Note from Video: Evil Imp is a regular reader of the site and asked me if he could do an article about some game breaking bugs that he's run into lately. I said sure, so here it is. You can post your comments for him below, or if you have an article you would like to write, contact me on the links to the side.
Unfortunately, no matter how thorough the QA testing process is before a game is released, bugs always slip through. Usually they are minor side quest ones. Sometimes they are game breakers. It’s fortunate we live in the internet age because updates are that much easier and faster to obtain. People need to remember that time is needed to create these patches. There are additional QA testing needed on the patches, and the distributor’s QA (Xbox live/PSN) to ensure it is virus free. All this will make a patch take a month or more to be created.
This brings me to my rant. When certain games, such as Dead Rising with the clothing keys or Bioshock with the downloadable health packs, utilize their respective service to provide additional content for free to their customers, why not use this as an option to workaround a broken game breaking quest? I understand the possibility of people trying to skip ahead in the game. I understand that putting a quest item out for download is not a fix to the issue. However when a company is manually modding saved game files in an attempt to fix people’s issue then this makes me wonder who is making decisions. While this offers a tailor made fix, it’s ridiculously labor intensive for an individual or group of individuals. This is not a resolution to be just thrown around at the first hint someone's having a problem. You don't want a game being beatable only by downloading everything you need to skip to the end. It is a reasonable option when a wide ranging bug has been confirmed.
I believe most gamers will get frustrated when they run in to a bug. I know I was when I discovered the Rudolph bug in DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue. In fact, if it weren't 1AM I would have probably been calling Hothead's Corporate office. However when encountering a bug at the end of the game which is game breaking, I will definitely contribute my saved game file to a developers testing. After all, without the information I have they may not be able to fix the issue. However the worst things to tell a gamer in this scenario:
1) Sorry, we are working on it, in the meantime you can try playing again from the beginning and hope you don’t encounter the bug again.
2) We are not able to get in to the saved game files for your console due to security encryption placed on there to prevent game tampering. So we are putting everyone using that console on the backburner.
3) We are doing what we can to see if/when we can get a patch out to you guys.
My issue with number 1 is there is no assurance of not encountering the same bug. My issue with number 2 is you are admitting to not working on the issue for some people. Number 3 is the worst, with the word “IF” in the middle of the statement. Fixing the coding and making a product that works when you’re charging the customer should not be an IF on the patch. This statement is opening the door to rolling over and playing dead on at least part of your customer base, and is second only to the "We're sorry, we cannot replicate your issue so we cannot help you resolve it" ie the You're on your own response. What’s infuriating is how easy it is to get a quick workaround in place. Simply put the quest items needed that aren’t dropping in DLC as a workaround. It gives players their workaround and developers the time to make a proper patch that doesn't break something else. I’m off my soapbox.
