Video: "The Great Glitch Crisis of 2014"


I saw this interesting video on Reddit and wanted to share. So let’s discuss.

Does the ability to patch after release cause poorly made games, or is it the little amount of dev time, or something else?

Also, during a discussion on Reddit, someone mentioned that Nintendo never seems to be mentioned when bashing these big game companies. Is Nintendo doing something right? If everyone is blaming shitty games on yearly release dates, how is Nintendo releasing yearly games (Pokemon) that seem to go over very well in the market.

And is there anything you indie-developers do to ensure quality in your games? Do you find yourself facing problems similar to those big developers have by having a hard time fixing prevalent bugs before release?

The problem simply comes down to laziness and greed.
Publishers want boatloads money but they don’t want to work for it.

Complaining isn’t going to get anyone anywhere if everyone is still throwing your money at the publishers.

Another reason may be the following quote from /u/Mick1500 on reddit: “Alot of this comes down to what people call fanboyism. People who pre-order these things and get burned often feel the need to justify their decision so that they don’t feel as foolish”

Even thought he games are released in a poor state, they end up having to fix their mistakes afterwards. I assume it would be easier to simply fix it beforehandm but maybe I am wrong. Maybe the online gaming communities care, but I guess the general public doesn’t.

Though it is interesting that even though other companies are getting away with it, companies like Nintendo are producing quality games. I rarely hear about glitches or problems in games like Pokemon or Mario Kart. I also rarely hear about problem with Valve games, but Valve doesn’t do yearly releases. What does Nintendo or Valve get from producing quality at a slow pace while the big companies are making more money by producing shit games at a fast pace.

Also it’s interesting to think about indie-games with bugs as well. I remember playing Minecraft heavily a few years ago, and there were definitely bugs, and they were definitely pointed out, but no one went on to say “Man, Mojang is a terrible company because there are tons of bugs,” similar to how people do say those things with Ubisoft, Microsoft, or EA. I also see Ray talking in IRC about people complaining about bugs in his game, even though they are explicitly marked “unstable” builds.

There’s a difference between fun bugs, annoying bugs, and game-breaking bugs.

Minecraft usually had the first, and occasionally the second.

If a game glitches out in a fun way, I’m not complaining.
If I have to go through an annoying workaround every once in a while, I report the bug but don’t mind to much.
If I can’t even play the damn game then I will complain.*

  • As a side note, I also wish people would also make sure that everything on their end is working before complaning that a game doesn’t work. The amount of people trying to run games at max settings on crappy hardware, or who have 5 year old drivers is utterly ridiculous.

Japanese developers usually have something called good conscious
The majority of western developers found that it doesnt pay more money, so they discarded it

@ Preordering: There is really no reason at all to preorder anything ever. Unless there is like limited supply or something, but in case of software there is literally no reason ever of doing that
But even with things like new phones or other tech… no reason at all

Just imagine you pre ordered a PS4 or some shit, and then you sit there with 1.0 software and no games at the highest price this product will ever be sold at. YAY

Additionally, I have never seen a true case of fanboyism. I’ve only ever seen it as an argument used by trolls who claim a game is completely broken (when it is clearly not) and then try to discredit anyone who is enjoying the game and so argues otherwise.



Final Fantasy 13 didn’t sell so good because it’s actually good. It’s because of fanboys of the older games hoping for something good or lying to themselves because accepting that square sucks now is heartbreaking.

It’s almost as if no-one reading or writing this stuff has ever had an actual job making software for a living…

Cas :slight_smile:

Although I don’t know about the professions of the people here, that’s with everything in life, I would say.
The more people can only place their opinions instead of their experience on something, the more they talk about it.
But I think the posts serve as an incentive for people like you, who know their business, to share your experience with them. :slight_smile:

By the way: In case I offended a respectable software-engineer by the above, I apologize! :wink:

This is why I torrent most of my games before I buy them, 90% of the time I don’t buy them and just delete them (AC:Unity, Farcry 4 are my latest ones).

However it is a 2 way street, torrents also cause developers to give less of a shit and/or put tons of DRM on their titles.

I suspect you’re of a dying breed… mostly everyone now just gets stuff on Steam. Less hassle all round.

Cas :slight_smile:

Lately I have been buying quite a few things off steam, they are quite generous with refunds when you buy a game that is utter shit.

I think it’s also worth pointing out that AAA games nowadays are extremely complex and have more and more money riding on them. The extra complexity means increased risk of bugs and longer testing phases, which in turn put pressure on the development roadmap and therefore budget. If you’re going multiplat then you’ve just doubled or tripled the risk.

I’m not making excuses for developers of course, and there are plenty of examples where you suspect it was a rush job or incompetence, but writing reasonably bug free software is hard at the best of times, least of all in a modern AAA game.