• Gork@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      90
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      Valve can’t count to 3 though.

      Expect after the Steam Deck 2 for its successors to be Steam Deck 2: Episode 1 and Steam Deck 2: Episode 2.

            • Grass@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              2 years ago

              My Deck64 was turned into a 1tb before you could even buy them like that though. For anyone who had extra 2230s lying around and was going to use a screen protector anyways it was a no brainer.

              • GreenMario@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                2 years ago

                I modified mine too but I tried to go the 512GB SD card route first and just install everything on that. Yeah still filled the internal storage. 1TB SSD is worth it. Now i just use the SD card for emudeck+roms.

      • ChapulinColorado@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        It would be free marketing if they went with that approach. I can already see the headlines: “Why the ‘Steam Deck 3’ is called the ‘Steam Deck: Episode 1’ and other 5 things with origins on the memeverse”

      • xantoxis@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        2 years ago

        Their problem is they already made a perfect game. Now they have to do it again. Doing something perfectly once can be chance, doing it twice is massively more difficult.

  • Hubi@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    141
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    2 years ago

    Interesting spin on the “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad”-quote.

    • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      82
      arrow-down
      18
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      These quotes are from a time when games were stamped into hard plastic and circuitry. No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk are two examples of games with rocky launches that are both amazing now. Saying a game is forever bad simply isn’t true anymore provided the makers stand behind the product.

      • Pleb@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        74
        ·
        2 years ago

        But they don’t most of the time. If you aren’t very lucky like with No Man’s Syk or Cyberpunk, you are stuck with an abandonend pile of garbage. And even with those games, it would have been better for everyone involved if they were what they are now from the start.

            • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              ·
              2 years ago

              While we’re at it, mad props to facepunch. Rust was always a great game. Even through the weird bits with xp and blueprint scraps and aimcone, it always felt like a complete game.

              Granted, I’m not touching it again unless a new plague shuts everything down for a month or I quit my job, but if you have 18 hours to waste every day it’s the best game ever.

          • Pleb@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            2 years ago

            Sad as that sounds, I’m sure there are some poor souls who are up for it.

            • Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              2 years ago

              From everything I’ve heard, 76 is a lot better now, I am planning on playing it with a friend… Sometime… Ha

              • Pleb@feddit.de
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                arrow-down
                1
                ·
                2 years ago

                Supposedly. But I was never a fan of the Bethesda Fall Outs, so I’d just never play FO76 in the first place.

      • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        42
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        2 years ago

        But the damage is lasting. NMS will always be known for the absolute shitshow it was on launch. Props to them for eventually delivering, but the game will never be as iconic as it could have been. Like compare bg3’s reception of “holy shit it’s so good” vs NMS’s “oh it’s finally good now.”

        • Mereo@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          2 years ago

          Indeed. I always read in forums people asking if NMS is worth playing now. Imagine if it had a great launch from the beginning. It would’ve been much more successful and wouldn’t have a bad reputation like it does know.

      • e-ratic@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        35
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        NMS is better since release but saying it’s amazing now is a bit of an embellishment. At its core it’s the same game with all the fundamental issues it always had, there’s just more fluff added on.

        • jaspersgroove@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          I mean, IMO it’s good enough to get your moneys worth out of it, its a hell of a lot of fun actually. It’s just that the main storyline is relatively short and the gameplay loop after completing the main story is not engaging enough to make it one of those games that you end up sinking 500+ hours into. To me that puts it in the same tier as Subnautica.

        • Morgoon@startrek.website
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 years ago

          Out of all my VR games almost none make it into double digits playtime (notable exceptions, Beat Saber and Boneworks) but I have logged hundreds of hours in NMS VR. No other VR experience comes close in terms of content.

      • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        19
        ·
        2 years ago

        On the other hand, making me a beta tester for games I paid AAA prices for leaves me with a very negative feeling. You only get one chance to make a good first impression.

      • darthelmet@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 years ago

        I think it depends on if the bad game has enough public attention that it can get a second chance after launch. When No Man’s Sky and Cyberpunk got updated, the story was plastered all over the game news channels/sites.

        Most games if they get off to a bad start, nobody gives them a second thought. How would you even know if it got better? If nobody is newly buying and reviewing it, the steam reviews won’t reflect the change in quality.

        There’s something to be said for the unfairness of which of these games that botch their launch get that second chance, but it kinda is what it is. People can’t pay attention to everything.

      • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 years ago

        The question bring why you’d keep working on something you got money for. Especially when you’ve been shown time and time again that people keep buying your games anyway. Seems more cost effective to pay those marketing people than your code monkeys…

  • seiryth@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    91
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 years ago

    Not sure why we’re arguing this quote with the same two games over and over. Nms and cyberpunk are great games, but they’re a rarity.

