Why Do We Ship Buggy Games? - A Look Behind the Scenes - Extra Credits

[@QazaRaspel]

99 bugs in developer's game code 99 bugs in the code take one down, patch it around 1276 bugs in the code

[@Nathan-yu7cu]

QazaRaspel Programmer Life

[@KyanbuXM]

QazaRaspel Yup, right when you least ducking expect it.

[@DesmondDuval]

Step 1: Start with working prototype Step 2: Spend 4 hours working in the code, with the functionality of the prototype completely broken the entire time. Step 3: Have working program with identical functionality to prototype. Step 4: Try to explain to anyone else why 'the architecture' of this version is better, even though they can't see any difference.

[@brycejohansen7114]

Desmond Duval+ So true... it's a deep lake with a small surface area

[@jayit6851]

As a programmer, the extreme jump in bugs made me laugh harder than it should have... Mostly because it's true...

[@Quasihamster]

2017: "Every once in a while, a big budget game is released in a buggy state." 2019: "Every once in a while, a big budget game is released in an at least mostly playable state."

[@vizthex]

basically yeah. This is one reason I stick to indie games.

[@FraserSouris]

Not really. Most big budget games are released in a good state. We treat the outliers as the norm

[@painedfetus8210]

@@vizthex yeah, Indies are usually the ones to stick with... OR Nintendo.

[@neintonine]

I would disagree and agree with @Fraser Souris... Its a question of perspective. Many games released great this year. (I talking about 2019 not 2020) For example, Apex Legends. This game was F2P, really well put together. And there was nothing to talk about Bugs. And btw. Indies are buggy, too. Maybe even a hell of a lot more than any 3A. BUT there are so many indie games, you just don't see them and only catch the indie games, that anyone talkes about. (And are bugless, I guess...) Just watch the amount of 3A-games releasing and the amount of Steam games added daily. The number of steam games are more. That's all indie games. Not only "Undertale", "Celeste" or what ever there is.

[@kyrnti1075]

3 words fallout seventy-six

[@matthewhoffman7082]

This reminds me of what I was taught in college. When programming something, build up. Start small, make sure it works, add onto that. Make sure the addition works, and continue. If a bug is embedded in the bedrock of the game's programming, and everything is built upon that, fixing it requires fixing EVERYTHING attached to it.

[@davianthule2035]

Modularised Code as well, have as few things directly connected as possible

[@micomine5266]

Extra Credit is like the most aware and unbiased group of people who explain things the best they can. Even if it's just explaining a situation, you can just feel the passion in his voice about subjects like this. EC is like super chill.

[@PA551ON]

Dallas Woodward and yet many of their so-called "fans" turn on them when they explain why we have microtransactions and loot boxes based on their own personal experience within the industry, simply cause it doesn't fit their narrative of every game company out to screw them and make all the money in the world doing it. SMH.

[@alexpotts6520]

@@PA551ON Yeah, I don't even necessarily disagree with that core premise, lootboxes are awful things that have no place in video games, but I find video game analysis on KZbin is so tediously samey. EC were a breath of fresh air, their optimism that problems could be solved was a much-needed antidote to the angry cynicism that permeates everywhere else.

[@winzyl9546]

Not really

[@Derekivery]

why do we ship buggy games? Because a bad game will make more money than one that is never released.

[@Radiovid-]

No Man's Sky, the game that made $78 Million dollars in a month? Great Example.

[@sentinel225]

Bush Plays that has nothing to do with what the original commenter said

[@narutardkyuubi]

Ironically enough, Minecraft's world is approximately the size of the Milky Way galaxy (someone did a calculation of the size of Minecraft's virtual size if each block represents a 1m x 1m x 1m cube. It's the size of a literal galaxy), so minecraft actually did No Man's Sky better than NMS did.

[@sevret313]

Minecraft never sold itself as being the size of a galaxy. If it did, it would fail. The game world is quite small if you think of the variation space within the game. The terrain generator is for them most part just making sure you never run out of space, but not really giving you ton of content.

[@johnrickard8512]

Minecraft is sold on the idea of a completely open world that is unique to your play session. The fact that the max size of a worldfile is that huge is irrelevant since it basically means the world is as big as you want it to be. Also, Minecraft's world was not always the near infinity that it is now.

[@vexis58]

Pet peeve of QA testers everywhere: "Why didn't QA catch this super obvious bug that I found in my first 5 minutes of playing?!" Guys, QA found it. QA found it as soon as they got the first build of the game. The devs immediately closed it as "won't fix" and ignored the problem for the rest of development. Occasionally a new tester would join the team and bug it again, and the QA lead would sigh and close it again as a duplicate.

[@Mint4589]

This is surprisingly accurate

[@luisjogos821]

**Sonic 06 flashbacks**

[@OninRuns]

The one thing developers fear more than anything in the gaming industry is a Unity update.

[@dddtl]

See Pokémon Go breaking iOS audio playback for 4 months.

[@FlipJanson]

Only if your company has terrible business practices and actually updates :P My company would always define what version they were going to use for a particular game and stick with it through the entire development of the game. Only new games would be able to start on newer versions.

[@BionicKing]

Yeah, I work in software and most industries will define early, "We are working with X version of Y." Changing unity every time it updates should be seen with the same skepticism as if someone said, "Hey, I know we're half way through the project, but I think we should use an entirely different IDE."

[@vizthex]

stop you're going to give them a heart attack

[@tomasgoes]

*Sweating intensifies.*

[@ancienthero2876]

All bugs can be fixed easily. Just put the entire game inside a try-catch statement.

[@pokemonmanyou4239]

I don't think the code will run if you do that.

