[conspire] Dept. of Fsck It, Ship It: Cyberpunk 2077

[Rick Moen]

I'm not a gamer, or, to put a different way, when people inquire about
my favourite online game, my standard answer is 'Usenet'.  But I can get
endless amusement from, say, a very recent, decade-long-anticipated
major online game release ending up being buggy as a naturalist's
specimen drawer.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/style/cyberpunk-2077-video-game-disaster.html

   [...]
   Since the release of Cyberpunk 2077 on Dec. 10, thousands of gamers
   have created viral videos featuring a multitude of glitches and bugs —
   many hilarious — that mar the game.  They include tiny trees covering
   the floors of buildings, tanks falling from the sky, and characters
   standing up, inexplicably pantless, while riding motorcycles.

   These videos depict a game that is virtually unplayable: rife with
   errors, populated by characters running on barely functional artificial
   intelligence, and largely incompatible with the older gaming consoles
   meant to support it.  Fans are livid.
   [...]

   One frequent glitch includes characters going into "T-Pose" -- 
   standing with their arms raised to either side -- and suddenly 
   losing their pants.  Users on Reddit described the phenomenon as 
   "straight Donald Duckin' it."
   [...]

Deirdre tried to read the first of those paragraphs to me this morning,
and couldn't make it through, without collapsing in laughter multiple
times.

Article goes on to say what anyone who's ever worked in the software
industry could have predicted:  Project was breathlessly pre-announced
in 2012 based on a 1988 tabletop RPG, the studio signed about Keanu to 
flog it, marketing promises went through the roof, but meanwhile the
coding was in trouble and behind schedule.  Top management started
bailing, tech employees were put under ever-greater pressure as the
project slipped, it was delayed six months to Sept. 2020, then to
November, then to December, remaining management panicked, and the buggy 
code was pushed out the door to make the Christmas season.

And... oops.