Glitchy Games: What Are Your Thoughts?

Nealocus123

Nealocus123

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Glitchy games are nothing new, I mean I'm sure everyone has seen / heard / played abominations like "Two Worlds" but why do developers knowingly release them? I game tested Gears of War 2 (co-op campaign) and it seemed to be a relatively through process (8hrs, 4 days) and I know there had to be a lot more people doing what I was doing.

I just have a few questions on the matter.

1. Why doesn't everyone experience the glitches? Call me naive but are the glitches on the actual disc due to bad burning or something?

2. Why are titles with gigantic budgets (Fable III, CoD: Black Ops, Star Wars: TFU 2, etc.) filled with glitches? I've never really had a game glitch on me bad enough to complain but Fable III is really frustrating me.

I'm just curious to what everyone's opinion is on the matter.
 
i'd say it's a money thing. the companies can spend the cash to test and fix all the bugs, or they can just fix whatever they can easily catch, then realease the game and if it sells enough and has alot of people complaining about them, fix them via patch. if the game doesn't sell well or not enough people complain, why spend the money fixing it?
 
Oh Acclaim Entertainment...it's been so long since we were together.

1) the process in which a player goes through a game isn't always the same, and a random glitch may only trigger when certain things happen in a certain sequence.

2) big game with big budgets are...big, so a lot can fall through the cracks when they're trying to get their triple A title to meet deadline so that marketing looks good. plus it's possible they didn't spend enough time playtesting their own games or think to try and break it by doing certain things. etc. and now that consoles are pretty much like pc gaming towers, DLC and patches allows them to find and squash bugs found by us the player without having to pay a bunch of college kids to playtest their games in their studio.

how do I feel about it? so long as they are prompt about trying to fix bugs they missed, I'm okay with it since I'm a casual gamer and not a professional one. "but wait, I paid $59.99 for that on release..." well...if you're a CAG you shouldn't have, because everyone here knows that you can get at least a $10 - $25 dollar GC on preorders. :)
 
Developers don't release unfinished games that are full of glitches, Publishers do.

If Developers had their way, every games release date would be 'When it's done'. Only a handful of developers can get away with this, Blizzard, Polyphony Digital, etc.

Glitches by their very nature are not experienced by everyone. If they happened all the time to everyone, they would have gotten caught in playtesting and eliminated. So glitches that affect every player 100% of the time are very rare.
 
The release now and patch later mentality is especially problematic with consoles. Disregarding those that don't have internet connections now, what about those in the future that purchase systems (used or otherwise) after Live is shut down? PC patches can be downloaded and archived, but once we've moved into the next generation we're going to be left with a bunch of broken games...
 
[quote name='Allnatural']The release now and patch later mentality is especially problematic with consoles. Disregarding those that don't have internet connections now, what about those in the future that purchase systems (used or otherwise) after Live is shut down? PC patches can be downloaded and archived, but once we've moved into the next generation we're going to be left with a bunch of broken games...[/QUOTE]


I wonder how long Xbox will continue to support the patches and things like that. Maybe by that point it will be easier to hack 360s and just have access to archives that way, or bring from a PC onto Xbox to patch?

Welcome to the world of online gaming. PCs are sitting there smiling. Anyone remember Ultima 9? It was almost unplayable when it came out.

Games, especially holiday ones are under tight deadlines, and that kinda QA is the last thing to get done. And, as long as people keep buying them, they'll skimp out as much as possible. I knew fable 3 was buggy, but still bought it cause I'd rather play buggy fable than 97% of other games out there. *sigh* I know, I'm the problem.
 
Unfortunately this is a side effect of games being patchable. On the Wii, where patches are generally impossible, glitches are less common, probably far less common, but don't quote me on it. Of course, and on the other hand, if there IS a glitch, you're just screwed. Take the infamous bug in Metroid: Other M that could render your game uncontinuable, with the only fix being to send your save into Nintendo on an SD card. So pluses and minuses all around. Overall I'll take patchability even though it leads to devs/publishers doing this horrible thing of releasing unfinished games and then seeing if the sell before fixing the problems. And that is a real and significant problem. If you happen to like a game that's less popular, you can be pretty sure you aren't going to get any support.
 
