Tom's Hardware slams developers

[Pennybags]

I think the article was a well written article that addresses the feelings many gamers are beginning to feel. I, for one, am feeling about the same way and am glad someone on a well published site has spoken up about it. Will it have any impact? Maybe if enough people speak up. I love BF2 but the fact remains, a buggy game should not be released! He brings up a very good point about the testing issues. They supposibly have a good amount of people they PAY to test out the game, and if they can not see obvious bugs we have seen in this game, wtf are they good for?

[imported_Bossman]

Just exactly what bugs are you dudes talking about when you say "the game still has bugs"?

They always blame the bugs when they get owned.

[exho]

bahhhh noones perfect, even the antichrist (EA) makes mistakes haha.

lol so true my friend

[stormwolf]

DICE guys, DICE. Not EA.
EA is marketing the game. Good marketing can sell you anything. The problem is that DICE allows itself to release a game with serious bugs. A more costumer oriented company would not agree to release such a buggy game.

[UnrealAlex]

I think we all need to copy that and send an email to EA/Dice with those exact words. If they wake up to find their email filled with 200+ emails of this they are bound to get the message -_-

Dude speaks the truth. We should boycott the expansion until they fix bf2 seriously.

[ODB]

I think a little bit of balance and thoughts from the other side need to be brought in here. I've worked in QA for both game Developers and Publishers and they know about these issues of patching and bugs but the bottom line is that of deadlines.

No matter how large the company (either the publisher or developer) they are funding all development of the company out of reserves of money they already have, therefore major delays to release of the game cost them large amounts of money. Everything runs to deadlines, deadlines for when the final code has to ship to the factories where they press the discs, deadlines for when the artwork has to be finished, deadlines for demos, previews and publicity. If these are missed the cost and negative impact is huge.

Then theres the whole QA testing issue, they have to do everything from test the game with every conceivable hardware combination to test every type and style of play. Its not easy and its all too possible that issues and flaws slip through. Evn if every issues/flaws are brought up they is often not time to correct them as the problems can run deep. When you add on the pressures of people bombarding the company for the latest patch or update then its all to easy to see why there is a good enough attitude.

[stormwolf]

...
Then theres the whole QA testing issue, they have to do everything from test the game with every conceivable hardware combination to test every type and style of play. Its not easy and its all too possible that issues and flaws slip through. Evn if every issues/flaws are brought up they is often not time to correct them as the problems can run deep. When you add on the pressures of people bombarding the company for the latest patch or update then its all to easy to see why there is a good enough attitude.

Man, I work in game development. Currently, not in desktop games, but I've had my share of QA and development of software.
There are bugs which the mind can not tolerate. An eralier version of my company developed the USAF and IAF simulators, and knowing the people involved which I now work with - there is no way they would release games with the low level of QA that BF series has. By the way they worked "under the ambrela" of EA too. Please note that my company has got numorous reaction of unbelife regarding our QA level. This is due to a very high standard, that basically means - if we know about a bug, it will be not released as a part of the next version. Of course there are tons of bugs that are hard to find, and that will slip the testing phase. But no way we will say - this is just a "small" issue. Let's wait to next version to fix it.
How does a server browser gets released like it was released in BF2? There are basic options there that don't work. Pressing the filter and needing to restart the game? What the hell? I doubt you can say this can not be tested. If DICE did not find the server browser bugs before release, there is something deeply wrong there.

A final note - I am in owe of the BF series. I don't think there is any matching game play and game balance in the multiplayer games world (it has it's weakness, as everything in the world does).
BF2 is an amazing acheivment of game play.
But, DICE should find what is wrong with how they develop the game, that they end up selling us buggy games. One solution could have been releasing the demo 3 month earlier as a beta version to learn the problems of the game (they at least would have solved the server browser issues like that).

[big_sammy_b]

yeah its things like this that make me say fair play to developers like rockstar games with the GTA series.

There games are always complete when they hit the shelves with the excetion of Vice City where there was a patch but only a compatibility patch for certain gfx cards that you only installed if you had a problem. Other than that you can see they make sure its finioshed upon release. Very rare thing these days.

[Alphaeno]

All I gotta say is, new engines comes with new bugs, if this guy knew anything about developing games besides using the basic terms (such as htiboxes and netcoding) then he would have never posted the article.

The point is, everyone who whines and complains thinks that if they were handed the source code for BF2 and everything Dice/EA worked on, they could make BF2 bugless. Nobody truly knows the difficulty of making TODAYS games perfect for play. There is no game on todays market that does not have bugs. Yet, they continue to call EA/Dice morons for not fixing bugs that they consider could be fixed by 14 yr olds, BUT, I don't see the complainers giving out solutions to these bugs.

