended" reviews are pretty jam packed with criticisms and complaints but are written by people who still believe in Paradox and hope that the game will be improved upon in the future.

[Shintai]

Victoria 3 was likely not only my last Paradox game but also last bigger studio game. Paradox is not an AAA studio btw. I may get a Witcher game from Project red but thats it. Indie for life now.

[Many-Named]

Originally posted by Shintai:

Victoria 3 was likely not only my last Paradox game but also last bigger studio game. Paradox is not an AAA studio btw. I may get a Witcher game from Project red but thats it. Indie for life now.

You mean you're okay with cyberpunk 2077 and how it was released and not victoria 3?

[easytarget]

The stories of the industries demise are greatly exaggerated.