Buggy Games

[sovietretail]

Has anyone noticed how many buggy games there have been lately?
I can think of a few right off, BC2 with its menu problems, Empire:Total War, with a ton of problems!, New Vegas with save errors and various others, etc. I have lost all hope with Empire, I'm afraid they will just focus on Shogun 2 from now on.

 

[motsm]

We have had buggy games forever, and can't say I've noticed any real increase. Especially when you look back at the years when games didn't have nearly the budget they do now a days, and you could find plenty more game breaking bugs.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Has anyone noticed how many buggy games there have been lately?
I can think of a few right off, BC2 with its menu problems, Empire:Total War, with a ton of problems!, New Vegas with save errors and various others, etc. I have lost all hope with Empire, I'm afraid they will just focus on Shogun 2 from now on.

Buggy games have been around forever. Every game has bugs. You just gotta hope that the company that made the game will make an effort to correct those bugs.

And WWYBYWB?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Ship now, even when the game is half-finished. It will save money and since consoles are online now, we can sell the 2nd-half of the game as DLC and patch the bugs out if the game is successful. If it is a failure, we did not waste money finishing the game.

 

[sovietretail]

Buggy games have been around forever. Every game has bugs. You just gotta hope that the company that made the game will make an effort to correct those bugs.

And WWYBYWB?

I think it is implied that there are bugs in every game, but its redundant to restate it. All I'm saying is that there are a large number of games, recently, that suffer from defects. Going back earlier, games in fact did not have as many bugs as they do now. Back before the internet became popular as it is, games had to be released "ready." Now they have the option to rely on patches. I would argue that it leads to games that come out ahead of time. I think they (the game companies) are too reliant on this.

 

[DaveSimmons]

> Going back earlier, games in fact did not have as many bugs as they do now. Back before the internet became popular as it is, games had to be released "ready."

So games had fewer bugs in the '80s? Maybe, but they also fit on cassette tapes and 360K floppy discs instead of 4 GB DVDs.

 

[HarvardAce]

Back before the internet became popular as it is, games had to be released "ready." Now they have the option to rely on patches. I would argue that it leads to games that come out ahead of time. I think they (the game companies) are too reliant on this.

I think there are a number of things at play, and I list them in order of importance (IMHO):

1) Software is several orders of magnitude more complex than it was in the 90's, which naturally leads to more potential bugs/defects.
2) Hardware is significantly more varied, not counting consoles (although even with those you now have some variance with different revisions and updates, etc.). No company, not even AAA releases, can test across every conceivable combination of hardware/driver version/OS/etc. to make sure there are no compatibility issues with your hardware. Back in the day you had a PC-compatible machine running DOS with a VGA monitor, now you have XP, Vista, Win7, AMD, intel, nVidia, etc.
3) # of users -- with a much larger market for games these days, you have a lot more users. Somewhat tied to #2, you also have a better chance of someone stumbling upon an obscure bug if you have a million people playing your game rather than a few thousand.
4) Ease of patching -- before the internet was ubiquitous and large downloads were possible, it did place a premium on fully testing your product because patching it was difficult/impossible. It's human nature to cut some corners if you know you can come back to something down the line and easily fix it if it breaks.

So yes, I think the ease of patching definitely plays a role in things, but if you think that creating a bug-free version of Tetris in the 80s is as easy as creating a bug-free version of World of Warcraft in 2010, then I have a bridge to sell you.

 

[Dankk]

I can think of a few right off, BC2 with its menu problems...

I haven't really noticed any problems with Bad Company 2 for PC. Then again, I just bought the game a few weeks ago and it's probably been patched multiple times before then.

New Vegas though, I definitely know what you're talking about. Some of the glitches I've seen are ridiculous, or outright hilarious. And it's not even made by Bethesda.

 

[sovietretail]

I think there are a number of things at play, and I list them in order of importance (IMHO):

1) Software is several orders of magnitude more complex than it was in the 90's, which naturally leads to more potential bugs/defects.
2) Hardware is significantly more varied, not counting consoles (although even with those you now have some variance with different revisions and updates, etc.). No company, not even AAA releases, can test across every conceivable combination of hardware/driver version/OS/etc. to make sure there are no compatibility issues with your hardware. Back in the day you had a PC-compatible machine running DOS with a VGA monitor, now you have XP, Vista, Win7, AMD, intel, nVidia, etc.

Yes I agree completely, but I think that companies should take the effort, BEFORE releasing the game to make every assurance that it will function to the best of its ability.

 

[HarvardAce]

Yes I agree completely, but I think that companies should take the effort, BEFORE releasing the game to make every assurance that it will function to the best of its ability.

It's the whole 80/20 thing. They can probably find 80% of the bugs in 20% of the time. If you can get rid of any glaring or common bugs in that time, why pay for testing the last 20% (which would be 80% of your testing budget) when most customers will gladly pay you to test the rest of it?

 

[Schfifty Five]

Yes I agree completely, but I think that companies should take the effort, BEFORE releasing the game to make every assurance that it will function to the best of its ability.

Games would take significantly longer to come out then. If that were the case, you'd be complaining that games don't come out as fast as they used to. See what I did there?

Look at blizzard. They are probably the one company that does do the most quality assurance yet there are still bugs in all their games. But how long does it take for blizz to release a game compared to other companies? Years longer than most.

Bottom line is that your complaint is invalid. You say that companies should do everything possible to make a game playable and bug free but you completely ignore all the factors and consequences involved.

 

[Mem]

A lot of it is due to size and complexity of games nowadays not to meantion deadlines software companies have, you can only beta test so much with so much hardware.

Gone are the games that fitted on a floppy that were more polished then todays games,end of the day its the norm I'm afraid.

 

[HarvardAce]

Gone are the games that fitted on a floppy that were more polished then todays games,end of the day its the norm I'm afraid.

I don't know, I've seen quite a few polished turds over the last year or two!

 

[Mem]

I don't know, I've seen quite a few polished turds over the last year or two!

That's my point,games nowadays are noway near as polished as those games decades ago.