http://www.ripten.com/2012/03/27/brian-fargo-talks-wasteland-2-abysmal-publ isher-treatment-and-having-fun-again/
Sorry my link-fu is weak, but this was an eye-opener for me. For those of you who blamed Obsidian for all the bugs at launch for Fallout: New Vegas, you might want to read this.
In any case, I'm rooting for Fargo and Wasteland 2.
Publishing rushing developers has been a problem for years, and Obsidian in particular seem to be a whipping boy for publishers. They had multiple problems on multiple titles, rather unusually coming off their extremely reliable reputation when they were Black Isle.
However, the biggest problem is the Internet, particularly the common spread of online gaming on the consoles. Before then, games had to ship in as perfect a condition as possible because there was no way of patching them. However, now they can be released in a fairly buggy state because the publishers know they can release fixes later on, rather than missing deadlines (and potentially missing out on lucrative holiday release slots).
The publisher is always in charge of QA.
This about sums it up.
Obsidian has been the victim of this issue at least three times -- LucasArts with KOTOR2, Atari with NWN2 early, Bethesda/Zenimax with New Vegas. All of them on release buggy crap -- with very little QA testing, which falls directly on the shoulders of the publishers. All this "make us a 100 hour game with someone else's engine but make the engine better and give us rich Torment like storylines and characters and cherries on top, and give it to us by tomorrow." Gah.
Also, if you haven't played Fallout New Vegas now that it's done and patched, DO IT. Get the Ultimate Edition if you don't have the game. Some of the most fun I've had gaming in a long time.
((And a semi-related rant follows....))
There's a general paradox in games development and publishing that I've never understood and it frustrates me so much. Good, in-depth games take a lot of time to create. Good, in-depth games require ongoing support after their release. And often, especially since good games cost a lot, it can take time for people to decide to pick up a game, or wait to hear from their friends as to whether it's worth buying.
And yet, publishers follow a standard corporate media model that demands quarterly releases at certain times a year, and put an insane amount of pressure on players to pre-order. And what really boggles me is that gamers DO pre-order, when TIME and TIME and TIME again, if you buy a game on release, you are practically guaranteed to receive an incomplete buggy piece of nonsense--and further more you will be nickel-and-dimed these days for added downloadable content.
What boggles me further is that gamers pressure each other to buy on release and buy DLC as they go. For example, I have friends that stare at me incredulously that I have not bought Skyrim yet. "But you HAVE to!" There's an underlying pressure to play it while it's the next big thing. And yet when I say, "A year from now, or so, I'll be able to get the GOTY edition with all the patches and all the extra content for the same price you paid for the original on release--and maybe less if I get it on sale," some of them do blink and say, "Actually, yeah, the game's pretty buggy right now, you should probably wait." And next year, I will have just as much fun playing the game (if not more) than the people playing it now)--but I will be seen as uncool because I am now playing an "old" game. (It's okay, I am generally uncool anyway, so it's not much of a deterrent.)
We do this to each other, and then this behavior further reinforces the publisher's idea that they can release a game with 0 QA testing and be chock full of bugs, and we will still clamor to pay big bucks for half a game--and then further be willing to pay in installments for the rest of it. All the while cursing the developer for bugs at release? And doing it all over again and again and again. Are we brainwashed by game publishers or is our own gamer OCD working against us? Either way, crazy really is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
As to Fargo and Wasteland 2 and a Kickstarter project... this is awesome and it really gives me hope that indie developers will have a new outlet to successfully produce awesome video games without having to deal with publisher rigamarole. I hope it also shows gamers they have the power to put their money where their mouth is and get a superior product. I would gladly donate to a project like this at least what I would pay MSRP for a mainstream game and get--one would hope--a much better product in return. It will be interesting to see if it turns out well. I realize backing a project like this is in its own way a form of pre-ordering (for the effect it has on you, the consumer) but it feels like you're helping guarantee something is awesome, rather than helping guarantee something will be rushed. I hope I'm right.
Also, reading this after reading that the newest SimCity will require always-on Internet and direct connection to Origin at all times it's so, so, very gratifying to hear developers who want to make games are finding ways around the kind of crap that publishers pull.
ETA: On a separate note, I really enjoyed Fargo's Bard's Tale, which gets mentioned in the article. It really is a good parody of VRPGs.
I really hope that some of the recent game kickstarters start to give the game developers more control. Things like Banner Saga give me a lot of hope. At 300% funding, they will not have to worry about making sure they hit release dates as much as making sure they deliver what people want. I hope that film can soon hit a similar point.
Obsidian has been the victim of this issue at least three times -- LucasArts with KOTOR2, Atari with NWN2 early, Bethesda/Zenimax with New Vegas.
I'd add Sega with Alpha Protocol to this list as well.
Obsidian has gotten a lot more flak over AP than their other games, as it was an original IP and the game was delivered to Sega months and months before it was released, so Obsidian should have been able to have fixed the bugs in the game.
However, it is now known that once the first build of the game was delivered, Sega ceased funding all further development of the game from Obsidian. Sega basically took over the project at that point and at no time asked (or, more importantly, paid) Obsidian money to do bug-fixes in response to Q&A (Q&A is handled by the publisher, NOT the developer in most cases, unless the developer is independent or massively rich, like Valve or Blizzard). The version of AP that was finally released was basically an alpha, which explains why it's so borked. Obsidian expected to have feedback, send off a more stable and fixed beta and then move onto a release version, but this never happened. Why? Ask Sega.
Sega has a history of bad Q&A on their games, actually, as the total mess that EMPIRE: TOTAL WAR was on release also shows.
I did not know that about Sega and Alpha Protocol. That is very interesting to know. I remember being very disappointed hearing that it was so buggy on release that I didn't buy it. (I was thinking of getting now that it's probably been pretty well patched.)
Just for the record, it's "QA," for "Quality Assurance." :)
Wow. Lots of good information in this thread, thanks all. Now I REALLY hope that Obsidian joins the Wasteland 2 project. W/out a publisher screwing up the QA, we could have a really kickass game!
Note to self: I can't remember if the game will have a Mac version, but even if it doesn't, a lot of happy gamers are sure to play it (just sadly not me).
Btw DQ, I agreed w/ everything you said in your earlier rant upthread.
EDIT: That includes seeing the humor in Fargo's Bard's Tale.
Alpha Protocol was a complete trainwreck of a game and it's interesting to read about how that happened. Thanks for that.
Interestingly I bought it recently and it's not bad (it's patched of course, or at least I assume). But it is definitely lacking polish, for the reasons above; I think it further didn't do well because they really didn't know how to market it. A lot of people saw it and thought they were getting a more spy-like Call of Duty or something, whereas the RPG elements are a lot stronger than I think most expected or realized. I'd love Obsidian to try their hand again at an espionage RPG. I know Sega said they weren't going to do a sequel to Alpha Protocol because the metacritic score was bad (which we now know from above was Sega's own damn fault), but if they could get the funding somewhere else (a decent publisher or Kickstarter) I bet they could put out something amazing. Even with mistakes made in Alpha Protocol, all those mistakes can be learned from.
Randomdays, I'm with you. There's been a few games recently announced that require always online (Diablo III is the one that pisses me off the most). I'll just take the $60 I might have spent on one of those games and buy 6 games that are older that I never got a chance to play at GOG or something, or replay something I already have.