Fair point, even with upgrades a la Cyberpunk 2077, the lost sales out of the gate are unlikely to be made up a year and a half later when they release the game they should have released in the first place
Game developers seem to be very afraid to change core features or the story of the game in a major way (even if the actual work would not be too extensive) after release. But there are enough examples where games improved a lot after release.
Sure, the initial impression of the game might be ruined, but that is more a consequence for the producers that most often where responsible for the rushed release, than for the gamers or developers, of the game is fixed afterwards.
Counterpoint: Star Citizen.
I’m not being snarky there. If there are no deadlines and unlimited feature creep, you get Star Citizen. Or rather, you never get Star Citizen except as a janky hyper-monetized pre-alpha.
Nah star citizen was a scam first, game second. If it ever produces a game it will have been purely incidental to continuing to run the scam and milk those whales
Yes, landing is difficult.
There is delaying to release a higher quality product and delaying while having features creep… Not the same thing.
I kind of believe Chris Roberts himself is just an overambitious perfectionist. He pulled the same kind of bullshit with Freelancer, which only released because Microsoft put its foot down.
I can also believe that a lot of the top people around him are grifters feeding his ambition and perfectionism to keep the gravy train running.
Either way, they got my Kickstarter money so the only entertainment I’ll ever get from that game is opining about it like I know anything.
That’s my take too, though “overambitious perfectionist” still sounds too flattering for what a bumbling narcissist he is.
He even put himself directly into the fiction’s lore as
but bigger.
Game delays are okay, but let’s maybe have a conversation about why valve is incapable of producing the kind of content it used to. Half-life 3 isn’t “delayed”, it’s not happening because of internal reasons.
Half life 3 had never been announced to be in development. It’s not delayed, late, on-time, or anything else for us except a hope it might eventually come out.
Half-life alyx was as good as any other half life content they’ve produced
The real question is… Can indie games publishers afford the delay of a game?
Implying they’re not passing on whatever that “costs” them to the studio…
Usually publishers have multiple products in development simultaneously with varying degrees of investment, the more money invested into a studio to develop a game the more urgent they want it finished.
Yes. If I can wait for the Dune movie in February, video game nerds can also wait.
It’s up to the companies to coast and ration their resources accordingly.
Generally they would fare better than AAA studios who are beholden to their publisher to release no matter what.
Depends on the circumstances. Small self funded team, part time? Can probably delay indefinitely.
Valve was a completely new company then. They weren’t going indie, but Sierra didn’t pay them for the remake of Half-Life. In the documentary they talk about financing it by creating Half-Life: Day One.
Chet Falizek, a dev who led L4D and a couple other games at valve talks about this a lot on TikTok, now that he’s running an indie studio. He’s a cool guy, would fit in on .ml or something for sure.
Joke on him, often game gets delayed under this exact pretext and it suck anyway.
I think it becomes a mixture of too early and delaying.
Some games clearly need another year to finish but they delay it for half a year and wont allow more for themselves
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I’m looking forward to the ward between factions posting the two quotes in comments sections every time a game gets delayed for the next several decades
Eh, gaming journalism just wants clicks to get ad-revenue. They would write an article about anything. Gabe waking up in the morning is news worthy to them.
Eh,
gamingjournalism just wants clicks to get ad-revenue.
Some basic things to note, that may or may not be obvious.
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Producers and shareholders are the ones still thinking gaming audience can be milked at the same rate as the past few decades.
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The alternative to current model of game launch + DLCs/features added over the year is that the game is not launched at all until ready and full featured.
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Gamer audience is privileged, consumerist and impatient. And most of the audience is either autistic or neurodivergent with impulsive and/or compulsive disorders, and have unstable hyperfocus and obsession issues.
Edit: “most” people are not but a significant number of people are. That was overestimated. Our generation’s psychological patterns differ from the ones before that did not play these modern and/or 3D games.
And most of the audience is either autistic or neurodivergent with impulsive and/or compulsive disorders, and have unstable hyperfocus and obsession issues.
Really? Most of the audience?
A significant amount of the audience is. “Most” probably is an overestimation and a bit sensational. I am neurodivergent, am ex-pro gamer and I have spent enough time gaming as a teen to know the thought processes gamers go through. Remember, we are the first generation to have played these modern games that were not just 8-bit.
Seriously this take is fucked up. Let’s put gamers in a bucket of mental cases because they like to play Tetris lol
muh tetris = mental cases reductionism lets laff
You have no clue how ADHD or other neurological disorders get accelerated due to video games of various kinds. Many other conditions like epilepsy, vertigo also get accelerated or triggered.
Let’s dig that hole deeper my dude!
- The alternative to current model of game launch + DLCs/features added over the year is that the game is not launched at all until ready and full featured.