I believe that bugs are a product of the "sign of the times" because it is the fan's demands and whining that gets games rushed. I am seriously doubting that games were rushed before the internet hit the fanboy market and everyone could complain and whine on a developer's website. I am not saying that bugs would be non-existent but like someone else said before, I think it is more a publisher's fault that games come with more bugs than less because of the time constraint on developers to get games done during a certain time period, for instance, the holiday season, summer, etc. Like Puffa said about developers releasing a game "when its done", take a look at Duke Nukem Forever that suddenly resurfaced after what seems like a decade of development.
 
so what happened in Halo Reach beta anyway? this game locked up on me more times than allowable for a triple A title. Losing progress in campaign so many times was frustratingly annoying to the point where I shelved it. Doubt it was a 'bad burn' copy, but whoever thought packing a game disc near a magnet (limited edition diary) was not too bright.

graphical or audio glitches are slight annoyances, but gameplay glitches where it just locks up are plain ridiculous and unforgiveable.
 
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Game companies are often given strict release dates due to a lot of different limitations such as time, money, marketing, ect. For example; some games are pushed to come out at specific times to correlate a movie release, or specific times of the year such as being out for Christmas, or purposely not coming out when another big release is coming out so it doesn't get over shadowed. One thing I read often which I do NOT agree with (for the most part) is people calling developers "Lazy". A lot of these guys pour everything they have into a game they are working on, but are restricted due to the things listed above.

Edit: This thread may want to be moved to the "General Gaming & Industry News" forum as currently it's being restricted to xbox 360 games\people who are interested in the 360. This would be a good discussion for all types of gamers.
 
[quote name='Puffa469']Developers don't release unfinished games that are full of glitches, Publishers do.

If Developers had their way, every games release date would be 'When it's done'. Only a handful of developers can get away with this, Blizzard, Polyphony Digital, etc.[/QUOTE]

At the same time developers have their fair share of blame.

Publishers are usually upfront with developers of what needs to be done and by when. They may not give developers the time, money, and manpower to get the job done right, but it's on the developers to speak up during pre-production to try and manage the publishers unrealistic expectations a bit. But yes, the publisher gets the final word.

It's on the developers to make the best of a bad situation and manage what resources they have to try to make the best game they can. Any bugs that are in the game in the first place are there because of the developer's design and coding missteps. I'm not trying to suggest that anyone could program a full scale game without a single bug, either.

And we, as consumers, aren't blameless either. We've supported this flawed game development process by buying these buggy games.
 
Two Worlds was hardly "glitchy." Oblivion was "glitchy."

[quote name='Mospeada_21']graphical or audio glitches are slight annoyances, but gameplay glitches where it just locks up are plain ridiculous and unforgiveable.[/QUOTE]

This. Skips and hiccups have never really bothered me in games, but I don't get how you can release something with game-breaking bugs and crashes in it. Bethesda. Even if they're instantly going to patch it, something like that shouldn't have even made it that far. I think laziness does account for a lot of it and I don't think "it gets rushed" is a valid argument. A developer should know better than to allow themselves to get rushed in the first place. I may be a bit of a Captain Hindsight but what is going to make your fans angrier, delaying your big title a little while or releasing it unfinished?
 
[quote name='Survivalism']Two Worlds was hardly "glitchy." Oblivion was "glitchy."



This. Skips and hiccups have never really bothered me in games, but I don't get how you can release something with game-breaking bugs and crashes in it. Bethesda. Even if they're instantly going to patch it, something like that shouldn't have even made it that far. I think laziness does account for a lot of it and I don't think "it gets rushed" is a valid argument. A developer should know better than to allow themselves to get rushed in the first place. I may be a bit of a Captain Hindsight but what is going to make your fans angrier, delaying your big title a little while or releasing it unfinished?[/QUOTE]


I agree with that. With the examples of Bungie and Treyarch, they weren't rushed, and they are very established and well known Devs, yet they come out with Reach and Black Ops. It's in excusable.

When it comes down to it in my opinion, the reason why they release such shoddy work is because they know people will buy it. It's in a way, our own faults why the game development quality has gone down over the years and decades. Because we vote with our wallets and we don't vote very well then want to complain after wards, given, our complaints are valid, but no one forced us to make the purchase and give them our money.

Then you factor in those kids with parents who buy them anything they want when they tell them to, it's impossible to change the way things are going, the parents are the ones with the money, they give the money to the gaming companies because their kids say so, the parents have no clue how good the game is or how it SHOULD be, they just go by the what kid says, so when the next new thing comes out the parents nor the kid doesn't care about Reach or black Ops anymore so why would developers put more effort into every release?
 
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