Recovering From Bad Gaming Launches
Will CD Projekt RED fix CyberPunk 2077?
We can all remember the good ol’ days when games were shipped on a cartridge and what you received was the finished product. Things are always changing and usually for the better. We don’t get milk delivered to the door anymore and gas stations typically aren’t full serve anymore, in fact about half a million cars on the road don’t even need gas stations anymore. Gaming has evolved too, we can now play online with friends around the world, we can don't have to leave our house if we want to buy the latest game release or even the latest console, and patches can sometimes fix things that would have been forever locked on a cartridge.
The unfortunate side effect in the modern generation of gaming, especially in the last decade, is that games seem to be shipping with more problems than ever before. There are a lot of reasons that this could be happening more frequently, including internal and external pressure. Companies like EA, Take Two, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and CD Projekt Red are all publicly traded companies.
This usually means that delaying a game is going to affect the stock negatively and not shipping a game during a certain fiscal period, when it’s expected, will likely result in a massive net loss. Internally, there are plenty of other reasons why a company might ship a game early including bonuses for the executives if a game is shipped within a certain window.
We’ve all seen the memes by now, watched all the reviews, and read the public statements that CD Projekt Red has released. CyberPunk 2077 is a very bad launch, plain and simple. This launch seems to echo poor launches of the past where things go from bad to worse. First, there were multiple delays, then plenty of stories about crunch arose, and then it was withholding the console version from reviewers, knowing that it was a broken and buggy mess which didn’t even come close to the vision they initially shared. Post release, there has been public statement, that lack genuine regret, talking about skipping certification and the return debacle to now Sony pulling CyberPunk 2077 from the PSN.
When thinking about the launch, there are three launches of the past generation that echo aspects of CyberPunk and its messy launch. No Man’s Sky was one of the most hyped games of the year, Anthem was a game that was coming from a trusted studio, who has since fallen from grace and Fallout 76 felt like the problems just kept piling on during the launch window. With a precedent of bad launches available from the recent generation, what can we except to happen with CD Projekt Red moving forward.
Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda
Bioware was once considered to be one of the gaming industries elite developers, who excelled in their field. What we are seeing with poor launches and what will become a pattern is that even if a game is broken upon release, this is still a time to gain or lose trust of your audience. The hands of time can never be turned back, but it is possible to salvage things and prove to everyone, that no matter what happens the company will stand behind their product.
It would be very easy to throw all of the blame on Bioware’s descent on EA but I don’t think that would be completely accurate as we have seen with an in depth report from Jason Schrier during his time at Kotaku. Obviously, EA has closed many beloved studios including Pandemic, Visceral and Maxis. However, we have seen companies show considerable success with EA, most notably and recent being Respawn Entertainment, who released both Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order both to commercial and critical success. Fallen order was a little buggy at the time of its release but the bones were very good and the product had enough good qualities to easily overlook a few blemishes.
Bioware was acquired by EA in 2007, the same year that Mass Effect was released, meaning that the first entry was clearly in the works long before EA came into the picture. Post acquisition they also released Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age Origins, Dragon Age 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age: Inquisition to name a few of the more high profile releases. All of these games had varying degrees of success, whether that was commercial, critical, cult or all three. The pitchforks for EA didn’t start until Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem both released in poor condition, lacking polish and refinement of systems.
For Mass Effect Andromeda, Bioware put most of the blame on the Frostbite Engine, which EA was trying to implement across all of their series including sports titles and shooters. In theory this makes sense as asset sharing across all studios within EA should make development smoother and quicker, as well as using an in house engine is cheaper than paying for an external engine.
There have been many articles depicting just how difficult Frostbite was to develop Andromeda for but I think that more of the problem should lay at the feet of Bioware and how they took one of their most beloved franchises and gave it to an unknown team at Bioware Montreal instead of Bioware Edmonton who had been fully behind the series to this point. Dragon Age: inquisition was made using the Frostbite engine and that game took home many game of the year awards, which means that Bioware can develop just fine using the engine.
Sadly, the blame for Bioware should lay at their feet. As documented, the major reasoning for the failures and poor launches of their last few games have been that the studio expects Bioware magic to take place. Dragon Age: Inquisition won many outlets game of the year award, but the development was quite problematic and didn’t truly come together until the end of the project. The takeaway for Bioware was that no matter how bad things get, a little extra hard work, elbow grease and talent means that the project will come together as expected.
History does always have a tendeceny to repeat itself with Bioware having announced the next Dragon Age game at The Game Awards in 2019, but then doubled down showing a trailer for a new Mass Effect. It doesn’t matter that the studio is over 800 people or that it has the financial support of EA, what’s important is that Bioware seems to be once again using their old mentality.
Anthem is still a very broken game depsite launching in early 2018 and since being publicly discussed by the studio that a full rework is happening titled Anthem Next or Anthem 2.0. The most recent update happened near the end of 2020 with more information depicting a game much closer to resemblance of Destiny, which begs the question: Why play this over Destiny? This came from the Bioware blog, but shared no hint of when any of this content can be expected.
The issue at hand, is that Bioware has been largely silent on just when Anthem 2.0 can be expected. This doesn’t even consider the recent departure of a few key figures from the studio with Casey Hudson and Mark Darrah. Hudson was essentially seen by many as the saviour for the studio upon his return. Despite a few poor launches while he was there, the thought was that he didn’t have full control from beginning to end. As much hope as you can have for Bioware moving forward for their next titles, they don’t seem to understand that fixing Anthem would do a lot more goodwill for the studio than announcing new games.
