Marobug said:
We're talking about completely different things then. Big companies work this way for a reason, and I can guarantee you most medium to larger sized indie studios work this way too. Except for single developers and open source projects this "flexibility" you speak of isn't a good thing, at all.
This is true, big companies must work this way, even medium to larger size indie studios. If not they collapse.
Want I want to say is that this method of working has it's flaws, it's not perfect, and I won't have to live with this flaws as a single developer.
The bigger a company is, the slower their decisions get.
I know because I worked for a company inside Johnson & Johnson.
Most of the people I worked with were from J&J, this is one of the most successful companies in the world, but the it's IT was a complete mess.
They had all these rules, all these method of work, they tried so hard to make us comply with it yet most of their own employees would bypass of all that, would make things the wrong way, and most of my work I had improvise because they didn't gave the right tools to work with.
I know game companies are not the same as a big corporation like J&J, but it's not the exactly opposite.
My point is as a single developer I have advantages that big companies don't, not because they are wrong or because they suck, it's because they are big companies. As well as big companies have advantages that I don't.
Firstly, why do you say that most big company games aren't well balanced ? Generally they come out way more polished than indie game titles.
Most polished than most indie games, those few great indie games are way more polished than the average.
But I think you're wrong to say that big companies have polished games, usually they run on a tight schedule, they almost always release before it's ready, I've seen lots of companies releasing a game and then having a week full of patches just so the game reaches the standard it should have had at launch. When they care to patch it.
I've seen many bugs that were identified at launch that were addressed months later.
Most games are visually polished, they are not bad, but they could use a lot more balancing.
I've seen way too many games with unofficial patches or with mods to address their issues, and most of these issues are balancing issues, I was horrified at how many flaws Victoria 2 had, I loved the game but the bugs turned me off.
The real question here is that a lot of companies don't see balancing as an issue. They see it more as a question of taste, some want a more realistic game, some don't. And if it's a question of taste we can't patch it. That's what I've seen, and I've seen it too many times.
Secondly like I said previously, there is flexibility in big companies. There is a QA board, internal and beta testers, there is press articles, etc... big companies do listen to feedback either internal or external, probably more so than indie developers.
They listen to whom they decide to listen, if big companies really listened they wouldn't DRM their games, take spore for example, do you think they listened?
People were screaming that the second part of the game didn't feel right.
How could they have released a game like that with all the beta testing they probably had.
Look dark spore, it went down the same road.
There were people that still liked them, it sold as hell, EA made big money with it.
But the game is still not balanced, it still sucks and it's a horrible game.
Thirdly you seem to have a common misconception on how big companies work. Right now I can't think of any big developer who doesn't have a communication channel of some sort.
Continuous support (in the form of patches) is usually given until a year or so after the game is released, I don't know of many indie developers who do that.
Big companies might not listen to you but that's not because they lack "flexibility", but rather because they have way too many customers to listen to and you can't expect them to pick each and every suggestion/opinion/bug report and do something about it. Indie developers, if put in a similar situation, wouldn't be any different.
Most of indie games I've played and liked were given constant patches. But I like just a few of them.
Having too many customers is a lack of flexibility if you don't have a way to listen to them all, if you can't handle all the input then it's lacking something, even if there's no possible way to address them all, it's still a problem.
But I'm not saying that they didn't made a forum or that they didn't put an email for you to send or something like that. I mean that however I try to contact them I fail.
I look and see forums full of people complaining and they still doesn't address the issue.
I look and see people launching unofficial patches, I see people reverse engineering games and they still don't address the issue.
Why can't they do it? Their boss don't let them, the publisher didn't authorize (I actually got this one as an answer once), they don't have the budget to allocate someone to address it.
It doesn't matter, the issue isn't being addressed.
There are lots of indie developers that act the same way as big companies, just because there are so many lazy people in the world.
But being an indie developer, it means that I don't depend on a publisher or allocating resources or having to ask my boss if he allows it. Being a indie developer allows me to address the issue faster. It doesn't matter if indie developers do it or not.
Big companies have trouble filtering all the information they get from their customers, but good big companies manage to filter, manage to address them, manage to deliver a great game.
As well a good indie developers.
But being a big company makes it difficult to handle these issues.
Now I'm confused, I think I wrote too much I don't remember what was my point exactly. :D
EDIT: Sorry about my English.
EDIT2: Hi Marobug, could you please take a look at this thread:
http://rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=62372