Probably not, since Telltale thinks only a small amount of people have this bug.
I think you guys in customer service really need to work on your bedside manner. Thank God you're not doctors.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry your son's surgery is taking so long, but the more experienced surgeons are swamped with other projects. And besides, there's only a small portion of people in the world who have your son's condition. Now excuse me, I must ignore you for the next several hours."
"Ma'am, I'm sorry your son's surgery is taking so long, but the more experienced surgeons are swamped with other projects. And besides, there's only a small portion of people in the world who have your son's condition. Now excuse me, I must ignore you for the next several hours."
At first I laughed, but then I cried. Hilariously accurate.
Probably not, since Telltale thinks only a small amount of people have this bug.
I don't believe that's accurate. If there's no news on a fix, you can't really expect anybody from Telltale to post anything. We did have a post from Amy on the 23rd in response to a direct question.
Amy, are there plans to make information regarding this problem accessible to customers before they purchase Puzzle Agent (expecting people to read the forum before buying really isn't appropriate)?
I don't believe that's accurate. If there's no news on a fix, you can't really expect anybody from Telltale to post anything. We did have a post from Amy on the 23rd in response to a direct question.
You're probably right, but after waiting for five months, I think we have earned the right to make fun of them.
I don't believe that's accurate. If there's no news on a fix, you can't really expect anybody from Telltale to post anything. We did have a post from Amy on the 23rd in response to a direct question.
Amy, are there plans to make information regarding this problem accessible to customers before they purchase Puzzle Agent (expecting people to read the forum before buying really isn't appropriate)?
I don't think there were any plans to do this but I am going to ask for this tomorrow.
I don't think there were but I am going to ask for this tomorrow.
Thanks Amy. I think it would be a good move in terms of limiting the number of people who could be adversely effected and reassuring some of the disgruntled people in this thread.
I hope that 3:02am isn't your local time (or if it is that you don't have to be anywhere in the morning)!
Well so to add to the voices about this... I just bought this through one of Steam's indie packs and ... yep ... unplayable.
Dual GTX 470s here
Having read the rest of the thread, this is profoundly disappointing from Telltale, a company I've respected for their quality as well as their creativity.
This has been a known issue since July... this is now November, nearly December... and guess what else: the install base for 400 series nVidia cards is only getting larger and larger as the cards become more affordable. Which means more and more people that can't play this game (but who probably just bought it for the same reason I did).
For this problem to take so long to resolve is absolutely ridiculous.
Hmm... any idea how to get the patch through the Adventure Bundle? That's how I bought the game and uninstalling everything and telling it to redownload still grabs the old version.
Urghhhhh. How can they not update it on their own site?
They probably got a bunch of new complaints from the Steam sale and prioritized that, even though they bought it for $1 and have been waiting for a couple days and we bought it for $10 and have been waiting for 6 freaking months.
Forgive me for being negative but that is what this whole debacle has brought out in me.
They probably got a bunch of new complaints from the Steam sale and prioritized that, even though they bought it for $1 and have been waiting for a couple days and we bought it for $10 and have been waiting for 6 freaking months.
Forgive me for being negative but that is what this whole debacle has brought out in me.
I'll have to take everyone's word for it that it's fixed since I've bought everything directly from Telltale Games. Pretty amazing if they've only fixed the problem for Steam users so far. Awesome level of communication in this thread by the way.
Sincerely, I thank you for finally fixing the problem. I look forward to getting the fix (soon?) and actually playing the game. Sadly, Back to the Future is the last Telltale game that I preorder. I've learned that I should be a lot more cautious with Telltale's products and I'm better off waiting until things go on sale.
I'm not sure how feasible it would be in this case, but I know for the TF2 Sam and Max items people who bought the game off of Telltale's site could get codes for Steam that would register their game on there... if they did that again then we could all get the patch that way.
I know for the TF2 Sam and Max items people who bought the game off of Telltale's site could get codes for Steam
Yeah, I thought the same; code isn't recognized in Steam.
When I bought Sam & Max 3 from Telltale, it showed up on my Steam account. I can't remember, but I must have provided my account when I purchased it in order to get the Team Fortress 2 add-on.
Steam user here, and I can assure you that the fix definitely works. I've so far been able to play up to the broken furnace puzzle with no hitches.
However the way Telltale treat this problem worries me. Obviously the only reason they fixed it was due to the recent Steam bundle purchases, which is were most of the recent complaints came from. That means that this fix took them under a week to do.
