Voicing Criticism The Correct Way?

[guitar421]

Wow! My first post ever censored and widespread community outrage over the discussion thread I created yesterday. I must have used widespread profanity, insulted the Chinese government or claimed that Windows was better than a Mac.

It's fair to question my tactfulness or approach in venting my experience with the game. I'll concede on that but when all was said and done I merely stated what has been widely felt about the quality of the game and listed the individuals by the name and title identified as the QA management team on the game credits of the shipped product and called them out on their work product.

I guess we're saying that there should be no accountability for the end product? These individuals did perform the QA role for this product. It would seem that given the poor quality of the product that becomes more and more evident as someone progresses only a few hours into gameplay that things were missed or glossed over. Shouldn't it be a fair question that any of these individuals would have to answer in the future is that given your role with QA on this product and that NFS: Shift was widely reported to have significant problems and issues with gameplay reported shortly after release what happened? Perhaps there is a good explanation for some of those involved as they may have had a comprehensive test plan and results that were disregarded by those in control and perhaps others may not have deniability. Either way these types of questions should be fair game and if they are not then what is the incentive for anyone to avoid a doing poor or below average job the QA for a major video game release. Should we as consumers just accept what we get and not provide any push back that could give game development teams pause for thought in similar situations in the future?

So after having another race malfunction for the umpteenth time I decided that I would stop abusing my wheel setup in road rage and I chose this approach to vent and release some steam. After $60 + tax I would seem to have that right. If anything else at least my G25 would be better off for it. I have purchased several dozen games during this current generation of consoles (including other EA titles) and none are without fault but this title sort of crossed the line for me with regard to being a knowingly faulty product by those that shipped it. In the grand scheme of things it's only a game and one should move on but on the other hand I don't like the idea that releases like this may occur more often in the future because someone felt that there wasn't much negative feedback from the buying public the first time they did this.

The video game industry is now a mature multibillion dollar entertainment industry which if I recall correctly has annual revenues that exceed both the motion picture and music industries combined. When something goes bad in either of those two fields you can read about it along with the names of the parties involved. What gives the video game industry a pass on this? Should those who work in this entertainment medium get more public notoriety and exposure (for good or bad) as a result of their work or should they largely be anonymous? If my approach is inappropriate or non-constructive in the long run then what is the best way to voice my disapproval?

 

[Joey D]

Your last thread violated the policy you agreed to when you signed up. It's fair to criticise, it's not fair to break the the rules.

The best way to send a message to companies that make sub-par games is just to not buy them. Complaining on the internet isn't going to accomplish any thing but make you feel better about the situation and perhaps convince others not to buy them game as well. It's not however going to affect the company directly.

If it really concerns you perhaps you should take the time to write a letter to EA and address those individuals you feel are responsible for not doing what they were supposed to. Other then that there are a number of consumer sites on the net that will address this issue if they feel fit. The Consumerist is probably the biggest and most well known.

 

[WolfRacer543]

I guess we're saying that there should be no accountability for the end product? ....



... When something goes bad in either of those two fields you can read about it along with the names of the parties involved. What gives the video game industry a pass on this? Should those who work in this entertainment medium get more public notoriety and exposure (for good or bad) as a result of their work or should they largely be anonymous? If my approach is inappropriate or non-constructive in the long run then what is the best way to voice my disapproval?

Of course there should be accountability, but we dont even know WHO should be held accountable. Its unfair and borderline stalking to bring up particular individuals who may or may not be to blame.

But as Joey mentions, the best way to voice your disapproval is not buy the game, or if you have bought the game, complain through the correct channels.

Should the individuals "work in this entertainment medium get more public notoriety and exposure"? Well, in my opinion, no. I couldn't care less about the individuals involved. I dont think most people would. When it comes to games, each game tends to stand on its own, and if a games studio or publisher is particularly bad, such as EA tending to have rushed games, the people who care will know (people who care = people who actually follow games beyond just playing them).

