Ranting in English
With the latest Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach an old and beloved game saga was brought back to life. People in the FNAF community was excited, as it could finally answer some hanging questions and probably pose new ones for the entertainment of the masses, even though Scott Cauthon was not working on it anymore.
And I brought that up because even if it's beautiful and sort of innovative in the saga, it's hideous.
Look, I think there's nothing more hurtful in games that seeing unreached potential, specially when it comes to a loved game. There are games with a lot of good, partially severed ideas. They feed the imagination with things that could have been, but never will, and those remains of dead ideas look like burnt dinner in fasting days.
If you have an idea, you either execute or not, but starting to work on it just to abandon it halfway makes the game feel unpolished. This applies to mechanics, lore, visuals, everything. They might think no one will notice how they stirred the wheel into a new direction, or at least forget about it by the end. But that's just lazy.
When a game is unpolished, even if I can't put your finger on it, it most certainly feels weird. It's uncomfortable to play a buggy game, it messes up the game flow. When you're trying to get through the lore and there are a lot of missing parts in the plot, that just makes the back of my brain itch. Even if I don't exactly know what's wrong, I feel something doesn't quite make sense.
I'm totally into making things mysterious by showing only part of the story, but there are wrong and right ways to do it. If you show a character's path, you can't just cut it like that, with no explanations whatsoever. It doesn't look mysterious. It just looks weird.
It's not the 'bugginess' alone what breaks the game's aesthetics, some use this as features, as has done Minecraft many times, or like Goat Simulator, a game self-consciously made out of bugs. When bugs become frustrating, as a developer you have to seriously consider working on them fast and kill them for good. You want people to keep playing until the end, not to quit it because it's crashed the third time that day.
Hey, I'm maybe being too rude about it. I get it, sometimes things don't turn out as expected, and budgets might get tight while developers are trying to figure things out. But let's be honest, some things could have been planned better. At the end you gotta choose, and something that's not there is usually better that something that's just half done.
| All images used on this post are my own unless stated otherwise. |
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Picada en Español
Con la salida del Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach una vieja y querida saga volvió a la vida. Muchos en la comunidad de FNAF lo esperaban, dado que podría responder algunas preguntas y probablemente generar algunas para el entretenimiento de las masas, aún si Scott Cauthon ya no trabaja en la saga.
Traigo esto a colación porque, aunque es bellísimo y de cierto modo innovador en la saga, es terrible.
A ver, me parece que hay poco más doloroso en un videojuego que el potencial desperdiciado, especialmente si es un juego querido. Hay juegos con un montón de ideas buenas, parcialmente deshechas, que alientan la imaginación con lo que pudo ser pero nunca será, y esos restos de ideas muertas se ven como comida quemada en días de ayuno.
Si tienes una idea, lo ejecutas o la dejas, pero empezar a trabajar en ella sólo para abandonarla a la mitad hace que el juego se vea desprolijo, y esto aplica para mecánicas, historia, visuales, todo. Pueden creer que nadie se dará cuenta de que cambiaron el rumbo o que al menos lo olvidarán al final, pero eso es dejadez.
Cuando un juego es desprolijo, incluso si no sé exactamente por qué, se siente muy raro. Es incómodo jugar un juego bugueado, jode el game flow. Estar viendo la historia y que haya un montón de huecos en el argumento, es irritante. Aún si no sé exactamente qué está mal, siento que algo no termina de tener sentido.
A mí me encanta cuando se añade un factor de misterio mostrando sólo algunas partes de la historia, pero hay formas y formas. Si muestras el camino de un personaje no puedes cortarlo sin más, sin ninguna explicación. No se ve misterioso, se ve raro.
No es lo bugueado nada más lo que rompe la estética de un juego, algunos lo usan como cualidades, como lo ha hecho Minecraft infinitas veces o Goat Simulator, un juego que sabe que está hecho de bugs. Cuando los bugs son frustrantes, como desarrollador hay que considerar seriamente trabajar en ellos y quitarlos definitivamente, quieres que lo jueguen hasta el final, no que se ladillen y lo dejen porque ha crasheado ya la tercera vez en ese día.
Y mira, a lo mejor estoy siendo muy hija de puta al respecto. La capto, a veces las vainas no salen como uno lo espera, y los presupuestos no dan mientras los desarrolladores tratan de solucionarlo, pero para ser honestos, algunas cosas pudieron haberse planeado mejor. Al final hay que elegir, y algo que no está suele ser mejor que algo que está a medias.
| Todas las imágenes utilizadas en este post me pertenecen, a menos que establezca lo contrario. |
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I think you make a fair point - the onus is on the developers to define a broad enough scope while not overpromising too much, leading to delays or as you said, a bugfest. I've had bad experiences buying certain sequels to games on day 1 only to find out that they were a buggy mess and were quite literally unplayable. Hopefully, this trend will change.
Some developers decide to just put out the games and plan to patch them in the future working with the money from sells, and the worst part is that they usually are right, specially with famous sagas. Some even have little to no beta tester teams, 'cause they expect players to do the work.
It's definitely a worrying trend in gamedev... hoping that the trend changes for the better over time.
Indeed, I don't even know why they wouldn't. If for any reason they got a tight budget, all they have to do is put out a payed beta. It's just about being honest.
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