This is why games are being released before they're ready

Driveclub, Halo: The Master Chief Collection and Assassin's Creed: Unity were all released in an unfinished state last year. Games that, in our opinion, should have stayed in development for at least six more months before being released. But why were they shipped in that state?

Gamasutra has been trying to get to the bottom of the problem and explain what it is exactly that creates an enviroment where publishers feel forced to release products that are not completely finished. In a nutshell, it comes down to two things: marketing and money.

Keith Fuller, who over the years worked on projects such as Jedi Academy, Quake 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops, had this to say: "Developers rarely get to tell Marketing 'We can ship it now, we fixed all the bugs'. Rather, the marketing department will tell you when you're launching regardless of fixing bugs. If you want that arrangement to change, figure out how to sell millions of units without telling anyone your game exists."

He continued: "The last game I worked on as a studio dev was Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Activision's legal team would go into cardiac arrest if I shared with you how few months before launch that game was almost entirely unplayable. That's due to the pressure of annual franchise installments and the competitive landscape."

Former High Moon CTO Clinton Keith concurred with that assessment: "Teams are pressured to hit scope, schedule and cost goals up front that are unreasonable. Beyond a point, not even crunching helps."

"As a result of all this, the team releases an inferior game, which doesn't sell well and damages the brand," adds Keith, who offered the chart below by way of illustration. "The stakeholders/shareholders respond by applying more pressure to management, who then apply more pressure to development."

So there seems to be a vicious cycle whereby unrealistic targets, both internally and financially, push unfinished games out into the public domain. How long will this continue, and what is needed to break the cycle?