 

[Dragonistic]

It's also worth considering that there is no hard evidence which suggests who's fault any of the problems or glitches involved with this game is. Can you prove for absolute certain that QA didn't pick up on these glitches? It stands to reason that due to time or money constraints set in planning that QA were simply not given priority and ignored. It's possible that there was time and money, but they decided to employ those resources elsewhere rather then listen to QA. QA aren't the top men involved, I highly doubt they had every decision under their control and to them 'name and shame' them with no evidence not only breaks the AUP but is also unjustified. QA may have identified every problem but simply ran out of time to find a fix and someone at EA may have demanded a deadline for the product (it was likely that deadlines were involved).

(Note: Was writing this before WolfRacers post popped up, so perhaps I'm repeating some of the above post)

 

[EA11R]

I've been astonished, for the past few years, at the Need For Speed franchise. They seem to have the market cornered of people who absolutely hate their games. I fully admit to being one of these; I buy all NFSs (except Undercover, which I rented and loved), for the sole purpose of seeing how long I can last playing it, before going mad. The NFS franchise has, amongst those in the know, developed into a welcome villain, the franchise about which we know we can always, constantly, complain.

Even so, I feel that SHIFT is a bit too flawed for its own good. I truly lasted a very very short amount of time before I couldn't play it further. By the time I tried to watch a replay of my near-stock Miata, and it didn't let me out, I didn't bother to reset the Playstation. My Miata looped floppily around the track hour after hour; I just couldn't be bothered to exert a single additional calorie for the sake of this wretched, wretched game.

Most recent NFSs have focused on getting one or two areas hugely wrong, such as the Undergrounds' neon or Carbon's Canyon Racing (dig the tunes, though), but I struggle to think of an area in SHIFT which hasn't been made totally unusable.

The menu is impossible to see, as is the HUD. There are enough controller adjustments to make a BMW owner cringe. The 'Vette won't move, the trophies want you to be violent and clean, and it's impossible to choose the right colour for your car. The physics are difficult enough to alienate beginners, and rubbish enough to alienate gamers. The support for steering wheels is spotty at best, and the cars don't seem to perform proportionally at all. I could go on and on, but the fact is, I just shouldn't. I'm missing the point.

In making such a massively ambitious game so immensely unplayable, SHIFT has achieved something unique: a serious racing game that is comfortably head-and-shoulders under anything else on the market. I only keep coming back to anticipate the planned super patch.

 

[niky]

Of course there should be accountability, but we dont even know WHO should be held accountable. Its unfair and borderline stalking to bring up particular individuals who may or may not be to blame.

The whole crux of the problem is whether it was the game developer or the parent developer which is responsible for the mess up.

As others (including myself) have pointed out... SHIFT feels like it has two or three different physics systems. Which means that the problem could be inherent in the base system used by the primary developer... or it could be in patches inserted after play-testing to make it easier... or it could be in patches inserted by EA to make it more "exciting". We'll never know.

Videogame physics is notoriously tricky to work with. Which is why you have 1000 mph Escudos in GT3 and incredible bouncing objects in games like Fallout3 and Halo. And things get worse in a collaborative game such as this, where it seems that neither party had final say over the end product. (This is the McMerc SLR of videogames, it seems).

Singling out people who may or may not have had anything to do with the problem is just plain wrong. And it's a misunderstanding of what Quality Assurance actually does in a corporation. These guys aren't playtesters, they're corporate pencil-pushers. (FYI, I do Quality Assurance)

 

[jjaisli]

That 3rd generation consoles have the ability to patch in updates and bug fixes, is both a boon and detriment; a true double edged sword. And as a result, console games now suffer the same development cycle as PC based games. Today's games are incredibly complex and their development costs millions of dollars. As such producers and developers are under tremendous pressure to get the games on the shelves as soon as possible so that they can start generating revenue and recouping their development costs. And hopefully before the developers run out of money in today's cash strapped economy. Considering the incredible scope and detail of games today, any time you have teams of dozens of developers, all collaborating on a single project, across multiple platforms, all working under tremendous pressure, it's inevitable that there will be bugs and hiccups.

