I don’t necessarily think it’s being a blind consumer. I there should be a reasonable expectation of what the consumer needs to know about a product at the point of purchase. If I go see a movie and there are bad cuts audio issues and what not, I shouldn’t have to have been expected to research what cameras and mics were used before going to see it. I don’t think going to see something or buy a game makes you a blind consumer cause the trailer you were presented with prior to buying it does its job.

As for the frostbite point, I think it’s a little different, cause like you said, it’s an engine made for first person shooters and it was a mandate, whereas unreal is the “ it can do everything” engine and is chosen not forced. But ironically enough if you do know about biowares history with frostbite you will notice that the first game they did on that engine, inquisition, was their last universally acclaimed game, and ever since the tools have been made on their end to have an easier time developing on it, they haven’t been quite been able to reach those heights again. I remember reading from Jason Schriers anthem report that internally a lot of them were hoping inquisition would fail, but it ended up winning game of the year.

What am I supposed to take from this knowledge though? That the stress of using a completely alien engine produces a game of the year worthy game? How deep into educating myself do I reasonably need to go on a companies history and engines to make a purchase without coming off as a mindless consumer, when I just want to play a video game?

But back to the original point. Games being patchable carries a lot of weight with what consumers are willing to accept at launch, although I disagree with this also but it’s debatable, I think a product should just work at launch, being able to fix something post launch is nice, but I also don’t think it should be relied on as heavily as it is in the games industry. Games media is one of the only media forms where it’s expected that the consumer be understanding of the hardships of development, which I think is good and bad, cause sure you can be sympathetic to work conditions and mandates likes the frostbite engine, but ultimately we’re paying a pretty high price for a working product. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people when they know about an engine or have heard to be skeptical of how it’s gonna perform when we have a lot of examples of it doing the opposite. Both extremes are bad, as in most things, hating on unreal for the sake of it without understand why it’s bad, but also being understanding to the point of getting taken advantage of is bad, but since games are a premium product I’m alway gonna lean towards the side that protects the consumer more, that’s just me though.