I guess the argument could be made that the games *are* in fact "working, polished and reasonably entertaining". Imagine if any of the games you mention had come out ten or fifteen years ago - nobody would have been able to stop talking about them! Modern AAA games are cursed with ambition, they have to push the envelope and that leads to bugs among other things. They costs a fortune so they must try to appeal to everyone and the end product shows a certain blandness and loss of character as a result. Smaller games aren't subject to the same constraints - they may be less of a spectacle but they can be themselves.

That's my impression, anyway. I haven't played any of the games on your list. I picked up the Humble roguelite deckbuilder bundle last week, and Fights in Tight Spaces - the main reason I got it as I had Dicey Dungeons already - is my favourite game of the last year. But the games in that are a very specific niche and I am guaranteed to like pretty much all of them.

What I like these days is shorter, more compact experiences. Open-world games and 4X games are just too big, sprawling and slow. I wish there were more games like Ozymandias.



 

It seems to me that the AAA games industry is confused about its own business model at the moment.

On the one hand they are addicted to pre-orders and massive day one sales so they invest enormous amounts in publicity and hype at the expense of actually polishing the game.

On the other hand AAA games are increasingly embracing live service models in the hopes of getting ongoing revenue streams from people who play the game long term.

These two different business models do not work well together because releasing a buggy mess that has been hyped up to the heavens is the surest way of killing any hope of establishing a long term player base.

Here's a gratuitous indie game recommendation for you: Dredge is a fishing game with a Lovecraftian horror thing going on. It is very well done and quite compelling.
 

I think the comparison is a bit off as you are buying an established product off the shelf instead of a pre-release prototype and the goals of an edge trimmer are measurable. So you wouldn’t buy a pair of scissors or a chainsaw even if they were advertised or could be used for the same goal. You can’t do that with a game because the definition of fun and enjoyment are not the same for each user.

It’s also unlikely that you are going to spend hours on end using the edge trimmer or trying out different methods of achieving the goal. So even if there are some flaws with it, you are more likely to ignore them if they don’t impact you too much and you won’t compare the edge trimmer to a pair of scissors or the chainsaw.

I would also not compare a game to a movie because there are just no moving parts in a movie. It either plays or it doesn’t and that’s easy to verify. Maybe a tent or some flat pack furniture that is used in a multitude of situations and various user levels would be better. Like, are the instructions clear enough, what outside conditions are there that impact use, etc.
Cyberpunk 2077 had bugs but there was the bigger issue with the world just feeling dead and repeated.

Development time unfortunately also means little. D3 and D4 were both in development for years and while I played D3 for a quite bit after launch and in the seasons after and the open beta for D4, D3 isn’t good and I’m not really interested in D4.
While someone interested in FPS games might be happy with a new Call of Duty every year.
 

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This is a long form medium. If you want to post angry / snarky one-liners, please do that on Twitter, where that sort of content belongs. If you want to post your opinion here, you’ll need to at least put in minimal effort to explain your disagreement.

On the question whether two things can be compared, I would point out Venn diagrams. In most instances there is an overlap somewhere, but it is not complete. Garden tools and video games are obviously not the same, but I can still compare them as consumer goods, and the question of consumer confidence in a product being roughly in line with the marketing for that product. And if you were to talk about the carbon footprint comparison between locally grown fruit compared to imported ones, it would be absolutely valid to compare apples and oranges.
 

The video game industry is getting exactly what it deserves with Redfall and Gollum, not to mention other games that are very buggy on release. When you choose to cut or lowball the QA/QC budget, you're going to miss a ton of bugs and gameplay issues. Or, in the case of EA forcing Frostbyte on games it wasn't designed for, you're going to have a dev team spending most of its time treading water rather than pushing forward every time there's a change to the engine.

The reason why you can walk up to the store, look at pricing and models, and select an edge trimmer is precisely because the review process works. Reviewers calling out faults in product design and QA/QC influence people's buying habits, and companies have been forced over time to build better and more reliable products if they want to customers to buy. You can argue that blind brand loyalty can short circuit this process --I'm looking at you, automotive industry-- but by and large the process works. You don't have to think too much about what you're buying now because enough other people do and have put in the legwork to make sure that's the case.