As a consumer, I can understand people's frustration that this game was released with numerous bugs. More than most. It shouldn't be. Period. But looking at it from the business side, EA had a multi-million dollar marketing campaign in the works for NFS:Shift. They advertised the game on huge billboards, in magazines, in flyers, in gaming and electronic stores, on Television, even on racing cars in at least 2 different series, all across multiple markets and in different countries. You can not put a campaign like this on hold nor can you put the game on hold without loosing the momentum generated by the campaign. Come hell or high water, this game WAS going to be released and in stores, ON TIME. And I'd bet my lucky penny that there were many heated and angry meetings at multiple levels within the SMS/EA organization in the months and weeks leading up to release. And I suspect, many of the people targeted by the original poster as being negligent in their "duty" to the end users, argued for just such a delay. But more than likely, they're not the ones with the final say.

As such it's irresponsible to simply point to specific individuals without really knowing the facts. The game had bugs. Plenty of them. But none of them were serious enough to make the game unusable, although I suppose, this is largely down to opinion. However, we know, thanks to Vancouver Blade, that EA is working on a laundry list of bug fixes and the game will eventually be set right. I don't disagree that it should have been right from day one. But I'm afraid the entire industry has been slowly marching toward the release and fix strategy for some time and as games grow larger and more complex, it's unlikely to change. Myself personally, I was more disappointed with the unrealistic pseudo-arcade like handling model than I was with any specific bugs. And unlike bouncing cars and screen tearing, that isn't something I imagine will change.

 

[ANFD]

Having an elaborate and extensive marketing plan deadline is no reason to release a game before it's ready. The negative outcome far exceeds any possible benefits you could have by "making the deadline". I have read all the theories posted here, such as "they had to get it out before FMS3" etc. All of the marketing decisions have to be centered around the idea of maximizing sales and releasing product of this low quality not only doesn't achieve this, it actually diminishes the potential for future releases.

The NFS francise has mixed reviews apparently from what I've read. I've owned every single one of them and found some to be better than others, but none anywhere close to the abomination Shift turned out to be. Most have provided hours of entertainment and met expectations. I started and finished Undercover twice and thought it was better than any of the street racing genre to have been released that year.

While on that subject, EA needs to address another common issue that plagues their games in general ..... they refuse to let you save and copy any of their gamesaves ..... in this day and age of PS3's untimely deaths, they will not allow you to transfer any of their game saves from your old console to your replacement console (hench starting Undercover from beginning to end twice). I find that most annoying and insulting.

I normally pre-order and purchase every racing game made, regardless ! EA's gamesave philosophy and lack of QA has caused me to deviate from that tradition. I will NEVER purchase another EA game without investigating it first

 

[jjaisli]

Having an elaborate and extensive marketing plan deadline is no reason to release a game before it's ready. The negative outcome far exceeds any possible benefits you could have by "making the deadline".

I agree in principle. It's the way things should be. But in reality, they aren't. Money talks. And worldwide sales of Shift (all versions) is in the neighborhood of 2.5 million. We're talking about big business here. Blitz marketing. Selling to the masses. I'm sure EA considered any potential back-lash from a couple of thousand hard-core gamers to be an acceptable trade off against the hundreds of thousands of lost sales which would have resulted from a 2-3 month delay. Otherwise they would have delayed it. They're a publicly traded company and have shareholders to answer to. And shareholders want to see profit & short term gain. They need to show revenue and delaying this game even for a month would have meant a potential revenue shortfall. The people responsible for these decisions think on a very different scale and scope than the users of their product. Or at least lets say, the passionate, hard-core sim racers here.

 

[MannyMoenjack]

As others (including myself) have pointed out... SHIFT feels like it has two or three different physics systems. Which means that the problem could be inherent in the base system used by the primary developer... or it could be in patches inserted after play-testing to make it easier... or it could be in patches inserted by EA to make it more "exciting". We'll never know.

As annoying as the bouncing and tuning glitches are, the shifting physics are the "deal-breaker" for me. At times while playing in both Career Mode and Online, I've felt that the game is inserting a "handicap" factor making driving a given car completely different than I'm used to. I've heard several different reasons for this physics change. I just hope it's not some gaming thing EA put in to make things more "challenging". Whatever it is, if it isn't fixed on the upcoming patch I'm either going to sell the game or sail it like a frisbee off the tallest bridge in the area.

