Octopus Overlords

Starcraft was released in 1998. Recently, Blizzard released another patch for it. While Blizzard has so far provided 8 years of support for one game, why are we lucky to receive 8 weeks support from others? There have been many complaints about Obsidian’s KotOR2 (Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords) and the missing storylines toward the end. Well patches generally are released to fix bugs, not change gameplay. Too bad.

What drives a company, such as Blizzard, to make their clients happy? What drives a company in the opposite direction and ignore its customers altogether?

Reviewers should add “platform stability” into their review criteria and update the review score as the game is patched. This new category would be weighed more heavily than graphics or audio. Otherwise what incentive is there for a company to fix broken gameplay? As it is now, only some games are criticized for broken gameplay.

Since patching is an ongoing venture, why not update a review score if the developer makes future improvements. Ask for unbroken gameplay and you shall receive.

I can't speak to what makes Blizzard better than the rest (maybe Tiny Ogre can weigh in on that), but I think for most companies, the development teams either disband and-reform shortly after the game is done (unless they secure immediate funding to start a new project) or they DO get a new project and suddenly have no time for their older games. Either way, the result is that nobody is around in any organized way to devote effort to software that has most likely already made them as much money as it's going to.

Sith

lorax wrote: Since patching is an ongoing venture, why not update a review score if the developer makes future improvements. Ask for unbroken gameplay and you shall receive.

I should be entitled to Unbroken Gameplay when i fork over $40-50 when i make my initial purchase. Patches are not meant to be expected at all, they're just a common courtesy...

To acertain degree, patches will almost always be necessary. I'm not talking about egregious bugs (such as Pool of Radance 2's uninstall/killWindows bug) or other obvious or widespread errors, but the simple fact is that unlike consoles, there will be a fairly diverse range of PC setups. Unless the company has a good sized budget for QA (which a lot of companies don't), something is going to be missed. I guess I don't get too upset about it, because both systems I've owned in the past 4 years have been extremely stable.

OT - seriously, lorax, why are you a party pooper? I mean, do you even enjoy gaming? Every post comes off as "PC games all suck now".

Blizzard uses a business model known as proactive stance in which they go the extra mile to do everything they can to make us happy. Most companies, I believe, go with the defensive stance, whereas they only fix something if we demand it enough.

Good old Business terms =)

Bioware is pretty good with providing support long after most companies stop too.

I think Blizzard and Bioware are two examples of developers who are large enough to continue providing support long after the publishers might stop funding smaller developers.

Hmmm - Valve comes to mind with the long support it gave for HL and the HL engine.

And yes, Lorax, you are a bit of a downer with your posts, borderline trollish sometimes.

Doesn't it all come down to money? IIRC, Starcraft is still wildly popular in Korea, and from the patch notes it seems that a bunch of the fixes are specifically for the Korean language. If people are still purchasing and playing a game, then it seems that it's in their best interest to patch it. The same goes for Vavle; Half-Life may be an old engine, but until the Source engine came out, plain old Counter-Strike was still near the top of popularity list. I don't think these patches are totally magnanimous.

Agreed, but in the case of HL, I don't think Valve was wracking up a lot of sales, especially since Counterstrike could have been downloaded for free. I know that a lot of the Counterstrike support was to test bandwidth and to keep the fanbase interested in them.

It goes without saying that no company continues to support a game without some business reason, but the fact remains not EVERY company does it - I can think of only three - Blizzard, Bioware and Valve. Then we hear stories of smaller developers - like Trokia - who claim they want to provide more support but can't due to publisher/financial constraints.

Speaking of continuining support for their games, I was impressed to learn that there is actually a brand new patch for Command & Conquer: Zero Hour, a game which was released over a year ago and has since fallen way down the charts. This patch was actually created with the help of the fan community who I guess worked closely with the developers. I wish I hadn't deleted the email, but I remember it mentioned a new balance system for the units, they even had a name for it. I thought that was pretty cool and maybe even warranted giving the game a second look.

My understanding is that Blizzard has entire rooms full of money in their office, but they won't let you roll in them unless you fix a bug in a released game.

Its a cost issue. Some games simply dont make enough money to warrant having someone create patches for it.

This is just pure speculation, but I would imagine with the continued overwhelming popularity of Starcraft in Korea, it simply makes financial sense to keep patching it. Otherwise, it probably would not continue to be patched so long after its initial release.

I don't think it is Blizzard going the extra mile. I think it is an indication on how long Blizzard takes to get anything done. They probably started this patch 4 years ago and just now got around to approving it.

Seriously, though, it is very cool that they will release a patch for a game so long after release. So many people bitched about Diablo 2's 2.10 patch, but seemed to forget how cool it was that Blizzard added new content to a game that was years old.

