Hope this finally solves one key issue, but there are lot more to go, too many to even be a little happy yet. Surely, if all 3 games get fixed up, a lesson will be learned here and we can expect better releases moving forward. I can't imagine this is efficient work at all.
ZacharyB wrote:Jinki, what do you mean? How would Degica exactly "bust CAVE's tail"? Degica likely already paid for the rights to publish the game. They have no leverage over CAVE. CAVE would have to fix it at their own cost.
It's all on CAVE.
I agree that this costs CAVE, at least in reputation. But Degica's hands are tied.
It's all on CAVE if and only if you have no clue how a publisher developer relationship is supposed to work. Before explaining, if it doesn't work this way, it's not working properly.
The publisher [Degica] is the boss, the money-holder, the requester of the game. They commission the developer [CAVE] to make them a product that they can sell to their [the publisher's] audience. In this case Degica went to CAVE to fund them for PC ports of their games to turn and sell on Steam. CAVE could have refused this offer, but accepted - Degica then releases funds for development and a port is created.
The other way - CAVE could have had ports made and were shopping a publisher to license their games in the west, on Steam, and Degica paid up for them. This could be the case with their relationship given the nature of things, but highly unlikely in most other cases, especially for non ports or simultaneous releases.
Either way, the publisher has last say over what gets released. They sign the developer's paycheck - if they are sold a crap product/service, it's on them to get the developer to make good on their investment.
I'll tell you a cool story:
Ubisoft Massive is the developer behind Ubisoft's The Division. The only issue with the game months prior to going to the printer, was the overuse of a singular generic enemy model [reskins] and some not so bad bullet sponging that could be circumvented. Still not really my cup of tea, but the experience that was set to release at that time was completely in line with what people were expecting from the game. About that time Ubisoft, a publisher, not a game developer, watched gameplay/"played" [generally a round-table and someone very inept at gaming plays and "suits" talk about "well, this looks too hard, this sounds too mean, 5 minutes to level at 10 is too long" etc.] the same ready to print build a bunch of other folks did and instead of sharing their opinions, sent a laundry lists of demands that had to be made before Massive could send the game off. This list [ironically massive] caused the game to be so poorly received by gamers - Massive knew this, QA knew this, interns, everyone that had anything to do with the game that had actual gaming knowledge [playing knowledge specifically] or developed it knew this was going to happen. However, when the boss tells you to do something, you may kick and scream a little, but ultimately you either quit [career suicide likely] and they find someone else to pick it up, or you do it.
The game releases to a massive "this isn't the game it was supposed to be" storm. It does pretty poor and finally the publisher cleared Massive for Patch 1.4. What most people will never know about Patch 1.4 is that it wasn't a massive overhaul of the game, it was Ubisoft allowing Massive to revert back to the game they originally designed, with what they could - unfortunately though, so much time had lapsed that there was no way to get it all back, not even close. As time goes on in an online game, you just can't go changing certain aspects without upsetting balances, QoL scales, etc.
Just let it sink in that, there was a release delay that effectively detracted from the experience instead of making it better. And while working on this, the developer knew they were effectively poisoning their own creation.
This is publishing in the gaming industry 99.9% of the time, even with third-party developers. On the rare occasion you get a power couple from, say, Infinity Ward that creates a new studio and lands a deal with EA and they get to make some sweet demands, but that is far, far few and between the norm.
