Former SH5 Producer Alexandru Gris talks about Software-Quality

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

I think the problem with SH5 is that the publisher allocated insufficient development time, and compounded the issue by making a business decision to give the game more of an 'arcade' feel to enhance the visuals for the casual gamers they hoped to attract.

Therefore, what we got was an unfinished, buggy mess that angered many subsimmers and was of little interest to the casual gamers.

I more or less agree with what your saying because I certainly don't blame the development team.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

[Zedi]

I fail to understand why some of you separate the devs from.. "publishers". They said that the blame is on the company, not teams and we should not separate them. So I do, I blame Ubi and everybody involved in the project. And the devs side had their huge part of quilt. Just take a look at the moding forum and see how many glitches and bad scripting is found in the code day by day.. is that also the "publisher" fault? At least the script part is a mess.. old code from SH3 badly rewritten for SH5 and sold as a new one.

I'm sure they are some nice individuals, is fun to stay with them at a table and have some beers... but we are not talking here about the person, but the professional who got in charge to make a job right and he failed. Simple as that.

[Arclight]

Yeah... kinda.

I dunno, do you blame the company for making a shoddy product or the worker that assembles it? In the end, it's management that sets out the rules and guidelines and provides the tools and work-environment.

The guy at the bottom of the corporate foodchain is just doing his job.

Originally Posted by janh

You speak from my heart. I won't buy a game just for graphics improvements, unless it's "predecessor" is clearly several generations older. Gaming is much more "mental" to me than "optical". Pretty, yes, a game can be, but it needn't. First of all it needs to be detailed, accurate (physically, historically etc), well modeled and executed, and offer many option/decisions to explore and test historical and alternative outcomes.

Unfortunetly the majority doesn't think that way. With the advent of this whole "HD-gaming" thing, the focus shifted to graphics. Games need to look good in order to compete; most wouldn't buy something that looks outdated.

The whole thing is a joke anyway. PCs have been running well beyond "HD" for a long time. Even a fairly basic CRT monitor could do 1600x1200 at 75Hz or more.

[TDK1044]

Originally Posted by Magnum

I fail to understand why some of you separate the devs from.. "publishers". They said that the blame is on the company, not teams and we should not separate them. So I do, I blame Ubi and everybody involved in the project. And the devs side had their huge part of quilt. Just take a look at the moding forum and see how many glitches and bad scripting is found in the code day by day.. is that also the "publisher" fault? At least the script part is a mess.. old code from SH3 badly rewritten for SH5 and sold as a new one.

I'm sure they are some nice individuals, is fun to stay with them at a table and have some beers... but we are not talking here about the person, but the professional who got in charge to make a job right and he failed. Simple as that.

I understand your point, Magnum, but it's the Publisher that allocates a 12 month development budget for a 24 month project and therefore forces a Development Team to cut corners in order to deliver the game on time. It's the Publisher that prevents any real Beta Testing from trust worthy outside sources.....like subsim.

Imagine how much better this game could have been if Neal had been allowed to offer six members here real Beta access to the game.

Instead, Ubisoft goes to extraordinary lengths to protect a game that few people are now interested in, because in addition to the fact that it's a buggy mess, the end user is also expected to attempt to access Ubisoft servers in order to play it.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Imagine how much better this game could have been if Neal had been allowed to offer six members here real Beta access to the game.

They tried that with one of the SH4 patches. Some idiot leaked it, so that will never ever happen again.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

They tried that with one of the SH4 patches. Some idiot leaked it, so that will never ever happen again.

Yes. That event caused considerable damage to the relationship between the publisher/developers and the gaming community. This is a major reason why SH5 was developed in a great deal of secrecy.

[FIREWALL]

Something I'd like to add as food for thought to this excellent discussion is.

How many of you in the future will PreOrder a game from Ubisoft or another publisher ?

Will you wait for better reviews after game is released ?

Wait for a playable Demo ?