One blemish Blizzard has on them has occurred with WoW. They are not releasing content patches quick enough and Sony is completing outdoing them in that regard with EQ2. However, since every patch goofs with my interface mods, I am almost thankful that Blizzard doesn't patch very much.

Money. Plain and simple.

I think all devs want to make their customers happy but they have varying resources to achieve that. BioWare has over 200 staff (and Blizzard is much bigger again) - is it any wonder they can keep patching compared to a small studio that might have <20 staff?

The solution is the way the industry is heading: amalgamation, rationalisation, less indie devs, more big-budget blockbuster games. More money = more capability to polish. Oddly, that's not necessarily the future I want despite, despite the highly QA'd code that should follow.

As for "platform stability" being weighted more heavily in reviews, "stability" does not directly equate to "broken gameplay" - or did you just phrase it poorly? Everyone will see it differently but removing features so that a game has a CTD or two less may not have the same priority for all gamers.

Dhruin wrote:The solution is the way the industry is heading: amalgamation, rationalisation, less indie devs, more big-budget blockbuster games. More money = more capability to polish. Oddly, that's not necessarily the future I want despite, despite the highly QA'd code that should follow.

Everyone will see it differently but removing features so that a game has a CTD or two less may not have the same priority for all gamers.

The solution is big-budget blockbuster games? And that leads to highly Q&A'd (quality & assurance) code? Do you have any examples where the merging of game companies is generally leading to more polished games?

Also, the purpose of a category in a ratings scheme is to provide a "rating scale". So, if the game only has a couple of CTDs (crash-to-desktop) then it would rate better than a game that has dozens of CTDs. It's a matter of scale.

The solution is the way the industry is heading: amalgamation, rationalisation, less indie devs, more big-budget blockbuster games.

I think that happened a decade or so ago.

lorax wrote:

Dhruin wrote:The solution is the way the industry is heading: amalgamation, rationalisation, less indie devs, more big-budget blockbuster games. More money = more capability to polish. Oddly, that's not necessarily the future I want despite, despite the highly QA'd code that should follow.

Everyone will see it differently but removing features so that a game has a CTD or two less may not have the same priority for all gamers.

The solution is big-budget blockbuster games? And that leads to highly Q&A'd (quality & assurance) code? Do you have any examples where the merging of game companies is generally leading to more polished games?

When I say "solution", I'm not espousing that preference, personally -- it's just the way the industry is moving (in my opinion). Your own examples are Blizzard (345 staff in the US, plus offices in Paris and Korea) and BioWare (~220 staff). Blizzard is now owned by VUG and BioWare, while independant, has made its money on licensed products to date. I'm sure there's an example somewhere but you aren't listing small indie studios as examples.

Because it's all about money.

As the next-gen consoles take hold, games with outrageous development costs life Half Life 2 ($40M +) and Halo 2 (Bungie now owned by MS) will be more commonplace...and when you are spending $40M you don't take many risks on QA. Don't get me wrong -- there will be stuff-ups as always -- but it will be less likely.

I'm not all doom and gloom about PC gaming and indie studios, BTW - it will always exist. And they will continue to have highly-variable QA and many of them will gamble with the QA because sometimes they just won't have the money to do it any other way.

@Peacedog, not even close to where it will go, IMO.

I've rushed this at work - apologies if it isn't coherent.

lorax wrote:Also, the purpose of a category in a ratings scheme is to provide a "rating scale". So, if the game only has a couple of CTDs (crash-to-desktop) then it would rate better than a game that has dozens of CTDs. It's a matter of scale.

The problem with this is that it's not an absolute property of the thing being evaluated. Games that crash all the time on my machine may be entirely stable on yours. So how can you evaluate an absolute number of crashes?

Blizzard has great support. Too bad I do not like their games.

I was impressed that Irrational released a patch on President's Day to get Freedom Force working with XP SP2. They've been saying they'd fix it, but they didn't have to, if you know what I mean.

malchior wrote:I was impressed that Irrational released a patch on President's Day to get Freedom Force working with XP SP2. They've been saying they'd fix it, but they didn't have to, if you know what I mean.

To coincide with the relese of Freedoom Force 2 demo. This was intentional .

Starcraft was just patched today.

Creepy. You got your wish.

morlac wrote:

malchior wrote:I was impressed that Irrational released a patch on President's Day to get Freedom Force working with XP SP2. They've been saying they'd fix it, but they didn't have to, if you know what I mean.

To coincide with the relese of Freedoom Force 2 demo. This was intentional .

Sure, but they didn't have to do this, FF2 or not.

Paradox still patches all of their games every few months.

CSL wrote:Paradox still patches all of their games every few months.

That's because their games still need patching every few months They make some very good games that no else comes close to, but they aren't worth crap coming out of the box. It's an interesting operating model . . .

HoI II didn't have any game-breaking bugs that I found.