Ok gamers, it’s once again time to take out that mirror and take a look at ourselves as a group. A few weeks ago I noticed a tweet by a clearly rattled Jim Rossignol; linchpin of ‘Big Robot’, a tiny development team responsible for that excellent British romp ‘Sir! You are being hunted’ and ‘The Signal From Tölva‘ which won me over earlier this year with it’s sci-fi vistas.
The above tweet was the beginning of a mini-rant from Jim about the annoyances of some gamers assuming that the development of a title can go on perpetually; curious to know Jim’s views on the subject I decided to jump in to the conversation:
In his eyes it seemed quite clear that the finger could be squarely pointed at more successful titles that could afford to bankroll development and this had skewed the general perception that a game could simply be ‘done’. Of course (despite the increase in character limit) Twitter isn’t exactly the best place for complex discourse, even so, the exchange between us did stay with me, and the perception by some gamers that games can just continually be updated is one that I find distasteful for a few reasons. Game updates are not a bad thing inherently, there have been some excellent games that have maintained their popularity by evolving over time, but the expectation is potentially damaging to small teams like Big Robot who don’t have the resources to keep adding to their titles. Likewise it irks me that gamers are losing appreciation for something complete and finished; take Portal for example, in my opinion it’s a game that comes close to perfect and would suffer for the continual tweaks, extra levels, and presumably onslaught of hats that would have followed if development had continued. Think of any game that you consider to be a ‘classic’ and imagine that development had just perpetually continued to the point that the idea was wrung dry of everything that made it special. So is Jim right? Is this a symptom of the more lucrative titles having the cash to bankroll perpetual updates?
It’s not a trend that’s been with us that long; the first game that I came across to keep the updates rolling was Team Fortress 2, it’s a game I’ve sunk many hours into so the updates must have served their purpose and hooked me in, but in all honesty the core experience has been diluted by the endless loadout additions, dancing, and hats… Lots of hats. Six hundred and twenty four updates ago it was a very different beast, and first made an impression on me with the purity of those nine specific classes, each with a focused loadout, in a crisp, clean, highly stylised world. When the first major update rolled out the community went wild, servers were packed, players were stunned that a company that developed a game would release ‘more game’ after sale for free. Oh, and what was the update? … A map, a single additional map, Badlands. So at that point this was a new enough idea that it caused a stir despite being a relatively minor update by today’s standards.
Firstly Jim’s point is entirely valid; successful titles with high sales can continue to nurture those sales with the periodic boost that an update can have, but revenue doesn’t just come from shifting units. The scourge of paid DLC and microtransactions also make perpetual updates a useful and lucrative expectation for certain publishers to nurture and are often revenue streams that gamers see as much less significant than they are in reality. For publishers that regularly make hundreds of millions of dollars in these after-sale sales it’s obviously in their best interest to keep the ‘free’ content coming to retain the playerbase. I’d also argue however that there are a few other causes in that melting pot. Digital distribution itself had played its part; maybe ten years ago many (if not most) game sales were physical. You went to the shop, bought a box with a disc in it, and played it. Sure there might be the odd performance patch released, but in general the expectation was that what was in the box was the entire game and after a certain amount of time that game would disappear from the shelves of the store. With digital distribution we can now buy a game that’s ten years old as easily as one that was released yesterday, and yet we expect that game to be up to date, work perfectly with current hardware (for PC gaming). A minority will even moan in forums when the title hasn’t had a HD texture pack, or new episode released. It’s at least partially the accessibility that has driven this expectation.
We’re also living in the age of ‘early access’, a subject I covered previously in one of the very early blog ramblings, which has allowed small teams to bring in revenue during development, and get immediate player feedback. As I said at the time, some developers (Big Robot fall in to this category) have used early access to great success to offset their humble size with extensive player testing and feedback in order to release a final product. Unfortunately, given the shear number of early access titles available on Steam, there are those that sit in that early access phase indefinitely nurturing the player’s belief that this gradual stream of tweaks and updates will go on forever. I barely even register that some games are early access anymore.
The worst part is that I’m reluctantly tainted with the same expectation; during my recent playtime in the PU:BG I found myself thinking “Hmmm… they’ll need to sort that in the next update“, or, “Oh, there’s an update, what’s new?“. Sure it’s an early access title, but that’s a trivial thing to forget given the vast playerbase (recently surpassing 2 million concurrent players) and its overwhelming popularity for a title supposedly pre-release. In short, a few years ago most of us weren’t playing pre-release games, now we do it so often it’s become mundane, as has the process of updating and tweaking.
As consumers of games, we’re continually adapting to the changing market, distribution streams, revenue models, and individual publisher’s strategies. On an personal level we’re likely to either agree or disagree with these, but need to understand that everyone is doing things a little differently from their competitors and allow for this in our expectations. If a game is releasing ‘free’ updates maybe we need to take the time to think about how or why they are able to do this before taking it as the default. Likewise being able to buy a game and appreciate it as a finished work is an experience just as valid and that idea of seeing a creation ‘finished’ is one that I enjoy.
As always feel free to jump into the comments!
*Banner image: www.teamfortress.com
Hundstrasse 
Great article. With these constant updates, I think we may start to only see the flaws in games, rather than enjoying them for what they are at that moment.
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Thanks! I like how games (like all forms of media) are like a snapshot in time… Flaws and all…
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I’ve actually wondered this in relation to newer titles giving out free DLC way after release. I noticed it with shovel knight, although those updates where goals in its funding, not purely updates.
I guess I expect updates in competitive or games that need balance like Starcraft. Much less so in single player games (like I’m not going to go replay ffxv bc they changed the last chapter).
