Do you still remember the Super Nintendo? Or maybe the N64? Those old gadgets where you inserted game cartridges, and if they didn’t work, you just had to blow into them and everything was fine again? This week made me a little nostalgic. Because console games had a significant advantage: They were bug-free. At least more bug-free than a lot of what you see today.
I have no idea, but…
As a gamer without any programming knowledge in the game field, it is of course easy to just complain. Jan Theysen (Creative Director of King Art) once said that MMORPGs require nearly a hundred times more effort than single-player games. Therefore, I don’t want to focus on MMOs at this moment; the hope for a bug-free MMO has died for me over the years.
My most recent example: The Witcher 3
An excellent example is the new “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.” Please don’t sharpen your knives, because the game is quite good overall. But it is a single-player game, and for that, it still has a relatively high density of bugs. Why are there weapon upgrades that allegedly grant “+0 attack power” according to the tooltip? Why can’t some quests be completed? Why do some dialogues loop endlessly? Not all of these errors are absolute “game-breakers,” but they are present and, to put it bluntly, they are really annoying.
Since many errors occur repeatedly and can also be reproduced, I find it hard to believe that these are rare isolated cases that were simply overlooked. Was perhaps a lack of time the crucial factor here?
Why do we accept this?
What I seriously wonder: Why do we accept bugs in such large numbers at all? I can’t think of a good example where I could accept an unfinished or faulty product. Or would you buy a Ferrari if the fourth tire and the passenger seat were delivered two weeks later?
Of course, games are becoming increasingly complex, but can that really be an excuse? A few years ago, developers couldn’t fix such errors afterward – because you couldn’t patch an N64 cartridge. If I were to be mean (and I sometimes am), I would accuse the game developers of simply accepting that they can fix it later with patches. Nowadays, you can release anything faulty on the market without concern and let the players take on the role of beta testers – a patch will fix it.
Who, in your opinion, is to blame for this development? The publishers who want to release faster? Or are bugs now inevitable and a truly “bug-free” game is an absolute utopia? And of course: Which game has truly ruined your fun at launch due to bugs? Let me know in the comments.