You should really read what you type before you hit the submit button. I wish I could wait for the games to come out and be patched, but I am addicted to these games and must have them the first day. I think EA and other companies know this.

[ODB]

Man, I work in game development. Currently, not in desktop games, but I've had my share of QA and development of software.
There are bugs which the mind can not tolerate. An eralier version of my company developed the USAF and IAF simulators, and knowing the people involved which I now work with - there is no way they would release games with the low level of QA that BF series has. By the way they worked "under the ambrela" of EA too. Please note that my company has got numorous reaction of unbelife regarding our QA level. This is due to a very high standard, that basically means - if we know about a bug, it will be not released as a part of the next version. Of course there are tons of bugs that are hard to find, and that will slip the testing phase. But no way we will say - this is just a "small" issue. Let's wait to next version to fix it.
How does a server browser gets released like it was released in BF2? There are basic options there that don't work. Pressing the filter and needing to restart the game? What the hell? I doubt you can say this can not be tested. If DICE did not find the server browser bugs before release, there is something deeply wrong there.

A final note - I am in owe of the BF series. I don't think there is any matching game play and game balance in the multiplayer games world (it has it's weakness, as everything in the world does).
BF2 is an amazing acheivment of game play.
But, DICE should find what is wrong with how they develop the game, that they end up selling us buggy games. One solution could have been releasing the demo 3 month earlier as a beta version to learn the problems of the game (they at least would have solved the server browser issues like that).

I'm not saying that they didn't know about some fo the bugs but more over its a case of not having enough resources to fix them. It might be that the browser issue was less of a problem than for example some game play issues. Therefore the game was released with the intention to resolve the browser issue later when both time and money allowed. I have seen both developers and publishers go bust as they have tried to release bug free games only to run out of money, go bust and then nothing is released. More ofen than not games are released not as the creators wanted but because of money demands.

[big_sammy_b]

^^ except for games released by rockstar.

Why do you think that is?

[imported_fvbyfv]

This whole article is about GLARING bugs, bugs that are there and a 2 year old can see, bugs that should be wrapped up before its sent to the public. Patches to fix lesser known bugs then can be released and since the patch is on their time table the patch in NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM should introduce a flaw that makes the developer ask the consumer to reinstall the game without the patch because they screwed up.

[stormwolf]

I'm not saying that they didn't know about some fo the bugs but more over its a case of not having enough resources to fix them. It might be that the browser issue was less of a problem than for example some game play issues. Therefore the game was released with the intention to resolve the browser issue later when both time and money allowed. I have seen both developers and publishers go bust as they have tried to release bug free games only to run out of money, go bust and then nothing is released. More ofen than not games are released not as the creators wanted but because of money demands.

My company does not know a phrase like: "It might be that the browser issue was less of a problem than for example some game play issues". There is no less of a problem. There is a problem and we will solve it. I worked in another company that QA there had great people, but nobody cared what we reported - it was like reporting a bug was intefering with their marekting plan or something. "Hmm yes, this is a bug, but we have no time". While I was trying to reproduce bugs I found 10 others. It was horrible. We had a huge testing department, comparing to the neededs, but developars were not enough I guess. The production was badly planned.

[Berrern]

yeah its things like this that make me say fair play to developers like rockstar games with the GTA series.

There games are always complete when they hit the shelves with the excetion of Vice City where there was a patch but only a compatibility patch for certain gfx cards that you only installed if you had a problem. Other than that you can see they make sure its finioshed upon release. Very rare thing these days.

You can't compare game development for consoles and PC's.

When developing games for the PC, the developers are making a game that has to work on literally millions of different configurations. Different hardware components, different boot systems, different programs installed etc. etc.

When developing console games, there's just one hardware setup - and the same bug/problem will show up on all consoles.

Because of this it's "easier" to code out bugs for console games.

[ODB]

My company does not know a phrase like: "It might be that the browser issue was less of a problem than for example some game play issues". There is no less of a problem. There is a problem and we will solve it. I worked in another company that QA there had great people, but nobody cared what we reported - it was like reporting a bug was intefering with their marekting plan or something. "Hmm yes, this is a bug, but we have no time". While I was trying to reproduce bugs I found 10 others. It was horrible. We had a huge testing department, comparing to the neededs, but developars were not enough I guess. The production was badly planned.

I'm glad that your company has those standards but not every company does or can afford to. But this is all hypothesising really, unless anyone can give us the inside story on the development of the game we can't label them lazy, cheap or incompetant. It might be that there were larger issues facing Dice and EA than the browser issue I don't know.

It would be cool for all games to be released bug free but that ain't gonna happen.