Not long ago, the honourable Matt Lees of "getting all upset in videos" fame wrote about how our obsession with polish leads to blander games, obliging developers to spend all their time squashing bugs rather than creating new concepts. Seems Ubisoft's Jade Raymond agrees with him. Could they be the same person? No, probably not.
"One of the things I see that's different [about the industry today] is that our audience expects perfection," Raymond told OXM in a lengthy and, dare we say, fascinating interview published this very afternoon.
"Before, there were only, say, two million people playing games - they were real fans and they were playing every game. They were willing to forgive bugs, and try things that weren't as much fun because they were different.
"Now, there are 30 million people buying and they only buy the top five," she went on. "They expect perfection. I think that growing up with everything being so good, so easy to use, there are certain expectations."
Do those expectations hamper efforts to break new ground? "It's not very forgiving. It does limit innovation, because if something isn't working as you get towards shipping, you have to cut it or revert to back what you know does work."
Sounds dangerously plausible, in light of (for instance) on-going fracas over Battlefield 3 bugs. If you won't hear it from Matt (no sweat, the man's a crime against nature), and you won't take it from Raymond (you monster!) heed the wisdom of those we interviewed for our highly readable and generally magnificent interrogation of games testing.
"Gaming wasn't seen as such a serious industry, so you could get away with a lot in terms of bugs, because that's what people expected," Anders Muldal of VMC Game Labs told us. "The average person thought the developer was just some guy with a PC building the whole game himself.
"Now people see the huge budgets that some games have, the hype that surrounds releases, particularly the triple-A titles, I think people are a lot more demanding. They expect their games to have the same production quality as a Hollywood movie. It should be perfect!"
Should it?
11 comments so far...
Thos. on 13 Aug '12 said:
I don't think developers got away with more bugs in the past necessarily. It's just that the games were so much simpler that there were less areas where bugs could appear. A side-scrolling 8-bit game is far easier to test than a current open world game.
Compounding the problem is that online capabilities mean bugs can be patched post-launch. If you think back to older consoles, there were actually very few bugs in games, because the producers knew that once the game was mastered there was nothing that could ever be changed, so they had to be damn sure the games were near perfect.
msbhvn on 13 Aug '12 said:
Never heard such moronic drivel in my life. The games that are exciting these days are the ones doing something different; Sleeping Dogs, Watch Dogs, Dishonoured. Sure, millions will be buying generic shooter #6000000 but they're idiots and therefore should be soundly ignored. Using the clueless masses to justify rehashing the same old crap to death, like Assassin's Creed has been doing for years, is probably the reason I haven't bought an Ubi published game on launch day, ever.
Clanger67 on 13 Aug '12 said:
Maybe you will Watch Dogs though.
msbhvn on 13 Aug '12 said:
Is Watch Dogs Ubi? How did it get past Jade and her "but it has to be exactly the same as everything else we've got or no one will buy it" attitude?
Bezza89 on 13 Aug '12 said:
She's Toronto, new outfit, Montreal are the kings - though I personally love Red Storm, who do Rainbow Six (and dishearteningly I think they did GR Future Soldier which bodes badly for Rainbow Six Patriots, hopefully not).
Clanger67 on 13 Aug '12 said:
My mate Chris used to work for Red Storm before Ubi. took them over.They laid him off few months later although he always claims it's because he wouldn't learn French
.
He met Tom Clancy at E3 years ago.
Bezza89 on 13 Aug '12 said:
You mean after they became UBI Red Storm? or before UBI published with red storm, because Red Storm before UBI are unknown to me, UBI pub Red Storm (Ghost Recon + Rainbow Six previous gen, and the Vegas games this gen) were awesome and UBI RedStorm have gone down bad paths so it would seem, after the admittedly good Ghost Recon AW, it's not Ghost Recon but it was good, and using the conviction engine for Future soldier and it would appear to be used in Patriots too.
Errr.... I guess whichever way this Chris chap was part of the good times at Red Storm. Boo to new ubi red storm.
Clanger67 on 13 Aug '12 said:
No they did a few before ubi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy ... ogue_Spear
Bezza89 on 13 Aug '12 said:
lol So was he with Red Storm Red Storm, Ubi pubbed Red Storm or UBI Redstorm? I am familiar with the middle one, the latter is getting progressively worse and the former I haven't played so can't comment on his skills as they are unknown to me as I said.
Clanger67 on 13 Aug '12 said:
Yeah Red Storm Developed and published i think it was their first three before Ubi. took over.He worked there then and like i said Ubi. cleared a lot out when they took over and replaced them with the french.They were all done with the collaboration of Tom Clancy though,hence he met him a E3.
Plamsa wing on 13 Aug '12 said:
"Now, there are 30 million people buying and they only buy the top five," she went on. "They expect perfection."
Those games are hardly perfect are they miss. Raymond?
Also your average person? Your average person gets pissed on a friday night then complains the following morning about having a hangover on a work day, when they got drunk on their own volition. Don't listen to them, you wouldn't listen to the local drunk at the pub would you?