And as far as the original post... I work for a large company so I have first-hand knowlege about corporate decision making. You can't be sure which individuals made the recommendation to release Shift without fixing the problems, so the company as a whole has to take the blame. To name names, in addition to being against forum rules, is unfair and unwise.

 

[ANFD]

I agree in principle. It's the way things should be. But in reality, they aren't. And shareholders want to see profit & short term gain.

I spent 25 years in a large Japanese corporation, where customer satisfaction not only was first and formost, it drove absolutely everything the corporation did. Short term gain was NEVER the issue ! Everything was long term, with the idea that everything you did and every product you released to the public affected all your other products and had ramifications for generations to come.

If somehow EA managed to squeeze as many sales out of their promotion as you claim, I can't help but wonder how many they could have sold had they looked more long term and how much better their name and products would be received in the future. This short sighted perspective has been the demise of many a US corporation

 

[Biggles]

Look, there's a lot that Shift has got right - there are many things it does better than any other racing game out there. If they manage to fix the outstanding issues with a patch, soon, I think they can be forgiven for releasing a buggy game. If they walk away from the issues without fixing them, they should lose all credibility.

 

[niky]

+1. Lots of bad, but there's a lot of good in Shift. Maybe 2.0 will be up there with the big names... or at least SHIFT 1.5...

I spent 25 years in a large Japanese corporation, where customer satisfaction not only was first and formost, it drove absolutely everything the corporation did. Short term gain was NEVER the issue ! Everything was long term, with the idea that everything you did and every product you released to the public affected all your other products and had ramifications for generations to come.

If somehow EA managed to squeeze as many sales out of their promotion as you claim, I can't help but wonder how many they could have sold had they looked more long term and how much better their name and products would be received in the future. This short sighted perspective has been the demise of many a US corporation

We're talking about EA. They've built an Empire out of making lots of big name games and making lots of money off of big name games.

Videogame success in the American market is all about short-term gain. Unfortunately. Make the most bucks for the least outlay.

Product? You could have the best product in the world, but without the marketing, you're not going to get the amount of money EA gets off of each game... not without tremendous grassroots support and word of mouth.

 

[ANFD]

+1. Lots of bad, but there's a lot of good in Shift. Maybe 2.0 will be up there with the big names... or at least SHIFT 1.5...



We're talking about EA. They've built an Empire out of making lots of big name games and making lots of money off of big name games.

Videogame success in the American market is all about short-term gain. Unfortunately. Make the most bucks for the least outlay.

Sounds like GM philosophy

[/QUOTE]Product? You could have the best product in the world, but without the marketing, you're not going to get the amount of money EA gets off of each game... not without tremendous grassroots support and word of mouth.[/QUOTE]

Nobody said that you didn't need marketing

Sorry about my inability to split the quote and insert my comments properly

 

[Mad Matt]

If it's fair game to criticise an actor in a film, or a director, or the lighting people, or the special effects then I can't see what's wrong with criticising the credited QA people for their work on a game. On this site I've often heard people criticise "Kaz" (as some like to call him) for his work on GT5.

Whether the criticism is well founded or not is another matter. Just as it might not be fair to criticise a film director who had his budget cut or was pressurised by his employer.

I also can't see anything in the GTPlanet rules which would prevent that, although the OP in his other thread probably got the thread locked for doing a bit more than just criticsing.

 

[guitar421]

I can see the point about needing to release the game prior to Forza 3 and I think around that time there was also the speculation of a GT5 release being possibly imminent as well so from a pure business standpoint that could be one reason. Release dates and competition however aren't unique to just this release and game genre and every game company has to deal with them. I haven't seen the same amount and level of faults in other titles but perhaps I have been just lucky in the other games that I have selected in the past few years. Is there an acceptable level of compromise between known bugs but shipping the product to meet a business deadline that at some threshold becomes for lack of a better description immoral?

