What is polish? No, I'm not talking about the language. Does anyone, absolutely ANYONE, actually know what polish is?

What do they mean when they are talking about polish?

It's an adjective related to anything come from that Eastern European country sandwiched between Germany and the Ukraine.. y'know the place that zubrowka and Chopin come from?

You forgot to put that in your poll, not to be confused with any other homonyms that might be flying about.

polish - to improve, refine, or add finishing touches to.

basically the degree to which a game feels complete or prepared for release.

Polishing a game means working out the kinks. Every game has something, but the level of polish determines the amount of bugs, glitches, etc.

I think the poll results definately shows what kind of people we have here.  Majority votes are for "a language".  Thank heavens for smart-asses.

Originally posted by ChoadSauce

polish - to improve, refine, or add finishing touches to.

basically the degree to which a game feels complete or prepared for release.

 

Polishing a game means working out the kinks. Every game has something, but the level of polish determines the amount of bugs, glitches, etc.

This. Polish is everything in the game functioning as it should.

It's the difference between having a car that has been driven for six months and is covered in road dirt and bird crap and the same car that has just been washed, waxed and polished to look like new.

It's good stuff. It should happen more often. With cars and with games.

Rift is polished and has earned a spot on the show room floor. Earthrise is a Jeep that's been run through a swamp, then taken to a desert and flipped end over end. That Jeep is now on it's way to the metal recycling center.

In mmorpg land: nothing being hampered by game breaking bugs, ui functioning smoothly, available content feels rich and features are well implemented. Derp.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland

Looky looky here. XD

..

Sorry, couldn' resist. ^^

I am Polish.  (damn, thats some real deep selfreflection right there for yah) o.O

After reading through early-access reviews, I have come across this term frequently - and obviously I am not the only one, because this poll showed up demonstrates that it has become activated in our current discussion vocab.

So here's my beef with it, because the most popular schema that it has been used in is something along the lines of :

Oh, yes, it has a lot of polish.

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Polish is not something you want a "lot" of.  You want it to be used, to burnish or give a shiny coat to whatever (take that metaphorically for the game of course - we all know what this is trying to mean, I'm just arguing against its use).  You don't want it to still be there when you get your polished thing.

Example: If I take my car to get it detailed, and they whistle me out to the front of the shop to pick up my car and the dude says "check it out, it has a lot of polish!" then I would tell him, "yeah, so take it back and wipe that crap off please."

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Polish is a tool that serves a purpose.  Games, cars, shoes should "be polished" but not "have polish."  If the only thing that sticks out in someone's mind is the "polish" something "has," then it makes me think initially that it is actually incomplete and hiding behind a veneer of sticky gunk used to "finish" but not to "COAT" something.

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Anyway soapbox off.  All the best wishes to Rift and the players, maybe I'll join you guys one of these days.

Stuff I put on my nails to make them super sexy <3.

~Miles "Tails" Prower out! Catch me if you can!

To me, "polish" means overall smoothness of my gaming experience. It's a rather broad term to describe how well is the game carried out in terms of playability from the customer's point of view. In other words, polish is absence of techincal and design flaws that interfere with my gaming experience.

Some things that contribute to a "polished" game:

1) No crashes, no major bugs, little to no minor bugs

2) User-friendly UI with ergonomic layout of all the controls which let me do stuff i want quickly, easily and intuitively

3) Absence of graphical glitches

4) High quality and consistent art style (graphics, sound, music)

5) Fluid animations which appear very natural

6) In MMOs in particular - zero UI lag - all technical issues related to PC performance limitations, connection speeds and delays are well managed and accounted for on the application level and do not "make it" through to the UI level

7) No typos in story texts, no variables or constant names appearing within some of them, etc :-)

8) User interface using fluid transition animations helps, although it must be unobtrusive and simple otherwise it gets annoying after a while (quick, smooth, direct movements)

The list is obviously not intended to be exhaustive, these are just some examples.

To a certain extent, "polish" is subjective. Also, that the game is polished doesn't mean that I like it or vice versa. Many people don't like WoW yet it's probably the most polished MMO out there. On the other hand, many people like to play Eve Online despite it has possibly the worst user interface design imaginable.

TL;DR: Polish is generic term expressing absence of technical and design-related annoyances interfering with smooth gaming experience.

What is polish easily explainable , Bug Free Crash Free Playable Enjoyable  content .

Isn´t that simple enough to achieve ?

So many games can´t even reach that with launch .

Polish is just a ste where the game performs well with little or no bugs/issues to the point it does not in ANY WAY detract from my experience while playing. If those bugs/issues, get in the way and directly affect my gameplay while playing, then I would say the game lacks polish.

Polish in an MMO generally means very smooth animations and combat, and minimal or no bugs.  A "finished" game, basically.

Polish is the measure of how closely a game, in its current state, matches the expecations of the players/devs.

Which is why games are rarely polished at launched because most games are launched to some extent in an unfinished state.

It's a language.

The people who are forgotten. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mahTGNIk4q4

I'am polish also :D.

But... for me it's that product is finished - no bugs, it has everything what is supposed to have - all announced content.