Rather than choosing an arbitrary time, you should choose a state of the game to call finished. Limited time will always lead to crunch inevitably.
Rather than choosing an arbitrary time, you should choose a state of the game to call finished. Limited time will always lead to crunch inevitably.
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
In a publisher fronting money to developer situation, without a fixed time limit (or money limit, which functionally translates to a time limit) is the publisher just infinitely on the hook to pay for dev time “until it’s done”?
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Depends; do they want the game to sell or not?
setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m not trying to be cute. If a publisher company gives money to a developer who is a separate entity, they’ve got to have some kind of contract. If there is no timeline or total budget written into the initial contract, how could a publisher pull out of that agreement?
If the answer is going to be “publishers can just pull out when they feel like it” then that’s neither adhering to the “let devs develop ‘until it is done’.” philosophy that is the entire point of this hypothetical restructure, and it for practical terms it does impose a deadline based on the publisher’s patience, except now that deadline is not expressly clear and simply defined.
JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No, no. You’re right. It is absolutely necessary to put out incomplete, buggy, unplayable “games” and force us to pay $80 to wait for them to actually finish it…