The thing about the game was that it was great for about a week or so and I think that amount of gameplay was just enough time so that these issues never had a chance to surface in great number during the period of hands-on time a game would be subjected to for published or on-line reviews hence the generally good scores received. With all of the competition in gaming review sites and magazines to be first to break the news there is also pressure to "ship a review" prior to others that I think also leads to just cursory evaluations of the games. One way to reduce the quality issues would be for people to wait a month or so for purchase but then again there are probably very few here as an example that won't have GT5 on pre-order or not be picking it up on launch week.

 

[Imari]

If it's fair game to criticise an actor in a film, or a director, or the lighting people, or the special effects then I can't see what's wrong with criticising the credited QA people for their work on a game. On this site I've often heard people criticise "Kaz" (as some like to call him) for his work on GT5.

Whether the criticism is well founded or not is another matter. Just as it might not be fair to criticise a film director who had his budget cut or was pressurised by his employer.

I also can't see anything in the GTPlanet rules which would prevent that, although the OP in his other thread probably got the thread locked for doing a bit more than just criticising.

It's not fair to criticise the QA people here because it's a reasonable bet that they weren't allowed to do their job properly and were strongarmed by EA.

It's fair game if you believe the professional that you're criticising was given a free hand and screwed up by themselves, that's entirely their own fault. But without any further information than the circumstances under which the game was released (ie. at the time both Forza 3 and GT5 were believed to be looming) the game was going to be pushed out the door regardless of the bugs, because in 3-ish months it would have been a dead flop.

Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and they probably could have delayed a little. But we're not likely to get the bugfix patch until early Dec at least, and I think it was a much smarter choice to release when they did rather than delay until Dec.

 

[niky]

If it's fair game to criticise an actor in a film, or a director, or the lighting people, or the special effects then I can't see what's wrong with criticising the credited QA people for their work on a game. On this site I've often heard people criticise "Kaz" (as some like to call him) for his work on GT5.

Whether the criticism is well founded or not is another matter. Just as it might not be fair to criticise a film director who had his budget cut or was pressurised by his employer.

I also can't see anything in the GTPlanet rules which would prevent that, although the OP in his other thread probably got the thread locked for doing a bit more than just criticsing.

It's fair to criticise an actor or a director, because you can see their work, right there on the screen.

The guys holding the lights? They're not doing anything that the director is not asking them to do.

Quality Assurance? How sure are you it's their fault?

Quality Assurance doesn't automatically mean "playtesters"... in corporatespeak, Quality Assurance is often simply be there to make sure that things go along smoothly at the company. Quality Assurance is not a programming term... it's a corporate one.

I'm pretty sure that the credits for playtesters would be credited to beta-testers, as this is the more likely terminology to be used by software developers. If the threadstarter wants to criticize the beta-testers... then such criticism is still unfair...

We don't know if they tested the original game from SMS... the revised EA version... or even the final build... We don't know the parameters given to them for playtesting. Did they just give them a list of events to enter and ask them to enter the events in certain cars and give feedback on how easy or how hard it was? Did they ask them to use the tuning menu at all? (given the mistake with the sliders and the undriveability of suspension modified cars in the first build... apparently not)... and did they have them playtest them on all game machines or on the PC only?

And much of the playtesting is done by the programmers themselves. Perks of working at a videogame company... besides, you'd be an idiot to write a program and not test it yourself to see that it actually runs. So, if you were going to blame somebody... they'd be it. Them and the head of the development team. But again, in this case, again, since SHIFT is an outsourced project for EA... we don't even know if the development team had full control over the final product.

 

[Mad Matt]

"It's not fair to criticise the QA people here because it's a reasonable bet that they weren't allowed to do their job properly and were strongarmed by EA."

While I have sympathy for that point of view, you could say that about almost anything anyone does, good or bad. So, Jenson Button was said to be a poor driver when things weren't good at Honda, and that he only won the championship with Brawn because his car flattered him. The reality is probably somewhere in-between.

I think you've got to criticise/praise people at some point, while keeping in mind the constraints people are working under.

