Second Chances

[owsf2000]

Was watching a video on Fallout 76 by Fantavision on youtube. In particular he was asking a simple question "Does Fallout 76 Deserve a Second Chance". I'm not actually making a comment/criticism on him and his post here. In fact I'm not actually going to be talking about Fallout 76 in particular. I only reference it here so you know why I started thinking about this topic at all.

In short, No, I do not think a game developer deserves a Second Chance at launching their game. People are free to do what they want of course. If they -want- to give the developer a second chance, all the power to them. However developers do not DESERVE a second chance. IE: Nobody should ever feel like they need to re-evaluate the game.

If the game was released in a horrible condition at launch, that just tells us the priority of the developers. (or their corporate overlords but I don't play the split-the-blame game. I'll blame the devs AND their publishers equally.)

Game is released as a buggy mess? Devs are forcing the game out just to get your money earlier than they should. Would you buy a dishwasher for full price despite it's programming glitches causing it to flood dishwater all over your kitchen until a repairman is sent out by the company to switch out some modules? Would you risk buying from them again the next time you need a new dishwasher? Especially if they have a history of these kinds of problems with their newly released appliances?

Game is launched with an exploitive micro-transaction ecosystem? Again, they're after your wallet. And you'd be a fool to think they haven't been manipulating the gameplay to 'encourage' you buy those micro-transactions.

We can keep going with all the different BS tactics employed by the modern game industry but I honestly can't bring myself to care. You get the idea.

Personally for me, if the game launches like shit, I typically place the game on ignore and forget about it. My personal policy is that I never un-ignore a game. Or publisher. And I don't buy things that have been ignored.

For those thinking "Your loss." keep in mind 'loss' here is relative. If I don't care for a game to begin with, I won't be losing out by playing other games that I'm enjoying perfectly fine. I have a finite amount of time to play games so I'm not going to waste it by playing games from devs that simply didn't care about their customer base enough to release a playable game at launch that isn't riddled with exploitive money schemes.

Comments

[kane_magus]

I totally agree with you that no game or developer or publisher "deserves" a second chance, ever. If I give them a second chance, it will be entirely at my own whim based on whatever desire I may have to play any given game, not because I'm "obligated" to do so. My whim may very well be "no, continue to piss off, your game was shit at launch and I don't feel the need to reconsider you again, not even if your game is ostensibly 'good' now." (For that matter, no game "deserves" even a "first chance," really, I don't care if it had a pristine, spotless launch and is claimed to be the "best gaem evar." If I don't want it, I'm not going to buy it, period. Like, say, any given FIFA or NFL or NHL or MLB or UFC or whatever game... it could be the best game ever made, in that genre or otherwise, but I don't give a shit about that stuff, and as such, it doesn't "deserve" to be bought by me.)

The only games that I have explicitly ignored that I will even vaguely, remotely consider giving a second chance are the games that were initially infested with Denuvo but then removed it later. But then, out of all the games I've not bought solely because they were infected with that shit but then cured themselves of it later, the number of them that I've actually bought later can be counted on one hand with several fingers left over.

At this point, though, just in general and regardless of any other considerations, a game simply costing more than, say, $30 or so is enough reason for me to give them a hard pass, at least until I see them on a 60-90% off sale, at which point I might give them a "second chance." And if their 60-90% off results in the game still being over $30 (or if it's a base game on sale for $10 or whatever, but still has over $100 of DLC, even with that also on sale), then they can continue to fuck off. Only a very, very rare few games exist that I might be more lenient with that stance. But similar to the above, I've been seeing more and more games that I've wishlisted go on sale for like $5 or less, where my response to that has been "meh, I don't really want this game even at that price," after which I just remove it from my wishlist entirely. If I'm not going to buy it for five dollars or less, then it's pretty clear that I'm not going to buy it at all, ever.

And, yeah, I have such a massive backlog of other games already (too many of which I haven't even touched yet, let alone finished) that me "losing out" on not buying and playing yet another flavor of the month piece of shit that had a piss-poor launch (and launching with Denvuo constitutes a "piss-poor launch" in my eyes, even if the game is supposedly super amazing otherwise) really isn't a "loss" in my eyes. It's more a loss for them than it is for me.

(As for Fallout 76 specifically, I will never be interested in that simply because it is a multiplayer-focused game, no matter how supposedly "good" it is now or whatever. Unlike seemingly every other Fallout fan, I have never been interested in the idea of "multiplayer Fallout," any more than I was ever interested in "multiplayer Elder Scrolls," which is why I haven't touched ESO either, and never will.)