#broken games

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Technical-Issues-PC/CURRENT-ISSUE-Game-Crashes-after-November-2020-Patch/m-p/9719086/highlight/false#M193439

When Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow was first announced, I was pretty excited. I’d played a little of the old Thief games on PC, back in the day, and it seemed like the sort of game that would be a perfect fit for VR. Although fundamentally different, it might have helped heal the scar left by the cancellation of Splinter Cell VR a couple of years ago. Then we got access to the game a few days…

I am using this corner of Tumblr for experimenting with writing in a way that isn't really academic, to think out loud, encourage collaborators to step up early in the process of game-making and other projects, and maybe move the thoughts to a more academic platform at some point.

The Wayback Machine is my friend.

I am also trying to gather up all the places I have contributed or been mentioned online, so that I have a ludography and bibliography that I can refer myself and others to. I have written *a lot*. I wrote 280,000 words for just one of my LRP/LARP campaigns, and have written several LRP game systems, over 50 escape games, and run live games for thousands of people. My approach has always been transmedial, but only in the last decade have I recognised that. There will be raw posts that are just links to random stuff I have done in the past with no context. At some point I may revisit them and explain a little.

I am also going to reproduce here some of my writings that never made it online. I wrote before the internet (just!). Some of that stuff was interesting enough (to me, at least) to put online now, and maybe reflect on, maybe rewrite.

My current interests are in:

Notations that help folk design games fast - if we want game-based learning to be normal in the classroom it has to be as quick to write and setup as a lecture - or as near as we can get it. I want to help non-gaming folk create games for learning. This includes re-using games, game elements and game mechanics. Also, setting up some kind of accessible archive of games.

"Broken games": What happens when you present a broken game, or a game that you tell the players is broken, and ask them to co-create the fix with you? This is so powerful. Even if you just use a commercial game and then ask the students how could we make this "better"?

Game-making, not designing: getting students to make elements of a game, to critique and think critically about a game. Using students as game-makers not game designers. Game-designers make the game template, and then students and teachers can skin it and fill it. I hope to post soon about IIF - my Imaginary Interactive Fiction project.

Keepsake and journalling games.

Adaptation of fiction and non-fiction into story-based games.

When I say "game" you can assume I most often mean a "game for learning".

I do not "do" video game design. My games are generally live and kicking. As a Digital Marketing lecturer my students spend enough time in front of screens.

Hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Day 26 of the daily blog challenge.  Now I know modern computer games are far more complicated than the older ones and budgets and requirements are much higher than they ever were.

However it seems the trend is to release a game that is far from tested or sometimes not even finished.  Then companies spend time putting out day one patches which are sometimes bigger than the original game.

Obviously lately everyone is aware of all the broken elements of CD Projeckt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077.  Reports of bad optimisations for consoles, broken quests and much more.

Now given the hype behind such a game it was always going to be difficult to meet up to people’s expectation but you would at least think that someone like CDPR would get the base functionality of the game working.

However they are not the first or the last to do this. 

Just look at the train wreck that was Fallout 76 by Bethesda.  If ever you are looking for a broken, badly designed project it was just total carnage.

Everything about that game that could go wrong, did go wrong.

The crazy thing is up to Fallout 76.  The Fallout series was quite a loved franchise with many fans.

The game may have been fixed up to a degree but it still seems many elements of the game is forever broken and even Bethesda have given up trying to fix various bugs and what you have is what you are going to get.

I think what’s worse with a lot of these games, they fix one series of bugs and introduce so many many more problems.  Sometimes they patch one set and return an old set of bugs back in the game.

Now I admit I’m not a programmer and I am sure creating games of such magnitude takes an awful lot of work.

However what is a more concerning issue is they are working these programmers to death, and we here reports of constant crunch and damaging mental health of these poor programmers.

Only for them to have their games pushed to market by companies, sometimes even knowing a product is no where near finished.

At times it really feels as if the gaming industry has given up any form of caring for quality.  Just shift units we can patch and fix the issues later.

I guess it was due to Hello Games No Man’s Sky such things became acceptable.  Promise the moon, put out a substandard version of such.  Then spend the next three years bolting on the features that were promised and a few extra twiddly bits on top.

If anyone remembers the sheer backlash of No Man’s Sky when it first came out.  It was unreal.

This is another issue.  Games publishers and marketers promising the greatest thing since sliced bread and then people being disappointed when they don’t deliver the golden calf.

I think Anthem by Bioware firmly fits into that category.  Oh yes you have a very pretty and functional world but sadly it has the gameplay of about an afternoon’s worth of play.

Now I get that games can have bugs and yes they can be fixed.  However the worrying trend is why bother we can just release a mess at a premium price, then spend time for the next year fixing it.

Nowadays we can easily preorder games at the push of a button. Publishers promise us extra bonusses for people who preorder, but when the game comes out, it’s half of the times less promising than it sounds. The game is broken, and requires patching. Why should we preorder a game that doesn’t fully work to begin with? This should be stopped, now!

Check out the fantastic piece @Brent_Kong did about the persistent problem in the gaming industry w/ unfinished games on release day.

When was the last time that you went to pick up a brand new game, either at a midnight release or early that next day, and been totally fulfilled by it on day one? It used to be that you would go camp out with your friends at the local Gamestop for hours for the new Call of Duty, Halo, etc. and race home afterwards to play until damn-near dawn (usually on a school night, leading to an unplanned…