How do bad games make it to the market place?

[elvis]

Sales & Marketing departments

Bingo. And it doesn't stop at games. Look at the top 2-3 companies in almost any market, and question how the hell they manage to stay afloat pimping the crap they do these days.

Marking >> Engineering in most industries. Sad truth.

[Lord_Santa]

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/212 ... ing-games/


explains some of it

[Reprise]

Agreed with anyone who says the answer is money. That's all there is to it really.

Ya know what I understand even less? When a game sucks and you play it anyway. Who here has done this? Don't be shy.

Even when you're thinking, "This game sucks," but you can't seem to stop playing it. It's almost as if your sub-conscience is saying, "No, I PAID for this game, I'm gonna PLAY it!"

Or... who has played a game that was just borderline alright but it got to the point where you realized it's actually a horrible game, but for some reason you force yourself to finish it. If you can just beat it, just that once, it will release your soul. After you beat it, you can throw it out the window on the highway.

Yeah I've done both of these. Sometimes it's for those reasons you explained, and sometimes it's because I know the game is horrible, but I'm still getting fun from it. Like a guilty plessure of sorts.

There are quite a few games I've done this with, but just off the top of my head, Enter the Matrix on the Gamecube comes to mind. That game was ridiculously bad, yet I felt like I had to complete every last part of it, even that stupid text game.

[lisalover1]

Ya know what I understand even less? When a game sucks and you play it anyway. Who here has done this? Don't be shy.

Even when you're thinking, "This game sucks," but you can't seem to stop playing it. It's almost as if your sub-conscience is saying, "No, I PAID for this game, I'm gonna PLAY it!"

Or... who has played a game that was just borderline alright but it got to the point where you realized it's actually a horrible game, but for some reason you force yourself to finish it. If you can just beat it, just that once, it will release your soul. After you beat it, you can throw it out the window on the highway.

Its that thought of, "No, I will not let the game beat me... but this is a complete piece of shit. I'm moving on with something else."

I recently bought World Heroes 2 for the Neo Geo, and that's all I could think the entire time.

[arion]

Crappy games are the reason i only buy used games. But there have been games that i played that even though i didn pay that much for still managed to make me feel as if i spent way to much.

It's the kind of game that has imperfect controls and then dares to give you a timed jump puzzle that requires perfect control. Then there are times when your thumbs are sore but the payoff is not nearly worth the physical discomfort.

It's during moments like these i feel insulted as a gamer. Insulted because instinctively i will try to pass these challenges and because they are so unfair or badly made i can't help to feel like my gaming soul is being fucked with.

It's not that i don't like difficulty in games but i will not put up with unfair difficulty.

[Luke]

I blame Grandparents.

Seems like every time I'm in a GameStop there's a Grandma or Grandpa walking around like they are in Mars. Copletely bewildered. They walk over to a clerk and ask, "My grandson has a nintendo. What's a good game?". As always, the clerk roll their eyes and asks, "You mean nintendo Wii? Here get him this Metroid collection, it's great".

Grandma thinks out loud, "Oh, I don't even know what a 'meteroid' is. That looks too violent. Ooooo! Party Games! That sounds like fun. I'll get him Party Games".

I love Grandparents, but they do buy a lot of shitty games for gifts.

[JWatts]

I'm sure nearly every games starts out with great ideas and then slowly during development a majority of titles, loose focus or designers make poor decisions. At the end of development they get it into the hands of players, maybe even realize that they made mistakes but they might be on a deadline or budget and simply don't have the ability to fix the issue before shipping.
So they ship the product as an attempt at gaining back development costs in hope to try again at another title, use what they learned and try to do better.

Then you have the budget devs that seems to not care after shipping a poor quality title, and if they can sell it for 19.95 or less enough unknowing buyers will think it's a good deal and purchase it. This is what Jrecee was explaining, if enough people buy it, the market for it will continue to exist.

[corn619]

Now, I base this on little to no real knowledge but: because the purpose of a game is to sell, not be good. Why do shitty movies keep getting made? Ultimately, because people keep paying for them. The idea is to turn a profit in the end.

That's why there are a thousand reiterations of the FPS. They're safe bets and will sell. Originality is a risk.

Wow, took the words out of my mouth. Its funny how the masses are satisfied with just the mediocre. Maybe its just me but, when I pay $300.00 for a console and $60.00 for a game it better be something I haven't experienced before. Would you pay to watch different versions of the same movie over and over again? I wouldn't but I guess the masses would. The amount of rehashed ideas sitting on the store shelves these days sickens me.

Why don't people like originality anymore? How many times can someone walk around with a floating gun on screen and shoot things? The last new games I bought was Bayonetta and Darksiders. Bayonetta was good but was ultimately Devil May Cry with witches. Darksiders is a great example of rehashed ideas frankensteined into a game, it was awful. I plan on building up my PS2, DC, SNES, NES, Genesis and TG-16 collections and take a major break on current gen games. I've just lost interest.

[BakaTanuki]

I blame Grandparents.

Seems like every time I'm in a GameStop there's a Grandma or Grandpa walking around like they are in Mars. Copletely bewildered. They walk over to a clerk and ask, "My grandson has a nintendo. What's a good game?". As always, the clerk roll their eyes and asks, "You mean nintendo Wii? Here get him this Metroid collection, it's great".

Grandma thinks out loud, "Oh, I don't even know what a 'meteroid' is. That looks too violent. Ooooo! Party Games! That sounds like fun. I'll get him Party Games".

I love Grandparents, but they do buy a lot of shitty games for gifts.

This, exactly. Last time I was in a Gamestop there was a dad and a kid browsing games. I overhead stuff like "What about this baseball game?... oh this one has Monster Trucks!" Also I think a lot of kids have pretty bad taste in games. I know several elementary or middle school boys and am amazed at some of the great games they dislike.

[CRTGAMER]

Why do shitty movies keep getting made?

Or crappy movie tie in games taking up all the rental shelf space at Hollywood/Blockbuster.

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/212 ... ing-games/

explains some of it

Notice the double irony in the pic? Yet another Guitar Hero, enough! How about some innovation already! The guitarists looks like Kratos, retired his chains getting stuck tapping those color buttons. Taking fun outta making games and games that are not fun.