[@lemonandgaming6013]

...

[@Solidsnake856]

@@pokemonmanyou4239 r/whoosh

[@nothanks6216]

As a solo indie game developer, I would become a religious man if that would work out of the blue

[@hajsza]

Actually CnC: Generals did something like that. If the game stopped for some reason, usually a dialogue window appeared which blamed the user's computer not being up to date ("Please install the newest drivers" etc.). Usually this happened when there were a lot of units in a map and the pathfinding algorithm ate up all the memory, but the same dialogue appeared in other situations as well. This made me think they must put a try-catch within the beginning and end of main().

[@LordEpos]

Every time there's a guest artist there's at least one commenter who wants them to be the permanent artist. I just wanted to say, the normal art is my personal favorite so far.

[@tristanferencevic453]

i agree

[@sprazz8668]

I like all of them. Can we have the episodes drawn and released 20 times each with every artist doing one.

[@brodown64]

@@sprazz8668 i think that is not possible

[@sprazz8668]

@@brodown64 I am aware, t'was but a humble meme

[@just_some_dude019]

Nick's doin the normal art, He was introduced in part 5 or 4 of the Otto Von Bismarck Series

[@judemcnab4394]

"or any given Blizzard game" *laughs in battleborn*

[@stephan2796]

I love how all game developers just avoid launching a game within the month in which a World of Warcraft expansion comes out.

[@Ethan-mp7wr]

Like the fact that you’re roasting Blizzard when ya profile pic is a junk rat mine

[@KingLich451]

Lol, battleborn.

[@icy_gambit5595]

BURN IN HOLY HELL FIRE!

[@anonymouslee8542]

@@icy_gambit5595 Meh, I liked Oscar Mike.

[@shaferai]

I've dabbled in programming, and I can attest to the fact that something that seems so simple to do in concept is virtually impossible.

[@peanutinc.7670]

"A delayed game is good eventually. A bad game is bad forever." - Shigeru Miyamoto. I don't know if he actually said that, but it says that on a quote in a picture.

[@MedK001]

*A rushed game is forever bad.

[@bamfyu]

He did

[@drgore1797]

One thing you forgot with pushing a title back is people get PISSED when a game is pushed back.

[@spindash64]

Star Fox Zero. And then people hate it anyway. And I still haven't gotten to play it...

[@pinkwings8036]

Unless they've been beat down to just accept it *Kingdom Hearts fanbases sighs in the distance*

[@ОлегКозлов-ю9т]

That's why anticipating new games does no good to anyone

[@brandonontama2415]

Dr Gore It really depends on the reason it got delayed.

[@FlipzMCL]

Honestly, the "clockwork rotation" model of game development seems to be the worst offender in terms of giving us buggy games that go unfixed. In the publishers' rush to pump out as many AAA games as possible as quickly as possible, they've created a business culture in which the developers are expected to basically abandon their products as soon as they're out the door if they want to make ends meet, rather than deliberately building in a period of post-launch support to ensure the best experience possible for their users. It puts developers in a horrible position for no good reason, aside from the publishers just wanting to make their money through haste and quantity rather than quality.

[@Roxor128]

Marketing the game before it's done could also be a contributing factor. Instead of having "We've got to finish by this date!" you could have "We've got these games ready to go, which shall we release on this date?" and get the game and the marketing right.

[@tylisirn]

@@Roxor128 You can't sit on finished games because they are perishable goods. Every week you wait your AAA game looks less and less impressive compared to the other AAA games, because tech moves constantly forward. This is what tends to doom the "forever" projects that languish in development hell for years. By the time they finally come out they are hopelessly outmoded.

[@blackhat0616]

*Cough! cough! Call of du...Cough*

[@MekaniQ]

@@blackhat0616 o o f

[@Alorand]

The one main takeaway from all of this should be - DON'T PRE-ORDER!

[@Taskuli12]

Alorand only if its blizzard game im fine with it

[@Hr1s7i]

@@Taskuli12 But do you have a phone?

[@vizthex]

but I want the free spaceship!

[@shardtheduraludon]

@@Taskuli12 How well has this aged since it’s surfaced that they’re punishing Hong Kong players to satisfy their Tencent Overlords

[@Taskuli12]

@@shardtheduraludon big bruh moment the age when blizzard was respected still

[@PhaseLotA]

"Incompetent Animators..." *Shows Dan* Awwww...

[@vizthex]

oof the meta joke

[@KristofDE]

As a developer who's just putting the finishing touches on a game he's been working on for over a year with a team of hard-working, talented people - thanks for this video. I'm guilty of raging at buggy or unbalanced games myself as a gamer, but I then get reminded that sometimes you can't really see a huge inconvenience coming when you first design something...

[@KristofDE]

Hey, Angel. I'll come back here and let you and the others know after the release date is revealed, just so I don't spill the beans too early! Should be very soon!

[@OracleGrouse]

Even as a game dev student, I know the struggle @_@

[@KristofDE]

I just want the publisher to make an official announcement, and then I'll be sure I'm not breaking any agreements, even by a small margin ;)

[@blitcut9712]

Just leaving a comment for future updates.

[@red_isopat]

Krzysztof Zięba half life 3?

[@MrsTheMark]

Thank you for explaining this, so many people really don't get this because it's not transparent. Being a developer is so difficult for this reason. So many people take these things for granted, and blame publishing studios for issues, when things like this happen.

[@Aapelinvideot]

4:10 "-because their launch week was dominated by something like a Call of Duty" *EA RELEASING TITANFALL 2 BETWEEN COD IW AND BATTLEFIELD 1* I'm glad that it still has an active playerbase 6 months after the release.