If this fix took less then a week to do, why didn't they fix it when the game first came out five months ago and avoid all this backlash?
The way Telltale handled this situation is far from satisfactory. If this were a puzzle, then the rating would be "Borderline".
It's sad to see the angry mob nature of this thread. Everybody is entitled to his or her opinion though, that's why my way of dealing with this thread as a moderator was to raise awareness of the situation here in our Mod Forum every now and then.
I have now decided to give another point of view of the situation. I am no involved in any of these processes, but i can relate to the complexity.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind.
TTG is still a growing company. I don't have much more background information than is publicly available, but the most notable changes recently are probably:
There were a couple of changes in staff, so communication might have been an issue. That's why i chose to mediate as mentioned earlier. Also TTG is still hiring. There are a lot of open positions, so obviously there's a need for more manpower.
TTG seems to work on a lot more projects at once now. That's a good thing for us, because it means more games we can play per year. But it can also lead to tighter project schedules. Scheduling is a challenging task in any kind of IT Project, because it is hard to estimate the workload and duration of a work package. That gets even more difficult if you do something new (As let's say e.g. the Puzzle Agent graphics engine, or the rendering of Tycho in Poker night). TTG has an even higher challenge here, because of short release cycles (Monthly episodes).
My best guess is that the graphics department, as in implementing the engines graphics capabilities, is still small. To quote from an older thread about a graphics issue in ToMI:
As for the issue, it's still on our graphics department, but he is still swamped with some other problems at the moment.
I'd love to get this working, but realistically it probably won't be coming any time soon. We've only got the one guy and he is one of the busiest in the whole company.
So worst case we can assume that there are still only a few people capable of fixing that kind of problems. That's backed up by Calebs earlier statement:
Hello again. I'm really sorry for the long delays on this. We haven't forgotten about this bug. We're very close to having an effective fix for it, but unfortunately the people here with the necessary knowledge to finish the fix have been completely swamped with other projects these past two weeks.
Based on the timing i would assume that Poker Night and/or BTTF were in the works then. From Poker Night it is obvious, that the graphics engine took a lot of work. Not only did they combine the rendering techniques of Strongbad and Sam&Max S3, they also implemented a cartoon renderer for Tycho.
We also know that the Fix has been worked on for a while now, and that it had side effects:
However, I have been personally testing the fix for this issue, and I know for a fact that it's nearing completion. There are just a handful of remaining problems that need to be resolved.
We don't know much about the complexity of the issue, but it was obviously not trivial. It might even be an nvidia driver or gpu bug that has to be worked around in a tedious and akward way.
The point is, that most of us can not understand why it took so long. If you consider the above, you might have a better idea.
The other issue is the lack of communication with the affected customers in this thread and promises that could not be kept. That is definitely something that should be handled better in the future.
In General it would be nice to have some kind of issue tracking system that is publicly accessible. That would make it much easier to follow up on the progress of a problem. Also reporting a bug and finding workarounds would be easier, if you wouldn't have to search the whole forum if it already exists in some weirdly phrased way.
Another problem is, that you often don't know if an updated version has been released unless you download it. There are usually threads in the Forum if an update is released, but you have to keep your eyes open for these.
An elegant solution would be having the version number on the download page. Further the launcher could send a simple request for the latest version number of the game at each start, and notify the user about an available update.
That's were a more likely explanation for releasing to steam first comes in.
It is easier to deploy updates to customers there. If there are still side effects with the fix that weren't found in playtesting, the version can be replaced easily. That would result in less buggy installations being around, causing support requests.
But it might be much simpler, like someone just forgot to upload it here or something went wrong in the process.
There were a couple of changes in staff, so communication might have been an issue.
Indeed, this may be part of the reason it took so long, but there must be more to it.
Also TTG is still hiring. There are a lot of open positions, so obviously there's a need for more manpower.
So is Blizzard, but I wouldn't expect them to take 5 months to fix a bug like this. While there may indeed be a correlation between the number of job openings at Telltale and the lack of manpower to handle bugs of such a nature, they do not necessarily imply each other.
TTG seems to work on a lot more projects at once now. That's a good thing for us, because it means more games we can play per year. But it can also lead to tighter project schedules. Scheduling is a challenging task in any kind of IT Project, because it is hard to estimate the workload and duration of a work package. That gets even more difficult if you do something new (As let's say e.g. the Puzzle Agent graphics engine, or the rendering of Tycho in Poker night). TTG has an even higher challenge here, because of short release cycles (Monthly episodes).
