Stellaris: A Shift In Consumer Taste

[sillyrobot]

I have been playing and promoting Stellaris since launch and I can honestly say that since 2018 there has been a fundamental shift in consumer attitude towards the game as a whole.

In my opinion consumers tastes have been changing from purchasing a game that will "work as intended, eventually" to an expectation of "works as intended, at launch"

There is no point of pointing fingers at the developers OR the poor Q&A department about the state of 2.2 because this attitude is at the corporate level and dictated down to its employees.

I say again. The developers and Q&A probably agree with MANY of the frustrations coming from the community at the moment.

This thread is one where we can let paradox know that our expectations as consumers are changing and that should be reflected in the product that they offer.

When games first came out, there was no chance of receiving patches/updates so the expectation was games would work.
When the Internet first became a thing. Fixes and patches were possible. The expectation was maintained that games would work, but sometimes mistakes slip through and at least they can be repaired. QA and what constituted "working" was relaxed.
Later, the potential of issuing nearly instantaneous changes became valuable. Companies stated issuing versions of their product in effectively unfinished states to build buzz, garner attention, and gather feedback.
Consumer fatigue helped split the market into "Those games that are done and expected to work" (released software) and "those games that are still in development and may fail or undergo massive change" (pre-release software).

Stellaris can never "work as intended, eventually". The devs keep changing what that intention is. Creating DLC is one thing; rebuilding large sections of working systems is another. My regret is in not understanding that when I waited a year+ after release to purchase the game expecting most systems to be stable and polished.

 

[Buladelu]

In my opinion consumers tastes have been changing from purchasing a game that will "work as intended, eventually" to an expectation of "works as intended, at launch"

Don't see that. In 2016 the taste was benevolent "should be good after a year or two" and now, three years later, it's "should have been good after a year or two".

 

[Duuk]

When games first came out, there was no chance of receiving patches/updates so the expectation was games would work.

..and yet not all of them did. Also, look at the inflation-adjusted price for games and you'd be shocked. PC game pricing has NOT kept up with inflation at all.

A $30-40 game (even in 1990 a fairly standard price) 30 years ago would be inflation-adjusted an 80-100 dollar game today. If you could sell a STANDARD, non-AAA game at $100 retail the amount of bug-fixing and QA you could budget would be astronomical. And even then you had games like MOO3 that were literally unplayable at launch.

 

[ragehavoc]

People are looking back at that era with rose colored glasses.

I've played many broken af games from the 80s and 90s. The thing is you would NEVER get an update. Many games had permanently broken features and never addressed bugs, the quality of games for sure has gone up not down. On top of that you didn't have forums where you would "discover" that the game is broken in some way.

I was one of the lucky few kids who had a modem (14.4 then 56k) and so could connect to like the Sierra BBS to download a patch. Even then you would maybe get a couple of patches unless it was a really good company.

There were a lot of bugs with Master of Orion 2 Windows version vs the non-bugged DOS version and all kinds of crazy shit. Many games were totally unplayable but they are long forgotten.

I think that is the point though, the games and companies that were unplayable are no longer with us, for a reason, while graphically games have improved, the quality has definitely been deteriorating for over a decade, to where we are at a point where people want to be apologetic for companies that have poor releases. It is insane. A bad company will always be a bad company, and the more money people give them, the worse it will be, we should most definitely be penalizing this behavior instead of encouraging it and making excuses for them.

 

[sillyrobot]

..and yet not all of them did. Also, look at the inflation-adjusted price for games and you'd be shocked. PC game pricing has NOT kept up with inflation at all.

A $30-40 game (even in 1990 a fairly standard price) 30 years ago would be inflation-adjusted an 80-100 dollar game today. If you could sell a STANDARD, non-AAA game at $100 retail the amount of bug-fixing and QA you could budget would be astronomical. And even then you had games like MOO3 that were literally unplayable at launch.

Sure! Some products don't meet expectations. It happens in every industry and every aspect of life. MOO3 was a massive disappointment, but not too unexpected considering how many companies it went through before being dumped on the market. Another example of a expectation failure was Duke Nukem Forever. Actually, since 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's Law), much of the product base doesn't meet expectation.

Games got nominally cheaper. So did beer. Do you have a point? The standard price for a high-end PC game was $40-$60 in the '80s (my original Master of Orion box still has it's $39.99 sticker on it). There have always been cheaper games, some even free. But again, do you have a point? Because that's certainly not rebutting one of mine.

