Just an idea - PC Games and Patches

Mortster

Mortster

Mortster

Associate
Joined
10 Dec 2003
Posts
651
Just an idea this one.

So more often and not these days PC games get released broken, and then we enter (if we are lucky!) the patch cycle, until (hopefully!) the game works as it should. A few recent examples being: F1 2010, NFS Hot Pursuit, TDU 2.

Why does this happen quite consistently these days ? Is this related to games which are multi-platform releases only ? Maybe not if you consider Final Fantasy 14 :)

It's fair, I think, to say that most games do get fixed by patches, but most of the time, certainly for me, it's too late by then and you have either completed the game (when it's possible to :) ) or got fed up with the problems and move on.

So why dont the people (publishers maybe) in charge of development teams who know the official release date just tell the developers that the release date is say 2 months earlier than the official date, leaving them 2 months to sort out the issues !

That way the devs dont get the stick from the forum fanboys when patches are required and the paying public get a game which works (as long as they can fix the problems in 2 months!)

Thoughts ?
 
Last edited:
It's a guess, but the people in charge neither know nor care about game development or the buying public. All they care about is money.

A game in development is consuming cash. One on the shelves (with less and less chance of being sold on or returned nowadays) is bringing in the holy dollar.

The game could be a complete dogs dinner, but Joe Public will still buy the next game they release. So where's the incentive?
 
Completely agree its quite a joke with glitches and problems with the game itself (i.e. f1 2010 dodgy ai and pit issues) but sometimes its just because of the amount of completely random combinations of PC hardware that it has to run on that can cause quite a lot of problems (case in point would be Black Ops - although quite an average game anyhow, a lot of the problems were hardware related as it ran pefectly on the majority of hardware - mine included).

Publishers pushing Devs to get it out fast enough usually means by the time they have a game ready for testing, its too close to release time and they can only do so much (although a few are probably guilty of just not being that bothered). The only way is to push back release dates - which both gamers (the majority anyway) and the people in charge hate.
 
Games are more about cash in 2011. Ten years ago it was about making great games whilst staying profitable.

Simple answer.
 
I bet if you look at most dev companies, they'll already have a large polishing phase at the end of a development cycle anyway. I think if every development house had their own way, they'd happily let release dates slip for a few weeks or months more time, most publishers wont allow this.

Lunatic Dreyfus said:
It's a guess, but the people in charge neither know nor care about game development or the buying public. All they care about is money.

A game in development is consuming cash. One on the shelves (with less and less chance of being sold on or returned nowadays) is bringing in the holy dollar.

The game could be a complete dogs dinner, but Joe Public will still buy the next game they release. So where's the incentive?
Click to expand...

This tbh. Most publishers aren't concerned with final quality too much. If it's possible to release a game, get it on the shelves where it can make money.

The really top devs/publishers (usually the self publishing devs) have a "when it's done" approach, and the quality shows. You know who I'm talking about.
 
Last edited:
Due to the complexity of making games these days and differing hardware configurations there will always be bugs of one form or another.
 
Liquid said:
Due to the complexity of making games these days and differing hardware configurations there will always be bugs of one form or another.
Click to expand...

In some cases this would be relevant but for many it's just not.

CSS had many bugs and glitches that had nothing to do with configs and went unchecked for years.
BC2 just has a **** engine which causes most of the bugs in it (that or the fact that they just made the game stupidly (same accuracy for all weapons at long range...?)).


Haven't played any other games enough to notice major bugs/design flaws with them.
 
Its the profileration of the internet too - being able to ship a broken game just wasnt acceptable last century and wasnt the norm, nowadays at least one post-launch patch is a planned event in a development cycle. Its just acceptable way to minimise resources (only a 'skeleton crew' deal with post-release niggles) while attempting to push a game out in the preferred publishers window...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
Do people not remember games which had obscene bugs, some of which were game breaking?

First 1 which comes to mind is Missingno from Pokémon
Others are like going out of the map in Mario 64 & Ocarina of Time

Games have always had glitches/bugs, but a lot of them were never noticeable because back in those days, you generally didn't find them and not many people looked for them, now you have Youtube revealing exploits everywhere. Also bugs seem more prominent now due to MP aspects of games, which can cause frustration, in the old times bugs and glitches wouldn't affect you or your game generally thus went un-noticed. Look on Youtube for random older N64 and Playstation glitches or bugs, I guarantee there is some there you never knew existed.


