With the recent trend of botched and half finished releases, Aengus Cunningham discusses this unfavourable trend and what it means for the industry.
In the world of gaming, there has been an unsettling and worrying trend forming leaving many dissatisfied with the state of gaming. Games are now starting to come out in either an unfinished state or significantly lacking in content to the extent that players feel like they’re experiencing an extended demo. The most recent victim of this kind of action is the most recent instalment of the long-standing and well-regarded fighting series, Street Fighter.
Street Fighter V launched to arguably the finest mechanics and general gameplay in a series considered the epitome of great gameplay for fighting games, and undoubtedly the best visuals on offer that Capcom has ever produced. The online section has also been made significantly more efficient in light of their recent games, if only somewhat remaining in the middle of the park compared to other fighting games. While this paints a pretty picture for the game so far, it falls apart when players realise that in terms of single player content, this is the single most lacking campaign in the series’ history, this only being compounded by the absence of an arcade mode entirely or any way of playing against the AI outside of training mode. Further content is planned to be released in the future, but on the back of similarly empty games released such as Star Wars: Battlefront and Evolve, a serious examination into these practices needs to undertaken.
Before saying that publishers are committing some serious mistakes in how they release their games, it is important to first explain why this has begun to happen. As time has moved on, the technology used to create games has similarly progressed. This has subsequently created games that previously would have been unimaginable to produce, but has also now created an expectation that new games will not only utilise this technology to its fullest extent, but also push the boundaries in terms of what it can do. Matching leaps in graphical capability are jumps in sound design, gameplay, narrative, voice acting and every other facet of a game imaginable. The amount of work that now goes into making a fully-fledged game takes years with potentially hundreds of people working on just one game.
To help match the hugely growing market for games, the rate at which the largest developers publish their largest, AAA rated games grows alongside it. The Call of Duty series is published annually, but in order to match the quality that the series lives up to, a number of studios are responsible for publishing the game and each studio is given a cycle of three years to complete it. As studios follow certain trends for games, be it single player open world sandboxes, or futuristic themed first-person-shooters, there is an onus on developers to get their product out first in order to ensure that it sells before people become sick of that particular trend and move onto the next one. The nature of game creation also lends itself to the prospect of a game being stuck in development for too long with this eventually prompting a cancellation, so there is an urgency to ensure the game is released in a timely fashion. Such was the case with Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain being released in order to ensure that its studio Konami, which was seeking to remove itself from the video game industry, didn’t shelve it indefinitely.
“A delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever”
Against this comes the more idealist view that the quality of the game should take preference over the corporate strategy of its delivery. Shigeru Miyamoto, widely-considered to be the Walt Disney of games recently said “a delayed game is eventually good, a bad game is bad forever” believing that the enduring legacy of a game will be remembered long after any delayed launch. This is evident through the likes of Sonic The Hedgehog, which was infamously released far before it was finished in order to launch alongside the Playstation 3 and XBOX 360, with the game suffering tremendously for it.
Perhaps the most insidious reason given for games being left unfinished is that there is a desire from the publishers and corporate side of development doing whatever they can to get a greater amount of money from a release, even if it means detracting from the finished product. One of the clearest examples of this is pushing for games to be left without already developed areas and sections to be released later for greater profit by selling it as paid downloadable content, or DLC, at a later date. This is more difficult to always spot but when it is found, it is nearly always to the detriment of the game as a whole. This was most notable during the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution where several chapters of the game were removed, explained away in the game as a jump to later on in the story before being sold as additional DLC later on.
This pressure from those funding the production of the game can also drive the direction in which the game is developed and by combining this approach with whatever is viewed as the most popular at a given time can lead to decisions such as pushing a game to be solely played online against others rather than adding a traditional campaign and leaving the game feeling entirely unfinished. Titanfall and Star Wars: Battlefront are notable examples of this, and while initially doing very well in the sales chart, the lack of any significant reason to keep playing after some time spent online has led to both of these game experiencing huge drops in activity. The direction that gaming is being driven to meet trends by those not familiar with their audience has contributed significantly to the release of games that are incomplete.
Street Fighter V was released to praise for its look and feel but took a significant amount of flak for the absence of many features that would be deemed essential by those familiar with the series and genre. The promise of the missing campaign alongside a revamped online system being released for free at later date ensures hope for the game, and that it was released in order to meet a deadline, but it is an ill omen for the gaming industry when the reverse being true is such a distinct possibility.
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