[@Aapelinvideot]

also it's an incredible game you should take a look at it

[@aetherdestroyer2317]

yeah at this point I'm completely addicted to Titanfall 2. if you haven't watched him yet go take a look at iniquity, he's really good.

[@Aapelinvideot]

Anemone071 The only reason I could think about is that selfish EA wanted to destroy COD completely, but they sacrifised Titanfall 2 which was a huge mistake at their part.

[@Thenextworldwar]

Titanfall 2 was crap :3

[@aetherdestroyer2317]

don't you dare. Titanfall 2 is easily game of all the years.

[@goldencyclone4984]

I love how no one has mentioned the fact that the graphic that popped up when James was talking about complicated games was Kingdom Hearts. Well played, James, well played.

[@extrahistory]

Buggy games are bad business. But why do they keep happening? Thanks for participating in this video's discussion! We want you to be aware of our community posting guidelines so that we can have high-quality conversations: goo.gl/HkzwQh

[@brurbina2427]

Extra Credits Hey Dan

[@couragew6260]

Extra Credits tux for this video

[@kirakiramagic]

Hi! Are you going to do a million subs video?

[@legoworksstudios1]

here's a list of buggy/glitchy games 10. The Matrix video game (2003) 9. Battlefield 4 (2013) on launch day 8. Assassin's Creed: Unity (2014) on launch day 7. AC: Syndicate (2015) on launch day 6. Sonic (2006) 5. Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (2014) 4. Mafia III (2016) 3. Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) 2. Superman 64 (1999) before we get to the top pick, here are some disappointing honorable mentions: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003) Homefront: The Revolution (2016) Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017) on launch day SimCity (2013) on launch day 1. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982)

[@BlackwolfAnthony]

It's part of why Fallout: New Vegas was borderline broken on release- Bethesda forced Obsidian to release the game on an extremely strict timeline, and offered them extra pay if they got 85 on Metacritic. They got 83, and lost the money. Obsidian was forced to make the game in much less time than they needed, and therefore the game was buggier than most Bethesda titles are. Bethesda published it, OBSIDIAN made the game themselves. I think that kind of meddling explains a lot of these poor buggy messes.

[@drakan4769]

a lot of these issues do have criticisms that we should be making though: 2:10 why are early testing to avoid potential bugs and fail safes a characteristic of "truly great" studios? that should be industry standard. "scheduling issues" let's call them what they are: planning errors, the fact that development is planned with a release date that has to be met is a problem in itself, and even if that's unavoidable who in their right mind plans a project assuming things will just go smoothly? is it truly impossible to take extra time into account to iron out bugs when planning development from the get go? after all, if you do that when something goes wrong, you've planned for it and have time and resources allocated specifically for dealing with that, if it doesn't, great, you're ahead of schedule. Oversized marketing budgets and publisher control: these problems have been a topic for a while now, and not just about buggy releases, we could spend ages talking about this, either way it should not be accepted with a "oh well, that's just how it is". In the end, with the potential PR disaster that a broken release can be, is it _really_ a sound business option to ship a broken product anyways? (yes it is, because we might outrage but still keep throwing money at them, and are still in line to preorder the next thing without any guarantee that it won't be just as broken, but hey, that's our problem, and you can't blame a business for the low standards of their consumers)

[@Stevonicus]

I love the inclusion of Truck Shepard. what a sweet boy.

[@Stevonicus]

wow, there's a lot of Monster Factory in here.

[@dstarr3]

I loved the Boy Mayor mag. lol

[@emperorethan2713]

Stevonicus Boy Mayor and Totinos made me laugh

[@LimedGreen]

I THINK DOGS SHOULD VOTE! Say if with me, Dog Vote! Dog Vote! Dog Vote! C'mon we'll call it something cool like ruffrage!

[@gooseygooseman1383]

I'd like to think that 7:00 is BONE DOGG

[@kal6957]

0:35 I love the guy pointing at Waldo He seems so happy/shocked

[@skiny104]

personally I only have issues when a studio/publisher ships buggy games repetativly, if it's an infrequent issue that's fine in my mind

[@sarowie]

How do they get away with it? People still pre-order those games. If people would just wait until the game is either fixed to the priced massively dropped studios and publishers would have a hard time to getaway with it over and over again.

[@Sean-Ax]

bioreactor . Bethesda lol

[@gosucab944]

Skyrim: Fix it yourself edition! (I love Skyrim but it had its fair share of bugs ^^')

[@greenlink875]

Everyone points to skyrim as the pre-eminent buggy game, and it is really buggy, but I don't think I've ever once encountered a bug in that game that was more than a, "huh, thats odd" or just hilarity. For as many bugs as it has, surprisingly few of them prevent progress at all and those that do you can fix easily with console commands.

[@TheHorribleCreature]

The balancing of the game is also off. Crafting is OP. Magic is pointless at endgame.

[@Gavingoodrich45]

"in cast of emergency" --Coffee-- loved it

[@timothymclean]

If only fixing business problems, in _any_ industry, was as easy as many laypeople think they are.

[@windsgrace688]

Now, as a follow-up to this episode, an episode about the prevalence of day-one patches would be greatly appreciated.

[@FraserSouris]

They are pretty neccesary even in the best cases. Games are often shipped out to be printed onto discs months before release. Patches are nessesary unless you want the team to do nothing for months

[@Crlarl]

0:30 I see Truck Shepard made an appearance.