Games also now-a-days have lots of hardware and software variations to take into account, when you look at the countless possibilities it's hard to pin-point bugs which may occur on some systems and not others, at least these can be fixed.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
Though you can take that too far. 3dRealms had that attitude with Duke Nukem Forever and went bust.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree, you obviously need very good funding to get away with this approach. Companies like Valve and Blizzard can only get away with it because of this.

The problem is games cost so much to make these days. The pressure to release a title from the publishers that are footing the bill must be massive.
 
I think the problem can be solved quite easily:

Just as food comes with a best-consumed-before date, games should be sold with a not-to-be-played-before date, which is the date of the final patch.

Of course, this would only work if the public weren't the beta testers. Ah, OK. Forget it then. It was only an idea anyway.
 
Publishers aren't always the bad guys either though. You only have to look back at John Romero and Daikatana to see why publishers push so hard.

You see the real quality where developers self-publish. It's their own money, so they're not going to mess around, but they also know their product and when it's really ready.
 
I think it also has to do with internet speeds increasing dramatically making it more viable to release large patches online to fix bugs etc.

Years ago the game had to be complete on release because slower internets meant if it wasn't complete on purchase it wasn't played.. and game reviews nowadays often have in their review great game but will live up to the hype hopefully with the next patch etc...
 
FNGsam said:
I think it also has to do with internet speeds increasing dramatically making it more viable to release large patches online to fix bugs etc.

Years ago the game had to be complete on release because slower internets meant if it wasn't complete on purchase it wasn't played.. and game reviews nowadays often have in their review great game but will live up to the hype hopefully with the next patch etc...
Click to expand...

A very good point.
 
I havent played any seriously broken games for ages, fallout 3 was the closest thing and the dual core .ini file fix sorted most of the crashes. I shouldnt have to resort to that kind of crap but thats the only game that has given me any grief and the gameplay more than made up for it.

Also dungeon keeper 2, spent many hours trying to get that working on windows 7 x64, long story short it wont run on a 5850, it will run on intel GMA4500. I can forgive it though for being 10+ years old :P
 
Quite often esspecially with smaller developers the games get released early coz they have no development budget left. So they release what they have and use the income from initial sales to fund patch development

This way less developers go bust and less games get cancelled
 
Mortster said:
Just an idea this one.

So more often and not these days PC games get released broken, and then we enter (if we are lucky!) the patch cycle, until (hopefully!) the game works as it should. A few recent examples being: F1 2010, NFS Hot Pursuit, TDU 2.

Why does this happen quite consistently these days ? Is this related to games which are multi-platform releases only ? Maybe not if you consider Final Fantasy 14 :)

It's fair, I think, to say that most games do get fixed by patches, but most of the time, certainly for me, it's too late by then and you have either completed the game (when it's possible to :) ) or got fed up with the problems and move on.

So why dont the people (publishers maybe) in charge of development teams who know the official release date just tell the developers that the release date is say 2 months earlier than the official date, leaving them 2 months to sort out the issues !

That way the devs dont get the stick from the forum fanboys when patches are required and the paying public get a game which works (as long as they can fix the problems in 2 months!)

Thoughts ?
Click to expand...

Games have always crashed and/or have been buggy.

Fallout 2 was realsed in 1998 and as buggy as hell. It was fixed but generally by fan mods.

Further back, I remember Lotus Turbo Esprit on the Speccy as almost unplayable.

Amaroute on the Speccy was the same. They claimed it had 128k enhancements but, well, it didn't.

It is easier for the user to patch now, though. That may be the issue!
 
The days when games comprised of a few thousand lines of code which could be manually checked by a single person in a couple of weekends are long gone.

The simple fact is games are so complicated these days they're impossible to thoroughly debug before release. Take fallout new vegas for example: People are still finding new bugs despite the fact the game has literally been played for millions of hours (by everybody combined).

Even if you're paying the cheapest workers in China to debug your game.... no developers can afford to pay people to play their games for 1000's and 1000's of hours until every bug is found.

It's just a fact of the industry. If we want big complicated games, we're going to have to live with the fact they will have bugs on release.

If it bothers you, just wait a few months before you buy stuff. Chances are it'll be cheaper anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom