Spectator-mode Notepad
It’s easy to get caught up in video game hype. It’s happened to me once or twice in the past couple of years. The Hogwarts game, Baldur’s Gate 3. Hell, I bought a new PC just to play Elden Ring.
But I’m going to tell you now that it’s a bad idea. And I’ll tell you exactly why.
Games rarely ship finished anymore. Most of them barely ship “finished”, ignoring testing and quality standards.
Every game releases a “Director’s Cut” version some time after the initial release. This is when to buy the game.
All too often, DLC feels like an integral part of the game instead of expansion, additional content. DLC designed to be added seamlessly to the game experience should be added to the game experience. DLC should take you above and beyond.
If you buy games on release, you’re paying to be a beta-tester. You’re handing over premium game prices to be testers for players like me, who won’t play things until they’ve been around for some time.
And in doing this, you allow lower quality results to be shipped, with companies knowing that the first month after their release is for hotfixes, patches and updates.
I don’t know why this is. I can think of two reasons:
1) Additional complexity in developement processes. 2) Greed.
I’d like to think it’s the former. I would hope it’s the former.
It’s probably the latter.