[@bloodhound752]

smh just buy some bug spray problem solved

[@stephaniehutchens3222]

underrated comment right here

[@MegaSceptile99]

Is that a new brand if bug spray

[@MegaSceptile99]

Punctuation, people

[@onyxi.x5777]

BloodHound yeah lol

[@sorenmine7765]

my god, you just solved years of problems!

[@gman1376]

This is why being a teenage bedroom dev is great. No fixed ship date = I can sink however long I want into making this game great.

[@tuckerkrause5838]

I am going to start game dev soon and I am going to drop trailers, screenshots, etc. When the game is atleast 90-95% done

[@fernando5208]

Yep, the investment is usually paren'ts allowance and dev's time, the major "risk" is to end up with more game dev skills even if the game is not shipped, a very different scenario compared with big budget titles.

[@swishfish8858]

Of course, the downside is that the freedom might mean you'll never get anything done. Deadlines are important.

[@mikethemonsta15]

I'm glad someone finally explained this in depth. Thank you from a developer on MCC.

[@ThatPazuzu]

nice cameo from Truck Shepard

[@ThatPazuzu]

never mind, this is all Monster Factory

[@acemack2]

Its nice to see all the boys again

[@TehVulpez]

the whole last minute and a half of the video: SOMETIMES SOMETIMES SOMETIMES SOMETIMES....

[@punchingplayerpenguin3291]

S O M E T I M E S

[@TheUnspokenKibbles]

Fiiiiinally! Something to help put all this into perspective. Nobody in the AAA space wants to release a buggy game, but high-profile software development is Really Friggin Complicated. It's absolutely disappointing for the public when it happens, but it's just as surely way more painful for the developers.

[@Flaris]

I'm sure it is more painful for the developers. After all consumers can simply choose not to purchase the game and not trust those developers going forward which hurts future sales. It is a business and everyone has limited time and resources.

[@Sleksin]

The consumer might lose some time and a bit of money. The developers might lose their means of income.

[@TheUnspokenKibbles]

If we were in the Atari era, that would be true, but nothing says you have to buy into the get-it-day-one hype. I know only a minority of people wait for reviews on entertainment media, but it really is a smart practice. Also, post-release support is now possible: games like Andromeda, Rainbow Six: Siege, The Division, and Homefront: The Revolution have all shown that even if you buy a problematic game on day 1, it can be worked into a much smoother experience if the devs are willing to do damage control and commit to the game's full lifecycle (which, for most AAA titles, they are). The ship date is not the end.

[@johnrickard8512]

Sounds like the world of embedded systems development has an even worse time than game devs. Why isn't that surprising?

[@gusmanrahmadi4724]

Anyone here after Cyberpunk's rocky start?

[@רזחרש-נ6ע]

And then there's Nintendo with Zelda BoTW, who delayed the game for like a year or more (can't remember) and then shipped an amazing game, who even compete with another, "higher profile" title, Zero Dawn, and could match up to it.

[@MurasakiNoKami]

honestly, there are few companies that have as much money and reputation as Nintendo, to be able to successfully pull that off

[@pinkwings8036]

Nintendo also just tends to have higher fidelity standards when comparing their releases to rivals. Since they are aware of their main market being children and families, they know that market is less likely to put up with buggy games, and that bugs will hurt their reputation in the long run.

[@muhwyndham]

Idk, but somehow it's like a mentality of Japanese game devs. They always like perfection as must and bug is a grave sin or something like that. They rather delay their games or limit what the game can actually do (or 'refining' what already proven success) than have to ships buggy game at all... רז חרש

[@Auron3991]

They also have a different culture around work than we do in the states.

[@Radiovid-]

The delay wasn't just to make the game better, the delay was to make it a launch day Switch game so their new console/handheld wouldn't have bugger all system sellers when it arrived. I mean, they still needed to add basic things like Difficulty levels and simple map functions as a season pass. Also I would certainly hope that a 30+ Year old franchise would "match up" to a new IP, although I'm not sure how ZD was the higher profile game.

[@mrpokemon1186]

Recently someone found in Factorio that the idle animation's shadow only moved when facing north. Some thing you just would never think to test so there's that too.

[@ryanamberger]

Easy fix for customers, stop preordering and buying into Day One Special Edition!!!!! shite. Wait a couple weeks, watch some reviews from creators you trust, and possibly save yourself some money.

[@justdontask3]

basically any Nintendo game is pretty much guaranteed to be not only playable, but quite polished as well. it might be a polished turd, like Sticker Star, but its polished. if its a Nintendo series you like, preorder it, because they only make 5 copies and you wont get one if you dont preorder (looking at NES Classic, and Xenoblade, and amiibos.....)

[@celeste1823]

As much as Nintendo have shady practices on some aspects, I'm proud that they almost always release a finished and polished game. The only one I can think of are Skyward Sword, in which you could get stuck if you completed things in the wrong order, most likely never discovered by testers and patched a couple of days after the discovery, and Brawl's awful online

[@knokout1]

Nintendo releases polished games for two reasons. 1.) They reuse code ALL THE TIME, and 2.) They reuse engines that they made ALL THE TIME. I never understand the praise Nintendo gets. They get praised for releasing the same game twice every generation, and then they get praised when that game doesn't have many bugs. Of course it doesn't, they tested the games on the first iteration, all they update is the graphics and some small new features.

[@celeste1823]

Every company reuses codes, every company reuses engines

[@art_lobe]

But not every company does as many unoriginal sequels as Nintendo. There are even certain games, like the last Mario Kart and Mario Party, that I find worse than their predecessors.

[@MegaBearsFan]

I think you may have missed a fourth reason for bugs to be present: The bugs that were shipped were low priority compared to more critical bugs that WERE fixed in time to ship the game.