[janh]

Yes, Elanaiba asked for the functions of developer and publisher not to be separated, and if, to speak of Ubi as unity. But of course both a separate functions, and managment won't really start programming and developer won't get into strategic market development. But after all, blaming anyone doesn't solve problems.

Originally Posted by Arclight

Unfortunetly the majority doesn't think that way. With the advent of this whole "HD-gaming" thing, the focus shifted to graphics. Games need to look good in order to compete; most wouldn't buy something that looks outdated.

Right. This trend has saved me many bucks in the past 5-8 years. Since graphics quality has become sufficient for me and changes rather little, I can wait a year or two after release of a title to get it from the bargain bin. It will still look shiny and new to me, as far as I care. I mostly pick titles with great depth and modding capabilities such as ARMA2, SHIII, or WITP, which keep me tied down for many years. This gives a lot of staying power to wait until new titles are well reviewed, patched properly (into the state that they should have had on release) and I can gather from the internet that core features have really been enhanced.

[janh]

Originally Posted by BigBANGtheory

I liked his footnote on page 1:
** Management of expectations and of communities is more important than ever in the days of the Internet.

How many developers and publishers still fall foul of this?

This really still reads weird to me. Does it mean that companies believe that should have people that "tell customers what they ought to desire and what their wishes and expectation should be"? Technically, I would think they should have a good public-relations staff that communicates with fans and customers -- both ways. News and infos on lasted developments to the public, and talking to fans to gather wishes, improvement suggestions, trends in the communities etc that should influence forthcoming developments.

[Shiplord]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

How many of you in the future will PreOrder a game from Ubisoft or another publisher ?

I never preorder games!
Here in my hometown, I can rent almost any new PC or console game in a video store (except the new DRM Ubisoft games and others that requires a mandatory user account ) for a day or two. This gives me a very good insight on a game which I intend to buy.

[FIREWALL]

Originally Posted by Shiplord

I never preorder games!
Here in my hometown, I can rent almost any new PC or console game in a video store (except the new DRM Ubisoft games and others that requires a mandatory user account ) for a day or two. This gives me a very good insight on a game which I intend to buy.

The other 98% of us only can dream of renting a PC game.

But as you post that leaves out the DRM games.

If consoles in the future can have the graphics and speed of a hi-end Gameing PC I, see it as the way to go as far as gameing goes.

[Frumpkis]

Originally Posted by janh

Just out of curiosity I read a review article about the new Mafia II. Off genre, but obviously the tenor could have been "copied" from SHV. Lack of features and functionality, linearity of story, poor physics simulation and purely optical damage model for cars, incomplete character development and empty cities,... sounds like another overly ambitious project that matches the above discussion.
Now it is no longer surprising that they did not widely distribute the game for previews before release... Which per se is already a huge stop sign.

I don't see that level of similarity between Mafia II (which I'm playing at the moment) and the SH5 release. There are a few people who are upset at the way MFII looks superficially like it should be a sandbox-style game, and it doesn't actually play that way. If you approach it on its own level -- as a linear plot RPG/shooter in an interesting environment -- then it's fun (IMO). My only complaint is that it's a little too heavy on the driving as filler between action sequences. MFII is currently at 79 critic/8.0 user rating on Metacritic, compared to SH5's rather dismal 62/2.3 rating. So it's not exactly being panned everywhere.

Two really important differences between MFII and SH5 are 1) I'm playing version 1.0 and I have seen no bugs so far, and 2) there was a demo available. A demo is a sign of confidence by a game company. Imagine how the whole SH5 drama would have played out, if Ubi had released a demo that revealed the shape the game was in.

[Frumpkis]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

How many of you in the future will PreOrder a game from Ubisoft or another publisher ?

Will you wait for better reviews after game is released ?

Wait for a playable Demo ?