This method of accountability has yet to show up in the video games industry, as people still continue to pre-order games and spend money on companies with the worst forms of predatory monetization practices. Until those buying habits change, the industry won't change.
 

That's a funny comparison, but I like it. I tend not to trust based on brand name alone now. For example, I've bought Levi jeans for a long time. A few years ago I bought the same pants I'd been buying for years and Levi had changed them. It was my fault for not paying strict attention - same product name, different product. I hated those new versions and realized brands can't be trusted - they, like people, change over time.

Pre-orders are a different concept to me. With a released product you can read reviews, compare and contrast. However, pre-orders are a black box, you just don't know what you'll really receive. What's shown is usually perfectly crafted to hide any negatives and just isn't a realistic depiction of the product in my experience.

I've pre-ordered a few games but I'm finished with pre-orders unless the perks are amazing and can't be reproduced in-game. Modern games are just too complicated to ensure that they'll work well initially. I did pre-order Cyberpunk 2077. Luckily I played on PC and had minimal issues. It became one of my favorite games due to the world building, story, open world setting, combat mechanics, music, and controls. The stories are what really sucked me in though. It's the same reason why I like Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto games. I am really looking forward to the expansion later this year - however I an NOT pre-ordering it. I'll wait a week or so after release so that I can ensure that it is what it's being portrayed to be and works as intended.
 

So the topic of brand names is an interesting one when it comes to videogames. How can we trust brand names when the studios are often undergoing massive turnover all the time. The Blizzards and Biowares of today are completely different teams then the Blizzard and Bioware of 2010 or even 2000.

The only consistency would be with smaller studios that focus on a single genre. For example if I know a game is being developed by NetherRealm studios then I can safely assume it's going to be a competent 2D fighting game with 3D elements. The studio has a defined scope and genre that it has consistently worked on for decades regardless of staff changes. Now each game they develop can still be good or bad but at least I know what to expect.
 

Of course can you compare them in terms of consumer confidence, my point was rather that you are looking at an established product with defined criteria (so it’s easy to evaluate as well) and a black box that could turn out to be an edge trimmer or it could be a pair of scissors.

For me comparing Amazon and brand edge trimmers is like saying "I’m looking for an FPS" and then picking up CoD as an established brand. You will probably end up with an alright shooter but the same person might have only little fun playing Against the Storm.

So the overall confidence of picking up any random hyped game and having fun is probably about the same as picking any random garden tool trying to trim edges. It’s just much more obvious from the get go, that certain tools will be unsuited.
 

This is an interesting point and I agree.

With some game brands, you do know what you'll be getting - if you buy a Nintendo or Blizzard game, you know it will be very well polished and likely a very good example of whatever game type it is. The latest FIFA will always be a super-polished game that is similar to last year's version. A new game in the Total War or Elder Scrolls series will be buggy and have play issues, but you know they will patch it to a quality product eventually.

Beyond those, you're right, who knows what you're going to get.
 

I'd say there are significant difference between video game and trimmer business.

I'm not expert on trimmers, but I can assume that they don't have much innovation going, and that 10 years old model is likely as good as last month's one. Video games business, on the other hand, usually assumes high degrees of technical innovation. Tech progresses quite fast, so even if you're copying existing mechanics, you'll have to adapt them to the current technologies. That's even more true if you're betting on new mechanics that require innovative tech. In this regard it would be more fair to compare video games to spacecraft: each project is unique and highly complex, so sometimes rockets fail to launch or explode in the sky no matter how hard people try to prevent that.

In ideal world, all games would have great quality assurance. But this is quite costly, because you cannot do that in parallel with development. A big part of QA has to come after the game is done. This would lead to a big chunk of the team doing nothing (unless you have financial and organizational resources to develop the next game before you even start selling your previous game, which only bigger devs can afford). So if you want half year of a polish, instead of "pay 10 more employees for half a year", it's "pay the whole company for half a year". This would probably drive game prices quite high.

The problem with this approach is that game dev is a high risk undertaking. A game can fail due to design, marketing, and technical reasons. Even if you pour a lot of resources into polishing technical part, other two factors still remain a big risk. This disincentives devs from overcommitting to polishing, because even perfectly polished game can easily become a flop.

