The Rise Of Bugs In Console Games

Thanks to GameSpy for posting a column discussing the increasing prevalence of serious bugs and glitches in console titles, especially in relation to several of this summer's 'blockbusters'. Singled out are Enter The Matrix: "Even if you enjoy the game.. you can't ignore the fact that all three console makers let Atari have a 'get out of final approval free card' when it came to testing...", as well as the new Tomb Raider title: "AOD froze up on me at least half a dozen times... Lara fell through invisible gaps in the street, walked through invisible gaps in walls, and refused to walk up stairs that she was supposed to be able to climb." What's to be done when, as the author says, "judging from the sales of these... titles, enough of you guys just aren't punishing the companies for releasing sub-par products to make a difference"?

Comments

whats to be done?

[mutewinter]

Buggy games certainly have to account for a portion of "piracy" out there. A few bad experiences of dropping $50 for a piece of trash can make individuals who aren't quite in the middle-class less than eager to take the risk again.

Consoles are even worse. At least for PC games we can anticipate patches, which generally tend to do a pretty good job fixes bugs, especially if its a big game (or an online one.)

Re:whats to be done?

[Muerto]

that is total crap. Just because a game is buggy doesn't give you the right to steal photoshop. Regardless of bugs, people spend time and money on making these applications... you have no right to steal from them.

Re:whats to be done?

[AndyBusch]

Yes, consoles are worse in terms of allowing patches, but, as this article implies, they are fantasic generally for squishing bugs before they get out. I've only ever played two games with showstopping bugs (Metroid Prime froze, but only once, and Mortal Kombat II for SNES wouldn't let you play pong). Everything else is so minor as to be something that you have to make effort to trigger (the minus world in Super Mario Bros.). In fact, this was also the state of affairs before the internet. Software just plain worked as intended (and not in the Verant sense), because there was no economical way to send out patches. But, since there is a way now (it's also known as "burden the gamer"), companies demand faster action to get sales.

Sadly, this doesn't seem like there's any feasible way to change this, without blowing up the internet, and making CDs expensive to produce again.

too much pressure to rush to market?

[jdvernon1976]

I'm betting on "We HAVE to get this game on the shelves, otherwise we lose money because of X"

X = in time to be released same weekend as movie
X = it's already been delayed and it's killing us

Don't the publishers realize that releasing sub-par games on schedule is MUCH worse than releasing excellent games behind?

Look at Blizzard - standard-bearer for "when it's done, it'll be fabulous" - Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 are prime examples

Gamers are lenient on deadlines when the game exceeds expectations, but I'm betting that Matrix Revolutions (if they make a game) won't have quite the same reception....

Re:too much pressure to rush to market?

[slughead]

My website published an article a while ago about this phenomenon, and it's not limited to consoles either. Here's an exerpt (please note that part of this article is a bit dated):

Nearly two years ago, Civilization III was released for Mac and Windows. Since then the game has gone platinum, and hundreds of 3rd party maps have been released.

However, none of these maps were made by Mac users. This is because Infogrames has only one person working on a map editor, and though many copies were sold under the pretense that the map editor would be released, they haven't seen fit to fulfill their promise.

Mac users aren't the only ones to see a decline in quality and features. Infogrames also cut the revolutionary AI that was supposed to go into Civ 3 (now it's just a more processor-heavy Civ 2), as well as multiplayer. Not to worry though, Infogrames has decided to go ahead with the multiplayer patch, however they're charging $30 for it and calling it an "expansion pack." Right, an expansion giving you what was promised by the head of the design department originally. Thanks a ton!

The same thing happened with Global Operations--It was released unfinished. You see, Global Operations was going to be the counterstrike killer. It had guns modeled more realistically than any FPS, even to this day, it had spectacular visual effects and creative and strategic maps.

Yes, global ops was probably (and certainly IMO) the best realistic FPS ever made, however it had one small problem: THE NETCODE COULD SUCK A GOLF BALL THROUGH A GARDEN HOSE. It was so bad that it would constantly have bullets disappearing and chunking models, even on the fastest computers and lowest pings. It was so bad, in fact, that the sales were murdered before they could even release the first patch (it died so quick they never did fix it). GameSpot, GameSpy, and several other reviewers pointed out the perfection of this game's non-net features, but had to kill the scores all because of the netcode, and the fact that it was a net-only game.

I'm sure many also remember GTA III for PC, and how it was also made almost unusable by the crappy engine, even though the designers blamed the complexity of the game (note how well GTA III: vice city runs, contradicting this claim).

It is a sad state of affairs when game companies think they can get away with this kind of crap. It's probably because the reviews are getting less and less uncorrupted, the audience is getting more and more impulsive, and the hype is getting bigger and bigger.

Lara Croft

[Anonymous Coward]

"Lara fell through invisible gaps in the street, walked through invisible gaps in walls, and refused to walk up stairs that she was supposed to be able to climb." "

Let me know when you get the buggy one where Lara has invisible clothes, right buddy?

Well..

