Remember when all PC games were buggy as hell...

remember when people used to ride around in horses?  People shouldn't complain that traffic takes for freaking ever in a major city nowadays.

remember when medicine was pretty much nonexistent and average living age was < 40?  People shouldn't complain about pollution and second hand smoke because it doesn't cut down on life nearly as much as the way the world used to be.

Eh? I remember it the other way around - without internet patches, games had to be finished and mostly bug-free before release. Nowadays, you'll see supposed "AAA" titles like fallout:new vegas look exactly like nobody even tested it ONCE on a PC.

No. I don't remember those days.

Suggesting that games used to be buggier or just-as-bugged-but-no-one-complained is poppycock.

Pc Games have always had bugs.  Not all games (not even most) were considered "buggy as hell" (severely affecting playability).  And when they were, people were just as pissed about it.

We just have far more efficient means to complain about things these days, for better or worse.

There was an ancient time where most of the games were almost bug-free or at least to an extend that there was no show-stopper or Point-of-no-Return (no, no, Sierra Games Adventures had such Point-of-no-Return as part of there design :-)) Reason was that distribution of patches were not convinient too (a few game magazines had sometimes demos on disks(!!), no thinking about patch distribution on that way).

Nowadays there are more game-breaker bugs in the first release of a game but on the other hand, due to the availability of forums and Internet alot of feedback is additionally a disalignment of design. First part comes as - at least as it seems to me as a player - companies rushes the games to the shelves as they know they can distribute the patch via internet. A common practice is already having a day-0 patch available

Anyway, I myself use as a guide to wait to buy a game for a few months or even a year for a GOTY-edition or something similiar. The only exception is for niche products (like E:WoM) that I dare to play because the last good one is already years old

Having start gaming on a Sinclair ZX81 ( yes, i am from the computer prehistory ), i think that game was not buggy like now...

Reason is very simple... game was not so huge and complex that now... the source code was taking only a few pages... but the more important, programmer was making program...

Now, game are complex... these are not more build from scratch with everything in it... game are created with other program being themself  filled with bug, using a OS filled with bug and driver filled with bug... if your tools are not perfect, how in the hell is it possible to create something good with them...

A other problem, for a lot of actual game, they are not final release but alpha or beta release... devs count on the player to be a playtester and seek bugs... internet have allow them to work these way and spare a lot of money on he testing of their product...

Maybe these modern game have in fact  know bugs at the release... maybe bug created by the devs themself... perfect method for fight piracy... making the original game useless without a patch who can only be obtain via online service where you need to identify yourself... in some way, these bugs are some new type of DRM... why i think so? Because sometime, a patch is ready before the game hit the store !!! Because some bugs are so huge that it is almost impossible to have dev miss it by playing one time the game...

Honestly, though, the games have also been increasing in complexity, size, and scope. The bigger and more complicated the game gets, the harder it is to test. Very few games now ship with big "showstopper" or "point of no return" bugs, and in most of those, the issues are technical which are hard to catch before release if that particular config wasn't tested on.

If I compare OpenWorld Monsters where the likeliness of showstoppers appearance is higher, I have to admit that they are by far more than in older games. And in my opinion, games like the ultima series, alter ego or the magnetic scrolls adventure were for sure at the same level or even more complex than today's open world games if you look how much you could have done and how long you could play with one title. Several of the newer one had showstoppers because something was not foreseen or was not working as indented. This I would not really count as a technical problem which most of the time refer to graphic clitches etc.

Another part which I see sometimes nowadays compared to old games (at least it seems like to me): the features are broken down to individual pieces and looked at them independently and designed as well. After putting everything together as a game it sometimes feel a bit soulless and not forming a full game. But this is another story

Generally speaking it's less games that are buggy that bother me (and I think the gaming community in general), and more games that are unfinished and rushed out the door in a state where all the game components don't really work together well, or sometimes where there are even things in the manual (and yes we had manuals back in the day) that were not actually in the game because they never got around to adding them.

We definitely saw that back in the day too, and it was just as big a deal then. I guess it was even worse really because of the lack of patches (but then even today an incomplete game will rarely be succesfully saved by future patches). It does seem to me like we do see more incomplete games today though. But it could be my imagination.

