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[KarneeKarnay]

What I would give for companies to go back to quality first instead of profits.

Seriously though, how many games get release early access and die before getting out of Alpha?

If that wasn't as bad the AAA companies releasing barebone games and expecting DLC to fix the game/improve gamelplay and add content. It's outrageous and it makes me feel like they companies and studios don't give a crap about the consumer, beyond how much they pay.


When was the last time a game got released without huge bugs, not a bareboned piece of crap and DLC that was expected to pick up the slack? There are a few I can think of.

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - Lots of DLC Expansions. This makes sense because beside the home dlc they all added a lot of content into what was already a good game. There were some bugs, but nothing truly game breaking.

Batman Arkam Asylum and a handful of indie game.

That's literally all I can think of and I've been playing games on all systems for more than 10 years.

Games that got release with bugs that would have been unacceptable 10 years prior.

- The Evil Within PC Port. - Most people couldn't even load the game without having to break the console. A patch was eventually released.

- Batman Arkam City - The game on PS3 crashed and corrupted save files. How did that get by?

- Watchdogs - Though this is more to just the huge differences in what we were promised but didn't revive.

- Alien: Colonial Marines - There is still a court case over this one.

These are only a few of them and I've only commented on the major ones. I could have talked about DayZ, while a great game that is clearly still in Alpha, has been in that stage for almost 2 years now. People have been donating to it since it was a mod, where has all that money gone? I'm not even going to touch a few on the indie games created by kickstarter that genuinely look like the screwed a lot of people out of money.

What happened to taking a pride in your work?

This is the oldest strategy in the business. If you can build a higher quality product than your rivals and do it more efficiently without the expense of the quality, then you will succeed.

 

[TGMIII]

If there was a major game breaking bug publishers/developers typically replaced the copies with patched disks, although this wasn't true for every case. Sometimes major bugs would never be fixed leaving the game broken forever.

Other than that for some bugs there would be reproduction versions of games that fixed those problems and it would often be the case where this wasn't disclosed meaning you could buy two copies of the same game and end up with two different versions. This is a fairly common issue for speedrunners when attempting to pick up a specific version of a game.

I think the idea that the ability to patch is the sole or main cause for broken releases is disingenuous and only pushes the blame away from the real cause of the problem, that publishers are pushing margins to their limits in order to prioritize profits. The ability to patch has been around for decades, something the console space has only fairly recently been able to catch up to, and while PC saw its fair share of broken releases in its day it didn't then mean that it was the majority.

 

[Zaventem]

There were also second enhanced releases. Tons of older games have bugs we just don't point out the smallest thing and make threads about it. Personally while sending a broken game out does happen i'm glad devs have the ability to fix mistakes.

 

[Tal Shiar Agent]

Many times the Greatest Hits versions of games would contain bug fixes. Less common would be when games would be quietly fixed in between shipments.

 

[antibolo]

Games were simpler. Hence easier to release with little to no serious bugs.

It's as simple as that.

 

[B_Spooky13]

Most were dealt with before release but back then games were a lot smaller and easier to catch bugs. (In the NES, SNES days)

As games got more complex the bugs started to show up more often. They were never really game breaking though. Just glitches

 

[JumpJeff84]

What I would give for companies to go back to quality first instead of profits.

Seriously though, how many games get release early access and die before getting out of Alpha?

If that wasn't as bad the AAA companies releasing barebone games and expecting DLC to fix the game/improve gamelplay and add content. It's outrageous and it makes me feel like they companies and studios don't give a crap about the consumer, beyond how much they pay.


When was the last time a game got released without huge bugs, not a bareboned piece of crap and DLC that was expected to pick up the slack? There are a few I can think of.

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - Lots of DLC Expansions. This makes sense because beside the home dlc they all added a lot of content into what was already a good game. There were some bugs, but nothing truly game breaking.

Batman Arkam Asylum and a handful of indie game.

That's literally all I can think of and I've been playing games on all systems for more than 10 years.

Games that got release with bugs that would have been unacceptable 10 years prior.

- The Evil Within PC Port. - Most people couldn't even load the game without having to break the console. A patch was eventually released.

- Batman Arkam City - The game on PS3 crashed and corrupted save files. How did that get by?

- Watchdogs - Though this is more to just the huge differences in what we were promised but didn't revive.

