People (rightly) complain about games releasing in an unfinished state, and then needing multiple patches before they are free of critical bugs. By charging for patches, they are discouraging this sort of behaviour (along with other things, but that's a different argument).

indeed. They should make games that work from the off without need for a patch.

I think we need to work out which is best - consoles or PCs - once and for all.

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Peter, you misunderstood my point. For example I own a 360, but I don't own a PS3. I'm sure there's plenty of other people like me and plenty of other people who own a PS3 but not a 360. Due to stupid exclusivity deals on Indie games, many people miss out on titles they shouldn't have to if they were to just release on PC.

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Can't you just say that about all exclusivity, regardless of platform and status of developer?

What about just releasing them on all systems, rather than wanting to just restrict them to PC.

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SWOS on XBLA says hi.

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I have all the consoles and have never bought a single indie game. They are crap.

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New master race build guide | Budget HTPC build

Alright, who woke him up?

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How did you get on with building your own PC?

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The existence of God is not subjective. He either exists or he doesn’t. It’s not a matter of opinion. You can have your own opinions. But you can’t have your own facts.

As I've said not everyone with a PC uses it for games and being PC exclusive is just as limiting as being console exclusive.

Of course! It's all so simple! Why didn't anyone else ever think of this before? After all, debugging something as horrendously complex as a video game must be a piece of piss, right? All those variables interacting in all those possible ways? Not a problem!

Because it's privately owned. Valve couldn't get away with half of the stuff it does if it had to answer to shareholders.

The best games are always the ones with emergent elements which can't realistically be fully debugged: That said, there is a case that perhaps quality assurance could stand to step up a little in some cases. The patch for Skyrim that caused dragons to fly backwards for example. How does something like that, which so obviously affects one of the signature enemies of the game, manage to make it out into the wild?


Not quite: In the long term, those games will still be in circulation and probably playable even on a bottom of the line rig.

GOG is a good demonstration of this. Although frankly, exclusivity deals is a bad thing for the entertainment industry in general.

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Actually, they discourage fixes, plain and simple. If every patch costs to distribute, it encourages developers to hold back fixes for individual problems in favour of the megapatch approach which frankly doesn't benefit anyone except the platform holder, when weight of public opinion forces a developer to unleash multiple patches.

I'm all for ditching this indie crap. Much prefer the associated costs to go elsewhere.

For mobile gaming it's a match made in heaven, but not on a home console.

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"Race drivers don't really care how fast they're going..we keep going faster and faster until we approach that limit of control and that's when we balance ourselves..that's how we make good time."
JOHN FITCH
1950's Le Mans driver

Well, have fun playing Call of Battlefield 654,892. Me, I'll go play a fun game.

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Oh wow. Indie is automatically fun.

Cheers for that brainwave indiebot.

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New master race build guide | Budget HTPC build

Most of them are crap, but there are a few good ones. Also it helps start off wannabe devs.

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