Seeing Red
After extensive time with Fallout 3 I could not help but long for the bug-free games of yore. As any PC gamer knows, computer games have always had their share of problems. This has mainly been attributed to the problems with programming for a non-uniform hardware set. However, with the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360, console gamers are now encountering many of the pitfalls that were once confined to the PC. True, slow-down, crashing, freezing, and other bugs have made their appearances in the past, however it is no longer rare.
I still own my original SNES. Yes, it is yellowed and has new controllers, but it is still going strong. I wish I could say the same for my Xbox 360 which is now on its third iteration. My 360 got the dreaded red ring twice. Now, well out of warranty, the DVD-drive is having problems and I have reason to believe it is on its last legs. This, and the problems with the hard drive, which are numerous, only bolster my opinion of the 360 as a console rushed to be manufactured.
Alright, I know the counterargument, game systems have gotten more complex and that is the reason for all of the problems. Ok, I agree with you they are more complex and the addition of optical drives and hard disks allow for more things to go wrong. However, my original Playstation still works, and so does my Dreamcast. As for hard disks, I still have an old 40 GB drive from (6?) years ago that still stores data.
What I’m saying is the complexity of these systems and of the games has gone up but the quality has gone down. This is unacceptable. As gamers we have to demand more from those who make the games we play. We should not buy games that need a patch out of the box. The console issue is a more difficult one to counter. Many gamers like to purchase the latest console upon its release, far too early for any major problems to surface. However, the poor quality of the games is much easier to counter. Many issues are spotted by reviewers before the game is even released. So why buy the game?
This brings me back to Fallout 3, which is a large, in depth, ultimately fun game. However, it was not too long ago that I would have lost it while playing a game that buggy. Yet I have been so conditioned to poor quality that it now seems acceptable to me that a game only crashes once every few hours. It shouldn’t be. A more extreme example is Grand Theft Auto IV, that game was very near unplayable. I only rented it and decided not to buy it when my save data could not be retrieved (which was later fixed by a patch) and the online mode was not functioning. Yet, GTAIV was the biggest selling game of all time. What the hell? We don’t have to stand for this.
The only way this can be countered is if gamers as a group declare that we will no longer buy games with such obvious bugs. We need to stand together and show the industry that quality is as important as enjoyment and just because something is hyped into the stratosphere doesn’t mean we will buy an obviously flawed product. As a group, gamers have aged, we are supposed to be mature adults, not a bunch of perpetual kids with expensive toys. It’s time we start acting like adults and hold the industry responsible for putting out a quality product. Would you go to a movie that cut out three quarters of the way through? Would you ride a roller coaster that was seven eighths finished? So why expect less from the most expensive form of entertainment most of us indulge in?
-Matt Frank
Tags: Dreamcast!!, Fallout 3, Game Industry, GTA, Nintendo, PC, PS3, Wii, Xbox 360
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December 4th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Hey man, these were some pretty good points. I think (especially regarding Fallout 3) that games are definitely being wheeled out the door before adequate play testing is being performed. I despise waiting for my new purchases to be patched before I can enjoy them the “way developers had intended,” and often reminisce about those times of yore when finding bugs in games like Metroid or Super Mario was exciting rather than defeating.
And yet, I think that game development has become a cycle that obviously produces buggy games. Ever since the mainstream had a whiff of Halo and GTA, and subsequently sunk it’s teeth into the gaming industry, investor dollars have flooded in like no other time in history. It stands to reason that when the mainstream pushes this industry to be more like the movie or music industries, we get games that are rushed out the door so they can coincide with pricey advertising campaigns.
What I’m trying to get at is that while I would like the adult median of games to come together with fists upraised demanding that developers focus more on quality, I doubt it would happen. That this is a mainstream process now, we can assume that the larger companies like Microsoft and Sony want developers to accommodate to the lowest common denominator. This LCD, of course, being people that are captivated by the advertising campaigns and hype. And that is where the loop appears and transforms the gaming industry into the controlled mess it currently is (and forces me to loose faith in my former favorites.)
Maybe we just need another E.T. to screw this whole thing up so we can start from scratch again.
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December 4th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Okay, so you’ve got two points here.
First, that games have become more buggy over the years due to increasing complexity.
And two, that games have not become better than past game and, in fact, have become worse.
Because that’s the type of person I am, let’s start with the second point first:
I heartily disagree. I’d say that it’s plain confirmation bias and availability bias. That’s to say, that first you only remember good games from old systems. After all, they are the only ones that were able to stand the test of time. Sucky games came and went. Everybody remembers Pac-Man, but nobody remembers Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 (or, at least, they don’t want to).
So, we’re only remembering the good games (or mostly good games) and that list is static. They’re not making new games for old systems, after all. But they are making new games for new systems. And, since it’s in such recent memory we can much more clearly remember bad games when they come. They stand out since they just happened.
In other words, we only remember the good games from old systems and since new systems have both good and bad games, we have a much more negative view of new games.
And now for the first part:
This I agree with. And, yes, it has to do with the fact that everything is getting a lot more complicated. There’s a reason why it costs millions of dollars to make a triple-A title and most of it is due to just getting all the basic stuff setup. The game industry is horrible when it comes to re-using code. There isn’t really any big open-source game engines, at least none that are equal in quality to say the Unreal engine.
As we get more and more complicated computers, it’s a combinatorial explosion of bugs.
Now, is this increased complexity worth it? On a game by game basis, it depends on the game. For something like Mirror’s Edge (which I really enjoyed) the game wouldn’t be the same without the high-powered graphics and physics. It would totally break immersion and be an entirely different beast. On the other hand, I’ve run into a couple games where I said to myself “This game would be a lot better in 2D”.
But is it worth it on an industry wide basis? I really don’t know and that’s because I really don’t know where the industry is heading. It’s liking asking is it really worth it to build huge particle accelerators to search for confirmation of the Standard Model. We’ll only know when the answer is staring us right in the face.
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