Gimme! Gimme!
by Heather Sommer

As the saying goes, ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ – and it goes without saying that it drags by excruciatingly when you’re waiting for something to oh, say, be released in America. Pushing back release dates seems to be a very common pastime for video game companies and the leading cause of whining in avid video game fans everywhere. But for all the complaining we do, could releasing something on time actually cause more chaos in the video game fan base?

Surely there are reasons releases are pushed back, right? Often companies find the need to push back the occasional title to fix bugs – however tiny and seemingly obscure and impossible to trigger – that (beta) playtesters have found. This is more than acceptable, as what detail-oriented gamer wants to purchase a game only to find that your character can, indeed, walk through the cave wall in level 34 (but only one way, and if you don’t do it just right you might get stuck infinitely - forcing you to restart and lose data after the last save point)? Seem a little extreme? My friend’s husband showed us a glitch in Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven that allows you to fall into a pit and land on a grey screen where the level above is visibly floating, mocking you. The map showed that you indeed were no longer on any known sector of the game – and falling into this alternate game reality forced you to restart and, of course, lose date between the save point and that new reality.

Selling a faulty product only to please fans and meet the self-imposed deadline is far from admirable (Microsoft, anyone?). Games are not wholly inexpensive and purchasing a title is an act of faith – in the company, the title and (insert your deity, if you worship one, here). Finding out that a game is faulty, even in some minor way, is much like purchasing an expired carton of milk: you could live with it (very unhappily) and is returning it really worth it? Will they even let you return it? The game is opened and all the copies will have the glitch. To avoid thinly veiled piracy attempts, major department store chains won’t allow a game to be returned – only exchanged for the same title. Their policy is a very practical means of avoiding the plague of piracy and they are hardly at fault for what the industry has released irresponsibly.

Not all released dates are pushed back to fix the prospective product, however. Marketing and advertising gurus might recognize that building suspense regarding a product is a great means of assuring a large and eager consumer base. Pushing back the deadline would also allow for more advertising in venues perhaps otherwise unavailable – giving a title another two months means another two issues of GameInformer, NewType, PC Gamer or Wizard World to build hype. Two more months of the infamous word-of-mouth – even if only to tell an unsuspecting friend that the title is to be pushed back again – also adds to advertising, even if informally. Besides, peer pressure is proven to be effective, right? Truth is that gamers trust their gaming buddies, and if I tell a friend that a title is supposed to be great, he or she is going to want to read about it/demo it/borrow it/buy it. Complaining about a release date is hardly grounds for dismissing a potentially ground-breaking title.

Of course, such subversive means of advertising that might upset fans would never be publicized as the reason for a delay. Unless in the industry, it is safe to assume (and the industry just hopes you will assume) that glitches are being worked out, a financial crisis is being diverted or a creator is bed-ridden or dead – and that that is the reason for the impending delay. Perhaps an incorrect assumption, but keeping avid fans from frenzying and storming headquarters is quite possibly the second goal of most creator-based companies. Second only to profitting.

Assume what you will, but be sure that some of us are seeking press releases and other such proof that we’re not being swindled. If we are – well then, we’ll think about not picking up that title. Maybe rental?

Look, not everyone really cares about when the game is released. I myself do not care when a game is released as long as it is. I just sit back, play my games and they pass the time until the game I am waiting for is released and it feels like no more that 2 minutes because I am playing games alot and always keeping myself busy with something that interests me.

I much rather have a game pushed back than release it with bugs. The wait is preferable when compared to the frustration you'll get from the bugs. Other than that, I get very impatient sometimes waiting for a game that I have been anticipating forever.

I care when the game is released~!!! I hate it when I wait the longest time for a game only to find out its been pushed back longer. Though if they held it back to fix up bugs, its understandable. *nods nods* X-box was like that? =\ I wouldn't have known...

A good amount of the time when titles are pushed back the company has a legitimate reason to do so... Others are done mostly to build even more hype, to allow more shots and previews to be leaked out, and in some cases come out around christmas so there's higher sales. Take Halo 2... It's completed, it's ready to rock, but we're not going to see it until christmas because of the money it'll generate.

