No offense to anyone who enjoys them, but I’m so sick of the “[bad] game is good now!” narrative. Fallout 76 is a six year-old game, and was in development for several years before that. In the context of game reviews (which I care about), Release Date is important, it’s when it has the most exposure, the most sales, and when review embargos end. So if you can’t have your game fully-completed by then, you probably shouldn’t release a half-finished, buggy game. Right?
Games like No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, and others might literally be better now than at launch… But what are we supposed to do, have reviews regularly updated to match the current state of a game? Actually, I would like that, if games journalists could do this. But until then, the game needs to be fully completed on launch, or suffer your permanent bad score…
No offense to anyone who enjoys them, but I’m so sick of the “[bad] game is good now!” narrative. Fallout 76 is a six year-old game, and was in development for several years before that. In the context of game reviews (which I care about), Release Date is important, it’s when it has the most exposure, the most sales, and when review embargos end. So if you can’t have your game fully-completed by then, you probably shouldn’t release a half-finished, buggy game. Right?
Games like No Man’s Sky, Cyberpunk 2077, and others might literally be better now than at launch… But what are we supposed to do, have reviews regularly updated to match the current state of a game? Actually, I would like that, if games journalists could do this. But until then, the game needs to be fully completed on launch, or suffer your permanent bad score…