Positive Game Industry News
So, I’ve been a bit on the negative side about games and game developers lately. So, I shall present you with some good news.
Lets start with Spore. I obviously just wrote a fairly harsh bit on the subject of this game. Well after a little bit of very angry customer feedback – 40 pages in one thread, 10-15 in another – Maxis responded that they were going to work on some patches to accommodate the demands. You can read about the player victory here.
It doesn’t help some of the lackluster game play, but it goes a long way to help restore the brand from the tarnish it was starting to build up. No matter what though, they listened and took action. This is actually some of what the policy of pirating I was speaking of is aimed to accomplish. Check that a promise has been delivered before you buy. If it has been, them immediately buy the game, they have earned those dollars by being honest.
Another game that had some problems was, The Witcher. Overall this was a great game that brought swordplay down to a more user friendly level (sometimes) and told an interesting story. It was; however, plagued with technical bugs and English content that left someone to wonder what the talk of really great immersive story was all about.
They have just released an entirely new version of the game, The Witcher: Enhanced. They used a great deal of the profit from initial sales to go back an polish everything they could in the game, and rewrite all of the English in the game to be closer to the original. Unfortunately I have not been able to play the new enhanced version…
The enhanced version is currently only a new boxed version of the game, but that will change tomorrow. They released the new game version on September 16th, the patch that will update the game for all previous owners becomes available the 19th. It is good to see a company going to such great lengths to correct a product that was released in a rather damaged state, and also add more content. in fact, there are two new sets of missions that add to the storyline being thrown in to this patch. Once again, a rather angry and vocal customer base helped to get a product not only fixed, but this time significantly added to.
It also shows that some developers are willing to go that extra mile when they break a promise.
