Now if all game companies could produce quality games like this
Hmm.. I think it's really more that Ironclad/Stardock are very special cases. They work day in and day out (maybe they're volunteers who don't get paid? or maybe they're all slaves working under someone who cannot be named?
)
I do seem to notice that companies (e.g. Ironclad, Stardock, and Blizzard) that actually allow for open betas almost always end up creating an end product that is flawless and a AAA game (MMORPGs are one type of game that this doesn't work out too well, probably because there are way too many at the moment).
For many cases, there are many legitimate reasons behind this (one big exception would be EA), for example:
1) Budget, which leads to time constraints, which leads to bugs.
2) Price of games. It takes A LOT of money to make games. The return on investment is not guaranteed, so this leads to making games into a playable & "hopefully good enough so that reviewers like it" sort of states and then based on initial purchases, "patch up stuff" (if they are nice enough too).
3) Testing hours committed. Bugs are everywhere (literally) - sometimes it takes a specific person or much more exhaustive play time to find bugs. Devs and testers in a game company are only human and only have so much time to test - i.e. it's very hard to avoid bugs. The number of bugs that could be found and the number of hours that might be needed to find these bugs would just not be feasible.
Just my thoughts, I may or may not be right, but this is what I've come to understand
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