Why Is My Middleware in Perpetual Beta?

When I was in college I was a double major — computer science and English.  I know, I know, strange combination.  Anyway, of the few things that people have said over the years that have really stuck with me, one such pearl of wisdom came from an English professor.  He said that a piece of writing can be written and rewritten and edited over and over again forever, but at some point you just have to stop and go with what you have.  Eventually, a piece of writing stops getting better regardless of your effort.  It’s what Economists call the law of dininishing returns.  As additional production effort is applied to a system the output gained from each unit of effort dininishes.  It is sometimes more beneficial to stop the current effort and apply what has been learned to something completely new.  It’s a lesson the game industry should learn.

Middleware companies sell complete packages for AI, physics, UI, animation, you-name-it, but what constitutes a “complete package” anymore?  What a lot of middleware companies deliver seems no where near complete, even for the subset of game development technology of which they are supposed to be the leading industry experts.  They release new versions monthly that game studios have to integrate to get lastest features and bug fixes.  Are we game developers, or simply beta testers for middleware companies? 

Many of these companies have great customer service.  They offer support tickets so developers can submit bugs and feature requests, but at this point, they’ve gone from middleware provider to service provider.  They customize a solution intended for the masses to the needs of individual companies, when what they should really be doing is applying the effort spent on maintenance of the current version on developing the next version.  After all, once a few games have shipped on the current product, its viability has been proven.  STOP DEVELOPMENT!  Give us what you have right now and put your development effort into making the next version that much better.

Sure, those companies that shipped games probably needed workarounds.  And the other companies out there with games in development have workarounds too.  Some of the currently supported features have unexpected results, or just don’t give you what you want. But do you really want to wait around for the “fix” anyway?  Waiting around holds up your production.  You have to remember that you are not their only customer.  It may be months.  It may never come.  It could be the fix that breaks everything else in your game.

You can’t rely on it.

So what can game developers do?  Well, the next time you’re shopping for a middleware solution for your project, and the salesperson tells you about the cool new features coming in the next or upcoming release, don’t plan on getting them in your lifetime.  If you can live without a feature, design your game without it.  If it isn’t there now, and you really need it, shop for another solution.  I don’t want to be a beta tester any more.  Neither should you.