 

[permeakra]

A $30-40 game (even in 1990 a fairly standard price) 30 years ago would be inflation-adjusted an 80-100 dollar game today. If you could sell a STANDARD, non-AAA game at $100 retail the amount of bug-fixing and QA you could budget would be astronomical. And even then you had games like MOO3 that were literally unplayable at launch.

Hm. Afaik PC games in early 1990s (and consoles too) were an unfavored child, since more money could be made on arcade machines. Am I wrong?

 

[sillyrobot]

Hm. Afaik PC games in early 1990s (and consoles too) were an unfavored child, since more money could be made on arcade machines. Am I wrong?

Consoles were unfavoured until the early 1980s. As you note, there was much more money available in the arcade business. Early consoles were also very limited in capability. Atari made a massive amount of money on consoles and that ushered in a new dev era.

From a development perspective, PCs were strongly disfavoured because you had to dump so much time/expertise into handling possible hardware/system configurations: 8086, 80286, 80386SX, or full 80386 processor? Monochrome or colour? If colour, CGA, EGA, VGA, or SVGA video card? If a better video card then Intel or ATI? 640K memory or using Extended memory or EMS? Consoles were preferred because you could ignore all that cruft and just build to one machine.

 

[Dustman]

I think that is the point though, the games and companies that were unplayable are no longer with us, for a reason, while graphically games have improved, the quality has definitely been deteriorating for over a decade, to where we are at a point where people want to be apologetic for companies that have poor releases. It is insane. A bad company will always be a bad company, and the more money people give them, the worse it will be, we should most definitely be penalizing this behavior instead of encouraging it and making excuses for them.

That's a bold statement. Graphic quality improved immensely, engines done as well. Something like Stellaris wouldn't even being possible on normal consumer hardware. Complexity leads to irritating errors that are in many cases hard to catch, and due to the scope of projects are rather numerous. I don't really believe that relative number of bugs increased by order(s). Sure they did for some products.

On another hand indie gaming is booming. Huge number of nice little games from different genres made by few individuals/small teams is skyrocketing. And prices are comparable with McDonald visit or even cheaper. Many of these games are of very, very solid quality and have few, if any, promptly fixed bugs

 

[Duuk]

On another hand indie gaming is booming. Huge number of nice little games from different genres made by few individuals/small teams is skyrocketing. And prices are comparable with McDonald visit or even cheaper. Many of these games are of very, very solid quality and have few, if any, promptly fixed bugs

Which is why Steam had to change their rules on the Early Access system. Because of the very, very solid quality of releases and few, if any, promptly fixed bugs in the fully finished, on time released games which were developed and published under the EA system.

 

[Karri]

I've been playing these games since EU2 and HOI2.

Paradox games were always incredibly buggy at new releases and always had bugs and needed hotfix patches after major updates.

Nothing new. It's just this time the thing that's broken is some glaring obvious issue.

I've been playing Paradox games since the first Europa Universalis. The bugs were there then, and are still there and they are still getting fixed. The games are only getting better and the engine more complex by time; be that patches or new versions(Play the original EU or EU IV? EU IV obviously). Looking at most Early Access title they seem to lose steam even before the real release version is out. Paradox keeps going, improving and patching the games. And probably will keep going until the end of time. It's not just patches and bug fixes that Paradox does; they clearly aim to improve the games time and time again. I can wait another six months and then come back to a game that is a whole new experience.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

Daily reminder that some of the "content-light" and cosmetic DLCs are what funds some of the free updates.

I have exactly zero problems with PDX releasing those DLC. If I/you don't want them, i/you don't buy them.

Those are not a reason to say PDX is becoming a money-making corporation.

What is wrong with Megacorp/Le Guin is something else entirely.

 

[trajan]

Sure! Some products don't meet expectations. It happens in every industry and every aspect of life. MOO3 was a massive disappointment, but not too unexpected considering how many companies it went through before being dumped on the market. Another example of a expectation failure was Duke Nukem Forever. Actually, since 90% of everything is crap (Sturgeon's Law), much of the product base doesn't meet expectation.

Games got nominally cheaper. So did beer. Do you have a point? The standard price for a high-end PC game was $40-$60 in the '80s (my original Master of Orion box still has it's $39.99 sticker on it). There have always been cheaper games, some even free. But again, do you have a point? Because that's certainly not rebutting one of mine.

I think his point was pretty obvious. If game prices had kept up with inflation, companies could afford to spend more money on pre-release QA/bugfixing/polish.

Whether they would or not wasn't addressed, but his point was that they could.

