by Stacy Jones on Jan 20, 2010
We all know how shipping a buggy or unfinished game can be detrimental to a launch, but Blizzard COO Paul Sams has reinforced this point in an interview with Gameindustry.biz (free account needed to view). Sams explains how shipping an unfinished game is not only bad for the franchise and players, but also devastating for developers that have poured their heart and soul into developing a game.
"If you've been in the games industry for any length of time and you've worked for a variety of companies, what you will hear from developers is that they were working on a game that they were so excited and enthusiastic about... and yet, when it got to the point where the company wanted to ship it and the game wasn't done, that company would oftentimes make the decision to ship it anyway because they needed to make their quarterly numbers, or whatever."
Sams goes on to explain Blizzard's approach to game design and the developer's unwillingness to sacrifice good game design in order to rush out a product to meet a fiscal deadline. He explains that not everyone agrees with the Blizzard way, but he believes it has worked out great for the developer and players and he cites at least 12 million gamers that would agree with that statement every month.