IMO, that just makes it all the more important to have people who can be dedicated to tasks like this. Perhaps that's one of the reasons they're looking for more people, but I don't see any positions which really fit in as far as this issue is concerned.
Based on the timing i would assume that Poker Night and/or BTTF were in the works then. From Poker Night it is obvious, that the graphics engine took a lot of work. Not only did they combine the rendering techniques of Strongbad and Sam&Max S3, they also implemented a cartoon renderer for Tycho.
I admit I don't have first-hand experience with this, but as far as I know, that's not particularly complicated. They already had appropriate shaders for Strong Bad and Max from their respective games, and toon shading is supposedly pretty simple to implement; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they just tweaked the Strong Bad renderer somewhat. There may be other things that required his attention, but I haven't seen anything from Poker Night that suggests it.
As far as BTTF is concerned, I can't say, since I haven't paid too much attention to that game.
That's were a more likely explanation for releasing to steam first comes in.
It is easier to deploy updates to customers there. If there are still side effects with the fix that weren't found in playtesting, the version can be replaced easily. That would result in less buggy installations being around, causing support requests.
But it might be much simpler, like someone just forgot to upload it here or something went wrong in the process.
According to Jake, the version that goes here is still stuck in QA. I'm not entirely clear on how the Steam version got out of QA earlier than the version here.
So is Blizzard, but I wouldn't expect them to take 5 months to fix a bug like this. While there may indeed be a correlation between the number of job openings at Telltale and the lack of manpower to handle bugs of such a nature, they do not necessarily imply each other.
IMO, that just makes it all the more important to have people who can be dedicated to tasks like this. Perhaps that's one of the reasons they're looking for more people, but I don't see any positions which really fit in as far as this issue is concerned.
Blizzard has >4000 employees. Telltale probably still <100. My opening statement was also meant more general, not yet related to the bug fixing directly.
But if you're looking for job descriptions that could be related to the bug fixing process as well i would say the Technical Director plays an important role. It includes a lot of the scheduling work i mentioned later, and scheduling might have been an issue in getting the bug fixed quickly. But the best scheduling can only help speeding things up if the resources are available. If they are not, you have to find a trade-off between the often conflicting interests quality, time and budget.
I admit I don't have first-hand experience with this, but as far as I know, that's not particularly complicated. They already had appropriate shaders for Strong Bad and Max from their respective games, and toon shading is supposedly pretty simple to implement; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they just tweaked the Strong Bad renderer somewhat. There may be other things that required his attention, but I haven't seen anything from Poker Night that suggests it.
Seeing that you're interested in programming, you might know that underestimating complexity is a very common problem in IT Projects of any size.
What maybe looks easy to implement in theory, can be challenging when it's supposed to be integrated in a complex system. Further the target platform for games is by nature highly variable, which is the root of this any many other bugs. Even if the implementation was simple at first, and worked perfectly, it got complicated as soon as some systems didn't render the graphics as expected.
That's why playtesting is required in the first place and that's when you start working around issues which makes your code more complex and therefore harder to maintain.
To make things worse this usually happens although you use the provided APIs correctly. That lies in the nature of complex APIs with a large number if different underlying implementations on some level (as Graphics Libraries in this case). Even the most accurate Specifications often have some parts that are up to the implementer or can be misunderstood.
According to Jake, the version that goes here is still stuck in QA. I'm not entirely clear on how the Steam version got out of QA earlier than the version here.
5+ months waiting for a fix to a game-breaking bug means people are frustrated and angry. That's common sense. Even now I am still waiting.
You and the others are perfectly right to complain.
I was just trying to express how i feel about this thread in general. It's sad to see how this worked out. I didn't intend to criticize that someone states their opinion.
I edited the statement to make it more clear what i intended to express.
In regards to the bug tracker comment, I've actually been reviewing more public facing bug tracker solutions for the company that I work for. We use Bugzilla internally, but "Get Satisfaction" looks REALLY nice for a public facing option.
It works kind of like a forum in that people can pose questions and have them answered by other users, but you can also go in and give an "official response" and it's tracked by issue instead of by thread. I can see the potential for people asking the same question many times like what happens in a forum, but the different sites I've gone to run by other companies like Mint.com and Mojang (the guys who did Minecraft) it didn't seem to be too much of a problem.
In regards to the bug, while I understand that Telltale isn't a huge company, a higher priority should have been put on a bug that completely breaks the game. At the very least they should have put up a warning.
