Eh, I’d be fine with them taking however long they need to release a fully complete and working game, rather than shove out a half-baked one.
See: 2077 at release vs 2077 patch 2.0
Also don’t hype the game with shit that’s not in the final game…2077 missed so many points they advertised.
Yeah, seriously. If they had only shown things that actually existed, I’m pretty sure all the negative press would have been totally avoided since even at release it was a solid enough story-driven RPG.
This is what soured me on it. I ended up not playing it until 1.8 and at that point had ignored the game completely to try and reset my expectations. After I did that, I picked up the game and actually enjoyed it a lot. As you said, solid story and fun gameplay, they just hyped that shit to a level that wasn’t needed and made a lot of us who were excited for the game just rip it a new one because of it.
I mean, a big part of why this is such a problem these days has to come down to them getting pressured to release games, right? Why even announce them so early then? Why are we talking about these when they’re not even in production yet. The studio can just say, “yeah, we’ll be making sequels to the games you love, but they won’t be out for a long time, longer than I can even predict.”
They light their shoes on fire and then run around doing stupid shit, releasing games too early by trying to create hype before they’re remotely ready to deliver on them. It just seems like such a self inflicted wound that does not need to happen. Don’t announce shit until you’re really about to button the game up. What good does years of “it’ll be coming out soon-ish!” do for them? Is it all about preorders to fund the last legs of production? I just don’t get it. It seems like a huge problem that they’re just creating themselves for absolutely no reason. Why go through the months of bad reviews, bad press, angry customers, and getting shit all over for a massive fuck up when they could’ve just released it a few months later? The game will be bought either way. And you skip the whole “everyone is pissed because our otherwise good game just isn’t ready yet” stage. So bizarre.
All of this is investor driven, and a lot of the announcements are ‘Yes, people giving us millions of dollars to do things, we’re going to make a 2nd game in this series’. You need to announce what you’re doing so you can get people to give you the money to fund doing the thing you want to do, since I’m entirely certain CDPR isn’t sitting on funding to go off for 5 years and make a game without telling anyone anything.
The hype train is mostly driven by game journalists that see that a company is going to make a game, and then do the clickbait ‘GameCo announces Game 2! Here’s 10 things that we think will be in it!’ listicles for the next few years, which skews everyone’s expectations and can drown out more tame discussion since who doesn’t like hype?
I mean, that’s how production works. It’s an investment. The company invests in the games, spending their own money, and then sell it to make that money back and profit. That’s how it works in every other industry. And, the most similar thing to compare it to: video production. Movies, tv, etc.
This stupid method is what ends up creating all of the problems with game production, namely that stupid “crunch” shit. They take peoples money, creating impatience in the customer, and then squeeze the programmers in order to deliver when the company creates this sudden ticking clock because they didn’t want to do business like every other company ever. Invest in the product, make it good enough to profit. If you fail, it’s your money lost, just like it is for movie studios.
You’re definitely right the journos are pouring gasoline on this fire, but it’s an entirely self-created problem for the studios.
I know it’s not going to happen, but a Witcher 4 where you’re playing as Letho out in the eastern lands is my absolute dream. He’s a great character with strong main character energy, and he’s also CDPR original content so doing it that way lets them play looser with story and characters without having to trample over the lore.