    Game Dev crunch is a plague in th industry, we suffer as consumers who cop bad releases on release. The whole industry could learn from its roots and delay things for a better initial product.

    Defending the current practice of redevelopment in post is almost consumer gaslighting.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      Plus, the base game itself should be good. It shouldn’t need updates. Post-game launch updates should be enhancements, not fixes.

      • Pogbom@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        23
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        Seriously, we need to return to pre-internet console mentality. You put out an N64 game, it better be goddamn finished. Companies rely way too much on “ehh can just patch it”.

        • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          2 years ago

          I mean, modern games are many times more complex so the idea of putting out a “finished” game these days is more like “this is an acceptable level of bugs/most players won’t hit this.” The problem is that the acceptable level has shifted way too fucking far in the wrong direction to the point where in some cases we’re barely getting an alpha, much less a beta. In general, I have no problem with companies putting out good games that get better, like tuning for performance so you get better FPS, it’s player on lower spec machines, etc. I don’t like the idea of paying to be a beta tester for two years, and not getting the good game until way later.

        • SSTF@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 years ago

          I’m not arguing in favor of companies putting out shoddy gamesor the practice of games needing patches to fix glaring issues, but suggesting that the 90s and early 2000s were the days of totally flawless games seems like a result of survivorship bias.

          We remember the great games from those days, but there were mountains of shovelware games releasing with all the problems we see today.

          Even many good or great games from those days have problems that either remain unfixed, or have only been fixed years later by fans.

    • Dojan@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 years ago

      The fact that it’s only the same two games is more of an argument against than for, honestly. With all of the awful launches people can think of two games that were redeemed.

      That’s bad.

    • Wumbologist@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 years ago

      I would even say NMS is a good example of this sentiment. The game has been good for years now and has had tons of free updates. There’s a lot of people out there who just don’t care and you can see this in forums whenever the game makes news. People still show up to decry the game for how terrible the release was.

      Public sentiment on the game and the studio is still pretty mixed

    • IndefiniteBen@leminal.space
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think a big difference with both is that they’re not big multiplayer titles that are looking to make money with cosmetics.

      If a multiplayer focused game is shit at launch, it won’t get a good user base and then it’s as good as dead.

      • FunctionFn@feddit.nl
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 years ago

        Both Destiny and Destiny 2 had really poor launches. Then they cleaned up their act and we’re very successful and had thriving playerbases. Light fall and this past year notwithstanding…

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I’m not defending the need for post-launch patches to fix glaring issues and I’m not defending crunch, but suggesting that buggy releases and crunch haven’t been with gaming since the earliest days of the industry seems like putting on rose colored glasses. There is a lot to damn about the current industry, but painting the root days of the industry as free of those same issues just to make the comparison seems unrealistic.

  • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    2 years ago

    This is true, but gamers are so impatient. I am in early access with my Virtual Reality Theme Park and have been busting it for 3 years as a solo dev, and of course it is not a full Theme Park yet. What does exist has put me into the top 10 on the Meta Quest App Lab store, but I get bounced out of the top 10 now and then as I will get 3* saying new rides are not coming fast enough. People are so impatient just like shareholders.

    • madcaesar@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      Make sure you put in the description you are a small one dev team. Most people are reasonable and understand you can only do so much.

      People are way less patient with asshole AAA studios that crank out garbage because they waste time implementing micro transactions or bullshit DLCd

    • Litany@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      Time was not the issue with HBO Got. The show runners ran out into the ground so they could move on and be done with it.

      • ASeriesOfPoorChoices@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        Time was the issue. They ran out of time waiting for GRM, so they went their own way. If they had waited… We’d still be waiting, but wouldn’t have gotten the suck.

        • Zron@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 years ago

          You mean if they’d been competent show runners in the first place.

          The show was great when it was based off of good writing.

          Then it got sketchy as they had to rely on GRRM’s notes.

          Then the notes got more vague, and season 7 and 8 turned into garbage.

          Conclusion: D&D were mediocre show runners who couldn’t hire competent writers, and thought game of thrones was about subverting expectations instead of strong character arcs.

          Justifiably, it lost them their next gig.

          HBO was willing to wait for good seasons. But D&D wanted to get into a Star Wars contract with Disney. They rushed season 8 out the door with lazy writing to get that Star Wars deal.

          After season 8 traumatized GOT fans and bombed in reviews, Disney backed out of the deal, and D&D have fallen into obscurity.