- Alien: Colonial Marines - There is still a court case over this one.

These are only a few of them and I've only commented on the major ones. I could have talked about DayZ, while a great game that is clearly still in Alpha, has been in that stage for almost 2 years now. People have been donating to it since it was a mod, where has all that money gone? I'm not even going to touch a few on the indie games created by kickstarter that genuinely look like the screwed a lot of people out of money.

What happened to taking a pride in your work?

This is the oldest strategy in the business. If you can build a higher quality product than your rivals and do it more efficiently without the expense of the quality, then you will succeed.

Skyrim's a pretty bad example seeing as a lot of people found the game downright unplayable on PS3.

 

[Robert at Zeboyd Games]

Let's not glamorize the past too much. Final Fantasy 6 is one of the highest profile & most respected SNES games ever and it had at least one major game destroying bug that you were almost guaranteed to run into if you used one of the characters (Relm) regulary, as well as a ton of smaller bugs. Or you can take a look at Lufia 2 that has one area that's just a glitch mess of random tiles. Or Exile 2 where they messed up in localization and accidentally made the game so difficult that it's almost impossible.

 

[FlashbladeGAF]

This is why Mario still "got it", compared to previous "mascots"

 

[HF2014]

The only two games i can remember having bugs and we could not do anything about it were NHL 95 on genesis and World Series Baseball ( dont remeber which year ) on Sega Saturn. They were having crazy stats bugs and we couldnt do anything about it then.

Most developers today just dont give a damn about how great it run on release. They have an agenda to follow and release it even if in reality its 70% complete. The patching excuse will now always save them.

Just take note with your wallet to make em understand. All EA and Ubisoft games for me are no longer day one buy. I always now wait for reviews and read on forums about the games i wanted before purchase. Anyway, what the big deal of waiting one more week to get a game you want? Yon dont have enough to play? Today with all the consoles, pc, tablet gaming, there is not enough time to play all games that get release. Yeah i got big hope for a few games this year. Bloodborne, The Order, Project Cars. Normally i would jump on them day one. But ill wait for some reviews and read on here on gaf on how the games are before buying. Perhaps because im getting older and i dont feel the rush of getting something new right away, and im getting more patient.

Bugged games suck. Period.

 

[John Kowalski]

Jesus people it hasn't been that long.

 

[SiegfriedFM]

Daggerfall was a complete mess until fully patched. So was Frontier: First Encounters, and to an extent Frontier. Super Street Fighter II Turbo on PC CD shipped without functioning CD music. (and look - these games were released by Bethesda and GameTek (pre-Take Two), what a coincidence) Strike Commander had a bug where the installation would corrupt after quitting the game.

I distinctly remember a PC magazine reviewing a game pretty much as "This game might be good, but it doesn't work, so we'll never know" and giving it the lowest possible score.

 

[JohnnyFootball]

Possible more quality control back then indeed, but i think its worth mentioning that games back then were a lot simpler, so quality control was most likely much easier as well. Not to mention that many older games do have glitches and bugs, but perhaps not game breaking. Its the same thing today, at least after my experience. I have not experienced many games in these days that are so buggy that its unplayable.

I think this is the correct answer. Games were much simpler and therefore had much less code to dig through to fix bugs and many could probably be found before release.

 

[MUnited83]

By having numerous game-breaking bugs that's how. Anybody who thinks things weren't bad as well needs to take off their rose-tinted glasses.

 

[Who]

They dealed with most of them before release.

Well yeah.

 

[sixteen-bit]

Jesus people it hasn't been that long.

You need to be 13 to sign up for GAF. Some gaffers were 4 or 5 when the 7th generation started, so they might not know a time before patches.

 

[AtomskEater]

Ar Tonelico 2 (PS2) had a pretty bad bug. My memory is a little hazy on it, but it was something about a buffer overflow with a boss's attack name, and this boss would always use this specific attack like 3 turns into the fight and cause the game to freeze. NISA's response was basically "get good" and some tips on how to beat the boss before that turn. So yeah that was great. I'd like to think they'd have patched that if it were a PS3 release.

 

[lazygecko]

See Revenge of Shinobi and the countless revisions it got to avoid copyright infringements.

 

[Krejlooc]

They dealed with most of them before release.

No they didn't. Most games had multiple revisions along their second print.

The way they dealt with bugs was "oh well, sucks to be an early adopter" and would fix them for later customers.

 

[bigbaldwolf86]

By having numerous game-breaking bugs that's how. Anybody who thinks things weren't bad as well needs to take off their rose-tinted glasses.

I can tell you honestly that as a kid and growing up playing from the Amiga that I never encountered a game breaking bug on any game through to the PS2.

 

[entremet]

Let's not glamorize the past too much. Final Fantasy 6 is one of the highest profile & most respected SNES games ever and it had at least one major game destroying bug that you were almost guaranteed to run into if you used one of the characters (Relm) regulary, as well as a ton of smaller bugs. Or you can take a look at Lufia 2 that has one area that's just a glitch mess of random tiles. Or Exile 2 where they messed up in localization and accidentally made the game so difficult that it's almost impossible.

Secret of Mana was also a buggy ass game.

I think people are forgetting a lot lol. However, many of these bug weren't as obvious as today's.

 

[Krejlooc]

Let's not glamorize the past too much. Final Fantasy 6 is one of the highest profile & most respected SNES games ever and it had at least one major game destroying bug that you were almost guaranteed to run into if you used one of the characters (Relm) regulary, as well as a ton of smaller bugs. Or you can take a look at Lufia 2 that has one area that's just a glitch mess of random tiles. Or Exile 2 where they messed up in localization and accidentally made the game so difficult that it's almost impossible.

Evade (state) does absolutely nothing in Final Fantasy VI. It's not used in any algorithm. It is an entirely useless stat. They actually forgot to use one of the major, tracked stats in the game, entirely.

Insane.

 

[Sting]

They didn't fix bugs at all. People just adapted to them, and then speedrunners started to use them to their advantage.

 

[sixteen-bit]

See Revenge of Shinobi and the countless revisions it got to avoid copyright infringements.

Heh, I wouldn't say countless (wasn't it 4?), but it was pretty funny seeing it get a new revision as late as 2009 for the Virtual Console release to remove Sonny Chiba's likeness from the title screen.

 

[spared]

They would delay the games for more bug patching before release. People were bitchin' at the Big N releasing games always at a later than expected date but there was quality like no other company could do it. Still is for the most part.ALso I find Nintendo not patching their games as often as most devs even today.

 

[Krejlooc]

I can tell you honestly that as a kid and growing up playing from the Amiga that I never encountered a game breaking bug on any game through to the PS2.

lmfao BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. I absolutely refuse to believe you never saw this screen:

 

[Steel]

They made sure they didn't release games that were completely broken in the first place. Strange concept I know.

 

[sharc]

incidentally, while it wasn't very common, a handful of NES games had revised versions that quietly fixed one issue or another.

kirby's adventure and super mario bros. 3 both have revisions addressing relatively minor issues, but super mario bros. 2 has a PRG1 version that fixes a potential showstopper during the fryguy boss fight, and castlevania's PRG1 fixes an unfortunately common and devastating bug that is particularly likely to crash the game during the fight with death.

 

[dr.rocktopus]

Ar Tonelico 2 (PS2) had a pretty bad bug. My memory is a little hazy on it, but it was something about a buffer overflow with a boss's attack name, and this boss would always use this specific attack like 3 turns into the fight and cause the game to freeze. NISA's response was basically "get good" and some tips on how to beat the boss before that turn. So yeah that was great. I'd like to think they'd have patched that if it were a PS3 release.

Was the sole reason I didn't get AT2. At the time I was lapping up JRPGs but that turned me off.

But yeah, cart/disk revisions. A good example of something that would be patched out today but was dealt with revisions in the past were the Islamic references to the Gerudo in OoT.

I do feel overall there were less egregious bugs in the past. I've only had console games crash on me with the previous and last generations. Anecdotal? technically.

 

[The Cartographer]

Jesus people it hasn't been that long.

10 years.

 

[entremet]

I always loved games with debug modes available to the gamer, such as Sonic the Hedgehog. They were awesome.

 

[npa189]

Games were also a lot less complex back then, and made by like 12 person teams. When you have 10,000 people working on an Assassin's Creed its bound to be a buggy shit show.

 

[Apathy]

The people saying that games got tested better forget about reissues like OoT? Tons of bugs that needed reprints to try and iron out.

 

[bigbaldwolf86]

lmfao BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. I absolutely refuse to believe you never saw this screen:

I've never seen that. Granted my Amiga experience is limited as I was very young.

 

[aspiegamer]

By having numerous game-breaking bugs that's how. Anybody who thinks things weren't bad as well needs to take off their rose-tinted glasses.

Oh come on now, that's ridiculous. There were often a few bugs in games or things that ended up either resulting in extra difficulty or minor exploits, but "game-breaking"? Hell no. There's a reason why the ones that ended up in recall as so well-known. It's because of how insanely rare it was and that previously the idea of needing to perform such drastic measures was crazy talk. Some PC games got patches for balance tweaks or graphical issues but they were never outright required to make the games work as intended or to add content post-release that was previously promised.

"How could they ever ship something that wasn't 100%?!?"
That qualified as scandalous. Anything that detracted from enjoyment. In any game. Even the tiniest bit. Ever.

 

[amnesiac]

Great quote.

 

[georly]

I think Miyamoto is talking more about game design rather than bugs and glitches. Bugs and glitches can be fixed, so its not true that the games will be bad forever if the only reason the game is bad is because of some bugs =)

Probably, but I think it also applies here. If nintendo found a game-breaking bug in their game, they would have delayed it rather than release a game with a bug that tarnishes their reputation.

 

[Sol_Goodguy]

They dealed with most of them before release.

They shipped revisions later on

Both of these, but I'd put more emphasis on the first one.

Games have definitely become more buggy since patches were introduced. Are games these days more complex? Sure. Does that excuse the increased bugginess? Not if you ask me.

 

[IvorB]

QA

 

[alstein]

This is correct.

PC games ALWAYS had bugs, and sadly the consoles learned this last gen and now this ship has sailed.

So did console games? It's just the bugs weren't as publicized.

Look at AGDQ runs for all the bugs in those. If message boards and forums were as popular than as they are now, we'd know about most of those within a month or two of release. The interest just brought this into the open.

 

[jimi_dini]

They dealed with most of them before release.

like it should be. For consoles.

 

[animax]

Great quote.

It is a great quote, but he didn't quite live up to it for wind waker

(not saying its a bad game, just that a lot of content was cut. And yes, I know he was only producer for that game).

 

[ElFly]

Keep in mind that games have exploded in complexity, and that the architecture of the NES/SNES/Genesis gave more resilience to games.

If you had the modern equivalent of old games displaying glitched sprites, aka games just simply pointing to the wrong memory, that would just crash and burn a modern game, probably hardlocking the console.

 

[Triggerhappytel]

I certainly don't recall anything on PS2 for example that was anywhere near as broken as Halo MCC or AC Unity etc. However, in the case of most of these games the issues have sprouted from online services not being up to snuff, and during the PS2 era that wasn't really part of the equation, so it's not really comparable to current situations. The only real comparable games I can think of are shitty low-budget games like Charlie's Angels.

 

[deoee]

This should be in every Ubisoft office.

 

[PooBone]

The games were less complex and largely worked upon release, but for bugs that needed to be fixed and didn't deserve a recall, later editions of the game shipped with changes. There's a pretty extensive log out there of all the various versions of Ocarina of Time to hit retail on the N64 with various small changes.

 

[PetriP-TNT]

They dealed with most of them before release.

That's because there weren't bugs in any game before PS3 generation.

Lenny face

 

[random25]

Game breaking bugs on console games usually gets a recall, but back in the days game breaking bugs are quite rare that I can't even remember any single game I owned got a recall. Most game bugs back in the day are usually when players try to forcefully exploit the game, and usually finding them gives you more fun than headaches lol.

Examples of these are game bugs from Final Fantasy games of old. There's really no game breaking bugs there, as in playing it normally won't destroy something in your game, but when you try to find and exploit those bugs they are as good as cheat codes, like the W-item bug from FF7 and Doom-Vanish bug from FF6. Speed runs also exploit those bugs, but as you can tell they are more of a fun factor than ruining the game experience.

 

[Superballs]

Some companies were better than others of course...but a finished game was a finished game.

Rushed games were pretty well doomed to be unsupported garbage. Especially in the cartridge days.

 

[Setsuna]

Not only did they ignore bugs when they were little But now as soon as something not expected happens people are crying bug