[icemax]

Enter the Matrix was a rush job by a studio that never should have gotten the contract. Shiny's biggest accomplishments (Earth Worm Jim, MDK) are no where near the great games put out by the first two studios contracted by the Matrix producers (SquareSoft et al). Also, Tomb Raider was an abomination to let out the door. The controls are terrible, and the game is buggy. A beautiful looking game however. Even with that said, these games are in the minority. Alot of good bug-free games came out this year

bugs are inevitable as complexity rises

[pezpunk]

look, we're not talking about pac-man anymore. every year the games and the systems involved get more and more complex, and the potential for bugs increases geometrically. consoles have been able to keep major bugs from becoming common by limiting the variables -- that is, using a standard system to play the game on -- but the system is getting very complex. it used to be, a game developer team had to write all their own code. nowadays, they use drivers and game engines that may or may not have major bugs or incompatibilities built in, even on the consoles they were written for.

show-stopping bugs like crashes or even just annoying gameplay bugs should never make it to the final product, to be sure, but crappy games based on a movie license are certainly not a NEW phenomenon. anyone remember E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial for the 2600? of course you do.

there are plenty of console games out there that are basically (major) bug free, and economic darwinism is still at work weeding out the crappy titles from the stellar ones, except where an established license gets in the way.

Re:We let them do it on the PC, what did we expect

[aridhol]

On a computer, there are many variations that need to be supported. The programmer has no idea what hardware you have, what apps are running in the background, etc. All of these can have a detrimental effect on your gaming experience.

Consoles, however, should be identical. The X-Box they test on is exactly the same as the X-Box that you play it on. This means that they should be able to test much more for console games than for computer games. There is no excuse for this trend.

Bugs & Politics

[starlabs]

Don't forget that publishing games on a console platform has as much to do with politics as the game itself.

Many big publishers (Eidos, Acclaim, Activision, etc) are given what I call "slack points". Basically these are allocated to them for a few games that they can use to push through QA on a "fast track". They typically use these on big-name games (Tomb Raider, anyone?) and *especially* if these big games need to be out by a hard date, such as quarterlies, Xmas, license coincide launches (ie moveies) or console launch dates. (Launch dates are a little bit different because QA is a bit tougher than usual - you don't want your launch titles to be too buggy!!)

In addition to slack points, these big publishers will also use whatever else influence they have to push a big game through. Nowadays it's all about $$$ - if a bug is not a showstopper, well lots of people are willing to look the other way (anyone remember Digital Polyphony's GT3 not being 100% finished? Lots of examples).

Re:We can't return opened boxes

[Sulihin]

This is why I tend to a) check online reviews of games and b) rent a game from Blockbuster before purchasing it. Of course it gives more profit to Blockbuster and doesn't really hurt the game sales much since Blockbuster will tend to buy more of a frequently rented game, but it does save me $$'s if the game sucks.

Punishment?

[TTop]

"judging from the sales of these... titles, enough of you guys just aren't punishing the companies for releasing sub-par products to make a difference"

How do you know a console game is buggy before you buy it? Okay, maybe you know a good website or something, but does the general public? No. The general public buys a console game expecting it to work without bugs.

So how do you punish the gamemakers? Chances are you probably can't return the game -- it's considered software, so most major retailers won't accept a return unless it's defective and in that case will only exchange it for the same item -- which doesn't help because all of the same title will have the same bug.

So what do you do? Don't buy that publisher's next title? I suppose, but then it's a little harder to make a linkage between the original purchase and slow sales on a subsequent title. Maybe just write a letter to the publisher complaining and letting them know you won't be buying their next title. But a letter isn't exactly punishment, is it?

Ummm...

[erydo]

...walked through invisible gaps in walls...

Many of us refer to those as 'doors'.

Industry correction needed

[AvantLegion]

The gaming industry needs to "correct" itself and enforce much tighter quality control on their products.

Imagine if movies hit the theater with scenes missing, or even just sections that don't display right, or have faulty audio, etc. Moviegoers would revolt.

As gaming heads more mainstream, the tolerance of the public to deal with technical failures will drop.

I'm currently playing Midtown Madness 3 on the Xbox. Great game, but the custom soundtrack option has HUGE bugs (one involves a failure to randomize - playback just goes in reverse order through the playlist on some occasions, and another bug involves the soundtrack getting "stuck" on a single song). What trade school dropout programmer can't implement a simple randomizing algorithm?

Luckily, a "fix" is supposedly coming (downloadable through Xbox Live). But it shouldn't come to that.

In some cases, with games like Enter The Matrix, the push to release a game on 3 or 4 different platforms at once is a fool's quest that leads to crap like this. Any game that tries a simultaneous multiplatform release in a short dev time will end up like this.

Of course, the biggest problem is a million or so idiot customers bought it anyway.

Patch it later. MUCH later.

[Mulletproof]

I've noticed this becoming an increasingly alarming problem on the Xbox, and part of it is due to the PC port mentality they seem to have. This was especially apparent in games like Morrowind and Ghost Recon. We're talk roach motel. Live games have seen this problem with a vengence as the "patch it later" menatlity of the PC is taking increasing hold. Not only are they shipped with obvious bugs, but timely patching is a fanciful illusion. Honestly, I laugh everytime I hear somebody mention a patch for a Live game.

I wish I could say it was getting better, but this is one area where the PC seems to be overrunning the console and not vice versa.