Geh.

When games are pushed back it allows for better sales, you've stated that yourself, and thats why it is done so much. Remember RE2? There was quite a delay there, and much people rushed to buy the game, although it wasn't exactly the point of the prolonged wait, as they actually changed the entire game, but it can serve as a good way of boosting sales.

People, especially fanboys/girls of a certain series, or company will think like this: "It was delayed! It must be better then they made it out to be!"

I myself hate the multiple push back dates, when a company delays a game multiple times for reasons like building hype. I do understand however that sometimes they do need the extra time for things like debugging. I dunno if anybody else is really into Final Fantasy 7 but in the Japanese version you can get Aries back, but in the American version you cannot because they didn't give the people working on it long enough to convert it.

A game ruined by bugs is a crime. If some extra months get you something more, it's worth it. If it is for hype and sales, well, that is crap, making us wait. What really bothers me is the translation time. I mean, when Japan has had a game for like a year *coughstarocean:tilltheendoftimecough* that just gets annoying. Obviously, there has to be some time, but how much does it really need?

I agree with the editorial...

BUT.

If a game has been "given" the time to fix and tinker, then it better BE bug free.
Brings the cling of "trustworthy" into the makers names.

japanese conversions take longer because the japanese playstation is different to the american one (to my knowledge) what i dont understand is why britian gets a simultaneous release with the whole of europe delaying it even tho the game is exactly the same as the american one

It's worth the wait if the game is complete. The games that are rushed always end up with things missing from the original Jap version, not to mention endless bugs and mistakes. I'd rather have a game at it's fullest. The only thing that makes the wait hard is the lack of really kick ass games being released lately. They're less and less. And when there is a game I'm interested in, I end up beating it in 2 days.

It's sad, but PS1 RPGs seem as though they were twice as long, and in some cases twice as fun, compared to the games being released today. The worst example is any game by Game Cube. Let's look at "Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes." This looked like it would be all that and a bag of chips, considering it was supposedly redone with the features of MGS 2. I thought it was going to be really long, considering it was still 2 discs on GC, especially due to how much a game cube disc can hold. Maybe if they would have worked a little longer and harder on this, all that would have been true. But the truth is, playing straight through the game, is really only around 4 hours of game play. 4 fvcking hours!

But let's not stop there, let's look at Final Fantasy as of late. First, think back to games such as FFs 6-9. Those old "less advanced" games, were at least a good 70 hours of game play, and that's without all the kick ass side quests mixed in. Now you would think the FFs for the newer systems would be all that and more right? WRONG! To look at the worst, let's think about FF Crystal Chronicals. First off, the damn thing had just about no story, it was horribly simple, and it only took a few days to beat. I think it was around 21 hours total or something. Maybe less. Once again, they could've spent a little more time, and perhaps added some kind of plot, even a simple one would've been a start. But no, they make a piece of sh#t with only basic game play, smack the name Final Fantasy on it, and completely forget about trying to make a decent RPG. The list goes on. They could do so much more with the capabilities of these systems today, but they're all in a hurry to just smack anything up on the shelves and get some cash off it. So one could say, that in reality, all these games have been rushed in terms of quality.

Well though that little rant may have been a little off topic, it's something I had to get off my chest. Hopefully we'll all see some better stuff after E3.

As for myself , I dont think of it as i got a few games to complete yet.

so I am not so worried about the delay

I've found funny bugs like this in Morrowind. Like if you have about 100+ Acrobatics, and your in Vivec jumping from platform to platform, sometimes you will fall through the floor and have to recall or cast intervention if you can't jump back out through the side. There are stupid little things like this that don't bug me, but there are things like in Everquest where if you zoned in a certain way to "The Hole" you would recieve like 10,000 damage (instant death until recently if your UBER of the UBER), and the body would be in the wall. Why does this suck? Because, unless a GM is on, you can't get your gear off of the body, and that gear is probably took u from day one to get. So, on MMORPGs, yea, its a big deal, because you can't just load a saved game. But with these other games, small bugs like this don't matter much, they are better for conversational pieces and a good laugh.