In regards to the Steam version coming first, I guess I don't really understand that... with Steam you're forced to update, whereas on the site, you could choose whether to download a patch or not. Also you could always just label it a "beta" patch for people who are experiencing the issue so that people know it's not fully tested yet.
In regards to the bug, while I understand that Telltale isn't a huge company, a higher priority should have been put on a bug that completely breaks the game. At the very least they should have put up a warning.
Indeed.
The portion of customers effected is small, and a Telltale rep even said that was one reason for the delay earlier in the thread. I get that, I really do. The problem with that as an excuse is that this is a game-breaking bug. It's not something visual or something minor, it is something that literally prevents anyone with a 400 series card from playing the game past the second puzzle. I can't even get to a point in the game where you can save.
No matter how small the group effected, no matter how fast you need to get that iPhone version up for sale, a game-breaking bug that stops people from playing the game at all deserves emergency attention. It's just good customer service, end of story. Even if the cost of repairing the bug is more than the total profit from sales to those effected it is still something you need to do, because companies shouldn't sell broken games.
The repercussions of not fixing it are me bringing this whole debacle up every time Telltale is mentioned to me on a forum or what-not. It also means I will never pre-order a Telltale game again because I need to try the demo and make sure it works on my system. It also means I might be less inclined to buy Telltale games I am not enthusiastic about, like Strongbad or Poker Night at the Inventory.
Bad customer service has repercussions. Even now, a fix supposedly exists and was out for Steam customers yesterday, but I am still waiting. How can a Steam patch be up quicker when it needs to go through Valve and their patch process while all you have to do here is post a link? It makes no sense.
I have a feeling that the offer of a refund to those effected made them think this was fine to ignore for a long time, but I just do not agree with that. You sold a game, I bought the game, now you need to make it work.
The portion of customers effected is small, and a Telltale rep even said that was one reason for the delay earlier in the thread.
In case you are referring to Amy's Post, she did not say it at all that way.
She was probably still talking about play testing when she wrote that, as she was in the sentences before. After all on the first few pages of this thread there was a lot of talk about the game not being tested enough, and she probably read the whole thread just before she posted her first response. Remember, she just joined TTG a few weeks ago. Also she posted shortly after i raised attention to this thread in the Mod forum, which also speaks for that theory.
I think that's a lot more likely than someone intentionally saying: "Hey, you're just not enough people suffering to get our attention" to their customers.
An elegant solution would be having the version number on the download page. Further the launcher could send a simple request for the latest version number of the game at each start, and notify the user about an available update.
That's were a more likely explanation for releasing to steam first comes in.
It is easier to deploy updates to customers there.
Yes it's easier to deploy updates and quick fixes if something goes wrong, but it still doesn't make much sense as a First Port Of Call™ to me.
If there's two dozen customers in this thread who feel like they've been left out in the cold that happen to have the exact hardware that needs to be tested against, surely offering to allow them to assist with playtesting is the option with the most obvious positive outcomes.
At the very least they should have put up a warning.
This is another thing. We've established that there are grumpy people who bought the game half a year ago and are stuck without a fix. What has contributed to the 'mob' aspect of this thread is that new customers (perhaps every day) are finding themselves thrown into this debacle without any prior warning.
Based on the timing i would assume that Poker Night and/or BTTF were in the works then. From Poker Night it is obvious, that the graphics engine took a lot of work.
Is that really appropriate? In the work I do, I have to do a level of resource management, and I would never ever consider yoinking resources for an unreleased project when there were deployed projects that need attention. That's (imo) poor form, and is likely to create angry mobs of upset customers which in turn puts extra pressure for your resources. Surely the "Finish your dinner before you start desert?" idiom applies here?
From observation, it seems that TellTale has it doubly easy in that release dates for new projects usually don't seem to be announced until the preceding week.
I, for one, am comfortable being patient, but I can totally empathise with those who aren't. I'm thankful to Amy for her efforts to keep us up to date recently, and DjNDB for helping raise awareness of the issue.
DjNDB, I respect your opinion. Believe me, I wish I could agree with you. I've purchased a ton of Telltale products; nearly every game pre-ordered, boxed special editions, shirts, hats, autographed merchandise, posters, DVDs... This is NOT what I expected from Telltale!
I don't want to go into too much detail because a lot of others have already expressed my opinion. But...
Unfortunately, there is no excuse for the handling of this bug, the handling of the customers, and the lack of communication here. I feel that both I and the affected community have been more than reasonable and understanding. In fact, I have a lot of respect for almost all of the users here because of it.
