Why I'd Rather Wait Months For The Perfect Game Than Have A Rushed Disaster

In the business of video games, there’s a lot that goes into picking a release date. It isn’t just a number drawn from a hat. There are factors like what major games are coming out when and if your game can compete with that. But if there’s ever a game I feel like I can’t wait for, I don’t care if it’s the next impossible installation of the Silent Hill series, I will almost always prefer the developer to take that extra few months to delay the game and perfect its product instead of rushing it out to please the fans.

When Fallout 4 was announced during E3 last year, everyone was surprised to hear that their release date was set only months away. An open-world game that big releasing in such little time? Maybe it was already close to completion and they had planned it all along. But when Fallout 4 released in September last year, it was riddled with crazy bugs and strange glitches.

So rather than take the extra time to perfect the game for arrival, a game many have been waiting years to release, Bethesda decided to pump up the marketing and rush a release of Fallout 4, which I waited a few months to buy so that bugs and glitches like the above video could be fixed. Were they expecting to ride the wave of the hype from the announcement at E3 and use it to drive sales in the fall? If it weren’t for fans’ undying dedication to the franchise, Bethesda would be shying away and apologizing, very much like the newly released RPG, Five Nights At Freddy’s World creator, Scott Cawthon.

Scott Cawthon has a thing he does with his games where he nails down a release date and then surprises everyone with an unnamed early release. After announcing Five Nights At Freddy’s World and teasing it for months, it released early last week. Unlike the previous Freddy’s games, it wasn’t a horror game. It had horribly upbeat music and a feeling of being put together in a rush with less-than-impressive graphics. Everything seemed low quality and not what it should’ve been in comparison to past Five Nights At Freddy’s games.

In response to all of the negative comments and backlash, Cawthon pulled the game from Steam and promised he’d work on it more to make it what it was truly meant to be. He also mentioned that those who purchased the game initially would be refunded. And when he eventually does release the newer, improved version of Five Nights At Freddy’s World, it will be free. Five Nights At Freddy’s World was probably the biggest early release disaster I’ve ever seen, but I have hope that Scott Cawthon can pull it back and turn it around to make it better than it ever was. But we’ll see.

The message is, don’t release a game just for the benefit of giving the title over to fans when they want it. Demand for the game will always be there, and guaranteed a handful of them will appreciate the developer taking extra time to fine-tune the game.