Publishers don’t care about gamers, only profits

Okay I'm going to go against the grain here. While I understand his point of view, gaming is also a business with HUGE overheads. And in the past when the publishers gave the developers free reign and almost unlimited budgets we ended up with Daikatana, and duke forever, and publishers almost closing their doors. I don't think that having deadlines and sticking to them is pandering to the shareholders and neglecting gamers, because at the end of the day, when it's costing you tens of thousands of dollars a day to develop, you have to weigh up whether it is worth it financially to iron out every small bug, or tick, or problem, on a product that may not even make its money back. especially when a lot of those bugs will only be noticed when the game is released into the wild.
I worked as a graphics designer, and can spend 3 days extra spit and polishing every design and while you will see the difference, it just isn't worth it financially to me. So I do the best job I can in the allotted time, and have learned when to call it a day.

All of that to say that to me games are better today than they've ever been. They are more engaging, bigger, and a hell of a lot more fun than they've ever been. And gamers are more demanding and less tolerant of shoddy work than ever before. I think they are giving gamers exactly what they want, or they wouldn't survive.
 
ave said:
Okay I'm going to go against the grain here. While I understand his point of view, gaming is also a business with HUGE overheads. And in the past when the publishers gave the developers free reign and almost unlimited budgets we ended up with Daikatana, and duke forever, and publishers almost closing their doors. I don't think that having deadlines and sticking to them is pandering to the shareholders and neglecting gamers, because at the end of the day, when it's costing you tens of thousands of dollars a day to develop, you have to weigh up whether it is worth it financially to iron out every small bug, or tick, or problem, on a product that may not even make its money back. especially when a lot of those bugs will only be noticed when the game is released into the wild.
I worked as a graphics designer, and can spend 3 days extra spit and polishing every design and while you will see the difference, it just isn't worth it financially to me. So I do the best job I can in the allotted time, and have learned when to call it a day.

All of that to say that to me games are better today than they've ever been. They are more engaging, bigger, and a hell of a lot more fun than they've ever been. And gamers are more demanding and less tolerant of shoddy work than ever before. I think they are giving gamers exactly what they want, or they wouldn't survive.
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Whilst gaming is also a business, game developers are also nevertheless artists in their own right. So I think the main thing would have to be balancing the economic investment of the Shareholders with your initial vision and artistic merit of the game. I myself don't believe that you should iron out every single kink in a kink until it is "Perfect"; however I also don't think that a product should be shipped until it is actually ready for it. Apart from DLC I think the goal would be that once you ship the game, with exception to minor fixes, that should be the end of the "work" you have to do on the game.
Using BF4 as an example; almost 6 months post release and it is still a mess. Compare and contrast Red Dead Redemption which was delayed for about 6 months and came out as eye-wateringly good.
 
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