I used to pre-order certain boxed games, to reduce the shipping delay as much as possible. But now that I buy most games on Steam, it's not really necessary to pre-order. I can have any Steam game on my hard drive in a couple hours, so it's easier to hold off a day or two and read initial user reviews. Online distribution and user reviews have helped me dodge a few bullets with games I was initially excited about, like Elemental: War of Magic (and boy, am I glad I waited on that one, based on early reports!).

Aside from that, certain developers have earned a "buy it early" or "wait and see" approach, based on past performance. I'll buy just about anything Bioware makes very early (next in line: Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3) because their recent games have been very solid (if not perfect) on day one. I'm very interested in the upcoming Shogun 2 from CA, but I've learned to wait at least six months on anything in the Total War series. Same thing for Ubi and the Silent Hunter series.... and I'm still waiting.

[JScones]

Originally Posted by TDK1044

I understand your point, Magnum, but it's the Publisher that allocates a 12 month development budget for a 24 month project and therefore forces a Development Team to cut corners in order to deliver the game on time.

An experienced project manager can be quite adept at balancing the project triangle - schedule, cost and scope - without the quality component suffering as much as SH5's has (look at practically any other PC game, including Ubisoft titles, as examples). Keep in mind the PM would have been given the fixed end date up front, as part of Ubisoft's approval to commence the game. Perhaps I'm a more risk adverse PM (perhaps more experienced), but if given just over one year to develop a new game, I would be very closely looking at the risks of introducing such new functionality as FPS view, especially if my risk mitigation strategy is to use SH3/SH4 code or exclude wolfpacks or effective AI. Resorting to "cutting corners" is simply sloppy management (at all levels). As I said, project triangle; the PM's job, not the game publisher's.

At the least, it seems to me that many quality issues with SH5 could be put down to poor communication at the management level. This is a fundamental problem with projects; it's seen as being much easier to "hide" issues or re-baseline schedule, cost, scope or quality than raise the issues with the project steering committee. PMs tend to see the latter approach as a sign of failure on their behalf, however, as I tell my PMs, the latter will reflect much better on them in the long run than the former: a good PM can deliver a project, an even better PM knows when to pull the noose.

Originally Posted by TDK1044

Imagine how much better this game could have been if Neal had been allowed to offer six members here real Beta access to the game.

They did that with SH4...did it make a substantial difference to the quality of the final product? I mean, a difference that justified both the cost and the risk of some goose releasing the game early?

[Gilbou]

They should work incrementally.

For SH6, take SH5 as base.
Then, make a list of the 5 or 10 news things you want developed.
A new feature only goes in the game if finished and working properly.

Do your work. Release date comes.
Of the 10 items, 7 are ready. Ship the game as SH6 with the 7 items
inside. Let developpers finish what they can for the first patch.

They work on the first patch, and are able to finish 2 items. Others
would require too much work. Release first patch that adds 2 items,
so the game has 9 of 10 items. Push the last one for SH7.

Work on bugs only, forget about the missing item now. Fix as
many bugs as you can. Put out a second patch.

When working on SH7, do the same. Keep 1/2 persons working
on bugs on SH6 because bugs fixed in SH6 automatically get fixed
on SH7 too.. So it's not lost work force.

People from open source projects do that all the time. Ex. NetBSD,
they only ship on the next release what is finished and working,
and push for another release what will require too much time.

They should try to release often too. Which means releasing one
version of the game every 2 years for example. You cannot finish
all the features you want to add, but at least only ship those
that are finished and working.

Working incrementally, you get something that : always gets
better and better, you never have to redo everything already done,
and especially : you don't see features that players like disappear
from one release to another...

If you do that, people will buy each versino every year or 2 years,
it slowly goes up in power and content. The manual is the same
thing. Write a manual. Improve it. Release after release.

They could do it right. But why would they ? They have a nice
group of sheep-alike people that buy unfinished games, for which
you just put out 1 or 2 patches, and the game is ridden with
bugs, is unplayable because of server, connection problems and
you still get away with profits.

You get what you deserve. And SH5 as it is, is exactly what you
deserved.