It doesnt always work to fix the game after release. Fallout new vegas is one example. I've played maybe 50 hours or so and i've made a lot of choices. I dont want to start from the beginning again, and have to make the choices again just because the game is broken and wont let me do the missions I would like to do.

LOL! Xbox fans arguing about games/patches again? Get a ps3 and you will know what it is to have a variety of fully supported games. For example, take a look at DCU, an online only game. It got patched like 3 times last week with all noticable fixes. Not like the other kiss ass devs that are only in it for themeselves with their game breaking "hot fixes" that are biased towards certain consoles. Lets face it, games are online now. Its about the quality and work in those patches. I totally undestand how you guys feel though, I just thank God that I'm able to play first party games that are made by AAA devs.

Patches should be a convenience for devs, not a crutch. It's obvious some games weren't ready to be released.

Modern day games are incredibly complex, relative to their previous-gen cousins.

We're talking 500K - 2M lines of code here (according to GamaSutra). Over 50 engineers can often be involved with making a game, over the first-game development cycle of 3-4 years (sequels take less time, and are somewhat less buggy, typically... although Treyarch CoD games certainly stand out as an exception). This is like 2-4 times as many people as last gen.

There are *thousands* of bugs in any shipped game (I'm not exaggerating here). Sure, a lot of them are typos or localization errors, but EVERY game ships with bugs, and modern games ship with more due to their much more elaborate nature than previous generations.

Games publishers spend MILLIONS of dollars on marketing, and this like reserving spots at disc manufacturing plants for disc printing, manual and cover printing, etc. That money is TIED to a shipment date, and shipping late costs HUGE amounts of money. Developers don't ship games in unplayable conditions, but if they ship with lesser bugs in a patchable system, that's okay, in my book, because otherwise we'd never see the kinds of games we see.

Multiplayer bugs are inordinately hard to catch, particularly without a public beta. Networking architectures are unbelievably complex, and covering all the bases before ship basically requires three things: a previously working engine, a phenominal network engineering team with experience with the networking code, and a mountain of testing data. There are VERY few games that are ever able to put that kind of work into fully debugging network code. Many of those bugs CANNOT be caught in a regular development environment, and reproducing them in a debugging environment is often next to impossible.

Moral of the story: Don't shoot your mouth off about how modern games should or shouldn't do this or that, without knowing what you're talking about. Saying "They should just do it better" just makes you look like a fool to anyone who has ever participated in software development.

You want fewer patches? Go play some games with tiny budgets and tiny teams -- like DS games. You want the high-end experience? Deal with the fact that its made by humans, and developers sink their lives into these things, often only barely able to recover the investment, because at some point, they had to ship their product.

It's disgusting to hear gamers whine about how "devs are lazy" and the like. The same people who put in regular 50 hour weeks, and 60 hours for the final 6 months of development, to make a game they feel they've put their heart into -- are "lazy" in the minds of some gamers. Game development is not a high paying job, nor are there royalties to speak of, except in very rare situations. These jobs are done by people who sink their lives into making great games (and many great games have tons of bugs -- workable bugs, but bugs nonetheless) for the sake of making something cool and fun only.

Divide the price of a video game -- a new one even -- by the number of hours of enjoyment you get out of it. Now do the same for a football ticket, or a movie ticket, a music show ticket, a night out at the bar, or heck, almost anything. The ignorance of some people is... astounding.

I assume it is more the publisher making the devs release the game before it's completely ready.

Well - it is not a 16KB ZX Spectrum game anymore you know.

what gave it away?

Once they got off the streets and went to hell is was GG. If they just polished the games more and gave them SOME seriousness, they could have been sick. Falling through the floor, walking in the sky, and punching people and them flying into the aether could only happen so many times. Only games with more glitches is ANYTHING from Bethesda.

Thats fine. Its a lot better off that way otherwise we get disappointments like SR reboot and idk the many other constant sequels that were unnecessary.

This is what happens when no clue CEOs put market researchers in control over people who actually make games. Same with movies and music, they sterilise everything to chase the maximum appeal and end up boring everyone.

The last release was…. Not good. Felt like a game directed by marketing analytics.

It's not dead, you killed it.