Divinity 2: Flames of Vengeance Finished
Divinity 2: Flames of Vengeance Finished
Development Info - posted by VentilatorOfDoom on Mon 28 June 2010, 11:40:10
Tags: Divinity II; Larian Studios... or at least the german version is finished. Swen Vincke of Larian Studios gave a status update on their forums.
I think I'm not hurting the truth that in the past, many domestic releases through domestic publishers which were only later published outside of their territory sucked when it came to the amount of bugs, of which it is most likely that several were known up front. The responsible ones to be honest are usually the developers who slipped and weren't ready in time, and if a publisher risks getting into trouble because of the delay, they will usually release in the territories where they are the strongest to recuperate their investments as fast as possible. Personally, I never thought that a wise move, as I always thought it's better to ship when it's really ready, but as a developer, responsible for a delay, you're usually not in the strongest position to argue, so you do your best to limit the damage. I'm going to give you an elaborate example of this in a minute, but let me first talk a little bit more about Flames Of Vengeance and why I think this time around, the understandable and probably predictable comment "You are using Germany as a beta-testing country" isn't merited - knowing full well that my statement has a certain bias, and if the unexpected happens, I'll be forced to eat my words and walk the hall of shame.
The main reason - we took our sweet time and managed to get away from external pressure for the development of this one. A dangerous thing in the mind of a lot of development managers around the world as developers tend to spend far more time than they should on their games (which is true) but we actually think ourselves that what we're offering you now is ready, and is a much better experience than Divinity 2 ever was. If it weren't for the reasons mentioned before, we'd happily release everywhere.
Obviously it helped that we built Flames Of Vengeance on a finished game, but still, one year for an expansion pack is pretty long, though then again, it's a pretty big expansion pack. Some games nowadays are shorter than Flames Of Vengeance on its own, let alone when playing it combined with Divinity 2.
Also, if required, our time to patch is going to be lot shorter this time, as we made sure that this time we can quickly react to anything that might go wrong. I really don't think it'll be necessary, but you never know. Did you know btw that for one of our games I once had to deal with the statement - "We don't do patches, our games are perfect" while these boards where being overloaded with messages of technical problems. The first patch for that game was actually "leaked" on purpose.
Sounds as if they're planning to use Germany as a beta-testing country.
Spotted at: RPGWatch
I think I'm not hurting the truth that in the past, many domestic releases through domestic publishers which were only later published outside of their territory sucked when it came to the amount of bugs, of which it is most likely that several were known up front. The responsible ones to be honest are usually the developers who slipped and weren't ready in time, and if a publisher risks getting into trouble because of the delay, they will usually release in the territories where they are the strongest to recuperate their investments as fast as possible. Personally, I never thought that a wise move, as I always thought it's better to ship when it's really ready, but as a developer, responsible for a delay, you're usually not in the strongest position to argue, so you do your best to limit the damage. I'm going to give you an elaborate example of this in a minute, but let me first talk a little bit more about Flames Of Vengeance and why I think this time around, the understandable and probably predictable comment "You are using Germany as a beta-testing country" isn't merited - knowing full well that my statement has a certain bias, and if the unexpected happens, I'll be forced to eat my words and walk the hall of shame.
The main reason - we took our sweet time and managed to get away from external pressure for the development of this one. A dangerous thing in the mind of a lot of development managers around the world as developers tend to spend far more time than they should on their games (which is true) but we actually think ourselves that what we're offering you now is ready, and is a much better experience than Divinity 2 ever was. If it weren't for the reasons mentioned before, we'd happily release everywhere.
Obviously it helped that we built Flames Of Vengeance on a finished game, but still, one year for an expansion pack is pretty long, though then again, it's a pretty big expansion pack. Some games nowadays are shorter than Flames Of Vengeance on its own, let alone when playing it combined with Divinity 2.
Also, if required, our time to patch is going to be lot shorter this time, as we made sure that this time we can quickly react to anything that might go wrong. I really don't think it'll be necessary, but you never know. Did you know btw that for one of our games I once had to deal with the statement - "We don't do patches, our games are perfect" while these boards where being overloaded with messages of technical problems. The first patch for that game was actually "leaked" on purpose.
Spotted at: RPGWatch
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