Whether you meant it or not, your post reads quite accusatively. Particularly when associating us to an unruly "angry mob". Frankly, I don't appreciate that.
Understand that, as I've said before, I'm also a developer. I work for a credit union so believe me that whenever my code has had even the most insignificant of bugs, it is fixed immediately. I have worked from 7am until 6am the next morning only to shower/change/eat and get back in the office before 8am. I have remotely debugged code on the weekends and while on vacation with my wife and family. Certainly, I expect far more gravity toward a bug in financial software than a video game. Five weeks; okay. Five months; utterly inexcusable.
And I know everyone is going to hate hearing this but this issue only affects a small portion of the people who bought the game.
Specifically, the "people who bought the game". Not, as you suggest, anything related to QA. I thought it was very clear.
If that statement was made 3 or 4 months ago, I doubt anyone would care. It was made after 5 months of excuses once the situation had become quite fragile. I do feel bad for Amy because it was an easy mistake to make. I certainly have nothing against her personally. Instead, I have huge problems with Telltale's priorities.
Please do not try to excuse or justify this situation further. At one point, we were even told that Jury Duty had delayed a fix. I'm really tired of reading about it. At this point, the more excuses I read, the more insulted I feel.
I'd rather just see Telltale swallow some pride and admit, without excuses, that the bug and the customers were very poorly managed. Further, I want to know that they are implimenting procedures to prevent it from ever happening again.
...sadly, they still aren't communicating in this thread. Meanwhile, my game is still broken and I have no indication of when I might see a fix.
Please do not try to excuse or justify this situation further.
That was not what i was going for. I knew that it was easy to sound like that though. I was not trying to sugarcoat the situation. Mistakes have been made that could and should have been avoided by careful management.
This thread is complicated to deal with, as there's nothing that can be said to fix it. It's been too long and of course a lot of emotions have grown over time.
Everything that's said can easily make it worse, if it looks like just another excuse.
I was was trying to show the big picture to those who might be new in this thread and only see that there's a bug, and it hasn't been fixed for a long time. That was not meant as a justification or excuse for what happened, rather than showing the complexity of the situation. I was trying to add some background information to a one sided dialogue.
Since i've seen TTG dealing with bugs a lot faster over the past years, i thought it was worth looking at what has changed recently.
The growth of TTG, the changes in staff an the bigger workload don't justify the delay in bug fixing and lack of communication, but they show that it is a deviation that can be dealt with by proper management.
To make that clear once more: I understand that some people are angry. The have every right to. I don't see it as my mission to change that, because i can't.
Comments
To find one of them has Telltale's name on it, which I've always respected, and that it is unplayable and broken was fairly shocking.
To think I'd still have a high opinion of Telltale if only this game hadn't been included in the Indie pack
Probably not, since Telltale thinks only a small amount of people have this bug.
I think you guys in customer service really need to work on your bedside manner. Thank God you're not doctors.
"Ma'am, I'm sorry your son's surgery is taking so long, but the more experienced surgeons are swamped with other projects. And besides, there's only a small portion of people in the world who have your son's condition. Now excuse me, I must ignore you for the next several hours."
I don't believe that's accurate. If there's no news on a fix, you can't really expect anybody from Telltale to post anything. We did have a post from Amy on the 23rd in response to a direct question.
Amy, are there plans to make information regarding this problem accessible to customers before they purchase Puzzle Agent (expecting people to read the forum before buying really isn't appropriate)?
You're probably right, but after waiting for five months, I think we have earned the right to make fun of them.
I don't think there were any plans to do this but I am going to ask for this tomorrow.
Thanks Amy. I think it would be a good move in terms of limiting the number of people who could be adversely effected and reassuring some of the disgruntled people in this thread.
I hope that 3:02am isn't your local time (or if it is that you don't have to be anywhere in the morning)!
Dual GTX 470s here
Having read the rest of the thread, this is profoundly disappointing from Telltale, a company I've respected for their quality as well as their creativity.
This has been a known issue since July... this is now November, nearly December... and guess what else: the install base for 400 series nVidia cards is only getting larger and larger as the cards become more affordable. Which means more and more people that can't play this game (but who probably just bought it for the same reason I did).
For this problem to take so long to resolve is absolutely ridiculous.
You mean the fix that they haven't done yet?
EDIT: Scratch that, just saw that Steam redownloaded it and they have apparently fixed it.
Jegus it took them long enough.
Steam gets an update before loyal customers on your own website. WAY TO GO.
Urghhhhh. How can they not update it on their own site?