 

[Strigoi Tyrannus]

One thing to remember is that this is the channel through which we interact with Paradox. Think of a grocery store. If you have something to complain about, you complain to the cashier because that is the channel by which you interact with that store. Of course you know it's not the cashiers fault that your favourite cold cut has run out or that the shopping lines are way too long because there ain't enough cashiers. You are not complaining about the cashier but to the cashier and expect them to pass the complain to higher up or to whoever's responsibility the issue in question is.

 

[sillyrobot]

I think his point was pretty obvious. If game prices had kept up with inflation, companies could afford to spend more money on pre-release QA/bugfixing/polish.

Whether they would or not wasn't addressed, but his point was that they could.

Only assuming the basic economics in the industry have remained the same over those 40 years. That's not the case. Per person productivity has increased in the dev area at least as much as it has increased in the broader economy. Since the primary cost is labour, that would be significant.

 

[permeakra]

That's a bold statement. Graphic quality improved immensely, engines done as well. Something like Stellaris wouldn't even being possible on normal consumer hardware. Complexity leads to irritating errors that are in many cases hard to catch, and due to the scope of projects are rather numerous. I don't really believe that relative number of bugs increased by order(s). Sure they did for some products.

It probably decreased =) But it is expected.
The difference in programming a PC game in 1990s or earlier and in modern days is quality of instrumentation and tools and to some extent methodology. Also, advances in hardware made obsolete many arcane arts of constrained programming. Yes, the devs have to write a lot more code, but
1) They don't have to fit everything into <1 MB or RAM.
2) They don't have to optimize for performance everywhere. CPU clock grew from < 1 MHz to 5 GHz and number of instructions per cycle grew from <1 to 3-5 and that's not counting multicore CPUS and GPU functionality
3)They got excellent free graphic libraries like openGL and don't have to draw every pixel by hand.
4) They also can buy or get some free graphic engines with liberal license.
5) Also, new methodologies for writing large systems emerged, because people got a lot of experience.
Devs of modern games have a lot easier time than devs in 1990s and they do not have to do low-level staff like drawing each pixel by hand.

That said, Stellaris isn't all that complex product. Sure, it's a big game with a lot of functionality, but in comparison with the likes of MS Office or Mozilla Firefox? Pfff, piece of cake. Yet, through the years I got hit by two bugs in Firefox, one was afaik readily fixed (at least I didn't see it ever again) and one had an easy workaround and wasn't all that important.

 

[Anemetius]

If you wish you can be a cow that devs milk. I dont want to.

 

[kgptzac]

I'm not here to comment what happened or not happened, but I do want to stress that something should happen: people should stop pre-ordering Stellaris DLC's (or pre-ordering any games in general). I learned my lesson on the 2.0 patch: upon the 2.2 patch I've seen so many issues where I know I won't enjoy the game, so I didn't buy the DLC or even try to play the game. People say to vote with your wallet, and I agree, but just voting with your wallet is not enough.

I can understand in the early days of Stellaris, people were more open to big patches and more tolerant to broken things. But years have past and Stellaris by all means, should be a matured game, yet devs still think it's ok to make radical changes to key aspects of the games. Compounding on the issue being the natural high amount of broken things, PDX is hellbent on "release first, fix later, and finally break things all over again with the next release" mentality. Logically speaking, this cannot and must not be a sustainable business strategy, so I'd like to call on folks to play some game that's not currently broken, lest PDX somehow look at their stats and believe people are still in love with current state of the game.

 

[King Travis]

What paradox has run straight into is the brick wall created by the entire gaming industry with communities that are fed up with the whole paying beta tester/early access/preorder/loot crate business model. All gaming companies are struggeling with it, and people are predicting a major downturn in gaming for a while as the bubble pops.

I'm not saying they do the loot crate thing, I am saying that I feel that gamers have been feeling exploited and taken for granted.

 

[Duuk]

What paradox has run straight into is the brick wall created by the entire gaming industry with communities that are fed up with the whole paying beta tester/early access/preorder/loot crate business model. All gaming companies are struggeling with it, and people are predicting a major downturn in gaming for a while as the bubble pops.

I'm not saying they do the loot crate thing, I am saying that I feel that gamers have been feeling exploited and taken for granted.

You mean the gaming industry that grew by 20 billion dollars (over 20% ) year over year from 2016 to 2017 (numbers not finalized for 2018) is projected to have grown another 20 billion for 2018 and continue that same growth? Yes, they are struggling mightily.

 

[King Travis]

Meanwhile large companies like, EA, Blizzard and Activision have gotten their asses kicked on some very high profile games due to not very friendly business practices. I'm not sure what you are trying to prove other than to show that companies like this need to show growth year over year, and find ways to extract more profit than the year before in order to please shareholders.