I have stated elsewhere that I think game play and AI of games produced in the early 1990s was generally superior to what passes for the same in the late 2000s.
Another thing which I firmly believe is that software quality (for all types of software not just games) of games has suffered greatly as the Internet became established on a new medium within society.
The Internet has contributed greatly to our hobby:
(1) Small independent developers can reach their niche market to sell their product where in the past they would have never had a hope of finding a publisher or shelf space.
(2) Communities of like of common interested players can form across international borders, regions, and other demographics.
(3) Modders and scenario designers can produce content for game engines that effectively give them life way beyond what the original development team/publisher intended.
(4) The development of point #3 along with cheaper CPU cycles, memory, and disk storage has resulted in the data structures of many games being moved out of the EXE to separate files. And in many cases, these files are plain text files. The games of the early 1990s saw more of the core game hardcoded in the EXE and data files even when used where usually tightly encoded binary data that required a great deal more skills to manipulate than NOTEPAD.
But the Internet has at same time hurt our hobby. Software quality has degraded and continues to do so:
(1) Product cycles were reduced and competition was increased. All of a sudden everyone is working on an ACW game. First, let's face it there are only so many historical epics worthy of mass marketting. If one party senses money to be made, then they all do. The race begins to be out the door first and hit Q3/Q4 where the money is. The difference between first and second place can be the difference between moving on to the next game or financial insolvency. So, the pressure is very real. Good companies will have experience project management and know how to cut features such that they make their deadlines while still delivering a worthwhile project. Poor companies will be overwhelmed and cut corners in a haphazard fashion and release a can of worms. Customers will be burned. There will be a bad taste. If customers are lucky, Q1 and Q2 will be used to fix the game and the rest of the less serious issues will be addressed by the modders.
Microsoft Windows and the Internet started a trend in the software industry of accelerated project schedules. Projects moved from carefully planned giants that were build on computers costing millions to things hacked together on Monday to show users and investors on Friday. The trend really started when Microsoft released Windows 3.0 and Visual Basic 1.0. This began it for those of us who worked in the industry. In 1995, when the Web overshadowed the release of Windows 95, the Internet brought accelerated software development schedules through quick visual mock-ups to the business world at large and not just IT departments.
I've said a lot. But the basic point is that the gaming industry suffers the same pressures that any other forms of software development suffer.
(2) The Internet has made code defects (bugs) appear to be very cheap and inexpensive. In 1987, getting fixes out to customers was a very expensive proposition. It involved distributions of tapes and other physical media. It was hugely expensive and much more cost effective to simply kill the bugs before shipping your product. By 1997, the major vendors all had FTP servers and it had become cheap to just throw patches up on the servers and let customers retrieve them. (Of course, this began before the Internet with the first BBS modem services.) The intense discipline of testing and quality assurance faded away during the 1990s, since the penalties and pressures which created that culture dissappeared.
So, it was with the gaming industry. In the early 1990s, a game with major bugs got bad press. It could not be easily fixed. The product would not move and money and time was lost. Minor bugs and enhancements tended to be addressed through expansion packs that were both patches and additional content add-ons. However, in the late 1990s and problems with a game could be fixed by the customers patching themselves at any time. Zero cost for bugs (so no pressure enforcing a culture of quality) while (see above) lots of pressure forcing fast and slopy work to market. As has been noted in this thread, it has become standard practice simply release unworkable code as version 1.00 and fast track a patch waiting for the game to reach the store shelves.
Clear and simple, it is the Internet which has created this situation. However, as I have demonstrated, there are also wonderful gains which have come about via the Internet too. Also, it is not only the developers/publishers who are to blame for atrocious software quality. We, the customers, are to blame as well. We regularly pre-order games, download them immediately, drive to stores to get them, ... We purchase these products before waiting to see if they are solid. We just assume that any critical problems will be fixed and we are entitled to these fixes. If we did not behave as we do, those who produce games would not behave as they do. So, our buying patterns are also very much to blame for this. At best, reputable companies ultimately fix their products. Other companies, simply abandon them.
This explains why I just got a new PC, but for the most part every game on my PC with one or two exceptions was published at least two years earlier. By now, the game is either worth having or it is not. In 2009, I will probably be purchasing quite a few titles from 2007.
As long as I am handing out blame, then the gaming community review web sites are to blame too. Very few of them will really expose a game as unplayable pile of CTDs and bugs. Very few of them will bury a product for being a cinch to beat after only a few days worth of play experience. So many of these sites are whores who are in bed with the products they are responsible for objectively reviewing. They are not consumer advocates, but in fact just extensions of the marketting apparatus of the industry. Look at some games which are a few years old that are widely known to be only mediocre. Now, go back and look at the reviews which they games received a few years back. For the vast majority, the review will relect a much more upbeat assesment than the product actually deserved.
---
I realize that some of what I have said here may not be in all the best interests of increased sales for my friends at Matrix. However, I was trying to paint a picture of an industry and history in broadstrokes. This not meant as a criticism of any one party, but once again an attempt to talk of historical trends and underlying causes that has shaped these events.
