FWIW I've never heard of a game Marketing budget increasing after it was determined to not be very good, in fact the reverse is almost always true.
Marketing budgets are generally larger for those titles with perceived better sales potential, sometimes that's because of a license, sometimes just because some exec is convinced the game is great and extolling it's virtues.
This wasn't really what I was meaning. Rather I've seen a good number of good to terrible games plastered across every news outlet, with game reviews embargoed until after launch, and internet rublings of how the publishers interfered too much with development and/or harrassed or mistreated the developers. Games like Red Faction Armaggeddon which was marketed quite abit, yet the developers themselves even grumbled about how THQ had basically ruined the development of the game. Also games that were ostensibly undercooked because of supertight schedules, yet marketed to hell and back, like Fallout New Vegas and others. I didn't mean that marketing budgets are increased to make-up for shitty games, rather from the outset, on many projects this gen, insufficient time nor creative freedom was given to the devs to actually create the games, whilst large amounts wee still spent on marketing.
And you should see how sales people deal with bad games, sales people won't sell what they perceive to be bad games to clients because their ability to do their job is based entirely on the relationship with the client.
Your view of dev strangled by evil publisher is extremely naive.
Bad games get made for many reasons, what should happen is more of them should get killed early, but like many investments, it's hard to make the decision.
Absolutely. Completely agree. But if a decision is made not to kill the game outwright, then they should minimise the marketing budget and at least let the dev tidy up the game with a bit of polishing time if possible. So long as a game has at least a few redeeming qualities there is always a chance sales could grow through word of mouth into cult status. Otherwise, kill it move onto something new.
It's great to talk about giving devs more time, but I've seen that destroy games as well.
Was it purely the extra time that killed the games in question, or other additinal factors? If a game has a great premise, is coming together well during the course of development, yet doesn't appear to be able to meet its given schedule, I can't see how affording the devs an extra few months of polish would somehow kill a game? If the game wasn't working at all, then of course, more time to polsih a turd will still produce a turd at the end of the day.
To ship a great selling, high quality title requires a team with vision, a publisher who believes in the product (yes this really matters if you want to sell any), team management with great focus, sufficient time and enough pressure to force you to execute.
Agree on all fronts. This was actually what I was trying to say before, but I thank you for your own much more eloquent rendering of it ;-)
FWIW I really like what Sony does with it's first parties, it pretty much leaves them alone, they have a successful blueprint, and Sony just makes them accountable. EA on the other hand has never quite figured this out, and I think it's because many of the upper echelon came up through development when it was very different than today.
I do wonder though about Sony's management more recently though. I mean i look at devs like ND, Guerilla games etc, and I wonder if both those teams not having to push useless features like 3D in U3 and KZ3 could have made those games better, granting the devs more time to execute on the things that really matter. Sony's top in-house teams themselves have excellent management and direction, but I still see a few things like 3D being pushed in their games that I suspect come more from publisher pressure than anything the devs would have desired to do themselves. It's these kinds of things that to me I would assume would affect how a developer would be able to successfully craft a fully well rounded product in a given amount of time (I assume Sony still dictates the development schedules).
I get that publishers can't simply give devs as long as they like to develop a game, but by being smart about what pressure you put on developers, along with being realistic about the amount of time you give them to finish a project, I think it would greatly benefit publishers like EA a whole lot more.
Ubisoft however doesn't get any criticism for me. As I actually have loved most of their games this gen. Particularly the AC series, which i find it crazy good how they are able to manage so many employees on different teams, on multiple games simultaneously, and yet still see the games improving with every successful release (have played only upto brotherhood so far).
