GamesIndustry.biz - Broken & Bugged Games

Well to continue my hatred of all broken and bugged games it seems Rob Fahey of GamesIndustry.biz has posted a new article that talks about both problems.

Given that we could all probably agree that a piece of hardware being faulty is utterly unacceptable, I'm not sure why software seems to get a free pass sometimes. Sure, there are lots of consumers who complain bitterly about buggy games, but by and large games with awful quality control problems tend to get slapped with labels like "flawed but great", or have their enormous faults explained in a review only to see the final score reflect none of those problems. It's not just the media that does this (and for what it's worth, I don't think this is corruption so much as an ill-considered aspect of media culture itself); for every broken game, there are a host of consumers out there ready to defend it to the hilt, for whatever reason.

I raise this problem because, while buggy games have always been with us - often hilariously, especially back in the early days of the PlayStation - the past year or so has seen a spate of high-profile, problematic games being launched, suggesting that even some of the industry's AAA titles are no longer free from truly enormous technical issues. The technical problems that have become increasingly prevalent in recent years are causing genuine damage to the industry; from the botched online launches of games like Driveclub and Battlefield through to the horrendous graphical problems that plague some players of Assassin's Creed Unity, they are giving consumers terrible experiences of what should be high points for the medium, creating a loud and outspoken group of disgruntled players who act to discourage others, and helping to drive a huge wedge between media (who, understandably, want to talk about the experience and context of a game rather than its technical details) and consumers (who consider a failure to address glaring bugs to be a sign of collusion between media and publishers, and a failure on the part of the media to serve their audience).