Digital News Production: Bugs and Glitches Research

A broken game can come down to a variety of different types of broken. It can vary from graphical errors to the game being literally unplayable due to crashes and freezing. Either way with the advancement in video gaming technology and their capabilities it has become that with more technology comes more problems. More recently broken games on release date is almost unrecognized as an issue as it happens so often to so many games that it is almost seemed as normal. While 5-10 years ago this was not the case on consoles such as the PlayStation 2. So now is newer and 'better' technology shooting their video games in the foot?

A few examples of recent video games experiencing this are Assassins Creed: Unity, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 and Batman: Arkham Knight.

Assassins Creed: Unity

The very popular and sought after games of the Assassins Creed series have only really had minor graphical glitches and before game-play was overall sound. However on the release of Unity, set in revolutionary France the game was borderline unplayable on release date and online features were simply just turned off. The developers, Ubisoft sent out an apology along with a 20 minute downloadable patch to make the game 'playable'.

Following all the patches and free dlc or apology and gamers are still left with a game that looks very pretty but will involve a random non player character to fall through the floor, levitate or even your playable character Arno, to experience quite a few teeth grinding glitches.  This may seem minor to a non gamer but it kills any immersion that is built up and seriously damages its own success.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5

The Tony Hawk games have always been rather buggy and it made them quite good in a strange way. The game was one of the first glitched games but that reason was why a lot of people bought it. However the latest installment raises a few questions whether they have done it on person and if so they have gone too far.

To put it simply it looks like a bit of a mess. The character falls through the map, flies up randomly and will grind on any surface to the point where you cannot continue to play any more. Expectantly the fans were not happy, the occasional glitch is funny and can be good but when it happens all the time and becomes the crux of the games, like a joke, its not funny anymore.

Batman: Arkham Knight

Another previously sound and highly anticipated game within a franchise went hand in hand with Unity on its course of glitches and bugs. This time however the consoles, specifically PlayStation 4

managed to get the game released and finished at the same time. However on PC the game was given the common title of 'unplayable'.

PC gamers pride themselves on their higher technological ability in comparison to consoles, and is all very confusing. In simple terms PC has the means to run a higher level technological capacity than consoles which allows them to play with less problems. However, with Batman this was not the case

with non player characters doing strange rag-doll movements and Batman getting himself stuck on almost every surface the games immersion got its back broken.

In conclusion their is a lot of examples we have for research, these being just three of many more. The reactions from these problems have been very important from the point of view of fans and developers and give us plenty of things to discuss within our project. Also Megan, Harry and I have our own experiences which we can rely on as a first hand account into what buggy and broken games are like.