So as I see it, the question is not "produce buggy games vs produce polished games". It's "produce buggy games vs produce no games at all". Ambitious games like Vampire: Bloodlines and TES2: Daggerfall might be buggy, but at least they _exist_ and we can enjoy them in _some_ form. Which I would say is a miracle in itself.
 

Tangentially related to the quality concerns that you raised - I get the feeling that debugging is a tedious and boring part of game development even if it is very necessary. With the limited amount of programming that I've done I know I hate debugging. Spending hours pouring over code only to realize that I made a syntactical error was painful for me. I wonder if this will be an area where AI will be very useful and if it is will the days of very bugging programs will be relegated to the past.
 

Janous: "With the limited amount of programming that I've done I know I hate debugging. Spending hours pouring over code only to realize that I made a syntactical error was painful for me. I wonder if this will be an area where AI will be very useful […]"
As a fellow sometimes programmer, I think it’s two things: one is lack of experience, preparation and planning. I just don’t approach my projects in an ordered fashion, so there won’t be a good code structure and a lot of things are added and changed ad hoc. So the result is a mess and it naturally leads to syntax errors or logical mistakes.
The other is lack of procedures: I do a bit here and see where that gets me, then I find that I could need that and add it, then the code could be better and I do that for a bit, etc.
Syntax errors are sometimes present, but most IDEs provide syntax highlighting already. So you are informed about malformed code right away. Way trickier are logical mistakes that have valid code but not your intention.
I don’t think an AI can help much in those cases as it would have to interpret your intentions - and what if it thinks your mistake is your intention and the rest doesn’t fit?
 

@Tobold complexity is relevant here. I don't think a hedge trimmer requires hundreds of programmers and support staff to make one, and its functionality is very clearly defined and limited. A video game is a unique beast. Even in comparing it to film, where a comparable number of people may work on a project, you will still find that the number of "moving parts in action" are far narrower than a video game, though a movie will be just as quickly panned for bad acting, bad pacing, bad cinematography, bad writing, and bad FX. In fact.....I kind of think that as much as people like to groan about weird game bugs, we're nowhere near as picky as the average film critic (pro or amateur).
 

Any specific reason why you didn't choose Diablo IV? I know I'm a bit of a Blizzard fanboy, so take this comment from that perspective, but if your criteria are working, polished and at least reasonably entertaining, it would sure fit the bill! Working and polished is objectively very much the case. I know "reasonably entertaining" is subjective, but based on your other comments ARPG is not something you shy away from and within that category, D4 is surely one of the best games ever released. Furthermore it can be scaled in difficulty to suit your preference as needed and even if you only play the campain, side quests and some exploration (and don't go into the D4 endgame grind or seasons) you'd still be looking at less than 1 EUR per hour played!
 

I would say that Diablo IV was one of the year’s “good” releases. I am still on the fence about it, because I played Diablo Immortal, and would need to have a much more in depth look at Diablo IV to see whether it is different enough from Immortal, which I could play for free.
 

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PErsonal advice: if you already enjoy Diablo Immortal then don't spend $70 for Diablo IV.

It has a nice campaign, but once you're done with it... The endgame is (still) non existent. You basically finish the campaign at level 45-ish. Then you're left with open world activities (think of bounties from D3) which become extremely repetitive/trivial and boring in a single day. The grind to level 100 is an absolute chore: slow, ultra-slow. Maybe even worse than Path Of Exile.

Gear itemization isn't good either. You will be chasing the same good item over and over, just with different stats. Builds diversity? Well, almost none: some skills are mandatory and you're locked into very few options. The game also lacks any kind of "game/build changer" item, so if you start as a "flurry rogue" you will hit level 100 and still be a flurry rogue.

Also: no map overlay, no customizable UI, no trading, no group finder (LFG), no build/skill loadup (saving) and a few other missing QoL's from D3. It's an online game but there is absolutely zero user interaction. If you ever played PoE, that game has more social tools than D4. Which says it all, sadly.

Unless you've got spare money, I'd say wait fors Season 1. Let it mature. Right now it's still really, really shallow (story aside, which is good).