      • SSTF@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 years ago

        Apparently it managed to get worse. The leak of the 2001 build that people are patching up actually looks really cool.

        • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 years ago

          My understanding is that the released game was not a “descendant” of that 2001 preview. The game was totally scrapped and then a new iteration was started years later which is what eventually was released. So it’s not like the game was actually being worked on for a decade. More like the released game (which was only built over a couple of years) had the same name as a scrapped game from a decade prior.

          • SSTF@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            That is precisely what happened.

            I was merely framing it that the 2001 build was seemingly on the road to being a good, or at least faithful Duke Nukem game but management kept dictating changes to it to keep up with gaming fads. Eventually Gearbox just shoved an entirely different build out the door.

            The 2001 build was victim to a lot of start-stop-start-stop development.

  • misophist@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 years ago

    Suck is forever

    “Hard disagree.” – person who played FFXIV before the realm got reborn

  • Destide@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 years ago

    I dont think any creative would disagree shareholders and useless management however

      • SSTF@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 years ago

        Perhaps. I suppose saying: “Delaying a game which is making coherent progress is better than forcing devs to cut their work short.” is a much less catchy quote.

        Duke Nukem Forever suffered both from not giving the appropriate development time to a single workflow, and from the related problem of upper manglement constantly demanding changing the game so much it was like starting over again and again.

        The leaked 2001 Duke Nukem build is promising. If the devs had been supported in focusing on that rather than constantly retooling the game to chase trends, it may have at least been decent.

        • SSTF@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 years ago

          If only there had been a 20% higher cocaine budget for John Romero.

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      It can also be difficult to determine when a game has had enough development time. Pretty much every game considered good or great has had some content cut for development time reasons. At the end of the day, somebody does have to be the person who reigns in the excess.

      Sometimes cut content would have been better if left in, sometimes cutting it was clearly a good choice.

      And then there’s the simple reality that a studio that delays too much risks going under, which kills that game and all future games by them, so when is good enough good enough to ship a game?

  • AMillionNames@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    2 years ago

    There’s only so much delaying can help a badly designed game, delaying only really helps those games that need that extra polish and likely won’t be receiving it afterwards.

  • SSTF@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 years ago

    Fantastic advice, as a guideline in a vacuum.

    No game should be shipped broken, but sometimes concessions are a reality.

    Even Half-Life had to make concessions. Xen is infamously less polished and fine tuned than the rest of the game. Valve didn’t have infinite resources and time to keep tinkering. Would the game have been better? Maybe. But time is money, and Half-Life already ended up selling huge. Would taking time to fine tune Xen have boosted sales? Were people in the 90s avoiding the game because of Xen? I don’t think so.

    The profits from Half Life allowed Valve to make more games and be successful. Is it worth trading off a more fine tuned Xen in order to have Valve exist as we know it today?

    • delitomatoes@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      In the documentary, they actually expand on that, they delayed the core game until the story and levels worked out and specially left Xen to the last as if they were not having fun before, they would have given up

      • SSTF@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 years ago

        I know. Perhaps I was not being clear in my point.

        Xen was made last, and Valve never could quite get it to the same quality as the rest of the game.

        If we follow the logic, which many commenters have, that “games should only be released 100% finished” then Half-Life should have been delayed indefinitely until Xen was as polished as the rest of the game.

        I was making the point that Xen is an example of Valve deciding part of their game is “good enough” and shipping it, rather than continually extending development.

        There are realities of game development that even Valve isn’t immune to.

    • SSTF@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      A lot of the time in the industry, developers are using money loaned by publishers. Things like getting more development time, which means asking for more money is a negotiation that the devs aren’t guaranteed to win.

      Valve is one of the successful developer & publisher companies that managed to survive. The 90s were a much smaller time for video games, and a small startup like Valve could compete with the big names out there. They had more freedom in a sense, but they also were taking quite a gamble. Other companies tried the same and didn’t survive.

      It’s easy to simply say “only release a game when it’s 100% done” but it’s a lot harder when you’re watching money that keeps your company afloat dwindle with each delay. Also, “100% done” is a very flexible concept. Games almost always have to cut content or make concessions in some way, so figuring out what a done version looks like while working on it can be difficult.

      The modern version of a small Valve style startup would be something like a Kickstarter funded development. Again, unless you are (for some reason) a Star Citizen dev, people are going to stop giving you money and you have limited funds and thus limited development time.

      And just because you delay to try and release a superior game doesn’t mean it will be a smash hit.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      Art is never finished, only abandoned.

      Also it’s fucking expensive to market things so people are aware you just released it. Or at least it used to be, before wish lists, early access, and so on.