Episode 537: Riotous Development

After a long delay, this episode looks at some of the more disturbing stuff going on in the videogame industry — and Minecraft. The Gaming Flashback comes back with Lucidity.

  • Riot Games employees walkout in protest
  • Claptrap actor accuses Randy Pitchford of physical assault
  • Microsoft teases new Minecraft AR game for mobile

Let us know what you think.

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This week’s question of the week, what occurred in 2009 that “wowed” you, made you happy, built your excitement or just generally rocked your face off?

Xbox 360’s Fable 2: No Online Co-Op In BoxXbox 360’s Fable 2: No Online Co-Op In Box

Much like Kameo: Elements of Power, Fable 2 ships without online co-op mode on day-one. However, Kameo didn’t promise the co-op mode prior to the games release, or talk about it in their presentations and hype machine conferences.

How does that happen? It’s easy to promise a feature but words do not make games true. More than likely the online co-op was a bit more complicated or had some bugs that needed to be shaken out prior to shipping. Microsoft is talking about releasing a patch for the new co-op play on the first week or so of the game release.

There are two options: ship a product that’s buggy and deal with the online PR nightmare with bugs and day-one patches, or, ship it without the feature and promise it early in the launch phase of the game. Once the code is complete, game software has to go through the packing, duplication and shipping phase. A lot of last minute testing can get done in the time it takes to produce the boxed product.

Hopefully Microsoft is doing some last minute testing to make a more reliable presentation of online co-op which everyone can use. However if it releases with a bunch of bugs…

(Thanks, GameSpot)