Having worked in IT for many years I wouldn't let my name go in the credits if I felt I'd done a poor job, whatever the reason. One project I worked on was producing particularly poor code which I complained about and said they should finish the testing. Their response was to sack all the testers and say "there, now testing is finished". So, I refused to accept the code, was over-ruled by management but made sure my name was not associated with the project after that.

EDIT: Sorry Niky, you posted while I was typing. Again, you may be right but QA, in my experience, usually means an independent testing team. I expect my developers to test their own code, but I always get an independent team/group to test before going to User Testing (or beta testing). I'd also suggest that the lighting guys do a bit more than just what the director says :-) Either way, it's just my opinion and I just thought it might be interesting to compare how we criticise films and games.

 

[orimarc]

That 3rd generation consoles have the ability to patch in updates and bug fixes...

Wow, I didn't know that the NES and the Sega Master System could do that...

Back to the topic, I think that some of the bugs aren't that bad (things like the grass-on-asphalt bug). Still, guess EA wanted to avoid the big releases of the year (Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, for example) so they rushed the game.

 

[ANFD]

Ultimate responsibility always lies with management. The various project managers have the finished product's responsibility. The beta testers are minor players in the grand scheme when it comes to decision making.

The EA representative who was an active participant in this thread sent me a personal email since I was one of the first and most outspoken critics relative to the game's pitfalls. He asked me if I would list the glitches that I had found for him I found this to be very strange as it implies that they themselves, did not test the game well enough to do their own documentation 💡

 

[niky]

"It's not fair to criticise the QA people here because it's a reasonable bet that they weren't allowed to do their job properly and were strongarmed by EA."

While I have sympathy for that point of view, you could say that about almost anything anyone does, good or bad. So, Jenson Button was said to be a poor driver when things weren't good at Honda, and that he only won the championship with Brawn because his car flattered him. The reality is probably somewhere in-between.

I think you've got to criticise/praise people at some point, while keeping in mind the constraints people are working under.

Having worked in IT for many years I wouldn't let my name go in the credits if I felt I'd done a poor job, whatever the reason. One project I worked on was producing particularly poor code which I complained about and said they should finish the testing. Their response was to sack all the testers and say "there, now testing is finished". So, I refused to accept the code, was over-ruled by management but made sure my name was not associated with the project after that.

EDIT: Sorry Niky, you posted while I was typing. Again, you may be right but QA, in my experience, usually means an independent testing team. I expect my developers to test their own code, but I always get an independent team/group to test before going to User Testing (or beta testing). I'd also suggest that the lighting guys do a bit more than just what the director says :-) Either way, it's just my opinion and I just thought it might be interesting to compare how we criticise films and games.

Lighting guys can make suggestions or implement the director's or lighting director's instructions to their best ability... but in the end, it's the guy looking through the lens that has the ultimate control of the movie.

Same can be said of videogames. You can blame people like Kazunori for problems with their games, as it's their overall vision that guides the project.

Sorry, not too familiar with software development... but from what you've said... the game should be playtested (in a perfect world) by the development group, an independent testing group and the beta testers... that's a whole lot of people to lay the blame on. In movie terms, you're blaming the director and writer, the production company, censors and test audiences... any of these groups can be responsible for completely ruining what could have been a good movie.

Of course... the only way you'll know if it's the director's fault, really, is to watch the final director's cut on DVD... but, from watching many "uncut" director's cuts, I'd say that sometimes... just sometimes... the cuts that the production company and test audiences make actually make sense...

Which, again... is the whole crux of the problem. Is SHIFT the "director's cut", or the PG13 version approved by EA?

 

[Silver-Sylph]

It really only comes down in shift's situation is they didn't bother to test it whatsoever.

 

[niky]

I do believe they did test it... but maybe not enough, in its final form.

Drive with the stock cars around any track in time trial, and it's perfectly fine.

Drive a short race with the AI, and it's perfectly fine.

It's only when you drive with the AI for prolonged periods where the physics start going wonky... or when you have to modify your car and then drive with the AI.

SHIFT is a perfectly wonderful game for free-lapping with stock cars. It's only when you dig deeper that the cracks start showing.