I haven’t seen significant numbers of people complaining that their drip feed of content isn’t coming fast enough. I’ve seen people complaining about spending a non-trivial amount of money on a visibly broken game that clearly had plenty of developer resources for microtransactions and loot boxes.
Gamer audience is privileged, consumerist and impatient. And most of the audience is either autistic or neurodivergent with impulsive and/or compulsive disorders, and have unstable hyperfocus and obsession issues.
Being a game developer had its moments but was still easily the worst job I’ve ever had, predominantly due to the community.
That said, I still wouldn’t go diagnosing millions of people with some bullshit I just made up.
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Sick of hearing about this this loser, go away already
How did Gabe Newell offend you?
The dude has been a bastion of how to run a company that delights its end-users and doing their best to run a company ethically. A staunch group of people that believe in right-to-repair as well as believing in modding and community growth of games.
Yes there’s issues on the publisher/developmer side of things, however Valve constantly works with studios to help mitigate these pain points and on-board to their platform.
Such a great quote.
“Suck is forever”
-GabeN
However, delay also doesn’t mean a better product. It’s possible for a game to be delayed a ton, and then still really suck.
Delay doesn’t equal good. DN: Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines made that clear.
Didn’t colonial marine turn out to actually have really good AI that totally changed the game feel that had been broken by a single misplaced semi-colon or something?
Well the AI went from “literally dogshit, you can run past them without a second thought” to “oh you have to fight them now.”
Not sure how good it is in the grand scheme, but at least the update fixed their brokenness and made the game playable.
https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/15/17574248/aliens-colonial-marines-fixing-code-typo-ai-xenomorphs yep, a code typo broke the alien AI. Unfortunately for that game though no amount of delays could’ve helped it, there were many more problems besides the AI. The AI was just the biggest problem.
Still better than if they released the same game earlier. Unless of course they kept adding features or content.
Half Life 3 is super late
You’ve just added another month to the release date.
Made the release date ONE MONTH BETTER.
The release date can be calculated as:
x = gabe(n)Where the function gabe multiplies the number of mentions of the game (signified by n) by months since it’s last mention
We’re fucked then
Half Life Alyx was sick and demonstrated everything VR could be. I will standby that statement and tolerate the flamers.
I actually have that in my library because I bought the Index but haven’t played it yet because I wanted to play the first 2 games first. I didn’t play the first game for very long tho because I got stuck at some point early into the game and haven’t felt like continuing yet. You can also really feel the age of that game, controls and that kinda stuff. Not sure if I should just punch through that game or just say fuck it and play Alyx.
If by “first game” you mean HL1, you could try playing “Black Mesa” which is a fan remake of the game, in the same engine that powers HL2. It’s not a 1:1 recreation, but it’s close enough (and I feel it improves on some things).
HL2 is also 3 seperate games (HL2, HL2 Episode 1, HL2 Episode 2), so make sure you have all of those in your library.
At the very least, I’d suggest playing HL2/EP1/EP2 before Alyx, since those would provide the expected background for Alyx, despite it technically being a prequel-ish thing.
Well you’re in luck because there are VR mods available free for the older Half Life games. Just get the Orange Box or something with all the half life backlog and VR mod them for free.
Half life 1 just got a new big update that makes it much better to play this day and age and fixed a bunch of bugs. Either way you could skip 1. As a kid I never played 1 and went straight into 2, then 2 episodes 1 and 2 with the orange box. I still haven’t finished 1 but with this new update I think I’ll go back to it some point soon now.
Hard agree. That game is what I hope the future of games is like. Meeting Jeff is one of my favorite moments in gaming.
I started my second playthrough before even completing my first (due to PC upgrades) and I’m still having a great time.
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Am not sure there’s a way for them to release HL3 and don’t disappoint huge number of people. Not because they suck at making games but because expectations have grown so so so much they are downright unachievable now.
The logical end point of that argument is not everyone is going to be happy with everything so why release anything.
At some point the Late vs Suck balance will tip the scales of So Late That the Customers Lost Interest or Died
I played hl2 as a teen.
One of my kids just finished episode 2 and asked me when the next one was coming out. I was like “oh bud I got some bad news for ya”.
It’s generational disappointment at this point.
Is it?
Is Gabe slowly turning into a wizard
Gabe has remained a wizard through all of time
I’m pretty sure he is Santa
If he is then I guess nobody ever put Half Life 3 on their Christmas list
wizards are turning into Gaben as he echoes across eternity. It seems like he’s turning into a wizard, but that’s because we can only see behind us in time.
I hope so.
“Suck is forever”
That’s some Gen X Yoda shit.
Makes me think of old school Blizzard. Rest in peace.
I always thought that Miyamoto quote was real too!
