I used to organize LAN parties (up to 30 people); Quake 3 and other id Software titles were the most stable titles we played. They ran on a wide variety of hardware configurations without crashes or glitches. We'd often try playing a new game, spend 45 minutes trying to get it to work, and throw our hands in the air saying "Well, let's play Q3A because we know it works on everyone's computer." Half-Life and mods were in the same category, but Half-Life was developed using the Quake engine as a starting point.
Okay, yes, Blizzard games are nice and stable and polished too. But have you been reading the Starcraft development articles recently? They've been talking about how much of a nightmare the entire experience was, with major bugs until just before launch. From what I gather, one of the senior developers was running around fixing bugs across the entire code base, and personally reviewed and fixed up an astonishingly large percentage of Starcraft code.
One can wonder: if they were using static analysis, could they have shipped the same game earlier?
My point wasn't that ID Software made buggy games. My point is I think that they don't know since a while what a trully successful video game is made of.
Okay, yes, Blizzard games are nice and stable and polished too. But have you been reading the Starcraft development articles recently? They've been talking about how much of a nightmare the entire experience was, with major bugs until just before launch. From what I gather, one of the senior developers was running around fixing bugs across the entire code base, and personally reviewed and fixed up an astonishingly large percentage of Starcraft code.
One can wonder: if they were using static analysis, could they have shipped the same game earlier?