A new European Union proposal could very well determine the future of videogame development, claims a new report from the BBC. The EU is demanding that games be made to march in step with other products and offer a two-year guarantee, with refunds expected for any videogame that is found to be too glitchy to get through. To put this in perspective, the chaps who made Two Worlds would be bankrupt under this new law.
Dr. Richard Wilson, head of European games representative TIGA, disagrees with the proposal: "They have to be careful not to stifle new ideas. Consumers need good quality products -- that is only reasonable -- but if the legislation is too heavy-handed it could make publishers and developers very cautious."
With all due respect, I don't think publishers can balk at the concept of new game ideas anymore than they already do. Besides which, since when has "new" and "buggy" been in the same league? BioShock was new, but I don't remember it being glitchy at all. Meanwhile, Bethesda takes the Fallout license, merges it with established Elder Scrolls-style gameplay, and presents to us a glitchtastic tale of buggy delights.
I do see what Wilson is saying, that developers would rely on established engines and be afraid to make new strides in the industry, but at the same time, there's no excuse for a broken game. "We're trying something new," doesn't quite cut it when you've demanded fifty quid for what you're now claiming is an experiment.
Personally, I feel the threat of a refund might force developers and publishers to seriously think about finishing their games before release, rather than just rely on patches after rushing something out of the door.
Contest:
10:40 AM on 05.15.2009
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It's the same shit with DLC, you have to pay extra 50 bucks to finish a game that you already bought(Looking at you Fo3)
I don't see this working at all, "glitchy" would be too open to interpretation. It would get abused to hell.
Stupid Two Worlds!
I remember the discussion about only letting 'Triple A' titles to be released. We wouldn't have a lot of games to play with if that was in force. Likewise, I don't think this will work well at all.
Whilst in the short term it would curb creativity, in the long run it would eventually be made part of the design process, and project management. But then most electrical goods don't have the benefit of being fixed over the internet.
Rather than enforcing it, perhaps it should be done on a fine or penalty bases. Much like how you'd complain about an offensive advert, you could complain the game is faulty (Far Cry 2 only recently fixed its save corruption bug, for example). If no fix is supplied in good time, the company should be fined.
Sounds harsh, but we pay them for the game. They should at least ensure we can make it to the end!
But I think this is a great idea.
i totally see the sense in this proposal, but i fear the industry would lose more than it would gain, and as a gamer that's unacceptable to me.
I'm all in favour of this as a consumer right, I just don't think it's even close to practical.
I'm all for holding companies responsible for releasing a shoddy product, but I can totally see developers getting scared and the consumer waiting twice as long to get their hands on a game if something along these lines went into effect.
Most games I've played recently wern't broken or glitchy enough to warrant them unplayable. The last big one I remember was GTA4 for PS3 and the game freezing/crashing because of some online ranking system used in the background while you were playing the game causing the game to freeze. Maybe to the point where you had to start all over because it corrupted your save file. It was fixed fast, but if they couldn't patch it the game might have been rendered useless if you were online while you were playing it.
Since developers have consoles with internet connection on all units of a it to develop games.The games have become increasingly buggy.
During the PS1 era it was a big deal when "Gran Turismo 2" players couldn't get 100% on the game.Now is not, big deal. Even Epic is immune to this: that created the engine they improved it they made games with it and still launched a game with broken multiplayer... or so I'm told.
Which means more things are going to get cut.
And especially if this doesn't apply to Download Content, MANY MORE things will be shipped after the fact to safeguard against this.
Hyperbole on Berserk overhere, I'll admit. But I believe that there's some validity to the idea that this can lead to less risk taking in design and release content.
As Jim pointed out this would bankrupt the company, and force the entire industry to focus more so on the standard cookie cutter experience that so many other games have become.
Not to mention EU citizens complain enough about not getting games or seeing a huge time difference between when the US or Japan get a title. This would only increase that difference in time or completely stop a title from being released into the market in the first place.
Yet again, the EU is making another horrible move.
Bethesda make some of the best wRPGs ever, should they be punished for not having the ability to playtest every possible game? No, I've played about 400 hours total on Oblivion, and never done most of the guilds, or gotten further than kvatch in the main quest. The games are buggy, Bethesda should not be charged for this. Let people trade the games in, y'know, like they have been since the game came out.
I mean, yes, Fallout 3 was glitchy (particularly the DLC, but I'm not lumping that in with this point), but considering the scope and magnitude of the game, I think it would be damn near impossible for ANY company to tes something this huge for all possible bugs.
Even if they had a thousand play testers it would be a monumental feat for the game to be glitch free at launch.
I think that so long as the companies in question are concerned about their product enough to support it with timely and audience-guided patches then I don't really see anything beyond a mild annoyance here.
Oh, and I haven't played it, but apparently Two Worlds is actually a decent game now that it's fixed and cheap. You just have to trudge through the first few hours of the game before it really gets kickass.
Besides, why specifically video games? What about other computer software?
Furthermore, 2 years is way too long. How do you prevent people from abusing the system? How easy would it be to play through the whole game, then wipe your save file and say you couldn't get through it, give me my money back? How many people would take advantage of that?
so people should have to waste their money because someone like bethesda didn't do their job properly ? thats just f*cked up. while I dont really agree with this I do think there needs to be some regulation as to how glitched your game is allowed to be. patches should exist for making improvements, not fixing stuff that should have worked in the first place.
I don't care whether one, ten or a thousand people a game and whether it has one or one thousand hours of gameplay. If you charge money for something it should work properly and consumers should have every right to return faulty goods. None of you people excusing this stuff would put up with the same treatement from any other industry.
Game development is incredibly expensive and difficult to do right, especially for PC games. There are way too many hardware configurations to be able to test their games on ALL of them. And if they were going to do it, their QA budget would skyrocket. It's not right that game developers would be threatened with refunds because their budget can't compensate for extra QA.
And even then QA can only go so far, especially for multiplayer. If you want better stability, you're gonna have to do field tests or public betas in order gather enough data to fix any additional bugs and exploits. And that requires a massive budget, a budget most developers/publishers either (A) do not have or (B) are not willing to invest in.
World of Warcraft and Left 4 Dead weren't perfect from day 1. And said field tests helped stabilize them a bit.
And last. Most bugs are exaggerated from the internet. Fallout 3 worked perfectly fine on my PC.
uninstall.. uninstall.. uninstall.. machine shuts down. Reboot.. No OS Found.