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I think you’re probably right that much of the ‘update culture’ has spread from the rise in popularity of multiplayer given that those games need lifetime support to maintain servers etc. So updates for balance, and then content are the natural progression from this
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I can definitely empathize with Mr. Rossignol. I think for a select few games with constant streams of income, it’s possible to continue updating. I think the downside to that model however is that it splits the development team. Instead of the developer focusing on the next major project, they spend time working on minor updates or DLC.
While I can agree that bug fixes and tweaks are entirely necessary, especially in multiplayer games, I don’t think that EVERY game NEEDS to receive constant updates; especially games from smaller studios.
I mostly just don’t like the sense of entitlement that some gamers exhibit. It’s a poor way to interact with a team of people that made something for the community to enjoy. That sort of behavior sucks the fun out of making something for others.
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Yeah, that ‘entitlement’ shown by a small fraction of gamers is something I’ve never understood. Sure you can have an opinion about a game, or the direction a Dev team has taken, but I don’t see how that translates into assuming that the developers are continually indebted to you.
*Sigh* …
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I feel like free updates should only be used to patch genuine errors, add promised material to the game, or provide some benefit on the backend. There are some developers who never look at how to improve their game, and essentially clone themselves, and they could benefit from reviewing their code, updating some content, and getting a little more familiar with their engine/programming of choice before moving on (*cough*FNAF*cough*). But outside of that, expecting free additions and dlc is just naive and entitled.
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Man I never thought about how DLCs and constant updates could effect smaller developers. Makes a lot of sense.
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I think seeing regular updates makes us see the flaws in games but, as a die hard Rocket League player I just love to see the new stuff they add each time. Rather it is a lootcrate, new maps, new cars or a new game mode. I just love it when Gaming Developers keep giving it their all on there good selling games (with a big player base as well).
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I don’t think there’s anything wrong with continual updates as a model for some games, but the idea that all developers can keep spending the resources developing old titles is unrealistic in many cases. I’m guessing that Rocket League maintains this development by paid DLC (or microtransactions?… Sorry, it’s not a game in familiar with).
Single player games in particular can’t be expected to keep up with the multiplayer titles in this respect as the revenue is almost exclusively generated at the initial point of sale
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That’s true RL keeps earning by Microtrasactions and DLC’s. That’s the biggest difference with Singleplayer games. One thing I am actually not a big fan of is that they release a game with so many bugs in it and just try to make up with it by releasing updates. When I play a game which has to many bugs in it I just think hell no i’m gonna play this even after an update. But that’s me!
In my opinion, Multiplayer games need constant updates. But the Price of the game should be a bit lower.
SinglePlayer games have to be bugless and are allowed to be €60,- haha
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I agree with you about the bugs – developers seem to see the ability to update post release as a get out for being thorough… Sure, some bugs always get through (particularly in PC gaming where everyone is running different hardware), but some games have been released in a near unplayable state in the past few years.
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Yes indeed and that’s the biggest downside about now a day developers. They just want to release games, make money from it and update later on or just stay in early access for the rest of their lives haha.
I must say I totally respect the choice of the developer from Assassin’s Creed Origins, Farcry 5 and The Crew. They just delayed the releases just to make sure to make the games better! That’s a thing I can respect. Even though Assassin’s Creed Origins is still quite buggy. But the game is amazing even with the bugs!
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Great article. I definitely agree for the most part. There are some games that I’ve played in recent years that I feel have kept updating for the sake of updating, and I think that takes away from the studio’s original concept for the game. Having said that, I’m curious what you think of situations like the one with Mass Effect: Andromeda. There are no more updates for the story campaign, despite the fact it’s still buggy as. I personally think it’s not right to have taken people’s money and then delivered a faulty product, and subsequently refused to fix it, but I’d love to hear another person’s take on it.
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It’s certainly a subject with many different angles to it. I only really touched on the expectation of the consumers here, but I agree that some developers are guilty of relying on the ability to update at a later date to fix clearly broken products.
Compared to other industries, gaming is pretty bad at giving consumers the option of a refund for something that’s broken. Steam does this to a certain extent, but the time allowed is sometimes not enough to find the game breaking bugs.
In the case of Andromeda, it’s pretty clear that the game shouldn’t have been shipped, and I think it’s perfectly acceptable to expect a fix if a game doesn’t work in the hardware current to the time it’s released (this is different to assuming that a game will still work on hardware decades into the future). It would be much better however if the publishers could be held accountable at the time of release.
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Oh, I absolutely agree that Andromeda shouldn’t have been shipped. I would much prefer release dates to be pushed back than games to be shipped in an unplayable state.
Thank you for your response. The fact that updates can be made certainly makes for interesting questions about what they should and shouldn’t be used for.
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… like many problems ideally it would all work out if both sides just respected the other :-P…
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Curious if this might be a case of a vocal minority; although, I think you’re definitely correct that large industry staples and early access have drastically affected game life span expectations. I was making estimates awhile back for the microtransaction talk, and I came to the conclusion that two years was approximately the anticipated length of developer support. I think a phenomenal example of this is the most recent “Hitman,” which saw initial controversy over its episodic release and has since been praised for its schedule and model. Two years provides for initial release, updates/patches, award season, price drop with community resurgence, and final updates and conclusion (which would ideally preface a new title in development, as in, “We’re concluding this work to continue development on XYZ…”). So, is Rossignol dealing with the active “Tolva” community or a very vocal old-school who don’t know how to move on from “Sir”?
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The comment was directed at those still wanting new content for ‘Sir’. (I know that he’s still actively working on tolva).
That’s interesting, 2 years ‘feels’ about right. I’m also aware based on a few of the comments here that I might have been misinterpreted as dating ‘all updates are bad’. My point is more to question when updates are appropriate and how it has changed or perception of ideas like a ‘finished’ game, or continued future support.
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… saying… Not dating…
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