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Should devs tell people about launch bugs in advance? “It’s an interesting problem” says Starfield and Skyrim designer"The players expectations are that the game is flawless" says Bethesda’s Bruce Nesmith
“The players expectations are that the game is flawless” says Bethesda’s Bruce Nesmith
Image credit:Bethesda Game Studios
Image credit:Bethesda Game Studios
It’s an interesting problem, because when you’re in marketing, what you’re looking to do is manage expectations. The players expectations are that the game is flawless, that it has no bugs. That is their expectation. You don’t have to like it, but it’s there. And you aren’t going to achieve it. So what marketing has to do is say, how can we get as close as possible to that expectation. How can we make it so these guys don’t hate us for what’s wrong and love us for what’s right?
Starfield: Shattered Space - Official Launch TrailerWatch on YouTube
Starfield: Shattered Space - Official Launch Trailer
“When a developer releases a game, they know all the things that are broken with it, these aren’t mysteries,” he continued. “I mean, every now and then you get a bug that’s like, ‘Holy s**t, I didn’t know that was going to happen’, but for the most part, you know it.”
Bethesda have run early betas and other, more controlled forms of access prior to launch, but not what we might traditionally call early access. It could be that Bethesda simply aren’t set up for the kind of on-going community relationship proper early access requires, or perhaps they just want to preserve the excitement of a traditional, once-and-done release. InStarfield’s case, especially, there was also its place as a big Game Pass title, although whether this is fundamentally incompatible with early access, I’m not sure.
“I will be the first person to say that Bethesda Games could have a higher degree of polish,” Nesmith told Videogamer. “They have benefited, and when I was there I benefited, from providing such a wide and vast array of gameplay that a certain amount of lack of polish could be forgiven. Having an NPC run in place in front of a wall for a little while became acceptable because of the 17 things you could do with that NPC, whereas most games you’d be able to do two.”
“That level of polish also comes at a price,” continued Nesmith . “Are you willing to let the game sit for six more months and be delayed six more months in order to try to polish it? You’re still not going to get perfection, it’s just going to be better. So at some point you have to make the decision to publish, and to publish something you know has bugs.”
It’s probably worth examining where the perception that “players expectations are that the game is flawless” comes from. Rising prices in a rough economy? Games being sold on their fidelity in a world where photo mode’s evil twin, the capture button, can easily put those claims to public scrutiny, within minutes of game being live? Collective memory of how a developer’s previous game ended up, rather than how it actually launched? It’s worth readingEdwin’s chat with Paradox CEO Mattias Lilja- who reckons players are less “accepting” right now that games will be fixed overall.