Plug Anthem into this chart. Unsurprising it launched with technical problems, game play issues, bugs, etc when the marketers and sales people often times place unrealistic launch dates onto these products (and yes, part of this cycle is driven by the whole earnings treadmill when it comes to the objectives of publicly traded corporations where the pendulum has swung too far at maximizing profits/revenue growth at the expense of the worker bees with the “do more with less” mantra while the executives rake in the money). There’s blame to cast all around because some of this is also dictated by unrealistic design objectives created by the game designers and development team. And then you have the customers; the players who fall into the above (general) trap.
So post-launch, Bioware has now put out a 90-day roadmap to address the issues to which I say, some of these should’ve never gotten past the beta test phase (but we all know how that whole process goes where too many companies use alpha/beta tests as a marketing/PR stunt to drive the hype).
IMHO, the game industry is just doing more damage to itself by continuing down this path of releasing half-baked products that are a result of the way the business side is run. That business side is also responsible for the lousy monetization practices (this includes crap like loot boxes) that has infiltrated many games because the customers have shown they are willing to put up with these half-baked products with their lousy revenue generating schemes (because there is this constant insatiable demand for something new).
Back in the old days, I remembered playing and sticking with a limited number of games. That aspect really hasn’t changed much with me. There’s genres that I don’t play because they don’t interest me (first person shooter titles, survival types, MOBA’s, and this recent battle royale wave for example). There’s also a huge swath of MMO’s that I also don’t play because of aesthetics and designs (not a fan of tabbed targeting for example). Likewise, titles like Anthem, Destiny, and Warframe also aren’t on my interest list either (so the issues with the game don’t have any bearing on me except for the subject of this entry which is about how it was released half-baked with issues).
Because I’m well beyond jaded with the process/game industry, there’s not a lot of titles that even gets me hyped up. I see early access or kick starter and usually look the other way (the most recent exceptions being Last Epoch since they had demos and Warlords Awakening because I got a free code). The only one remotely close recently was Lost Ark once I did finally get a chance to play the story through completely (during the final Korean closed beta test). But that positive feeling (where I felt that this might potentially be a title I could play for the long term) fell into the chasm once the end game design could be played in full during the current ongoing Korean open beta test.