[@brurbina2427]

Guys, could you give me your sincere opinion? I'm about to enter college and I really do love the art of making games, I have decided do dedicate myself to being a game designer but thing is, I live in Brazil. Being a game Dev must be somewhat of a scary thing to hop into even in developed countries, now here it just terrifies me. Here minimal wage is about 450 dollars per month or less, it's a difficult thing planning your life around something, and when it is not a certain thing, it's much harder. So, is it worth being a game Dev in a country where you do have to worry to get at least enough money to survive and have a home, is it worth planning your life around that? I wanna do what I love but I also wanna have something to eat. :c

Maybe could try going for a general IT education and work on game development in your free time? If you then released a game as freeware or a cheap indie game you would have some game dev skill to show off and a higher chance of getting a game dev job. But at the same time you are studying general IT, which is useful for game development and can still land you a general IT job. (That is if they are sough after in Brazil) _I claim no responsibility for the usefulness of this advice._

[@najex1]

I don't think extra credits can answer that for you. You aparently already know the risks. Now you have to decide if it is wurth it. That responsibility lies solely on you. Also, there aren't just two options here. You could learn a trade (example: programming?) that could help you in game design, and if your game designing career fals apart, you still have something to fall back on. I think Extra credits once did a video on needing a bunch of different skills to be good at game design.

[@LtKharn]

I can't speak to what it's like in Brazil but it might be worth getting a degree that can do something else as well. Just in case. Game studios are usually not too bothered what degree you have, so looking at something like coding or management could be useful. I'm also not an indie dev so I can't really help on that front either (this is going great xD). But remember that as a freelancer you'd have a wage advantage on those us in the West. And if you do dev games in a small studio or online then you are sitting in a large market that isn't really targeted and any international dollar will go quite far for you :) "So, is it worth being a game Dev in a country where you do have to worry to get at least enough money to survive and have a home" To be honest this is a problem wherever you live, imagine doing the same thing in a place where a house is about 14 times the annual salary.

[@ACrazySpider]

That will be a large risk no doubt and I don't want to tell you not to do it. However if you chose to go down that route i would recommend that you focus your education on a skill that can be marketed to more than just games. If you enjoy ar,t being a 3D artist or animator is flexible and can get you a job in the game industry but also a job elsewhere. Focusing your studies on purely game design limits your appeal to non game companies. The decision is yours I'm personally a programmer so my skills transfer easily if this games thing does not work out. Best of luck, I wish you well.

[@Legendarior]

Get a degree in general computer science or something more broad. Have a backup plan. Do game dev in your free time.

[@Narusasu98]

Really love all I learn in these videos, and the art is top notch. Very good quality, love this channel.

[@honzav5997]

I am just in a process of finishing a game for school assignment and I was just thinking about leaving some dangerous code in to save time..... I take this as a sign not to do that

[@ShermTank7272]

As a software developer myself, I can say that this is pretty accurate. Making a piece of software is a lot more complicated than many people think it is.

[@dande3139]

I'm sure this is true for many AAA games, but I have been increasingly disappointed with "Early Access" titles, which get overhyped, and have the majority of the customers invest in a game before its official release. Then the devs spend all their time working on the "fun" stuff (new content), instead of refining the game that they have. In the end, we get for our "early" investment a game which has many features, but none that work very well.

[@Foxpawed]

The point is to help the developers build a better game by providing a wider pool of feedback and some additional capital to work with. The problem the OP brought up is that many developers don't actually go on to complete the game in a meaningful way, leaving everything largely unpolished and just shoving in more alpha quality content. It's part of why Minecraft looks the way it does; Everyone got into the game with all of it's low-quality, originally temporary graphics, and then they shrugged and left them like that forever, letting the playerbase pick up the slack by supporting resource packs.

[@XBlueM0ndayX]

This. Consumers don't know what they actually want, they're not game designers. They can enjoy a game but they can't make informed decisions about what goes into making the game enjoyable and definitely have no clue about how to actually make it. I mean the number one thing people seem to ask for in every game is "customisation" - the shallowest aspect of most games. "Wow my character can have green hair! I FRIGGIN' LOVE THIS GAME."

[@pouncebaratheon4178]

Buy early access games ONLY IF their current state is worth their current price; NEVER have faith in what the finished product will be. An example is Factorio, which last time I checked was the second highest rated game on steam. It's still in EA, but has a ton of features and most get a ton of playtime out of it. It's just a *good* game with awesome devs that could have been released many patches ago, but they just keep cooking up more content and balancing. There are also games like ToME, which is still getting regular updates 19 years after it's release (The amount of content in it is insane; it has, for example, over 1,000 achievements). It's not considered an early access game but is the same concept since it's continually being updated. Since some devs use EA and others use post-release patches and some use both, the official release date doesn't mean that much anymore for computer (and XBone) games.

[@KorboQ]

"consumers don't know what they want, they aren't game designers" So are you a game designer? If not, how do you know what consumers want?

[@christiancastro5934]

Th most outrageous example of this is Ark Survival Evolved. The developers have some serious balls for releasing DLC for the game while still in early access.

[@geckoo9190]

This video reminded me something very important, always keep back ups of your work and never name your project something something forever.

[@daracaex]

I can't help but wonder what would be happening if Mass Effect Andromeda was released today instead of a couple months ago. The recently-released patch 1.06 and the previous patch has improved all of those poor facial animations dramatically. How many people didn't buy the game because so many were hopping on the "terrible animation" bandwagon and making a ruckus? Just a couple months later release could have prevented a massive outcry, possibly helped the game sell better, and then we could have had greater dedication to DLC or a sequel rather than the current hiatus on ME that people are talking about.

