Every time I think of Knights of the Old Republic 2 I cringe at the idea of what could have been. The folks over at Obsidian pretty much admitted that they had a ton of extra content and story elements that got sidelined because Lucas Arts wanted to make a particular launch date. Today’s wish list isn’t about making a new game, instead it’s about the idiotic scheduling of games that makes no sense. What we’re about to tell you, oh video games company(s) is that new games are unique to other forms of entertainment, and therefore the rules should be different.
From an outsiders perspective it seems to me that money often dictates when a game comes out. As a gamer on a budget this is a ludicrous idea. The fact is I often can’t afford a game when it first hits shelves so I have to wait sometimes months to get the game I want. When I buy a game, no matter how ‘old’ it is by industry standards, it’s a new experience for me. How is my experience devalued by the idea that the game is somehow old? In other words, how can so much hoopla be placed on when a game comes out when the timing of the games release has no real meaning?
Even sports games don’t really need to come out at a certain time, I find it hard to imagine a sports fan griping because Madden didn’t come out on the first day of the football season, especially when the extra time spent working on the game would produce a better game. If they would have spent more time working on NBA 2K10 then we wouldn’t be forced to play such a broken piece of garbage. No, deadlines are most certainly the problem. And don’t get me started about ‘Black Friday’.
How many times have you heard about a game being rushed to hit shelves by Christmas time? This is the single most travesty in all of gaming because it drives down the quality of games for no good reason.
The videogame companies should be smarter than that. They should realize that they will make money whenever the game comes out, no matter the month. After all, new games come out every month so what’s this fascination with the holidays? Videogame makers could easily make any month just like Christmas with the marketing machine they have in their arsenal, it’s time for them to change the way the game is played.
What the VG companies need to be wary off is an increasingly fickle gaming audience that is getting older. Sure there’s a gamer born every minute, but the group with the disposable income now is becoming all the more savvy. That savvy audience is less brand loyal than before, so if the fourth game in your series is lame because you rushed it, they’re gone to the competition, and your game is sitting in the ‘used’ bin. And yeah, you may have had an initial bump from the first wave of unsuspecting buyers, but the next game you make will be hurt.
Games, as a rule, should take as long as they take. Because for one thing they’re really expensive, so the quality just has to be there. There aren’t that many genre’s out there when you look at it, and what typically separates games isn’t when they come out, but how good they are.
If companies where smart (and I’m not saying they aren’t) they would completely do away with deadlines. They would take as long as it took to make games and sell the crap out all of the ones they make. Sports games suffer the most from deadlines, I think that sports games shouldn’t come out every year, they should come out every other year with a simple update patch in the off years.
The gaming industry has a strong foothold in the consumer landscape, why they continue to play by the old rules is perplexing. If any one industry is powerful enough to change the rules, it would be the Gaming industry.
In closing I would like to remind the Video Gaming industry that they have a huge fan base that is doggedly loyal. If comic book fans will put up with late books, then I’d bet good money that gaming fans will wait for a ‘late’ game.
