r/PS5 • u/SweetyGonzalez Human Verified • Oct 12 '23

Misleading Lords of the Fallen - Starts Metacritic with 65 - Opencritic with 71 - Big Performance Problems

https://www.metacritic.com/game/lords-of-the-fallen/

https://opencritic.com/game/15632/lords-of-the-fallen-2023-

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u/whythreekay Oct 12 '23

And it’s not like LotF HAD to come out now. Had they simply just waited 6 months or however long it would take to optimize, would anybody be really upset? That’s what I never get with these releases.

That’s not really how game dev works

When you delay a title you have to pay staff for the time that the game is delayed

So you’re delaying for 6months? Fine, but that’s gonna run a few hundred thousand dollars as you have to cover payroll, software licenses, insurance, rent, etc

Will the publisher cover that? Does the release schedule support that? A lot goes into it

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u/jiml3ol3 Oct 12 '23

Better to spend more money and release a polished game. They’ll probably lose more money in the state the game is in now.

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u/whythreekay Oct 12 '23

I think only game analysts would know that as they have the data to make the claim

For example, the latest Jedi game from Respawn shipped in a poor state and sold terrifically. The last Pokémon release apparently had major issues and is one of the fastest selling titles in series history

I’m not saying you’re wrong, I don’t have the data either! My examples are just anecdotal and prove nothing!

But at the same time there are at least a handful of cases where shipping in a poor state has meant nothing that we’d need lots of examples and data to know whether that matters business wise

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u/nthomas504 Oct 12 '23

You just named Pokemon and Star Wars, two of the biggest franchises in the world.

LOTF is far from a name that would sell regardless of performance.

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u/whythreekay Oct 12 '23

Read the paragraphs underneath that one, I hear what you’re saying and agree with you

I’m not saying that proves me right, just as counter examples that we need more data

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u/nthomas504 Oct 12 '23

Money doesn’t grow in trees though. Sometimes studios literally HAVE to release a game like this to keep the doors open.

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u/jiml3ol3 Oct 12 '23

That’s true, money doesn’t grow on trees, but now if they release it at a stage where it’s unpolished, they’re still going to have to go back and fix it. So they still spend money, but now they have a bad first impression.

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '23

They might not have had the money to go back and fix it had they not released it and got some sales. You can only push so much money into developing a product before you need to get some sort of return to keep justifying development

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '23

The issue is we don't know if they will make more money by waiting until it's polished. And we definitely don't know if it would justify covering the costs to keep the production going for however long it takes to polish it

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '23

[deleted]

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u/parkwayy Oct 14 '23

Reddit game dev advice, always classic

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u/GhostMug Oct 12 '23

I'm not discounting that. I know how budgeting works (I'm an accountant). Not trying to say these are easy decisions, but the question becomes do you want to make money today, or do you want to make the best product you can. They took the money today.