[@G00N3R7883]

You are probably correct. I've only started playing Mass Effect Andromeda after patch 1.06 was released, I'm 33 hours in and I'm actually quite enjoying the game. Its probably not going to be a GOTY contender for me, its got some open world filler quests that aren't that exciting, I've seen a few wierd things (for example yesterday I saw an enemy spawn high up in the air before coming down to ground level) ... but overall its a fun, flawed game. Like most games. Solid 8/10

[@fernandobanda5734]

3:38

[@MrMarinus18]

Well you need to add 3 months to that because there is quite a bit of time between finishing the game and actually releasing it. I don't think it's because of the outcry. They were already busy making the patch.

[@Immadeus]

0:28 WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED! HAND OVER THE SONIC GAME!

[@KaiserAfini]

Dan started to explain the reason for the episode and I immediately envisioned Mass Effect Andromeda, No Man's Sky and Destiny.

[@BloodyAltima]

See, I don't remember Destiny's issues really being bugs, just an utter lack of content.

[@Thenextworldwar]

I've still yet to find any evidence that it was Activision's fault, interestingly.

[@matthewclements6603]

I didn’t find destiny buggy. Lag was an issue in multiplayer, but not so much bugs.

[@sasuke2910]

So basically it's because game development is treated as a factory line rather than an artistic production.

[@romanjohnsson6183]

Jeru Sanders it can also cost too much

[@Degdreams]

Businesses are for money.

[@anlasma7942]

Some art can sell for millions of dollars, but none of them costs that much to make.

[@keniak1-g960]

Money talks dude.

[@talongreenlee7704]

That would, in fact, be the main difference between the AAA industry and the indie space in the minds of most players

[@ThatGuySquippy]

This is why I love and respect Naughty Dog so much. Everything they release is almost flawless and they're willing to make launch delays to ensure the game ships at the highest level of quality. Honestly, they probably just have a really kick ass QA team...

[@joaomarcoscosta4647]

Great video, as always! By the way, I am a little curious about something: Why do we sometimes take so long to see an official patch to something that the community managed to fix within days after a title's release?

[@MurasakiNoKami]

the company has to delegate the time, money, and resources to fix it, if it's not the #1 thing on their to-do list, it might take awhile before they actually assign people to the task the community is likely willing to do it for free, depending on the game, there could be thousands of people working on fixing the issue, and since they don't have a schedule to follow, they can start working on it immediately.

[@Evan24_7]

This is fun to watch after cyberpunk 2077’s release

[@deamon6681]

The illustrations usually vary from funny to smile inducing, but "launch window" realy got me bursting into laughter.

[@Malidictus]

"The increased cost of game development" comes down to a bloated marketing budget more often than not. Because executives treat games like packaged goods, they often invest more money into advertising their game than they did into actually making it. And I don't mean that just in terms of TV ads or magazine covers. Licensing a more expensive engine so you can brag about how your game is "more modern" when you had extensive infrastructure built in a preexisting one is done primarily for the sake of hype and generating pretty bullshots than for the sake of making a better game. Enter Mass Effect - a game which was simultaneously overhyped and underdeveloped. Their character animations - especially facial animations - are bare-bones not because the animators failed but because a lot of it isn't animate AT ALL. From the looks of it, it seems like the developers had to switch from Unreal 3 where they had the game's entire infrastructure already built into Frostbite 2 where everything had to be done from scratch. Apparently, facial animation was intended to be handled by some kind of procedural algorithm, potentially tweaked by hand in some cases, but none of that happened as they ran out of time before the end of the fiscal year. While games these days are expensive to make, a lot of that expense is wasted, as far as I'm concerned.

[@kenoua]

This is why a Day 1 patch is god bless for devloppers. When a game is being published, since the game must be burned on disks, there is obiously a long period of time between the official release and the date of the chosen game build. This way, devs can continue to work on the game and release a patch on the launch day without having to delay the game further.

[@splatm4n8]

0:30 that is what I find when I find secrets in a game

[@RiverSiege]

Thanks for the video, getting behind the scenes understanding is helpful when it comes to seeing through the veil of industry workings.

[@WannabeCanadianDev]

Guys basically just watch Shirobako an anime about the production process behind popular anime and you'll see a working example of what Dan and James talks about in action; for a different medium ofc, but still, it's very similar.

[@DKen2021]

Oh yes, its definitely an interesting show. It really gives you insight that there are actual humans behind the process dealing with real life things instead of people in stuffy business suits throwing darts at the board. I don't watch that much anime, but I loved what I watched.

[@WannabeCanadianDev]

1. Problems with 3rd party contractors. Check. 2. Problems with inexperienced staff. Check. 3. Sometimes you have incompetent staff leading to miscommunication issues and drama between immature staff. Check. (Tarou!) 4. Conflict and confusing demands/requirements from On High. Check. 5. Director/Producer short comings. Check. 6. Complications due to problems being caught too late to be solved without large amounts of crunchtime. Check. Virtually any problem with the release with a AAA game has occurred in Shirobako except for problems with technology/backend not panning out as expected.

[@ark14700]

Raenir Salazar That's been in my backlog for a few weeks, funny to find it mentioned here lol

[@WannabeCanadianDev]

Anime fans and creative types and gaming have a large overlap.

[@davidpoketrainer]

Having just watched it through 2 weeks ago it definitely does give you a good idea of work flow issues.

[@g-rated-g]

This was one of the most concise and fair presentations of this situation. Thank you for making this

[@madman19931612]

good video, simply explaining why without judgement. very well done guys! i just wonder how it can be "too expensive" sometimes when a modder can fix it in just a couple of days in some cases?

