Bugs within games - Developers getting lazy?

markyb

markyb

markyb

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Following on from the shambles within this thread...

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=14976548&postcount=224

“When navigating menus today while connected to Xbox Live the game suddenly crashed again. When my rage had subsided and I got a better look at the screen, I was pretty shocked at what I saw.

“Was my Xbox 360 version of Need for Speed Shift really trying to access the Playstation Store? Microsoft are not going to be happy about this.”
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This just made me think about games in general recently which have been bug ridden from the start. For instance Fallout 3 and related add-on packs, one of which when released was unplayable until they patched it.

Do developers rely on patches to much these days to fix issues for problems that should have been fixed in earlier beta versions?

This never used to happen years back. Is it due to games getting more and more complex and trickier to program or devs just getting lazy?
 
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markyb said:
This never used to happen years back. Is it due to games getting more and more complex and trickier to program or devs just getting lazy?
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combinations of both i would say. the inventions of high speed internet means large patches aren't completely infeasible like they used to be so they rae more willing to leave stuff till later to hit a release date.
 
Sorry but that xbox accessing the psn store looks like complete bs, look at the button icons for cancel an accept, they're obviously playstation ones.
 
PiKe said:
Sorry but that xbox accessing the psn store looks like complete bs, look at the button icons for cancel an accept, they're obviously playstation ones.
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Indeed I was thinking the same, personally I've not noticed many bugs in the games I've played.
 
I'd say games are as buggy as they were. Only bug I've had this gen that has actually affected my gaming in any way was the Umbra bug in Oblivion.
 
games have always had bugs
i remember the sliding bug in flashback on the amiga where you could run, turn and slide through walls lol
or the build bug in the xcom games that was ported successfully to the ps1 version
 
As the costs related to game production increases so does the pressure to release them asap. And as said earlier devs now assume that you will have internet connection to patch the games later so are less inclined to do full bug testing.
 
hood1971 said:
As the costs related to game production increases so does the pressure to release them asap. And as said earlier devs now assume that you will have internet connection to patch the games later so are less inclined to do full bug testing.
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I think youve completely contradicted yourself there and are incorrect on your second point. I agree that the pressure exists to release on a particular date, but no developer in any field would be less inclined to do full bug testing. It just comes down to having less time to test end to end when changes are being made close to a release.

This is a problem outside of the gaming industry, in any software environment. As titles become more complex, testing becomes infinitely harder to do and I think perfect games are a thing of the past.
 
I doubt the testing is any worse, infact I'd say it is probably better, in spite of code becoming far more complex and there being way more code per game than there was a few years ago, let alone 20 years ago, the number of bugs and major bugs are typically less now than they were back then. Yes there are still bugs and sometimes the patches replace one bug with another, however I would imagine the QA cycles in games development are quite rigorous.

I suspect what developers are falling short on is time to implement fixes to all the bugs discovered and they have to draw the line in the sand at a particular point and release the game.

I think fact that patches are being made available so shortly after release shows that the developers are still working on bugs even after the game has gone gold.
 
roboffer said:
I think youve completely contradicted yourself there and are incorrect on your second point. I agree that the pressure exists to release on a particular date, but no developer in any field would be less inclined to do full bug testing. It just comes down to having less time to test end to end when changes are being made close to a release.

This is a problem outside of the gaming industry, in any software environment. As titles become more complex, testing becomes infinitely harder to do and I think perfect games are a thing of the past.
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No contradiction at all - devs are under pressure to release games asap, therefore less time to do bug testing fully and properly. A few years ago there would have been more emphasis on bug testing as it was hard to get patches out to users.
 
Games are more complex and schedules are tighter than ever due to more strict budgets and time constraints.

Certain types of games are harder to QA because there is no 'set-path' to go through the game.
 
has anyone here ever developed a game? any sort of game, bug finding and fixing can take a long time and when you do fix a bug you might trigger another 5 more, I dont feel its fair to call all developers lazy and yes it is true that games are buggier these days but they have become far more complex too.
 
Sure new technologies and programming methods will cause bugs and various issues with software, however, it really just comes down to money and making street date. Depends on the time of the year, but if a company misses a street date, especially around end/start of financial year, it can cost tens of thousands of pounds, not to mention damage company stock prices.

The QA dept will have a database of bugs and usually a decision has to be taken by producers/devs when approaching gold on which bugs to prioritise and fix (mostly A's and B's) - again, due to pressure to make shipping.
 
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Their not lazy at all!

Its all to do with financial pressure nearly always coming from the publisher who are directly funding it. QA cost a lot of time/money to get right at least 4-6 months and this is being cutback to save money as for some publishers they must release a game in a certain financial quarter (Q1,Q2 etc etc) to avoid penalties & or more serious investor issues.

Thats why nowadays its very common to see serious technical glitches like lack of vsync as the developer has run out of time to optimize the code to avoid that (optimizing can take another 6 months plus). So again to save time/money you get unfinished games with sometimes very bad screen tearing & or other visual defects.

MS/Sony should just change their QA rules so that a game which lacks vsync or the option to enable it does not pass & cannot be released until it does.
 
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