Massively^™

"Why do game developers hit delays so often..."

I think a lot of it has to do with the complexity of the project, but when given the opportunity...I always blame the marketing department. In my mind a completion date should be given for something this complex unless they are already deep into beta. The developers sure as Hell don't want to give one. Seriously, it's like asking a woodworker what the timeframe is to complete an unbelievably intricate piece of furniture that they've never even tried producing before. When will it be done? Who the Hell knows?

AoC is supposedly still trying to decide on the *fundamentals* of it's PVP system but they are shooting for two months from now. Warhammer looks really good but they are talking as if gigantic chunks of the game are still up in the air.

Uh, okay. The dates given are numbers on a calendar. I am expecting AoC to be 3/4 done with large problems, but I will still buy it simply because I don't care anymore. I want something new and that's that. Warhammer? I'll buy that too and see which one I like more.

The marketing types think they are geniuses for playing with release dates like a RTS game. Gamers don't care. If it sucks when relesed, early or late, we will drop it like a sack of potatoes.

Heh, I was just goofing.

I am an ex-game developer. To be honest, most of the time I think teams fall behind because of a few things:

1. "testing" other people's games. For some silly reason, you can convince your boss that it is a good idea to play another game all day to make sure the one we are making is competitive. I think a couple months in a year is lost this way.

2. Changes in engine! As an artist, man, how many times have I had to go back and change my assets because the engine got modified? TOO MANY

3. "Two weeks". When your programmers say, "Oh, we will have that feature done in about two weeks" it really means, "We have no idea how long this crap is going to take - god help us - why don't you ask again in two weeks when we sort some of this out?" Of course, the production managers base timelines on these two week dates... which is always going to lead to slipping.



And, now, as the team there is working in their 11th hour, they are all pulling super long days, everyone is working their ass off, and so on. Because at the end of a game (or any production for that matter) the team has to pay up for the time lost early on. I don't envy them this year.

The developers usually dont set the dates but rather the publishers etc. And its impossible to accurately estimate when a game is going to be done

@ Brian 2 & 3 are pretty right.... However in regard to them finishing at a set time its really unrealistic especially if they are trying some thing new (EA's Online end of things isnt the most fantastic in the world so its bound to end up with some bumps in regards to that) I for one think no date should be given (im currently in game development) Until they know their production pipeline is working in regards to meet that end.

@Henrik ..... I'm not sure what you mean.... WoW wasnt horribly buggy at launch that i recall but they were not ready at all for the Influx of people that started playing the game and this resulted in a poor experience for alot of people (they actually stopped selling WoW for a short while around here..)

WoW is also a few years old now and back upon its release I think the mindset was more open to problems at launch because most of us people that have actually played something before WoW were there then. I am a big MMORPG player having been around since the Days of the Original Meridian59... (out a bit before Ultima Online) I know games are bound to have problems at launch and i dont really mind them at this point...

However what I'm getting at is that this generation of WoW (as their first game) MMORPG players are a bunch of whiny runts that wont give something a chance if it doesnt meet WoW's current standards right away.... I get sick of going into games and hearing this isnt like WoW at all or this is kinda like WoW. They act like Blizzard was innovative but they werent.

We need to get these people out of the mindset that a game needs to be perfect right off on the PC. This isnt the console market and games quite often have updates there is little reason why they should complain. I wont get WAR for about a month or so after it comes out anyways till their servers can more amply deal with things Unless they are good at launch...

Servers being unstable is a bigger problem to me then the game being buggy... If i can get in world and things are horrid cuz of server lag a few bugs dont look so bad do they?