Why are people frustrated by "unfinished" games?

[CaptainBipto]

How is it different from a long, good TV series with multiple seasons? Or a good series of books?

That is an excellent point. It sounds like you are trying to equate a game 'update' to be equivalent to an entire book or to a full episode of a show.

Well let me Imagine this:
What if the Harry Potter SERIES was just 1 book, the Philosopher's Stone and the 'book' didn't have any resolution and after you turned to page50, it just said End of Content, Tune in next month for more adventures of Harry and the Gang. Then when the next month came around, you downloaded the ebook again and it had another 25 pages, with a few 'stories' and quests, but nothing was ever resolved. How well do you think that 'book' would be received?

What if The Big Bang Theory was only 1 episode and after that you got 5 minute shorts every few weeks after that and each short was just a continuation of the exact same situation and setting of the first episode, because the nothing was actually resolved in the first show? How well do you think that show would have done?

How about The Witcher game series? Imagine if the first game never had a climatic battle, never had any story progression beyond the first hour of so of play time, had little to no side quests or stories and then every month a new 'DLC' was added that introduced a new character or some new items and repeatable 'quests'? Maybe not so interesting then?

 

[Meaning Less]

Frustration should be directed towards developers who stop releasing updates or endlessly tease and don't deliver

You are talking about one and the same issue here.

All those projects that seem to never go anywhere are the ones that given enough time either turn into endless milking if they gather enough support or abandonment if they don't, and that is the issue with never finished projects basically.

 

[javier_himura]

How is it different from a long, good TV series with multiple seasons? Or a good series of books?

It is no different. A good TV series that is canceled without answers, a promised series that is not been renewed. All of them feels disappointed when that happened. When I see on TV services like Netflix a series with many seasons that are not currently running the first thing I check is if the series did has an end, even if it was rushed, or was canceled with a cliffhanger. It is the second I won't dare try watching it, no matter how good could be the first season if the end is a cliffhanger the whole series will be disappointed. The problem is that when you follow a series that is currently running you can't know where it will end, and of course, if everyone chooses to wait until the series finish to watch it probably the series won't have an end, so you have to take the risk.

Probably canceled TV series are more frustrating than unfinished games because series usually have professional writters while most VN games are just crap stories full of cliches. Sure, there could be one game that you really like the concept, you enjoyed, and it is frustrating not to have an end, but most VN games are more compared with bad series that you start watching, you continue because you don't have something better to do, and maybe even leave it for another thing. In that case, having the journey unfinished doesn't matter because you have not enjoyed it.

 

[PTSdev]

I think much of it comes down to fundamental narrative design. If a developer has a clear cut plot in mind, there's a high chance the game might actually get finished. Lots of VNs lack real conflict. This especially applies to cookie-cutter incest / "stepfamily" games. You're a guy, your father's dead or has been abducted by aliens, you now live in a house with lots of hot women. Oh, and of course everyone in the neighborhood and at school is also female and always ready for your horse cock. While this premise is totally fine for some good porn, it restricts the writing from the getgo. Sure, there's always the bitchy sister and there's almost always the "big mystery" (supernatural elements or a crime story) which gets "solved" along the way. But there's almost never real conflict. The plot moves forward, because it has to. On the flipside, this allows you to basically milk the audience endlessly, because there's no end in sight.

I'm totally fine with serialized content, some lewd games (Fetish Locator comes to mind) have excellent pacing and function like TV shows when it comes to plot "chunks". Other games (I won't name any) become sprawling monstrosities with dozens of love interests, side characters and locations. It IS possible to make a game with lots of characters (Summertime Saga did a decent job imho), but only if you clearly define some boundaries for their respective stories.

And that's where Patreon comes in. Making games is time consuming and I'm all for supporting indie devs financially. (I'm a patron for some lewd games myself...) Some devs have a well defined artistic vision which they pursue regardless of the monthly amount of money they get. Going into Early Access allows you to generate some income during development which is fine in itself. It only gets problematic if you start to add meaningless stuff because your patrons pay you for doing so. I totally get it - if you complete a game, you can't generate that kind of income anymore unless you start a new game. And that's where we arrive at the sunken cost fallacy. "I just CAN'T finish this game right now, I've put SO much work into it... let's keep it going..."

Don't be afraid of the finish line.

 

[E_nigma]

And that's where Patreon comes in... problematic if you start to add meaningless stuff because your patrons pay you for doing so.

That cuts deep. Especially on games with longer tails, as they get older and the dev skills get way better but the updates take longer cause a bump in quality so they put out side content or make another game or just start adding things the game didn't need like sandbox elements or something randomly just shoved in there

 

[jamdan]

I don't think people are frustrated with unfinished games. Almost every game on here is unfinished, including the most popular ones like BaDIK, COBD, Harem Hotel etc.

People get frustrated when a game seemingly has no direction or is falling off the rails. A lot of games start great, and progressively get worse. Either because the dev didn't think out the story, or keeps adding more routes and characters that spread the game too thin.

I guess those are the same thing though. It all boils down to poor planning either way. Speaking of TV shows or video games or movies. The developers of those plan everything ahead of time. When they actually start making the thing, they already know what will happen in the beginning, middle, and end.

But most devs do not do that. Combine that with a lot of developers being way too ambitious. Coding things they don't know how to code. Writing a complex story when they've never written before. Some developers start out more advanced than others and can handle a more complex game, but most aren't like that. And that, to me, is the primary reason so many games get abandoned or stuck in purgatory. The developer not knowing what they're doing.