Recently, there have been more than a few examples of botched game launches, which usually cast a negative light on the entire game, such as 'Anthem' or 'Fallout 76'. Rebuilding a positive reputation is then usually a lengthy process.
Now they are reporting various developers have their sayThose who criticize games are, in a sense, defending themselves, as this isn't always due to poor development or even malicious intent. Rather, it's simply impossible to test games in advance in their live environment and under real-world conditions to ensure everything runs smoothly in the end.
Additional factors include long-term planning, for example when renting servers, as EA Development Manager Alex Mann explains:
"At launch, you see the highest traffic in these games. Everyone's been hyped, the marketing team has done a great job, everyone's really excited to go online, and the moment the game launches, everyone clicks 'Go'. But you'll find with the life cycle of most games that they initially have this massive surge and then it's over: If every game company had bought the hardware to cover everything needed for that initial surge, after two weeks they'd have 50% of the hardware that's never used."
This presents a particular challenge for the launch, requiring careful consideration of the right resources. Fortunately, it's now possible to utilize server offerings like those from Amazon to better manage this.
However, capacity isn't always the problem, as Fredrik Brönjemark, Director of Live Services at Massive Entertainment, adds. Large online games are so complex that it's simply impossible to oversee or predict everything.
"Furthermore, there's an additional layer of first-party services, so there are many ways things can go wrong. For The Division, the main issues were downtime or connection problems, instability in the game software running on the servers, or hosting providers. Server capacity is very rarely the problem."
Real-world conditions cannot be tested.
Frank Sanchez, a former BioWare developer, says that you can never truly test real-world conditions in advance, not even in a public beta test or similar. Every game is different at launch, even though prior testing is very helpful.
"You can't plan for live [simultaneous players]. It's simply impossible. There's no substitute. I've seen every kind of stress test internally before they implement it there, and there's simply no simulation for live. [...] The best way to test live is to be live."
Furthermore, it's not always possible to fix absolutely all bugs before release, no matter how much one wants to. This is partly due to marketing, which is often too aggressive with all its timelines and milestones, making it difficult to keep up.
“Every team will tell you that this is very difficult. That’s just the reality. The list of things that need fixing is constantly changing. […] The lucky starts are the ones that have flaws, but they aren’t crippling flaws.”
Finally, the developers defend themselves against the claim that beta phases are purely for marketing purposes. Brönjemark adds that this is a myth. Many issues can be fixed on the server side these days, even after the game has been released on disc or a day-one patch has been delivered. Launch day is never the end of development.
“No game starts perfectly,” Sanchez concludes. “That simply doesn’t exist. Anything they would consider a smooth start is just something that never reached the level where a player perceived something as wrong.”
