Anyone work in the video game industry? I have a question

[DaTT]

Why is it when there is a global problem with a game, the creators never say what happened and what they did to fix it?

For example, Battlefield 3 was experiencing some strange issue on Friday (Punkbuster related perhaps because the issue was non-existent on non-PB servers) where your game would freeze for a second then continue.. It was kind of like lag, but not really at the same time.

Anyways, EA was aware of the issue and had it resolved in several hours but they never made an announcement about it, nor did they announce when it was fixed. Why? It used to happen with Blizzard and WoW all the time but no one ever gave reasons.

I wouldn't see it as bad PR to say what the problem was and what is beiong done about fixing it.

 

[Platypus]

Why is it when there is a global problem with a game, the creators never say what happened and what they did to fix it?

For example, Battlefield 3 was experiencing some strange issue on Friday (Punkbuster related perhaps because the issue was non-existent on non-PB servers) where your game would freeze for a second then continue.. It was kind of like lag, but not really at the same time.

Anyways, EA was aware of the issue and had it resolved in several hours but they never made an announcement about it, nor did they announce when it was fixed. Why? It used to happen with Blizzard and WoW all the time but no one ever gave reasons.

I wouldn't see it as bad PR to say what the problem was and what is beiong done about fixing it.

< -- Ex video-game industry. There are a lot of reasons why that would happen, pride being at the top of that list. No one likes to admit they made a goof. It doesn't surprise me Blizzard would be forthcoming and EA wouldn't be.

 

[rh71]

Blizzard posts on forums about upcoming fixes for the most part - probably so they don't get inundated with the same questions. I don't think having a comprehensive list of problems in 1 place through the years would be very beneficial to the company's image.

As a developer, I would mention problems once in either an email or instant message only to the people who need to know and hope it gets buried for the rest of eternity. Do I want such a list following me around my career?

 

[DaTT]

< -- Ex video-game industry. There are a lot of reasons why that would happen, pride being at the top of that list. No one likes to admit they made a goof. It doesn't surprise me Blizzard would be forthcoming and EA wouldn't be.

No one may like to admit it, but there is no hiding the fact that there is an issue. The game is not running right....why not say, "this is the issue, here is how we plan on fixing it, but it may take a few hours to implement." I, for one, would have far more respect for a company that did this.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Pretty much pride. I hate when any company keeps it's users in the dark with this stuff in the name of pride or other silly corporate BS reason.

I ran a MMO game server for over 5 years and whenever there was an issue I kept users in the loop at all times until the point it was fixed and they were happy. Even scheduled things like a server move were announced ahead of time and the process was constantly being updated in a thread so people know the progress and ETA.

Even things that were embarrassing such as an exploit I'd at least post something to the nature of "An exploit has been found with NNN and it has been disabled, we are investigating" followed by "a fix was applied and the feature is now turned back on". Even basic one liner updates like this can go a long way.

 

[DaTT]

Pretty much pride. I hate when any company keeps it's users in the dark with this stuff in the name of pride or other silly corporate BS reason.

I ran a MMO game server for over 5 years and whenever there was an issue I kept users in the loop at all times until the point it was fixed and they were happy. Even scheduled things like a server move were announced ahead of time and the process was constantly being updated in a thread so people know the progress and ETA.

Even things that were embarrassing such as an exploit I'd at least post something to the nature of "An exploit has been found with NNN and it has been disabled, we are investigating" followed by "a fix was applied and the feature is now turned back on". Even basic one liner updates like this can go a long way.

Agreed. I run and maintain 9 BF3 servers. When we have a problem with our servers and their plugin's, we always announce that the server will be restarted and ALWAYS (if possible) wait until the end of the round before any sort of maintenance is done.

 

[KaOTiK]

I worked in the industry for a little bit. Besides pride, most don't want to open their mouths because it paints a target on them if shit hits the fan in some other way and now a lot stuff must be run through a PR person in some fashion so people don't can't pick apart what someone says to find some hidden meaning to it.

 

[DannyBoy]

People say pride.

The reality is the Video Games 'industry' has developed with the powers lying with the publishers, much the same as the film industry powers lie with the distributers, the music industry with the record labels.

The developers 99% of the time will be aware of issues, the publishers / distributers will never care, they'll only care about the political / economical protection of whatever franchise they've had success with to maintain profits.

I worked on the COD MW3: Elite mobile app for 2 1/2 weeks for one of the outsourced development agencies, I was hired 4 weeks before the launch of the game after the in house developers had 6+ months to perfect it, we managed to release a stable app for iOS with only 2 weeks of development, we literally didn't have the time for supporting Android et al as we were there to consult on a salvage solution.

****something-vision provided an API that was returning data with an insane amount of irregularities in the data itself.

Who got the blame for the inconsistencies / bugs with the Android app after release? The creative / agency developer, not Active-wank-vision. Why? To protect the publisher, not the creator.

The innovation / creative 'plant' / talent, beit primary, secondary or tertiary, comes from everyone else in the industry except the publishers.

The flip side of this is that the publishers are the ones that rake in all the money, no different to the record labels, film distributors etc.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

- D

 

[LumbergTech]

It can negatively effect the company depending on who hears and gets upset about the info. I test casino games and when something goes wrong, the more public discussion that occurs, the more damage that can occur. The reasons in casino games are obvious, but the same reasoning applies to other games as well...