I believe you can get a refund all the way until two weeks after 1.0, so we kind of still do. But also, I can’t think of any game beta that took iterative feedback to core systems the way today’s early access games do. Perhaps because more games are very systems-driven today by comparison.
You’re looking for an argument that I’m not interested in, and it’s not what this conversation was about. Paradox sure looks like it released some games early, knowing that they were underbaked, because they couldn’t feasibly keep delaying them to give them the time they needed. We can agree to disagree there and go our separate ways.
I’d say it’s a sign of an unhealthy company, since their reports must be truthful but can present the rosiest picture possible. You don’t have to force this to be some absolutism. The rest of the industry came on hard times simultaneously to these games releasing unfinished, as well as games from their peers doing the same. I don’t think my conclusion is farfetched.
Correct. We’ve seen tons of layoffs in this industry because their business models weren’t healthy. So they’ll make cuts, or push out games like Cities: Skylines II or Skull and Bones when they’re not ready or will do long-term damage to their brand because they need to take the least bad option, but meanwhile, Take Two and Nintendo can push back marquis products another few quarters because they’ve got a moat of security around themselves. At times, those companies were not, and one day will not be, healthy, but then they sacrificed or will sacrifice something or other in order to survive to be healthy another day.
You don’t see Take Two shoving GTA6 and Judas out the door for profits now, for instance. Paradox abiding by the same MO to burn good will for multiple games and then getting developers off their books is a move you make when you’re out of better options.
The ways that they play differently are a few numbers tweaks and occasionally a new animation. It’s not the difference between Melee and Brawl or 64 and Melee.
And perhaps that health is because by that point they already started releasing multiple games far too early for a cash injection, one of which ended with them cutting Harebrained Schemes loose. I’m also calling it like it is. I don’t see healthy companies sacrifice their long term fan base and development throughput for short term gains. It smells a whole lot like trying to stop the bleeding. As for assigning The Chinese Room to sequel a beloved RPG, I don’t even know where to start there.
No, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
Everyone ran out of cash in this industry. Investment dried up, and they knew what state their game was shipping in. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong to be upset as a consumer either.
Sure, but that was iterative, like Super Street Fighter II Turbo, as opposed to making Street Fighter III. Wherever they go with Smash from here, it will involve a systems rework and fewer characters.
That doesn’t make it sheer greed; it’s what’s feasible to develop. A systems driven game like a city builder or a 4X game mean that you can’t just drag and drop old content in the new systems and expect it to work and look cohesive. Every fighting game launches with fewer characters than the previous version, and it’s not because it’s some conspiracy to delay dropping the SFV characters in SF6; it’s because swapping out the V system for the Drive system is a massive change, and the old characters take a lot of work to port over. Even the art style in Civ 6 is very different from Civ V. When you try to just copy and paste content between two different styles of art direction, you end up with nightmare fuel Chun-Li in Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite.