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Everyone's A Beta Tester
kukyfrope writes "Many people dream of being videogame beta testers but, in reality, a lot of us already are. GameDaily's Greg Atkinson discusses how developers are using the ability to patch games as a crutch for launching games ahead of schedule, using a 'we'll patch it later' mentality, as opposed to extensive play testing." From the article: "What's going on lately that so many games are being released unfinished? Why are the people now paying to essentially beta test the games rather than purchasing completed games? ... If you scan through the PC reviews, on this and any other site, you will notice an overabundance of games that lost points or otherwise hampered their players' experience by being unpolished, full of bugs, and sometimes downright annoying to play. Everything from controls and camera movements to balancing issues, broken quests, and of course graphical errors are abundant in probably half the titles on the shelf these days. It's become habit to look for any patches to a game while I'm installing it, and that's not right."
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It's not just with games though....just look at everything Google has in beta!
It's been this way for years. I remember getting the Diablo II patch before I had game in hand.
The new beta.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I just hope that the PS3 with hard drive isn't going to allow game developers to skip QA the way they do with PC games.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I agree that the number of games released in a buggy state is getting way out of hand. When I buy a game, especially for $50, I should be able to take it home and play it. Since that never happens, I just play the waiting game. I almost never buy a game when it releases; instead waiting a few months. The price goes down, and patches come out, so I pay less for a game that plays better than at launch. Sure, I don't get to be the first guy on the block to play, but that's not a big deal when I'm saving $10-20 bucks a game. And it's not like the game is any less fun if you wait. Hearts of Iron II is just as fun when it came out as it is now. Plus it runs smoother thanks to patches. And cost about $30. Seems like a win/win scenario to me.
This will only change if all you idiots will stop buying buggy unfinished games!
As long as you keep buying beta-quality stuff, and the companies keep making their sales and profit goals, they'll keep doing it.
Duh.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
This is why I like console games a bit better. There's exceptions, but they tend to just work. They're kind of the Macs of the gaming world: just one system to design for.
"If you scan through the PC reviews, on this and any other site, you will notice an overabundance of games that lost points or otherwise hampered their players' experience by being unpolished, full of bugs, and sometimes downright annoying to play."
That is precisely what I am NOT seeing. One if the biggest problems with reviews is that the reviewer rarely depends on the product (or even pretends to). For instance, take a new car review. The reviewer might mention (this happened in a long term study in a major car magazine recently) that they had to have it in the shop on average once every three weeks for eight months. For those of us in the real world, being without our vehicle for at LEAST 2-3 hours (often 2-3 days) every month would cause major problems. For them, it is a minor issue because they are not dependant on the product.
The same applies to gaming. If I purchase a product and it won't work correctly out of the box on my system (most recent example: galciv2), I can't play it. This is because I have one decent gaming system. Sure, for those out there that have more than one gaming system it is a minor inconvenience, but for the other 99%... Reviewers constantly ignore this. If they have that issue they simply use another review system and note it in the review. The game may lose 2/10 points for that. Unfortunately, saying a game is say 7/10 including that issue does not reveal the actual rating of the product, because many people will be unable to use it, making it a 0/10.
The response to this is often "just wait for a patch." Fantastic. I paid $50 for a game that by the time it is playable for me the retail price has dropped to $40 and I am just then getting to play. Can I take it back? Nope, not under current laws. Does the consumer get screwed? Yep.
Not a quality function. Yes of course users are doing Beta testing, the whole purpose of Beta testing isn't to find bugs in the product, but to find out if you're hitting the market and providing the features that people want!
Alpha testing is actual testing, and what game testers who work at places like EA do. Not Beta.
I see it as sort of a bonus. Especially with Diablo 2, by the time I got the full version they had changed a bunch of stuff from Shareware that I'd liked. So I found an original copy and patched it just up to the point where the bugfixes outweighed the funky balance changes.
You know I was just thinking this morning that it was time for the 6 monthly posting of this complaint.
1) make half a game
2) put it out in stores
3) ???
4) profit!
Pretty much since the internet made it plausible to distribute patches. Most games have had significant patches since at least 1996. So the article might better say: game devs are still relying on users to discover significant bugs in their products, and this status quo has maintained its strength in spite of a decade of complaints from pseudo journals.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
That's evolution. The market selects the most profitable approach.
There is also plenty of blame to go to the graphics card card devs as well if you want to talk about stuff being in continual beta. 3rd graphics were the worst thing to happen to games, I say that only half jokingly. :) I love when you need to update the driver to work with a certain game only to have it break with another. Just this weekend, I got the urge to reinstall AvP and I had to find the magic nVidia driver version that worked, previous and later versions broke the game.
Aside of having cheap beta-testers (and this practice continuing as long as we're dumb enough to jump on every hype the studios present us): It's another anti-cracking feature.
When a game is released, the cracking groups jump it and try to beat each other in the attempt to release the 0day. But a crack for a patch? Has no priority. You will more often than not notice that the game is cracked the day, or before the day, it appears in the store. A crack for a patch can be delayed by days, sometimes even more than a week.
Of course, this also serves as an annoyance to those who use cracked games. They have to get the patch, and the corresponding (not any, but the corresponding) crack.
Let's face it. Game studios have many reasons to release buggy betas, and zero reason to provide us with finished games. So why should they? As long as we buy their buggy betas, this won't stop.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...hasn't beta testing...er, I mean playing WoW for the last couple of years been worth it?
I mean, for those of you who actually have the time and money to play it...
back in 1998....
The more things change the more they stay the same I suppose.
Monstar L
A few years ago I downloaded the demo of Sim Golf and loved it. So I went out and bought the game. BIG MISTAKE. That game was horrendously buggy and most of the bugs were glaringly obvious too. Token example: golfer complain about having to walk up hills, so you get them golf carts. When driving a golf cart up hill... they would complain about walking up hills. They fixed this, but it's the kind of thing that struck you instantly and should have been caught. Add in bugs that prevented you from editing your courses, playing your courses, and other such things and the game became almost unplayable and lost all it's fun.
This is one of the reasons why I stick to console title now, but as I've said I rent them because this kind of stuff is starting to creep in (combined with just plain bad games). This is a real shame because if I find a game that I really like, I won't buy it because I beat it while it was rented and I have no reason to go buy it since I won't play it. It is a very rare exception that I buy the game (Frequency and Amplitude are about the only two).
There are only a few companies and game series that I will buy without playing first. Nintendo is probably 90% of that. Harmonix is another company that has achieved that status for me. Other companies that had it decided they didn't care and lost it due to blunders (bad games, buggy games, whatever).
If you buy a game and it's buggy... RETURN IT. COMPLAIN to the company and the retailer. It is DEFECTIVE. If you put up with that kind of treatment, it will only get worse (as history has shown).
I think a good test is the zero day patch for game-play. If there is a patch out when the game is released (or within any short time frame) that fixes game-play bugs (hardware compatibility stuff is OK) then that company just doesn't care. Don't give 'em your money.
Let's look at Nintendo. I can't remember experiencing any bugs in their games (I've seen them in plenty of others). Do you remember what happened when it was found out that Pokemon Gold & Silver wouldn't let you harvest berries after you had been playing for a year or two? Many companies would say "too bad" or "here's $5" or "send it it, but you'll lose all your data". Nintendo fixed it. For free. On a two year old game. And then even gave you a rare item or a rare Pokemon as an apology gift. Pure class.
And notice it took like two years of playing to find that bug. I realize that Pokemon Gold and Silver are less complex than Oblivion and other recent games... but the sheer number of bugs in such a large volume of games can't be blamed on complexity alone but hubris and an uncaring attitude towards the consumer.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
...they're just following Microsoft's excellent example.
Seriously though, I would put more blame on the game publishers forcing games out early (LucasArts is especially bad for this) than those who write them.
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
I know I complain when people whine about news being old, but I think this story missed the mark by about 10 years.
It used to be that any game I bought had about 10 patches before the month its was released changed.
Now, it seems like game are in perpetual development, NOT being released to customers, ever (Duke Nukem Forever). Games like Half Life 2 and Quake 4 were in development for years and missed umpteen deadlines before they finally came out, and the developer's excuses were they wanted to make it perfect.
While I don't play the whole plethora of games available today, I still usually pick up the popular titles. I find very few times that any of the big releases have any issues that prevent enjoyable gameplay. When a patch is made available (months after release), it usually tweaks games settings or fixes (usually) any multiplayer networking problems. These kinds of issues can only be encountered once something enters wide release. No beta environment could every duplicate what the open market can find for bugs (re, beta testers are usually people in the know, real life is actually filled with morons and people without a clue).
I seldom ever find myself using a game that feels like a beta.
The problem I have is, I would rather a company release a game that might still have a few lingering issues, and then patch it later, rather then holding a game from release for 12 - 18 months to make it perfect. As long as those issues do not interrupt gameplay, or are only encountered infrequently or very randomly, then I won't mind playing the game. What I can't stand is the idea that developers spend 3 months tracking down a bug that maybe only 5% of the market would ever encounter, and that only being once in their life time.
HL2 and Duke Nukem Forever are extremes in this case, where people make it a career to hype about a game that takes years to develop, and then keep postponing it indefinitely. For the most part, I don't need a game to be perfect on release, just good enough to play without too many interruptions or problems. I would be hypercritical of a game that has bugs but was still delayed 12 - 18 months to make it perfect over a game that was released too soon but has a quick patch cycle.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Last I knew, Beta testing was for adding and testing content. The code is supposed to be complete by Alpha, and stable by Beta.
I think you missed the authors point entirely, and somehow got the exact opposite meaning. Googles products ARE stable, and still in beta. The issue as the article mentions it, is several things that are still in beta form are being released as complete games, and the paid players revliantly testing it. (Beta games being released as real, not real being still in beta)
Google is the opposite, keeping it in beta past the point it reaches stablility to absoloutely assure its completed quality.
If the higher price isn't enough reason, now we know to wait 3-6 months for the price to go down and the bugs to be fixed.
There are some games that don't even bother to fix the bugs, so a buyer could scout out whether the community is still dealing with bugs or not.
What rock have you been living under? (To the article submitter.) Game companies have been doing this for MANY years. I can remember buying "The Sims Online" long ago & immediately after installing it it commanded a 26MB patch download. Every day after that for many months it seemed as though they had a new 10-20MB patch to be downloaded each time I connected. I remember they marketed the game to both broadband & dial up users, as broadband was NOT the norm then. I wonder what the hell the dial users did???
Now let's talk Xbox 360. Every game I own for this thing (including the famous Call of Duty 2) has required an immediate patch download. I knew the instant broadband connectivity was paired up with a console with a Hard Drive installed it would spell then end of users actually being able to buy a complete game in the stores. There was a day when you could walk into a store with confidence & know they had to finish the damn thing before selling it because once they pressed out millions of copies onto CD/DVD, people WOULD NOT accept a piece of crap.
The forums for Call of Duty 2 are filled with people pissed off about lag, disconnect, glitch issues, & lack of basic features such as voting to change the map, kick a player, etc. However the Call of Duty folk have simply ignored their user base & took their time answering people & patching the game.
Just goes to show once they have your $$ they don't care much about what you think.
Wherever you go, there you are.
First off, I should probably lay out my credentials. My name is Michael Russell, and I'm the QA Manager for Ritual Entertainment. We're going to be releasing "SiN Episodes: Emergence" over Steam on May 10.
In some ways, Greg Atkinson is absolutely right, but he seems to be right for the wrong reasons.
There are three global problems in game development: marketing usually promises a date that cannot be met, throwing more people at a problem cannot fix it, and bugs found at the end of a project are hard to impossible to fix.
The marketing date is a huge issue because 90% of the time, the people making the game have no buy-in regarding it. They're working towards being done when it's done, and then when they get told that they have six months when they need a year, things get implemented too fast and half-assed.
Of course, here we are at six months out with no testing so far. In fact, the game is generally in an untestable state due to the huge influx of new, untested, unstable code and/or assets. Several major developers and publishers are now moving to the "monkey" model of testing: hire 100 temps for six weeks at the end, have them hammer on the game, and the end result is 5,000 bugs with little time to fix it.
So, the team gets the game to a basic level of functionality, throws it in a box, and gets to work on the patch while the box winds its way to retail.
Until the industry as a whole learns that QA is no longer just a line-item expense but a necessity, we're going to have issues like this.
Console developers are starting to get it, but mostly because the platform holders have a set of tests that every game released on the console must pass. Fail one test or a permutation of one test, and there is a high likelihood that you won't ship. Suddenly, spending an extra few dollars on testing early to find and fix the problem doesn't seem like a big expenditure compared to the nightmare that is missing your street date.
I'm happy that we've had testing on "SiN Episodes: Emergence" from day 1. Are there still going to be bugs? Always...there's nothing you can do to eliminate bugs entirely. It's the nature of software development. But by getting on the project early and testing through to the end, we're able to make sure that the game is stable, completable, and fun out of the box.
And for a game, that's all you can ask.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
Sometimes, in spite of all the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it, a high-minded developer who lacks sufficient funds to finish polishing a product chooses not to ship at all, rather than release something unfinished. Is this the best approach? Would you prefer nothing at all to a buggy product?
Unfortunately, games cost money to make, and there isn't always enough money to make it to the finish line. Sometimes, they need to release SOMETHING, just so that the company won't go out of business. The failure rates for game companies are absolutely phenomenal.
Is that really what you want? Fewer games? Because that's possibly what you're asking for, whether you realize it or not.
I've been beta testing this game since August 2004 =)
Gamma Testing?
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
This is news? Tell us something we DON'T already know.
Although patches weren't terribly uncommon back then (Quake has used them for a while), I remember the original Unreal to be the first mainstream game that really worked like this (there may have been others I don't know about though). Right in the box, there was a slip that said it was somewhat incomplete and thus somewhat still in the testing phase. I found that to be rather interesting that they did that.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
You're right about this:
The code is supposed to be complete by Alpha, and stable by Beta.
But shouldn't that be true of the content as well? Or at least, complete by Beta, and stable by release -- that is, beta testing is saying, it's done, we know there are still bugs, but we can't find any more on our own.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
in the PC gaming world.
In the past QA for games was much more vital due to the media (cartridges). I don't doubt that developers are also pushing for online features so they can push more games out the door, rather than focusing on delivering a finished product.
It's all about getting the buck as soon as possible for them. Bugs... let's worry about those later.
It usually isn't the game developers that push out buggy games, but the publisher.
When the publisher isn't the developer, it's the publisher who sets the release date. Then everyone complains about bugs and the developers go back and fix everything they would have caught with sufficient testing..
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
And just how much of a role does buying a "pre-existing" game engine play towards keeping down the bugs, and shortening development time? And why don't more game companies do that?
And even if you had gotten galciv2 to run the game was a disaster: dozens of crashes, messed up interface, pitiful documentation, blatant AI stupidity (which I found really surprising given how much talk about how smart it was suppose to be). All of which most reviewers don't even mention.
They all seem so taken by the fact that some no name company made a good game they don't want to point out it's many glaring problems.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
I have to agree with most of the sentiment here.
1) It's nothing new. (For us old folks, remember Microprose?)
2) It's not ever going to go away.
Where there are some stupid bugs that have made it through to the release, I can see patching a game to help keep the balance.
I give credit to certain game makers for trying to make a RTS whos units have different strengths and weaknesses, but I can remember the tank rushes from the original Command and Conquer and the Zergling rushes of Starcraft that lost players since their opponent would always resort to cheesy tactics. No fun = lost interest.
Sometimes it's just too hard to figure out what the cheap shot of these types of games are ahead of time. They're better now, but there always seems like they need to tweak the balancing of units.
This does, in no way, let them off the hook for letting stupid bugs through.
Anyway, my $0.02
I wonder: What (in)famous cheesiness do you remember from games? I'm not talking about cheating (like wallhacking or the like), but obvious imbalances built into games that made the game not fun to challenge an opponent since they could always take advantage of the same move or the like.
For example:
Ryu (and Ken?)'s fireball/uppercut combo; in Street Fighter II
My guess is that it's due to a combination of factors:
- Games are a lot more complex these days, with a lot more places that things can go wrong. More and better testing is required to assure the same level of product quality as in yesterday's games. This testing isn't happening; perhaps because schedules haven't changed with the games to reflect the additional required testing time.
- Games don't have as long of a shelf life these days, especially PC games (which, incidentally, are easier to release patches for), and every aspect of their development is probably managed with this fact in mind. Unless you make a smash hit game of the year best seller, your game isn't going to be in the public eye long enough for people to care about the bugs. At least, that's what the publishers are hoping when they throw deadlines at the developers.
- Publishers these days own so many labels that they are able to assign various publishing labels to games depending on their level of market risk. This means that they don't have to worry about sacrificing brand loyalty on a crap game. If it's a smash hit, they can re-release it or release a sequel under a more respected label that they own. My point? Less accountability for quality on the publisher's part, which allows them to put heavier pressure on developers to release games before they're finished.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Oblivion for the 360 is getting a patch, for example. Having hard drive for downloadable content is a double edged sword in this regard.
Also, obligatory "Oblivion is an awesome game anyways" that everyone always says. Because, really, it still is an awesome game.
Not to bob my head, but I'm especially seeing this with Knights of the Old Republic II. It's been out for, what, a good year? And yet gameplay is still plagued with cinematic bugs and a good chunk of the last third of the game was cut completely. The site itself says that there's an ongoing bug where, if you stay in any one area without hitting a cutscene for more than 40 minutes, your game is prone to crashing. Maybe it's just me, but this strikes me as a very "Should've-been-fixed-before-the-release" type of bug.
What makes this more irritating is the fact that once the game's released, developers keep saying "We'll fix it next patch, we'll fix it next patch"...and then the company decides to take the developers off that project and onto another one, since fixing games that're 6 months old won't make them as much money anymore. So these bugs and dropped features never get fixed.
Tluin natha Linux xxizzuss uriu olt bwael mon'tun.
If you delay the game until it's ready, everyone bitches that it's late.
If you split the difference, everyone bitches that it's buggy and late.
If you manage to stop adding features early enough so that you actually ship a game that's on time and pretty much bug free, everyone bitches that the gameplay is lame, and they should have added feature x from other game y.
And if you hire enough programmers to put out a massive killer game on time without bugs, but have the audacity to actually charge enough to pay all those people a decent wage, everyone bitches that it's too expensive.
Okay, rant over. Back to fixing bugs to please you people.
So if a game studio figures how to hold off the crackers for a week, then software piracy is history?
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
Honestly, what impact would random hardware configurations have?
We've got either Direct3D or Direct3D for our graphics API. DirectSound or DirectSound for our audio API. DirectInput or DirectInput for our input API. (I do realize I'm discluding OpenGL and SDL, which are both great tools, but it's to make a point).
So with Direct3D, DirectInput, and DirectSound wrapping different hardware, what's the big deal? I can buy the argument that console games will be more optimized because you can get up close and personal with the hardware, since everyone will have the same damn thing.
No, the differences will be things like games crashing or the computer crashing due to bugs in the DirectX side of the driver, or the kernel-side of the driver.
So what about gameplay? With gameplay bugs, that's logic in the program. If I shoot you and you don't die, that's not because I have an ATI video card instead of an nVidia card, it's because the hit detection algorithm is broken.
Non-fixed platforms mean I have to deal with lower performance (often poorly tuned game design is the major factor here) and maybe crashes, but it doesn't mean I should put up with broken game logic.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Shhh, we are not supposed to criticise the game because they "don't use DRM." Yeah, and having to enter your long serial number every time a patch comes out, or being required to register your product and link the serial number to it in order to download a patch is so much better. Thanks guys!
Don't let your PR department release dates that you can't meet.
If you don't know whether you can make a release date, don't publish a release date. I applaud Duke Nukem Forever for that, at least. People laugh, but if it's good enough, they won't complain about lateness. Remember how long we waited for Half-Life 2? And remember how we didn't even know they were developing it for years?
The mistake made with HL2 was not the huge development time, it was the announcement of features that weren't included and release dates that weren't met. It was a fine game, but the expectations were just too high.
So, Duke Nukem Forever made one mistake -- they told us they were working on Duke Nukem Forever. But I don't think it will suffer nearly as much from high expectations when its actually delivered, since, honestly, most people believe it never will be "done".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Actually, they can release finished products.
They just need to find a trick so that the amateur cracks miss a copy-protection that occurrs at the 75% mark of the game. Even if the game is still possible at that point, it will be much harder to complete. (Just make sure that normal users aren't bitten.)
