So what does this mean for patches? Today there are two ends of the spectrum, and for the sake of simplicity let's generalize. Don't read this as any kind of evaluation, rather let's consider the range of possibility. And in This Corner...!

In the left corner we have JANES. The "golden boy" is well dressed, his manager has diamond studded cufflinks. After all, there is "history" and that "old world" tradition at work here! The JANES team work feverishly to make the new title as perfect as it can be, right out of the chute.

Yes, to the delight of gamers world wide, JANES offer patches only when they have to and do so slowly and deliberately for one or two iterations only. Dust off the suit, hop out of the ring and that's an end of it. Hopefully it was a knockout blow in the third round, because if the second patch doesn't address your issue, be it bug fix or enhancement request, you are probably out of luck. WWII Fighters is the most recent release to follow this pattern.

In the other corner we have Microprose. He may not have the weight of tradition on his side, but he's in fighting trim and not afraid to try some new moves. The initial release of Falcon 4 was heavily bug ridden, even by MPS' own evaluation. But wait, the favorite is down but not out! He pulls himself up on the ropes. The "Golden Boy" thought the match was won, but it ain't over til it's over.

Microprose, bless their fighting hearts, have made a public commitment to continue supporting the product with patches until it's perfect. And in only three months they have shipped three patches with a clear roadmap for more.

Most of the hubris around the topic of patches seems to point to the conventional wisdom that Jane's are doing it right and Microprose are charlatans out for your wallet. Our little boxer scenario would lead to the opposite conclusion. I'm not so sure that either of these is correct, but perhaps Microprose is at least falling in the right direction.

The Eternal Upgrade: Fact or Fancy?

For my money, I'd rather have products that are given extended life by a continuous upgrade path. Particularly for sims with the depth and complexity of Jane's F-15 and Falcon4, I invest huge amounts of learning time. With F-15 my investment of time has already stopped giving returns; Jane's have as much as said that F-15 will evolve into some other form but it'll be a whole new universe and I've pretty much wrung the current scenarios dry. I had great fun while it lasted!.

With Falcon4's philosophy, especially given the track record MPS say they hope to duplicate from F3's "electronic battlefield" best-known-methods, my investment is likely to continue paying dividends. Rather than the terminal Universe of F15, Falcon4 will allow me to fly first with MiG drivers, then Hornet drivers, and after that SA-6 wallahs and other interesting things of that ilk (if Steve Blankenship's wish-list come to pass that is ;-).

So is it ok to release F4 with a huge bug list? No. And then again, maybe yes. I'd much prefer that we marry F4's development strategy with Jane's "JD Power" standard initial product quality. Who wouldn't choose that if it were possible. But then again perhaps in an Internet-time distribution model, maybe it's not such a big deal. Try a thought experiment with me...

Click to continue

The New Paradigm

Consider. How about a business plan that says: we build the game until we think it's ready for some amount of outside exposure. Peg this to what we know today as beta for most games though most companies will continue to do some level of "private" testing, so what I mean here is that code will be released earlier than the Janes standard.

At this point copies will ship via the net, for the intended purchase price, but make it clear to purchasers that you plan to continue development to completion and that they can expect to find unknown/unspecified problems.

Take the F4 approach and do incremental beta releases, er, I mean patches, and repeat until the software is finished. Make regular reports/updates to actual and potential buyers about the current state of the code and known problems etc. Let the punters decide at what stage they lay their hard earned cyber cash on the counter.

So Where's the Catch?

You don't want to deal with beta quality code? Don't buy the game until the updates show that the game meets your standards. Read the USENET news group or COMBATSIM.COM message boards for a while and you'll soon develop a personal feel for evaluating whether a game meets your requirements for prime time.

Don't have time for this? Are you sure? Considering the time I invest in learning a new sim, reading the forums for a while now and then is time well spent, especially if it saves me frustration with a game that won't meet my needs. And if your answer is still "no time!" then you are the person who should wait until a company says the game is done. Not that that is any guarantee of completion these days!

On the other hand, if you want to get your hands on the beta code for the new grail like all those lucky simulation writers and editors (;-D), now you have a way to do it. And you don't have to worry about NDAs and all the ticklish legalities that go along with them.

There are a couple of issues that need more thought here, I'll admit.

At what point is a game "done" and what's to stop a company taking money early and not following through until "done" comes along? I think "done" will be defined by some balance between customer demands for more fixes/updates and the marketing dweebs figuring out that they've saturated demand for sales anyway (hey, doing something new is never easy).

As for follow through, at least follow through on Internet time, companies that take the money and run from the hard core crowd will get to do that once. More likely not even half of once; people figure this stuff out pretty fast ;-). And statistics show that while the "hard core" crowd only account for about 20% of simulation sales, they have a HUGE influence over the rest of the crowd, to the tune of about 60%.

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