Greetings! As the discussion continues this week on delays and whether they help or hurt the games we play, we bring you another stellar Member BattleCry. We’re seeing a lot of good points raised in the dialogue on this subject and many people are pointing out two situations; one where the delay helped and the other where not so much.
Coky14 checks in with not only two such examples, but also so insightful comments on how gamers perception affects their attitude about the delay as well as the psychological impact of a firm street date being broken vs a vague release window changing. Let’s turn things over to him…
Coky14 Says:
Here’s my Epic Battle Member Cry,
I really prefer to see a game delayed so they can work on it a litle longer so we, as gamers and customers, get a better and more refined experience. The problem, as the last choice of the poll says, is that publishers shouldn’t announce a clear date when they don’t know if they’re gonna ship in time.
The best example of how to do it is, God of War III. Announced for MARCH 2010, in June 2009, they gave themselves a large window to see if other games could make them change their idea or if the developpement went faster or slower than supposed. I also feel that if God of War would have been delayed, because the date wasn’t set in stone, it would not have been taken so harshly by the community.
The counter-example, is Splinter Cell : Conviction. How to completely destroy momentum. The game was awaited for so long. They released a trailer this winter where it the release was dated for 23.02.10. The whole point of the trailer was to say the release date. Now, the codeofconviction.com thingy (which I participated in) helped us get the real release date as for April 13th. After 5 years more or less of developpement it really didn’t need that. Shame on marketing or the developpement team for that bad decision. We’d better get our cash out of that game or else you’ll have a line of frustrated gamers ready to NOT buy another Splinter Cell game as they will have lost their faith on the franchise.
Finally, the positive affects are mostly unappreciable by gamers as we will never get to understand the amount of polish that was made during the time of the delay (of whatever the game was actually delayed for). It’s mostly intengible. This is why we see so much delays as a bad thing.
The negative effect is mostly dangerous for smaller franchises or new IPs. God of War III and FFXIII will sell as much on March or on April. It could sell well in Christmas time, Easter, Halloween, etc. People have confidance in their developpers and know they’re doing the right choice. Alpha Protocol (sorry Daniel), as much as they can delay that game, it’s not looking too good. I’d be happy for SEGA if they get a 85 from critics. The game looks clunky, the style seems weird, caracters empty, and delays won’t change that. As said, we haven’t been conditionned to think SEGA will release triple A titles.
Finally, my Battle Cry is in fact to developpers who have to make the heart breaking choice to make these delays happen or not. Will you break the momentum to make a better game? Can think of what I would do I such a position.
End
People can agree or disagree on his assessment of how delays have affected God of War III and Splinter Cell: Conviction. However, I think he makes an extremely good point about why gamers often view delays as inherently bad…we often have no basis for comparison; we don’t know how bad things were to begin with or how much better they are after some more time is spent tweaking things. I also appreciate him taking a look at things from the devs or publishers point of view. These can’t be easy decisions to make, especially when we gamers can be as hard to please as we often are.
So what do you all think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below and if you have something else entirely that you’d like to sound off on, then feel free to do that over on this week’s topics starter post where you can SUBMIT A NEW TOPIC:
SUBMIT YOUR MEMBER BATTLECRY IN THE COMMENTS SECTION HERE.
That’s gonna do it for now, but we hope you continue having an awesome week and keep your rants, raves, and recommendations coming here on EpicBattleAxe.com!
Stay Brutal,
Viking Brent
Awesome written BC from a neutral point of view, thumbs up.
Personally i can´t really take a side here sometimes it helps the game to get delayed and sometimes it does not.
Contra example:
[Duke Nukem Forever]
The delay or the “when it´s done” approach clearly didn´t help the Game cause now no one cares anymore about if its getting released or not but if, it won´t sell very well i think.
Pro example: [Battlefield Bad Company 2 for PC]
I think in this case a delay had helped the developers to get rid of the Problems the Pc version of the Game momentarily suffers from.
Connection problems,Punkbuster issues, Team auto balance doesn´t work, Hits that don´t do damage, random CTD´s, Veteran unlocks don´t work, etc. and the EA Master Server goin down every 2 days or so because it wasn´t ready for this huge amount of Players (or so they say). This could have been easily prevented by simply delay the release of the game by one or even two months.
About Alpha Protocol: You really can´t say what it will be when its released i agree with you that the Game (in what we´ve seen so far) does look a bit clunky and half-baked but we haven´t seen much new footage in the last time have we? Maybe it will look much more polished when the release date draws nearer, i definitely hope so. A espionage RPG could be awesome.
So long
Awesome cry.
I think the guys at Ubisoft didn’t really know what they wanted SC: Conviction to be until the end of last year.
First there was the total engine rewrite, then there was the delay to expand the multiplayer options… Did they not realize, way ahead of time, that a well conceived, sizable multiplayer suite almost always adds to a game’s value?
One thing I hope Ubi currently realizes is that this indecisiveness has killed many gamers’ enthusiasm for Conviction. They’ve still got my vote, as I’m a sucker for stealth action and the gameplay footage has been impressive.
However, I know for sure there are many out there who just don’t care anymore, even if they were totally pumped at one time.
As for Alpha Protocol, judging from the gameplay footage that was floating around just before its original release date, things were not looking good.
Unfortunately, things don’t seem to have improved since then, delay and all. Has anyone seen what hand-to-hand combat looks like in AP? Ugh is the only adjective that comes to mind.