[@b1uezer]

I watched 1:24 about 5 times because I couldn't stop laughing at how well that "buggy" animation was pulled off.

[@darcgibson5099]

This is not sustainable business practice. This is what happens when business crowbars its way into art without understanding it or having any particular passion for it. Rather than working for the fans, devs are working for shareholders who don't care about anything other than seeing returns on their investment because they likely don't play videogames or see them as an art form.

[@Gothic7876]

They are to release, if they aren’t releasing they aren’t making money. That means that company can go bust. And while Games can be an art form, it’s IS a business, due to the amount of effort to make them. Only the uninformed declare its purely an art.

[@MyShiroyuki]

We need a healthy balance of both business and passion for art.

[@mcming3338]

Congratulations for 1 million subs. I've been watching your channel longer than I've had an account. Great job!

[@TroubleShotVFX]

Except for Nintendo. Fucking wizards those guys.

[@alvin_row]

Yeah... now that I think about it, they worked on BOTW for so long they probably had to re-do the entire thing twice.

[@nathanbrutal4183]

Very true! I personally am a pathetic game developer, but building bad games gives me a lot more appreciation for ok games.

[@staticbits]

What comes too my mind when I hear "buggy games": Goat Simulator

[@MrMoon-hy6pn]

Bugs are apart of the goat simulator experience, bethesda is what I think of when you say bugs

[@nivek6728]

tabs

[@ecupcakes2735]

thank u for making this video. often people dont recognise that game development is complex, but humans are even more complex than that. thank you for remindng people that there are people working very hard behind thr scenes, and no bad decisions are made with the intention of dissapointing the public. like in any life situation some things cant be helped and all we can do is try to fix the mistakes thay have already happened.

[@kingdarious9244]

I bet Mass Effect Andromeda help inspire this video.

[@extrahistory]

Funny enough, we made a really in-depth analysis video about that specific title a month-ish ago! kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZqLZp6CMpbhmd6M

[@BingBangPoe]

Probably did, look at Commander Shepard at 0:30.

[@demetronix]

no mans sky

[@ztcgamer9652]

King Darious 0:30

[@arrgghh1555]

Bethesda

[@thunderboltll]

After watching this video I'd like to commend Ivory Tower for their work on the Crew. The Crew was almost unplayable when it first came out. Riddled with bugs and texture/sound errors that most likely stemmed from them building their engine from the ground up it was difficult to swallow at the best of times. They released a FREE patch that fixed so many of the game's errors and made it look and sound gorgeous. I can't imagine how much work and begging to Ubisoft that must've taken. Good work guys and best of luck on The Crew 2.

[@TheWunn79]

Oh hey, Truck Shepard. Fancy seeing you here.

[@jajssblue]

Great video! But I feel like it deserves a follow up on "How to effectively communicate bugs!" I know there are a lot of prisoner dilemma-esque quandaries with such a proposal. But the fact that buggy launches are inevitable makes me wonder if there isn't some kind of marketing or communication move that can address it.

[@ESPmrBrough]

imagine in future years when game development is much more common knowledge, just as how more people can write music or literature now than in the past. i think there'll be a lot more unique projects produced with passion and to the creator's best ability for the *sole* purpose of *being a great game.*

[@aspenfacer-valentine4397]

Ehhhh, it's better to compare games to movies than any old media. Much like a movie, you need a lot of people working together to make it work right. Sure, there are some games (And movies) that are one man projects, but those are hardly the norm, and often have a much longer development cycle because it's just the one person. Otherwise, you have to rely on mutual devotion to art to hold a non-professional dev team together. These... game-making conglomerates would break up for the same reason that bands do, possibly without ever finishing a game because of the time development takes.

[@Karsten1]

Keep up the good content, awesome that your Videos can be listened to without losing too much, like a game dev Podcast 👌

[@cyberrb25]

I would say that this has become an aware thing on recent years. Mainly because of 2 reasons (but still find it interesting AND compelling to talk about outsourced tools VS internal ones): 1) *Games are on the Internet.* Makes no sense right? Well, two cons of the Internet are that when there's a bug in a game, even if it is because of a single hard-to-achieve string of actions, people will yell and Internet will make it's way to become an echo. As soon as there is a video of "I played X videogame and this is what happened", it's already late. Also, new games which can now be patched, no matter how fussy a bug is, people will yell for it. Pokémon Red and Blue launched 2 years in the West after the original launch, and they had a bunch of bugs. However, as they cannot be patched, they aren't to be yelled at. 2) *Games are bigger.* As many people begin to think open world is justice, worlds become a much bigger hassle to debug. Just because the arrange of actions is bigger, the possible combinations make it a hell to find those pesky bugs to patch. That's why there is usually some time after the launch line that devs make the fixing to the game; just because 2 million users playing the game is the best way to encounter bugs, even if 2k beta testers know better what things to look at than them. It's like fine cracking v. brute force cracking.

[@Flowtail]

I think that having some more specific examples of games that have fallen into these traps might've helped me understand the scope of this problem a little more. Even so, excellent video as always, guys!

[@anderskorsback4104]

I would think that such specific examples would be business secrets. Thus the Extra Credits team can only speak in general game industry insider experience terms.

[@NelsonStJames]

Which still begs the question, regardless of the reasons, if your buggy game hurts your franchise, causes the game not to sell, and causes buyers to now be leery of your company name, is it worth it? Especially when you consider that game patches don't come out of no where. Eventually someone is going to get tasked with fixing a buggy game somewhere down the line. For some major titles (we won't say who), from a merely business perspective it seems like it's worth it to release your game as bug free as possible up front considering the reaction to that game could negatively affect any other games on your schedule to be released.