A large factor prior to the launch of any new games from Bioware will be if they will have released Anthem 2.0 or not. If the company remained silent and the next Dragon Age is released, gamers will be very pessimistic, which could lead to the slightest issue getting overblown. In its current form, Bioware still hasn’t recovered from poor launches of Andromeda and Anthem.
Fallout 76
Bethesda’s Fallout 76 seemed to keep having one bad press mishap after the other. Obviously the game being critically panned was the first issue but then things just kept getting worse. There was a preorder canvas bag that came with a special edition of the game and was sent out to influencers, however when consumers received their bag, it was not the bag that was shown. Instead it was a very cheap looking, nylon bag. Bethesda tried to remedy this situation by offering in game credits to everyone who purchased the special edition. The problem is they only ended up looking cheap by offering the equivalent of about five dollars which wasn’t enough to buy almost anything in the shop and was not anywhere close to the amount needed to buy a new bag.
They did realize after some more backlash that people were not happy with the amends they tried to make. They finally offered the canvas bag to anyone who filled out the proper support documents. Sadly, there was some type of glitch in their support system that allowed users to see all personal data of anyone else who had filled out the required support docs including address, full name and some payment information. There was also a Fallout themed helmet that was offered in partnership with GameStop, however a bunch of them needed to be recalled due to high levels of mold.
Any of these issues on their own aren’t that big of deal. Games get poorly reviewed often, sometimes you don’t get exactly what you ordered and sometimes what you do get could be faulty. Instead, it’s how these occurrences kept happening one after the other making a bad situation look much worse.
As for Fallout 76, eventually it was patched and updated with enough features that were absent at launch and received improved scores since its launch. Fallout 76 didn’t do a full turnaround like our next example but they took some lumps, tried to make as much right as they could earning back the trust of some and have done more for Fallout and the Bethesda name, then Bioware has done for itself and it’s recent titles.
No Man’s Sky
Prior to the release of No Man’s Sky, the biggest and only release to come from the team at Hello Games was Joe Danger and it subsequently released sequels and mobile version. In terms of exclusive games in 2016, the PS4 was lacking in mainstream titles with the exception of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. There were plenty of great games in 2016, but they either weren't exclusive to the PlayStation 4 or they didn’t have mainstream appeal. This is where No Man’s Sky and fate meet. No Man’s Sky was a small independent title from a small, British team at Hello Games with the concept of infinite, procedurally generated planets to explore. Essentially, a never ending exploration game to get lost in the vast depth of over 18 quintillion planets.
Unfortunately with a massive marketing campaign and publishing help from Sony, No Man’s Sky and its expectations grew well beyond it independent development. A major problem was that instead of having a PR firm help deal with the marketing of the game, it was all left up to Hello Games and their frontman Sean Murray. In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Murray remembers “being naive and overly excited about my game” Unfortunately, it was this angle that gave gamers their potential view into the upcoming world of No Man’s Sky, which would send expectations, well skyrocketing.
There were many features that were shown in preview coverage or discussed during interviews to be in the game but somewhere along the way had to be trimmed from the product that launched. This drew the ire of angry video gamers. Just look at how mad some people got when the puddles were a little different in 2018’s Spider Man. An all around excellent game, that instead of focusing on the amazing aspects, some people chose to focus on puddles.
Hello Games was thrust into a new position completely unfamiliar to Sean Murray and everyone else there. Sometimes, however, we are able to grow through these challenging experiences. What the team did after the backlash upon the release of No Man’s Sky was very unconventional. They went silent and avoided any press or public statements that would be misconstrued. Instead, Hello Games put their heads down and got back to hard work on No Man’s Sky to try to bring the game to the vision that the team had for the game initially. However, we have heard the promise of we will make the game better and we will fix it from developers many times over the last generation.
What Hello Games has done with No Man’s Sky between its misrepresented launch and now is nothing short of remarkable. If my count is right, then Hello Games has updated the game with 14 major patches with the first coming about six months after release. All of these updates were done at no extra cost to the gamers who originally purchased the game and without flooding the game with micro transactions, which could have been an easy move for the whales still around. The game even currently supports PSVR and has a updated PS5 mode with all the bells and whistles.
All of this work should have now earned back the trust of the people who felt burned by No Man’s Sky and at the very least has told gamers and the rest of the industry the Hello Games will stand behind their products until it’s right. No Man’s Sky even took home the award for “Best Ongoing Game” at the 2020 Game Awards, beating out huge triple A titles including Destiny 2, Apex Legends, Warzone and even Fortnite. It might be too late for No Man’s Sky to get to the smashing success level that it was hyped to be, but whatever big title Hello Games does next will surely get everyones attention, which is something that wouldn’t have been said after the launch in 2016. Hello Games are a shining example of how to properly rebound from a bad launch.
History Repeating
Just how bad is a broken launch for a studio? That seems to fully depend on how the studio stands behind their game and what they do moving forward. No one wants to spend their money on something that isn’t fun or doesn’t work, but everyone does seem to appreciate a good comeback story. We have seen many different case studies on how damaging a bad launch can be for a studio, but we have also seen how lemons can be turned into lemonade.
Hello Games is the clear case study in what happens when something isn’t right and how to make it better. For all of the people that bought the game on day one and stuck around, Sean Murray and the rest of the team have stuck behind their initial vision and continued to provide value for those gamers.
CD Projekt Red is currently in the midst of seeing damaging effects of the poor launch of CyberPunk 2077. How they choose to proceed over the next coming few years will alter the course of history for the studio. They have tarnished the trust behind the brand, but with meaningful updates, patches, DLC and anything else they can throw at CyberPunk, they could eventually turn the story around.