They probably got a bunch of new complaints from the Steam sale and prioritized that, even though they bought it for $1 and have been waiting for a couple days and we bought it for $10 and have been waiting for 6 freaking months.
Forgive me for being negative but that is what this whole debacle has brought out in me.
I think it's done that to most of us...
Sincerely, I thank you for finally fixing the problem. I look forward to getting the fix (soon?) and actually playing the game. Sadly, Back to the Future is the last Telltale game that I preorder. I've learned that I should be a lot more cautious with Telltale's products and I'm better off waiting until things go on sale.
When I bought Sam & Max 3 from Telltale, it showed up on my Steam account. I can't remember, but I must have provided my account when I purchased it in order to get the Team Fortress 2 add-on.
However the way Telltale treat this problem worries me. Obviously the only reason they fixed it was due to the recent Steam bundle purchases, which is were most of the recent complaints came from. That means that this fix took them under a week to do.
If this fix took less then a week to do, why didn't they fix it when the game first came out five months ago and avoid all this backlash?
The way Telltale handled this situation is far from satisfactory. If this were a puzzle, then the rating would be "Borderline".
I have now decided to give another point of view of the situation. I am no involved in any of these processes, but i can relate to the complexity.
There are a couple of things to keep in mind.
TTG is still a growing company. I don't have much more background information than is publicly available, but the most notable changes recently are probably:
- There were a couple of changes in staff, so communication might have been an issue. That's why i chose to mediate as mentioned earlier. Also TTG is still hiring. There are a lot of open positions, so obviously there's a need for more manpower.
- TTG seems to work on a lot more projects at once now. That's a good thing for us, because it means more games we can play per year. But it can also lead to tighter project schedules. Scheduling is a challenging task in any kind of IT Project, because it is hard to estimate the workload and duration of a work package. That gets even more difficult if you do something new (As let's say e.g. the Puzzle Agent graphics engine, or the rendering of Tycho in Poker night). TTG has an even higher challenge here, because of short release cycles (Monthly episodes).
My best guess is that the graphics department, as in implementing the engines graphics capabilities, is still small. To quote from an older thread about a graphics issue in ToMI: So worst case we can assume that there are still only a few people capable of fixing that kind of problems. That's backed up by Calebs earlier statement: Based on the timing i would assume that Poker Night and/or BTTF were in the works then. From Poker Night it is obvious, that the graphics engine took a lot of work. Not only did they combine the rendering techniques of Strongbad and Sam&Max S3, they also implemented a cartoon renderer for Tycho.We also know that the Fix has been worked on for a while now, and that it had side effects: We don't know much about the complexity of the issue, but it was obviously not trivial. It might even be an nvidia driver or gpu bug that has to be worked around in a tedious and akward way.
The point is, that most of us can not understand why it took so long. If you consider the above, you might have a better idea.
The other issue is the lack of communication with the affected customers in this thread and promises that could not be kept. That is definitely something that should be handled better in the future.
In General it would be nice to have some kind of issue tracking system that is publicly accessible. That would make it much easier to follow up on the progress of a problem. Also reporting a bug and finding workarounds would be easier, if you wouldn't have to search the whole forum if it already exists in some weirdly phrased way.
Another problem is, that you often don't know if an updated version has been released unless you download it. There are usually threads in the Forum if an update is released, but you have to keep your eyes open for these.
An elegant solution would be having the version number on the download page. Further the launcher could send a simple request for the latest version number of the game at each start, and notify the user about an available update.
That's were a more likely explanation for releasing to steam first comes in.
It is easier to deploy updates to customers there. If there are still side effects with the fix that weren't found in playtesting, the version can be replaced easily. That would result in less buggy installations being around, causing support requests.
But it might be much simpler, like someone just forgot to upload it here or something went wrong in the process.
Indeed, this may be part of the reason it took so long, but there must be more to it.
So is Blizzard, but I wouldn't expect them to take 5 months to fix a bug like this. While there may indeed be a correlation between the number of job openings at Telltale and the lack of manpower to handle bugs of such a nature, they do not necessarily imply each other.
IMO, that just makes it all the more important to have people who can be dedicated to tasks like this. Perhaps that's one of the reasons they're looking for more people, but I don't see any positions which really fit in as far as this issue is concerned.
I admit I don't have first-hand experience with this, but as far as I know, that's not particularly complicated. They already had appropriate shaders for Strong Bad and Max from their respective games, and toon shading is supposedly pretty simple to implement; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they just tweaked the Strong Bad renderer somewhat. There may be other things that required his attention, but I haven't seen anything from Poker Night that suggests it.
