While gamers like to complain about the release of broken games, and rightfully so, they are part of the reason why games release broken. Obviously developers and publishers are part of the reason that games are released in a broken state gamers also are to blame for the current trend of games releasing broken.
Gaming in 2014 will be remembered for two things; firstly most of the big titles which were scheduled to release in 2014 such as Batman: Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3, Evolve and Hotline Miami 2 were all postponed to 2015 and secondly 2014 has suffered from multiple games releasing in a broken state.
Less and less in the video games industry do we speak of gameplay mechanics and level design but instead we talk more and more about frame-rates, resolutions and glitches. While the latter game topics use to seem rather trivial, they are coming more and more important as companies are releasing games which are not fully ready for public consumption.
Plenty of major releases such as Assassin’s Creed Unity, LittleBigPlanet 3, The Crew and DRIVECLUB have all have suffered from game-breaking issues at the time of release. While these problems are obviously terrible since people spend their hard-earned money on these products, many people still purchase these games even after they find out that the they are broken. So this begs the question, is it okay to release a broken game?
The alternative to releasing a broken title is delaying it, hopefully with the additional development time Batman, The Witcher 3 and the other listed titles work perfectly when they release later on this year. The problem with the delaying titles is the widespread disappointment from fans, some delays receive minor backlash but others like the delay of DRIVECLUB PS Plus Edition resulted in millions of PS Plus subscribers getting rather angry. The problem for developers and publishers with delaying games is that they will miss crucial holiday sales, sales which help generate enough income for them to warrant making sequels and expanding on franchises.
We can blame the nasty publishers all we want for releasing games which are not finished but the simple fact is that there is a massive market of people willing to purchase broken games. Gamers, me included, will most likely continue to pre-order and purchase franchises which we enjoy playing even if the previous entry was released too early in its development cycle.
In fairness to the publishers, the number one priority for the decision makers at places such as Ubisoft and EA is to make as much money as possible so if the choice of releasing in the lucrative Christmas period in a broken state or in the quieter periods which follow when the game is actually ready is a pretty easy choice. There will certainly be a number of gamers who will boycott the next Assassin’s Creed or the next Battlefield but those people will not be enough to force publishers and developers to release games that are not in a broken state.
One of the most broken releases of 2014 was Borderlands 2 on the Vita, this first-person-shooter was haunted by a plethora of issues which spilt the Vita community. On the one hand plenty of people thought that the game was a terrible mess but on the other side of the spectrum thousands of people bought, played and praised the game even though it ran at a solid 15 FPS in certain areas of Pandora.
Many independent game companies which provide games on all platforms have not received complaints about broken games in 2014. The reason for this is because they have to release a solid experience in order to be noticed, they rely on word of mouth promotion not television advertisements.
This also begs the question of how many issues make a game too broken? While titles such as Call Of Duty: Advance Warfare suffered from minor issues in their online mode was it enough to consider the game as officially broken on release? I personally did not have massive issues with Assassin’s Creed Unity and Call Of Duty and I was playing them on launch day, in fact the biggest issue I had with Unity was its freemium game feel.
Hopefully developers will improve their understanding of current-gen systems so we do not have to witness some of the glitches and bugs which has plagued gaming through-out 2014 but before you complain to publishers about the quality of a game ask yourself this: have you supported this trend by purchasing a game which you knew was broken?
Just to be clear I am not in favour of gaming releasing in a broken state but I understand multiple broken game releases. Unless a sizeable portion of the market stops purchasing broken games this trend of releasing broken games will continue until developers gain enough knowledge in order to keep the glitches, frame-rate dips and crashes at bay. If you are angry at paying for an incomplete product then remember that we have been paying for DLC for years.
Do you have an opinion about games releasing before they are finished? Tell us in the comments below.