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Can I have my money back please?
By Steve MacGregorBad Vibes
It sometimes feels as if we, the customers, are paying for the privilege of being beta testers. I am reminded of a story about the decline of the British motorcycle industry in the 1960s. A major British manufacturer had produced a series of ill-conceived, unreliable, and generally unpleasant motorcycles. A member of the press accused the company of not producing enough prototypes to allow extensive testing.
A senior member of the company replied, “On the contrary, we don’t produce anything else but prototypes”. I have the feeling that the games industry is going the same way. I have bought several games recently that feel half-finished or at the very least not properly tested, and I get the distinct impression that several publishers just don’t care any more.
Now it seems to me that some of the major players in the simulation market have got themselves into a difficult situation. They are concerned about predicted poor sales, and rush games through development and testing to reduce costs. The resulting games are all too often shoddy, badly received, and rightly achieve poor sales. The whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are threatened with no more hard-core simulations. I can’t say that I feel too concerned about this.
It may be true that companies like Microprose/Hasbro intend to pull back from this genre; but, given the appalling quality of their last product, how much of a loss will this be to us gamers? I believe that there will always be a market for high-quality, well-tested sims. I don’t think that there is a place for some of the dreadful quality stuff we have been subjected to recently. The moral for developers is simple: Don’t complain about lack of sales if you try to sell half-baked software.