How do truly bad games get released?

I was under the impression that there was a very long drawn out process involving hundreds of people to turn an idea into a game and put it on the market.

Now i may be wrong about this, and please correct me if I am wrong here... but is there not enough time during the process of making a game in which SOMEBODY might say "Oh my God, this is horrible! we can't release this, it would be a disaster!"

Not only that, but its not like the people involved in this process have never played a videogame before. Do they not try the finished product? and on that note... they have people that test these games for a living!!!

My question is, why with all these professional people involved, do games get released that just plain suck in every way (terrible gameplay, bugs, etc)?

Someone has to:

1. publish the game

2. design the game

3. actually MAKE the game

4. Test the game

5. agree to begin production on the game

so with all these people that have been involved with the final product, not one of them flagged the game as a piece of crap??

There ARE GOOD GAMES OUT THERE, so its not like we are trying this for the first time and figuring out the formula...

Now, I would say there is an exception to this... the "A for effort" type games. Games that attempt to create something revolutionary that will change the industry, but ultimatly bite off more than they can chew. these games actually deserve our respect for trying to deliver something that they knew would be great.

then there are the shameless licence and franchise games that attempt to further capitolize off the fans of the subject but really just pump out a crappy game with a nice label on it. (there are exceptions to this as well btw)

so what are YOUR thoughts on why some games are truly terrible (and im not talking about games that YOU didn't like personally, i am talking about games NOBODY liked so don't say halo just because you didn't like it or command and conquer because you prefer shooters)

Theres no developer in the world that wishes to create a bad game.

But bad games do come out. Most of the time is because the development team ran out of money and is forced to release the game in whatever state it is in at the time. Game design is an art and it can be very difficult to predict the actual implementation of something before its done. This is why very successful studio have an iterative process where they implement, test, and adjust the decisions they feel are best. While this sounds like what every studio should do, money constraints often make it so that only 1 or 2 of the best sounding implementations can be tried, as opposed to someone like Blizzard that can do 9 or 10 over as many months as they need.

If developers do have all the money they need to make whatever game they want, then they can easily spend the time, effort, and tools needed to make it just right. Publishers are not endless money wells for developers to feed from though.

So its not so much a question of "how can these people miss something like this!?!?" They most likely caught it and know about it. There just wasnt enough time to implement a better idea.

Almost no developer in the world will work a few months more without pay to finish up a game just right, especially when they've got a family to feed.

The quick and dirty answer is that a lot of it has to do with deadlines. Almost every game released is on a tight deadline and any problems they encounter along the way greatly hampers their ability to put out the game that the developers wished they could put out as they generally don't have the time to implement all the routines and ideas in their heads onto the finished product.

This is especially true with license titles as they are usually commissioned to be released at a certain time regardless of any issues that may crop up during development. To top it off they are working under specific limitation set by the owner of the license and it's common for them to come in during the closing stages of the game's development and express a desire for something to be changed which further complicates things.

But bad games do come out. Most of the time is because the development team ran out of money and is forced to release the game in whatever state it is in at the time.

XaosII

That would be my guess as to why games that are truly bad--as in, broken and unplayable--are released.