this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2024
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IDK, Nintendo essentially does that. They build a game, properly test it, and then ship it. There's very few fixes post release because the game was solid at launch.
This constant stream of updates post release isn't something to be praised, most games should ship in a good state and the devs should start work on the next one.
Yup. Seems much more common in indie games and way less common in AAA games. So I mostly buy indies and don't buy AAAs anywhere near launch.
As a kid, I had no such issues. Games couldn't be updated post launch, so they had to be good or they'd fail. I miss those launches...
Idk... As a gaming kid in the 90s, I always wished companies could fix the bugs in their games or rebalance stuff. I was so happy when computer gaming started having patches available.
To an extent, sure, but that was when the bugs were small because they were operating on the assumption that games wouldn't be patched (e.g. for consoles, many people didn't have reliable Internet, etc).
Now that updating post launch is a thing, they don't bother with as much pre-launch testing, so you only get to the quality we should've had after 6 months or so of patches. I'd much rather they delay games by 3-6 months and have a solid launch instead of releasing crap and patching their way to success.
I'm not against post-launch patches, I just think they should be much smaller and way more rare than they are. The launch version should look substantially similar to the patched version some 6 months later.
Case in point, I just bought Cities: Skylines 2 after 6-ish months post launch, because it's finally at the point where I feel like it should've been at launch. Performance seems okay, features work mostly as advertised, etc. I'd still like some performance tuning, but reviewers gave the recent patches a thumbs up, so I'm finally getting into it. That's a bit of an extreme example, but it's indicative of the state of gaming these days.
Whereas for Nintendo, I have no qualms about buying a game at launch. I know it'll be a solid experience, and by the time I notice bugs, there will probably already have been patches. I wish more devs were like Nintendo...
Two of the most popular indie games, Stardew Valley, and Terraria have had free updates for years. Minecraft too even before it was sold to a MAGMA companie.
Yes, and there will certainly always be outliers.
But that's not at all what I'm talking about, I'm talking about games where, to feel worth the money, need patches post launch. Games where players can point to specific features that are incomplete or way too buggy to consider "done" based on how the game was advertised. So games like Cyberpunk 2077, Ark: Survival Evolved (console), and No Man's Sky never should have shipped in the state they did. There are plenty more that really heavily on day 1 patches, and yet still fail to meet the developers' own expectations.
I didn't play Stardew Valley or Terraria at launch, but I bought Minecraft and Factorio at launch and was more than happy with what I received as both completely met my expectations. Adding content to increase appeal is different from adding content that was advertised during the development phase.
The original argument was that most good developers tend to support their games post launch. My point is that post launch support should rarely be necessary for good developers, with Nintendo and many indie and AA devs as examples of that.
Post launch support is a crutch that far too many devs rely on to ship games before they're actually finished. If you have a list of bugs and features that need to be completed before the game is "done," you're not ready for launch. If you have a list of features that you'd like to add to increase appeal of the same, that's a different story entirely.
Most official AAA launches should be considered "early access," and most "early access" launches shouldn't be released yet. Change my mind.