As far as BTTF is concerned, I can't say, since I haven't paid too much attention to that game.
According to Jake, the version that goes here is still stuck in QA. I'm not entirely clear on how the Steam version got out of QA earlier than the version here.
5+ months waiting for a fix to a game-breaking bug means people are frustrated and angry. That's common sense. Even now I am still waiting.
Blizzard has >4000 employees. Telltale probably still <100. My opening statement was also meant more general, not yet related to the bug fixing directly.
But if you're looking for job descriptions that could be related to the bug fixing process as well i would say the Technical Director plays an important role. It includes a lot of the scheduling work i mentioned later, and scheduling might have been an issue in getting the bug fixed quickly. But the best scheduling can only help speeding things up if the resources are available. If they are not, you have to find a trade-off between the often conflicting interests quality, time and budget.
The Senior Software Engineer - Core Technology looks like a pretty good fit though.
Responsibilities
Essential Skills and Experience
That sounds a lot like implementing features in the game engine, which naturally includes debugging and fixing bugs that come up in the process.
Seeing that you're interested in programming, you might know that underestimating complexity is a very common problem in IT Projects of any size.
What maybe looks easy to implement in theory, can be challenging when it's supposed to be integrated in a complex system. Further the target platform for games is by nature highly variable, which is the root of this any many other bugs. Even if the implementation was simple at first, and worked perfectly, it got complicated as soon as some systems didn't render the graphics as expected.
That's why playtesting is required in the first place and that's when you start working around issues which makes your code more complex and therefore harder to maintain.
To make things worse this usually happens although you use the provided APIs correctly. That lies in the nature of complex APIs with a large number if different underlying implementations on some level (as Graphics Libraries in this case). Even the most accurate Specifications often have some parts that are up to the implementer or can be misunderstood.
Ah, thanks, i hadn't seen that yet.
When you leave a game broken for five months after release with no visible warning on either the Telltale or Steam store pages, that tends to happen.
You and the others are perfectly right to complain.
I was just trying to express how i feel about this thread in general. It's sad to see how this worked out. I didn't intend to criticize that someone states their opinion.
I edited the statement to make it more clear what i intended to express.
It works kind of like a forum in that people can pose questions and have them answered by other users, but you can also go in and give an "official response" and it's tracked by issue instead of by thread. I can see the potential for people asking the same question many times like what happens in a forum, but the different sites I've gone to run by other companies like Mint.com and Mojang (the guys who did Minecraft) it didn't seem to be too much of a problem.
In regards to the bug, while I understand that Telltale isn't a huge company, a higher priority should have been put on a bug that completely breaks the game. At the very least they should have put up a warning.
In regards to the Steam version coming first, I guess I don't really understand that... with Steam you're forced to update, whereas on the site, you could choose whether to download a patch or not. Also you could always just label it a "beta" patch for people who are experiencing the issue so that people know it's not fully tested yet.
http://store.steampowered.com/news/4718/
Indeed.
The portion of customers effected is small, and a Telltale rep even said that was one reason for the delay earlier in the thread. I get that, I really do. The problem with that as an excuse is that this is a game-breaking bug. It's not something visual or something minor, it is something that literally prevents anyone with a 400 series card from playing the game past the second puzzle. I can't even get to a point in the game where you can save.
No matter how small the group effected, no matter how fast you need to get that iPhone version up for sale, a game-breaking bug that stops people from playing the game at all deserves emergency attention. It's just good customer service, end of story. Even if the cost of repairing the bug is more than the total profit from sales to those effected it is still something you need to do, because companies shouldn't sell broken games.
The repercussions of not fixing it are me bringing this whole debacle up every time Telltale is mentioned to me on a forum or what-not. It also means I will never pre-order a Telltale game again because I need to try the demo and make sure it works on my system. It also means I might be less inclined to buy Telltale games I am not enthusiastic about, like Strongbad or Poker Night at the Inventory.
Bad customer service has repercussions. Even now, a fix supposedly exists and was out for Steam customers yesterday, but I am still waiting. How can a Steam patch be up quicker when it needs to go through Valve and their patch process while all you have to do here is post a link? It makes no sense.
I have a feeling that the offer of a refund to those effected made them think this was fine to ignore for a long time, but I just do not agree with that. You sold a game, I bought the game, now you need to make it work.
In case you are referring to Amy's Post, she did not say it at all that way.