[@RawkLobstah88]

1:30 Dammit Dan, I was drinking. Now I got soda everywhere.

[@KnakuanaRka]

All of this factory-line nonsense is why I think the low-key and indie game industry is preferable to the AAA. Games should be seen more as an art form than a carte blanche to print money; this lack of passion is a major issue. That, and my lack of money and a restriction to the DS line, Wii, and iOS means I can’t really play these AAA games even if I wanted.

[@Fantashic]

I love the monster factory references in this, especially since it's basically a series made to try to make games buggy.

[@Owlr4ider]

Once in a while heh? Even in 2017 this trend has started to become common. Nowadays the absolute majority of games, especially triple A games, are released buggy, broken and unfinished. The whole games as a service model is reinforcing this attitude of fixing it later, if at all. All these excuses about development costs and release windows are just that, excuses. At the end of the day it's about standards and acceptance. If you were to buy a new car and than realize it wasn't completely finished or there was an issue with the brakes would you accept that and just move on? Hell no, you'll be up in arms demanding a refund and suing the car company for endangering you for driving without functional brakes on a brand new car. I mean sure brakes are an extreme example but even something smaller like the windows failing to roll down would lead to a similar result(barring the lawsuit, which would be altered or outright forsaken). So why is it that when it comes to games we're so much more accepting and making excuses for the developers/publishers rather than call them out for this phenomenon and demanding for it to stop?

[@olivierreeves8201]

You actually added Boy Mayor of Second Life and Totino's in an episode, you guys are heroes

[@Cassibales123]

Wow, way more complex than i thought.

[@klaussone]

Still, you are a costumer whatever the reason behind a buggy game are that copay's problem not yours. A buggy game is worth less than a good less buggy game. So use your money accordingly. It is of every developer and publisher best interest to deliver new games not only good and innovative, but also to make it as bug ridden as possible it a game is to succeed. The whole deal about complaining about buggy games is not about if the developers are lazy or not. It is about consumer interest. Again extra-credits takes a side of developing witch is fine. just not something to build your practices upon. Its not the whole picture, just part of it, we still need to focus on the part that concern us as the public who pays the bills.

[@loganoates6683]

Crazy Nerd Than* Sorry, had to!

[@deworde]

killaken2000 I think that makes sense. But understanding this stuff is a good way of managing the frustration.

[@Thraim.]

Of course, making something almost from scratch is always complex. The problem is that every other field that designs things faces pretty much the same hurdles but doesn't get away with selling their product even though it doesn't work properly yet.

[@101jir]

Also, the more we know as consumers the more pinpointed feedback we can give to devs, assuming they care. And if they don't, well it will be a slow (or perhaps a very fast) spiral to bankruptcy for them.

[@smol_white_bat]

You get to experience this in game jams. You have a time limit, there might be bugs, you can try to fix those but sometimes it can break the game, so you just patch it however it works and ship it like that.

[@therealmistermemer]

"In Vault 76, our future begins."

[@deanvangreunen6457]

I love the buggy animation made, looks legit!

[@carloemanueledoria7648]

todd howard: because it just works!

[@brettd2308]

I used to work as a QA tester for a major publisher, and it's definitely true that most buggy games are a result of production pipeline issues rather than any laziness or lack of testing as you often see fans complaining about. For every single game I tested (or helped test during their crunch time, which is a common practice), the last few weeks of the project would see almost all reported bugs marked as "known/shippable" by the developer because they just weren't cost effective to address at that late stage. This usually led to a lot of frustration among testers, since we still had to work all day and meet our quotas (difficult for a highly polished game), only for the devs to not be able to do anything about the bugs we'd find unless one was major and game breaking (which we'd define as literally making the game unplayable, ie crashing or freezing), in which case they'd scramble to try to fix it in time.

[@jackflynn1360]

boy mayor for second life mayor

[@brannanvitek1035]

*Awesome* video, guys! Wonderful information, thank you!

[@froginatub]

That beautiful truck Shepard tho. Amazing.

[@ChefAndyLunique]

This is a video that every single reviewer, influencer and fan should watch. So much isn't understood and I'm grateful you discussed this. Thankyou always

[@ThaOrg]

Men, I loved this one! More about game develempont please. Maybe some kind of most used game engines or the revolution of engines.

[@MikeSandersman1]

That moment when every American goes "Ooooohhh!" to the mention of Fortnight 4:32

[@Josearnaldomanuel2]

but but but Valve time..... I think it's also because of pre-ordering. It gives a reason for the Management to not give a care what people think since they already bought it.

[@LeonNighttime]

"Every once in a while..." ahahahaaaaaa X'D made my day

[@marscaleb]

"They might be more than a delay could ever fix." You say that, and yet they DO get fixed. Those big name AAA studios manage to get fixes out eventually. This really isn't about game making in general, this is about certain companies being really bad at what they are doing. Because you can easily track which studios have more problems with this than others.

[@FraserSouris]

Not often and not always. There are many games like Duke Nukem and Rogue Warriour that never got fixed

[@reubenfrench6288]

I feel like option 3: "We just didn't catch it." is a lot more common in games that go through regular patches.

[@joechip1232]

The easy solution for gamers is to stop preordering games and to wait to buy them until the major bugs are fixed.

[@Roxor128]

If you're cheap enough, this kind of happens by default while you wait for the game to get a suitable sale.

[@muraalia]

The art in this episode made me smile a lot. Cute bugs :)