God of War’s Cory Barlog Talks About the Pre-Launch Process and the Truth About “Ugly” Games

It’s not uncommon in gaming threads and on social media to see non-industry consumers talk about delays and comment on the reasoning being behind the delay for being “ugly.” The conversation heated up when Cyberpunk 2077 saw a delay when it was cited as performance issues on this generation of gaming as the reasoning. Many developers have been speaking out about this type of rhetoric, proving there is so much more to the process than many realise, but one of my personal favorites came from God of War’s Cory Barlog. 

Barlog took to Twitter to expand on his previous comments about Cyberpunk’s delay, even going as far as to say that this is something a lot of dev’s don’t like sharing. 

I can’t say I speak for the industry, so fellow devs chime in to disagree or correct if you feel your experience is different, but I feel this to be true for *most* games.

GAMES ARE VERY UGLY, FOR A LONG TIME, UNTIL THEY ARE NOT.

Traditionally, that is right near the end.

— Cory Barlog 🖖 Little Creep League (@corybarlog) January 22, 2020

He added, “This is due to the absolutely fucking bananas level of complexity and moving pieces required to make really any game today. We are, more often than not, going on passion and belief that the vision of this buggy + duct-taped together ‘thing’ is going to come together in the end.

“To me, there is NOTHING shameful or nefarious about the game not running well in development. We ALL obviously want to release the smoothest/most bug-free experience humanly possible. Sometimes we (mostly) succeed. Sometimes we don’t. But it is NEVER because we did not try.“

It’s something not everyone thinks of and there are plenty of places, websites included, that hop on the sensationalism to make delays seem “tragic” or the process of development seem as if it’s something that it’s not. Delays can be disappointing, but it’s a business decision that must be made prior to launch with the ultimate goal of reception in mind. Until that game ships, it’s not complete, so we shouldn’t expect these experiences to function outside of reality.