I really hope things take a turn for the better. The equipment customization options appear expansive and the concept of an espionage RPG is simply badass. I’ll keep an eye on it…
I still think it usually does more harm than good. Especially since we (as gamers) don’t see the improvements as you mentioned.
My example would be Singularity; a game I was really looking forward to in 2009. Now I couldn’t care less. When they delayed that game (because of CoD:MW2) I interpreted it as a lack of faith in the strength of their game. Only a good demo or stellar reviews will get me interested again…
yeah i kinda have to echo Jeroen there, if a team can’t get the game out on times or they opt to change the release window it feel to me like they are either lacking confidence in their product or simply can’t manage themselves properly
Wooo Thanks Brent for featuring me! I almost forgot about the post but it’s great to see you pay interest to your followers!
I also omitted to say a few things on the neutrality stand point which was mentionned.
I own only a 360 (as for now, I plan on getting a PS3 this week end lol).
I never played a God of War game.
I’m a fanboy of the Splinter Cell franchise.
I really don’t like the feel of Alpha Protocol.
On Alpha Protocol, I guess it’s personnal, I just don’t dig it. Love RPGs and love Stealh action games, but the mix seems poorly done. I watched a few videos and the game looks to be badly animated (crouching is the worst part) and the caracters seem flat and stereotypical. The art style also seem inispired as the russian girl with pink glasses (as seen in the trailers) look not only bad, but no sexy at all. Also, guns with all their upgrades seem akward and out of place. I’d rather play Mass Effect for a hour before playing Conviction an other hour. I’m really waging a one man army war against this title. Sorry for those who like it…
@Sigmatic : I wanted to play Bad Company 2 about an hour ago, EA had shut down their servers -_-… If you remember, similar problems arose at the lauch of the first Bad Company game… Anyway, I doubt a delay would have helped it since the had a public Beta on PC and both long running and very popular demos on both consoles.
Thanks Again Axers!
One aspect of delays that I haven’t seen talked about yet is the difference between delaying a sequel to a successful game (Splinter Cell), and delaying a new IP (Alpha Protocol). Here’s how I look at it.
Splinter Cell is a fairly long-running franchise now, and Ubisoft doesn’t want to release a game that will tarnish that reputation and destroy the series. So naturally, they’re going to take the “when it’s done, it’s done” approach. The problem is with how they executed this. They have been feeding us gameplay footage, trailers, and release dates for well over a year and nobody has actually played the game yet. I haven’t played any of the SC games, but I imagine that would be enough for even the most hardcore fan to be at least a little nervous about buying Conviction. However, it’s a proven franchise and a lot of people will still be on board. Sales will likely be lower than what Ubisoft would like to see, but they have only themselves to blame for not getting their act together sooner.
Alpha Protocol is a different story ENTIRELY. Although Obsidian (the dev) has a pretty good track record with making sequels (KOTOR 2), I have never heard of them releasing an original IP that did well. Also, take into account that the game is being published by Sega and you aren’t looking at a recipe for success (in my opinion, at least). The fact that it’s a new IP means that nobody has any pre-existing loyalty towards the franchise, and can easily be disuaded from buying in. What may seem like “taking the time to get it right” in a proven franchise can quickly appear to be “scrambling to pick up the pieces” for a new IP. I think that for this game the situation is going from “how good is the game?” to “who cares enough to find out?”. I’ll use myself as the example. When I first heard about Alpha Protocol, I was pumped. I like RPG’s and the idea of a steal-action RPG was fresh and enticing. Now, it’s been close to a year since the game was announced and I have so many other games to play (FFIII, GoW III, and so on) that it’s hard not to just sweep Alpha Protocol under the rug for showing signs of weakness.
Just something I thought of, so I figured I’d point it out in case anybody cares.
I agree with this members battle cry for the most part.
I think the whole thing with Conviction getting delayed again was only because the big wigs (not the devs) want all profits from it to come in their 2010-2011 fiscal year which starts April 1st 2010.
All in all I think in this case the delay is going to hurt sales of the game as I think there is just less interest in it now. So I think really stupid decision if they delayed it only for the reason I believe.
Games in general though I think it is a situational thing. For example take the situation of the Mortal Kombat team from Midway. Except for the last MK game (MK vs DC) just cuz I don’t think it should of even been made, the past couple MK games (MK: Shaolin Monks, Armageddon) were simply rushed out the door. Now in this situation it was Midway pushing these games out, where really they should of been delayed and worked on 6-12 months more. So in this case I believe the MK franchise would be in a lot better shape and better received if they did delay the games and spent more time on them making them just complete. Overall they just didnt feel even 100% finished like they shouldn’t of been ‘Gold’ versions… Midway was in money crisis though and for the most part it was MK keeping it afloat therefor the reason why they were having the MK team push a MK game out yearly for a while.
K a more non-specific example…. Take the situation of whatever game that has already been delayed multiple times…. Pretty much I believe you can delay a game twice without really hurting yourself. But never should there be a third time should you have to announce a delayment. If that ends up being the case for any one then in my opinion it is because they set a release date, or release window when they just shouldnt of. And really I think deadlines are bad for Devs, so I dont know why devs would want to set a public deadline by announce a release date, and then gotta delay it because you just couldnt get it all done in time and now you’re stressed and feel all pressured and even more so cuz now you delayed a product that people are ready and waiting for….
Look…. STOP announcing games years ahead of schedule. Dont even bother till you have SOME THING to show. And when you do announce do say the hopeful release date or even the year unless you know 100% sure it will be done by then unless some weird thing happens that excuses the delay, or you just die, either way….