Even though I’ve long talked about waiting for a bit before buying new games, I’ve only ever looked at it from a pricing perspective. Nintendo games aside, waiting tends to mean a lower price, which of course is good for players and hopefully helps encourage developers to create better games that you don’t want to wait for. Yet, there’s another side to this, that of performance and even just raw content. Even good games like Crimson Desert are in their roughest, most content-bare state at launch, making it much more desirable to sit and wait until it’s much more playable, the “play” date, if you will.

“Play Date” is a joke term coined by Mega64 in a now years old video (see above) that was making fun of games launching in a broken or incomplete states, the joke being that there’s actually two important dates in a games lifecycle: the launch date and the “play” date, the “play” date being the point at which all the major issues are fixed and the game is completely playable.

I thought it was funny at the time, but it never really registered until the recent debacles surrounding Crimson Desert and Marathon. Both games have their good points, but they both also suffered from major issues at launch. In Marathon’s case, it’s a combination of a lack of content and a mismatch of budget and target audience. In Crimson Desert’s case, it’s mostly technical issues and control problems. I’d say it’d be better in both cases to wait for the “play” date, but one of these games *cough* Marathon *cough* might not be around long enough for that.

Well, I guess live service games like Marathon don’t really belong in this conversation since the entire deal with those is continuous change and development, which, as anyone who’s followed a live service game will know, means that there are lots of highs and lows in terms of content and overall performance. As such, there isn’t really a “play” date for them even if they manage to last.

Going back to Crimson Desert, the biggest criticisms at launch had to do with its controls and the overly simplistic quest design which greatly contrasted with the scope of what players can do in the game. So, while there was definitely fun to be had in Crimson Desert, it was something of a rough and at times empty experience. Thankfully for everyone who’s interested in the game, though, its developers haven’t been sitting on their hands.

In the weeks since Crimson Desert launched, Pearl Abyss has been working steadily to address all player complaints and feedback as well as adding more actual meat to the experience. So, with each week that goes by, Crimson Desert becomes a better, more intuitive experience. They’re not even done improving it either. Crimson Desert is supposed to get a massive update soon which will supposedly add even more content and features requested by players. This sort of support is promised to go through June of this year at the very least, so, once that month passes, perhaps Crimson Desert’s “play” date will have finally arrived. It might even be on sale by then too.

I’m looking forward to that, but this still has me wondering about the state of the industry. Should players really have to wait six months to a year before the games they want to play are actually finished? I don’t think so. I think that if you’re going to charge a premium for your product, then that product should be ready for primetime on Day One. If it’s not, then what you’re actually selling is the opportunity to beta test your game (i.e. early access), and that should, at the very least, be sold at a massive discount (betas shouldn’t be charged for at all, really).

I’d say that just admitting to having an early access launch (at early access price) would be a good compromise between player needs and developer/publisher launch schedules, but somehow I feel as though that too would just get twisted in a way to squeeze players for more money. So no, this pattern of launch date and play date should not be a thing. Games should be polished and ready for launch day, even if they have to come out later.

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How do you feel about the launch state of AAA games these days? Do you usually buy right away or do you tend to wait for the “play” date too? Would it make a difference to you if games came out later but were feature complete?

Image form the Steam page