Ready-ish to go

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

This quote from Shigeru Miyamoto is infamous within the gaming community and often used as a mantra when eager consumers are met with the disappointing news that they are going to have to wait a little longer for a much anticipated game.

Last week was no exception.

"Final Fantasy VII Remake," one of the highest profile games of the first quarter, was slated to release on March 3. After five years of development and with a month and change left before the release you would think that Square Enix must have already done everything there is to do for the game.

Apparently that's not the case, and last week they announced that the game would be delayed a few extra weeks to April 10.

The delay caused a bit of panic in the gaming world, but not for the reason you might think. Delayed games are common enough, especially for high profile projects. The issue of this particular delay wasn't about the delay itself, but with the new target release date.

Coming out on April 10 puts "Final Fantasy VII Remake" smack dab in between the release of Capcom's "Resident Evil 3" and CD Projekt Red's "Cyberpunk 2077," respectively scheduled to come out the week before and the week after.

That's a major gaming release every week for three consecutive weeks in April.

It's kind of a lot.

Thankfully, and it feels weird to say this, but Square Enix isn't the only developer out there that needs some extra time to polish their product. Just two days after the "Final Fantasy VII Remake" delay was announced, CD Projekt Red announced that "Cyberpunk 2077" was being pushed into September.

In retrospect, the timing of that announcement couldn't be better. How often do developers announcing a delay get a response of "Whew, thank goodness."

While I'm sure there are plenty of gamers out there annoyed at the "Cyberpunk 2077" delay, I'm just glad that I won't feel pressured to get everything I can out of "Resident Evil 3" and "Final Fantasy VII Remake" before moving on to the next big thing.

Besides, "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." Right?

Well… not really so much anymore.

Once upon a time, before internet capable consoles, games were effectively set in stone. Good or bad, whatever hit the store shelf was all it was ever going to be. Today though, the ability to continually patch and update games after launch has, quite literally, changed the game.

It is not uncommon these days for games to receive a "Day 1 Patch," which allows developers to continue working on the game during the time it takes for physical copies to be produced and distributed on store shelves. While disks are being printed and trucked around the world, developers can get bug fixes and gameplay changes ready to go before anybody has a chance to play the "finished product."

The ability to update games after launch means that developers can make minor quality of life changes or major overhauls.

Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" launched around the world with audio and subtitle tracks for every major spoken language on the cartridge, but no way to access them without changing the system settings on your console. Hardly a game breaking flaw, but annoying nonetheless. Nintendo later implemented language and subtitle options in an update shortly after the game's release.

A more dramatic example might be Square Enix's PC release of "Chrono Trigger." Gamers went on a rollercoaster of emotions the day that Square Enix surprised launched a PC port of the SNES classic. "Chrono Trigger" is one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved games of all time. One would think that Square Enix would know to handle such a product with care.

They didn't.

In the span of about five minutes the entire gaming community went from "Yes! Chrono Trigger is available for PC!" to "Oh no. It's a haphazard port of the crappy mobile version."

In a move rare for Square Enix, they actually took the criticisms to heart. Over the next several months they released five patches to the game, gradually turning it into the game they should have released from the start.

The most notable exception to this rule is Hello Games' "No Man's Sky."

When "No Man's Sky" initially released in 2016 it was one of the year's biggest disappointments. Director Sean Murray hyped the multiplayer space exploration game by declaring that their procedurally generated universe was so vast that the likelihood of meeting another player was near zero. As it turned out, the likelihood was not "near zero" but simply "zero" as gamers quickly discovered that interacting with other players was simply not a feature of the game.

Even without the controversy over the misleading statements, the game generated negative reviews for its monotonous and tedious gameplay loop.

For a small studio like Hello Games, flopping such a major release could have been a death knell. But then something strange happened. They kept working on it.

In spite of the magnitude of ill-will generated at launch, Hello Games has spent the last four years putting out free updates. Bit by bit, they've gradually turned "No Man's Sky" into the game that people thought they were getting at launch and then some. It's one of the greatest comeback stories of the industry.

Of course, these stories are exceptional because they are the exception. More often than not, an unfinished game simply stays unfinished. Thanks to Steam's Early Access program, there are a great many PC games that never even make it to their "official release." They simply stay in a state of perpetual development.

From a practical standpoint there's nothing actually stopping Square Enix or CD Projekt Red from releasing their games on their original target dates and implementing updates later. The reality of gaming today means that "ready for release" is a largely arbitrary distinction. It doesn't mean the game is "done" anymore. It means that a game is done enough that the developer is willing to stake their reputation that you will enjoy the product as is.

If they succeed, they are rewarded with a good reputation. If they don't, as was the case for Hello Games, it's an uphill climb to regain that trust.

A rushed game may no longer be bad forever but another adage remains true.

You only get one chance to make a first impression.

Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and is still going to have a very busy April.