Guernication

My thoughts on games and the issues around them.

Author: Guernica

It has been said we live in a 'blame culture'. Its popular to point the finger when things go wrong, or at least not how we think they should have gone. Iraq, house-prices, sports events, the weather, everything has to be someone's fault. There has to be one individual we can all blame for whatever went 'wrong'. Even though we also live in a society where personal responsibility is increasingly unfashionable, we need to be able to blame mishaps on someone.

When games go 'wrong', and by 'wrong' I mean everything from being unplayable to just not playing like we want them to, we like to blame. And usually we blame 'the devs', the guys who write the code and design the worlds we play in.

'The devs nerfed my class/prof/ship/item'

'The devs screwed up PvP'

'The devs should've thought this through more before unleashing it on the players'

'The devs don't listen to the players'

'Why didn't the devs do what I said they should've - then we wouldn't have this problem'

When I read negative forum posts about how a game has been changed or released, the impression I get is that players often see the guys making the game as their enemy. And they define that enemy as the guys who are entering the numerical values in the databases and code strings that actually form the game worlds we play in. But when things do go 'wrong' in games, is it really the 'devs's' fault?

Aren't games companies more complex than that? Aren't there more layers at work in decisions about game mechanics than the guys actually sat at PC's coding all day?

Ask yourself this question: If I'm a coder and I work on a game I like and play, or even that I don't play but I still take some pride in working on, as I take pride in everything I work on, would I really be happy to release into the community something I know is buggy or only half done? Wouldn't I rather keep working on it till it is perfect?

Do people who actually make the games really want to release unfinished games into the world? Do coders like sending out buggy code? Do Community Relations people like it when the issues they have raised get ignored and they get swamped with hate mail from the players they are trying to work with? Do designers like it when they vision they have tried to realise on-screen is corrupted and badly received by players?

Do the designers of the NGE in SWG like the fact they had to redesign the game almost from the gournd up and still be catching shit for it two years later? Do the Vanguard or Fury devs like it that their games bombed because they either had too little content or were unplayable on most PC's?  Do they put out bad products on purpose because they are sado-masochists and just like never seeing sunlight and being rewarded with piles of hate mail?

Or is it more likely they probably didn't make the decisions behind these failures in the first place. That someone else, far from the frontline, who never has to play the game or really interact with its players, is driving the release schedules and budgets of the devs?

Such calls are made by suited professionals. Management levels. Marketing. They are the ones who set the timetables and budgets the people who actually make the games must live by.  They, I submit, are the real reason rushed, buggy, and incomplete projects get sent out into the world.

Are the 'devs' perfect? Of course not. They are all human and even the best coder or designer will slip in an error or two, even under the best conditions. But I believe coders, given the choice, would rather hold back an update or an item, or even an entire game to iron out all the problems. It is the management that sets deadlines and release dates and sticks to them, even if they know they are premature.

Largely thats for good reason - as I mentioned above, coders will hold onto their projects, potentially forever, to iron out all the bugs. You have to call time at some point or nothing would ever get released. Sometimes though, they just order something to be released because thats when the company strategy says it has to be, ready or not.

So I think bugs and nerfs and glitches, at least in the continually changing MMO worlds, are really inevitable. A bugless game would never get released. Games developers aren't perfect. Their masters, holding the reins of the company certainly aren't but they decide when enough is enough and its time to release.

So next time your game gets bugged or nerfed or generally screwed with by some incomplete or premature release or update and you want to scream 'kill the devs!' on the forums, please, bear in mind, it may not be the 'devs' fault. Maybe the guys who have most interaction with the game knew there were problems with what was being sent out. Maybe they screamed at their bosses that they needed more time to fix the issues. But the marketers had their way. They had set a date. Their reputation and bonuses depended on it being met. They don't have to deal with the players. They don't to deal with the mess. They just pick up a cheque and a pat on the back for meeting a deadline.

And maybe the alternative really wouldn't be any better. If devs did iron out every glitch, if they did playtest every system to perfection, if they did refuse to release products until they were 100% clean, no glitches or bugs, or hiccups whatsoever, maybe wee would never actually get to play anything at all as MMO's never reach that perfect state.