Or failing that, have the patches add on extra content or performance enhancements (e.g. improved multiplayer performance, rendering speed, or rendering quality.) As an alernative, release a Director's cut version of the game as a freely downloadable patch (but the original will still be available.)
"Even if marketing solely decides the date and doesn't give the date until 6 months out, development shouldn't just ignore that they need 1 year and stick their heads in the sand. At that point development needs to go back to marketing and try to work things out. If the date is fixed, then the game needs to be rescoped until it fits in the time available, even if it means removing features. It's better to have a slightly smaller, playable game then a larger, bug-ridden beast. "
That sounds like Microsoft's plan for Vista.
[Crap, I knew I should have pressed "Preview"]
Publishers set the release date. Really? And HOW do they set the release date? By asking the developer, "when will this be ready?" So the developer's failing to deliver the product on in time is not the publisher's fault.
The problem, as you say, is with inexperienced developers:
11 months later...This is obviously the fault of the developer, who should have simply maintained, "It will take 24 months."
http://outcampaign.org/
If you're making a console game, unit test, torture test, playtest, and 3-year-old-test. If there are bugs after the game is released, you're morally obligated to replace everyone's media with a patched version, or make sure ALL your customers know of a workaround.
If you're making a PC game, release it early and call it a beta. Charge no more for the beta (hopefully less) than for the finished product, and upgrade them to the final version for free. And pay attention to your beta testers, and patch every bug found quickly. At least for now, most people will wait for a version they can buy in stores, even if it costs more money.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Forget StarForce, or any other copy protection. What works is releasing a game that you know has serious bugs in it, and then applying a patch or two that will fix them. Viola, the CD/DVD rippers that love to get original CD images are now hosed up a bit, due to the fact that those bugs have to be patched. Apply patch, fix copy protection that requires the CD to be in the drive. Each patch restores it, and may even check a different spot on the CD surface. Busts up those NoCD cracks pretty quick.
That means that people that are ripping the game have to look for new cracks, which is a journey fraught with viruses and the like.
Sure, game companies are inherently lazy and rush product to the shelves. But, now they have added incentive to make us buy unfinished games. And they know that most game players want to have it NOW, so they will live with it. What's to stop them?
And I can't say I'm different. I can certainly see myself buying NWN2 when it comes out this summer.
Oh, they certainly won't allow you to play 75% of the game. With current games, you lose interest around 50%. So why'd you buy the game?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Of course not. It's just a little nuisance for the crackers. And it's also the only kind of anti-copying ploy that hurts the copyer more than the buyer, the others are more a nuisance to the "honest" customer than the "illegal" ripper.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Do like me, don't pay, download from P2P. I refuse to pay for an un-finished game, therefore I only pay for games when no patch has been released in years. I might buy Warcraft I now.
You just got troll'd!
Games are getting more and more complicated and sofisticated every year.
But games always had bugs. Take perhaps the most successful game in history, Super Mario Bros. Walking through walls, getting stuck on a pixel...
It's not NEW that games are buggy. You have hundreds of different possible system configurations on PC that can lead to bugs. Games like any Elder Scrolls have an almost limitless number of player driven possibilities. Is it possible to find every single bug in them before release? Not unless the developpers would hire say 500 000 play testers (about the number that would be required for a game like Morrowind, DaggerFall or Oblivion) and push back the game over 2 years just to be sure the game is bug free.
Most games are playable and enjoyable even with a few bugs. A few are totally broken and it's usually mentionned in their reviews.
So fact that games can be patched is a "good" thing, not necessarilly a proof of developpers lazyness. They brought out a playable and enjoyable game and i play it and have fun with it. If it's patched later on, so much the better for me.
But I didn't read anything that sounded like a gameplay issue caused by the video. By gameplay issue, I mean "was unable to get the powerup" or "boss at end of stage 2 was invincible due to video driver."
:)
The boss at the end of stage 2 may be impossible to see, but that can be fixed without patching the game engine itself. Merely changing the video card will fix it. The OP was referring to problems caused by hardware that made a game unplayable, but those are fixable without patching the games, so I argue that those arent't in the set of bugs to consider. The only ones we should be worried about are the ones that the game programmers are directly responsible for.
Your ATI Rage 128 didn't break because the RO programmers sucked, it broke because ATI sucks. That's why I don't buy ATI hardware
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.