She was probably still talking about play testing when she wrote that, as she was in the sentences before. After all on the first few pages of this thread there was a lot of talk about the game not being tested enough, and she probably read the whole thread just before she posted her first response. Remember, she just joined TTG a few weeks ago. Also she posted shortly after i raised attention to this thread in the Mod forum, which also speaks for that theory.
I think that's a lot more likely than someone intentionally saying: "Hey, you're just not enough people suffering to get our attention" to their customers.
This is/was my biggest concern, and on its own, could have quelled most of the negativity within this thread.
+1
+1
Yes it's easier to deploy updates and quick fixes if something goes wrong, but it still doesn't make much sense as a First Port Of Call™ to me.
If there's two dozen customers in this thread who feel like they've been left out in the cold that happen to have the exact hardware that needs to be tested against, surely offering to allow them to assist with playtesting is the option with the most obvious positive outcomes.
This is another thing. We've established that there are grumpy people who bought the game half a year ago and are stuck without a fix. What has contributed to the 'mob' aspect of this thread is that new customers (perhaps every day) are finding themselves thrown into this debacle without any prior warning.
Is that really appropriate? In the work I do, I have to do a level of resource management, and I would never ever consider yoinking resources for an unreleased project when there were deployed projects that need attention. That's (imo) poor form, and is likely to create angry mobs of upset customers which in turn puts extra pressure for your resources. Surely the "Finish your dinner before you start desert?" idiom applies here?
From observation, it seems that TellTale has it doubly easy in that release dates for new projects usually don't seem to be announced until the preceding week.
I, for one, am comfortable being patient, but I can totally empathise with those who aren't. I'm thankful to Amy for her efforts to keep us up to date recently, and DjNDB for helping raise awareness of the issue.
I don't want to go into too much detail because a lot of others have already expressed my opinion. But...
Unfortunately, there is no excuse for the handling of this bug, the handling of the customers, and the lack of communication here. I feel that both I and the affected community have been more than reasonable and understanding. In fact, I have a lot of respect for almost all of the users here because of it.
Whether you meant it or not, your post reads quite accusatively. Particularly when associating us to an unruly "angry mob". Frankly, I don't appreciate that.
Understand that, as I've said before, I'm also a developer. I work for a credit union so believe me that whenever my code has had even the most insignificant of bugs, it is fixed immediately. I have worked from 7am until 6am the next morning only to shower/change/eat and get back in the office before 8am. I have remotely debugged code on the weekends and while on vacation with my wife and family. Certainly, I expect far more gravity toward a bug in financial software than a video game. Five weeks; okay. Five months; utterly inexcusable.
I'm sorry but it was said exactly that way: Specifically, the "people who bought the game". Not, as you suggest, anything related to QA. I thought it was very clear.
If that statement was made 3 or 4 months ago, I doubt anyone would care. It was made after 5 months of excuses once the situation had become quite fragile. I do feel bad for Amy because it was an easy mistake to make. I certainly have nothing against her personally. Instead, I have huge problems with Telltale's priorities.
Please do not try to excuse or justify this situation further. At one point, we were even told that Jury Duty had delayed a fix. I'm really tired of reading about it. At this point, the more excuses I read, the more insulted I feel.
I'd rather just see Telltale swallow some pride and admit, without excuses, that the bug and the customers were very poorly managed. Further, I want to know that they are implimenting procedures to prevent it from ever happening again.
...sadly, they still aren't communicating in this thread. Meanwhile, my game is still broken and I have no indication of when I might see a fix.
That was not what i was going for. I knew that it was easy to sound like that though. I was not trying to sugarcoat the situation. Mistakes have been made that could and should have been avoided by careful management.
This thread is complicated to deal with, as there's nothing that can be said to fix it. It's been too long and of course a lot of emotions have grown over time.
Everything that's said can easily make it worse, if it looks like just another excuse.
I was was trying to show the big picture to those who might be new in this thread and only see that there's a bug, and it hasn't been fixed for a long time. That was not meant as a justification or excuse for what happened, rather than showing the complexity of the situation. I was trying to add some background information to a one sided dialogue.
Since i've seen TTG dealing with bugs a lot faster over the past years, i thought it was worth looking at what has changed recently.
The growth of TTG, the changes in staff an the bigger workload don't justify the delay in bug fixing and lack of communication, but they show that it is a deviation that can be dealt with by proper management.
To make that clear once more: I understand that some people are angry. The have every right to. I don't see it as my mission to change that, because i can't.