Yeah, the PS games that Insomniac Games made were amazing. I was dissapointed when I found out that they weren't making them anymore, but we have R&C now, which is also amazing.

We can thank Vivendi for that.

Some games are hyped through the roof and expectations are huge. Remember Prey? That game was hyped alot and turned out to be medicore, at best. Prey did have some really great concepts that just need to be utilized more.

because of YOUR drinking problem.

Games don't always turn out the way they are first envisioned, things can go wrong and when they do i think the developer is faced with 2 basic choices. They can spend more money, lengthen the development time and try to improve the game or increase the marketing budget and hope for the best. If you are the man fronting the money, what would you do? It's not like crap games can't sell well.

I think to some extent developers suffer from confirmation bias, meaning they tend to focus on the positives while brushing the negatives under the rug. Often they have spent months and years working on a particular game and become so attached they are unable to see that it sucks.

Of course being rushed to deliver the product will have a major impact as well, but for games that aren't rushed there's my two cents.

Lets be honest, do you ever think that something you made is total crap? The developers are biased because they made it.

Because when it comes down to it we have three components, only two of which can be grasped by mere mortals.

Price, Time, Quality. You can have a a great game, in short time too, but the budget will be astronomical.

You can have a great game on a reasonable budget, but the time of release might be delayed several times.

Those are really the only two scenarios that keep a good game from being a great game. Either the money runs out, or the time does.... Then you have those games whose ideas are worthless to begin with.... Nothing can help those games. Me and My Pony? Seriously...

Deadlines are a big part of it, Knights of the Old Republic 2 is a great example of this. The game while decent has a notoriously pathetic plot hole filled ending simply because it was rushed to market for the holiday season.

In other cases like Heavenly Sword developers dump all their money into cinematics and the end result is a short, reasonably repetitive game with amazing cutscenes.

Tease you with a sequel by being unfinished. More questions than answers are raised at the end of lots of games.