#except the one person who made a shitty remark and taunted me... then gaslit me publicly

[ooc-miqojak]

The State of AAA Games in the Modern Era

"Before the internet became a core facet of gaming, if a studio dropped an unfinished game, that game stayed unfinished." "If a game launched in a poor state, that became the game's legacy."

And a quote from the video linked in #2 in my sources below: "This corporate mindset has encouraged studios to ship now, fix later, and exploit the wallets of players for years down the road. And oftentimes we do see some of the lead developers from these studios even brag about how to pull off this scheme at GDC conferences: [Quote from developer] 'Overdelivery is actually dangerous. With every release that you put out there, you're setting a pattern for your community and for your players. Because it's hard to tell a team, a team that has extra cycles and they have energy and they wanna do something amazing and know how to do it and it totally would be amazing and awesome for the game! Sometimes we have to tell them, like, we shouldn't ship this because it's an overdelivery. Beware of overdelivery, overdelivery is actually dangerous.' "

These are objective facts that people were ready to tear my throat out about during what I thought was a fact-based, adult debate earlier today. Instead, I just had people repeatedly say the same thing to me over and over: "But games still had bugs on console!" Which was something I never countered. I even agreed! My point, however, was that bugs in games were much rarer, and far less impactful to the overall experience of the game - and modern games are often released in a half-finished state, with bugs that massively impact gameplay - just look at Cyberpunk 2077. It's notorious for that very thing! And yet, more than one person was willing to twist my words, and take things out of context (repeatedly trying to nitpick things like Pokemon Gen 1 bugs - things that were not relevant to the discussion, as they were not bugs even remotely comparable to those in modern AAA games upon release) to desperately cling to some idea that console games were released in as bad of a state as modern games are? I don't know why, when console games would have literally killed consoles and gaming as a hobby, if they had been regularly released in as bad of a state as current digital/online only games currently are. It's a fact, and not an opinion that more games in the modern era release in a half-finished, buggy state that makes games unplayable upon release. That is not an opinion. Here's another article about it! (There's lots of videos/articles about this very thing, with just a cursory Google search.)

Yes, console games had bugs - and the ones notorious for those bugs that made story or gameplay basically impossible... bombed! A modern game, like Cyberpunk, that releases with massive bugs? Simply promises to keep patching the unfinished product, which you could not do on a physical product. This is a fact, and not an opinion. Someone claimed that console games would just make a better version, and re-release the game... which doesn't amount to much, because the game already has a bad rep, and no one will pay twice for the same thing (were your parents going to buy you the same $40-60 game a second time back then? Doubtful. No one in their right mind would.), nor would you trust that publisher a second time. That's not the same thing as releasing Cyberpunk in a half-made state, unplayable and bug-ridden and missing core/promised features, and just... finishing it over the next couple years after taking people's money for the half-baked product that wasn't what you promised. They're not asking you to pay for the game twice, they're just making you buy an unfinished product that won't be complete for another year or so (if it ever is). As the video states, there were two years of class action lawsuits - which I don't recall hearing about with console games, because you simply couldn't release only a partial part of a game you claimed was complete, and hope people stuck around for patches, because you couldn't just try and clean up your mess once a disc or cartridge was purchased. If there were incomplete textures, and you couldn't progress the story/engage in gameplay due to game-breaking bugs, that was it. You were screwed.

The modern era and advent of online-only products has led to AAA publishers releasing more and more unfinished products with game-breaking bugs because "we can fix it later"/it's cheaper to fix after launch/because executives simply don't care how it impacts the players, because they have pre-order money in their pockets already/they continue to mistreat the devs of the games, and force them to release unfinished products, and move on to the next cash-grab. These are facts. Not opinions.

Anyways, here's more fact-based sources. One

Two

Three...this video is even from five years ago! (And quotes someone from 8 years prior to that stating that: "The answer for us as publishers is to actually sell unfinished games..."

Four

Five

Next time you find yourself heated by facts that aren't opinions, don't attack the person dealing out the facts, and claim they said something they didn't say - especially if it's the exact opposite of something they said multiple times. Once you start taunting and being childish in a debate, it becomes clear you're not an adult, and shouldn't be partaking in serious, adult conversations - no matter the topic. Objective facts may make you mad, but hey - I'm mad that modern games release in a shitty state thanks to being fully online these days, and not releasing in a physical state that encourages Publishers to release a full, and mostly bug-free game (free of bugs that impact gameplay or story in a serious way, at least. The occasional NPC glitched into a wall or the sky isn't a huge deal, and a wacky texture here and there is mostly hilarious.) Anyways, Donald Trump simply attacks people who use facts in a debate! Don't be like Donald Trump. Don't choose to attack the other person, instead of using objective-based-facts to debate/discuss things. Debates shouldn't make you mad - they should be interesting, and enlightening, and you (or the other person, or all parties) should learn from them. And inevitably, in fact based discussions...someone is wrong! I'm often wrong. I like learning new things. But letting your emotions guide you in a fact based discussion that is very literal and not rooted in emotional appeals... just makes a mess.