I guess I just never got the memo about when we started taking things so seriously and expecting perfection out of anything that's released. Bugs were something that existed in games, you found them, they were there, and they generally stayed there. It didn't stop people from playing the games they enjoy or supporting the companies behind them.

"Remember when all PC games were buggy as hell..."

No, I don't. Back in the 90's I didn't encounter that many games with bugs. The games that were buggy really stood out then. The buggyness has increased since. Now the ones that aren't buggy seem to stand out. But games are a lot larger programs now and I'm sure that is the major reason there are a lot more bugs in them. Along with companies not willing to spend the extra manpower needed for a decent level of quality control.

I guess this might be easier to discuss with examples. If we are talking about a game like Civ 5 or Elemental, then I don't think people are complaining so much about the bugs. I think they are complaining more about the gameplay elements that don't work succesfully because they were rushed out. Things like AI, game balance, whether certain features actually effect the game in the way that the designers intended, etc. These are much more serious problems because you can't just play around them.

What was it that caused you to bring this up?

Hi Johan, your Paradox games still suck for bugs.

Honestly... reading too much BS on the internet about pretty much every game that's released. Its my own fault for that. I understand that gameplay and balance are much more important than passive bugs and glitches but whats annoying me and what im really referring to is how everyone has become a critic these days. Saying that "all PC games were buggy" is an overstatement and I'm sorry for that. But when I got into computer games and we encountered a bad game we played it for a few days, laughed at how much it sucked and moved on. Now that we're generations into the industry and 4, 5, 6 sequels into some popular titles people have this weird sense of entitlement and jump on the chance to complain about every little thing that they don't approve of and rant about how the first game or a prior version was so much better. Its just silly to me how quickly conversations digress into the companies ethics, commitment to their fanbase, business models blah blah blah. I guess my point is that people should either stand behind a title they have faith in, or get the hell out so the people who do have constructive things to say and want to see a game change for the better can do so in a mature and respectful manner.

You've all made good points and I apologize for posting out of frustration I just feel like a lot of people take themselves too seriously when offering their opinion and criticism regarding new games. It really is the nature of the internet and the fact that there are more ways to voice opinions than ever before, regardless of whether or not those opinions are valid or are in the interest of making things better. All this being said, I need to stop reading all the silly comments most likely written by teenagers who have no clue what they're talking about.

Well back when I first started playing PC games there also weren't really web forums to post on and complain about things. If I wanted to talk about Master of Magic there was no web based messageboard for that, I pretty much had to use user groups. If I wanted to complain to everyone about a game even older then that, I would have had to write a letter to a game magazine and hope they published it.

Today though everyone is online and everyone with a complaint can really easily voice it. If 100,000 people buy a game and 99% of them love it, then that's still 1,000 people who can complain that it sucks on the web. And if 12 million people buy a game then......well you just have to go to the World of Warcraft Forums to see an example of what that looks like.

Then there's also the fact that a lot of people's favorite game types don't come out very often any more so it hurts more when they are bad. I remember the early days of gaming when a new RPG came out every month or two. If one sucked, I'd just get the next. Now though turn based RPGS are few and far between and if one sucks I have a long wait until the next one.

The industry is more competitive and the market is more saturated now than it used to be... that's a factor pushing games out when they aren't ready.

To those saying games are now too big and complex, tough.  It comes with the business.  Sucks that the industry got into a technological arms race during the last decade and games are so tied with shiny new tech, but again, tough.  Indie game devs don't bitch about that.

Games definitely have more bugs today, but at least we have workarounds and patches. In the "good old days" these options were not so forthcoming. I agree that there is a massive sense of entitlement these days, and the expectation that software should be perfect at launch. That's not to say I think all games are great at launch or anything, but I do feel for developers making huge games in an age where there's more hardware and software compatibility issues than ever before.

I keep a tidy system, don't steal games and keep everything up to date, and i don't experience too many show stoppers, if any at all. maybe im just lucky.

Good point.

Yes, I remeber many bugged games. Never been a big deal for me.

Actually they do. We paid them money

Still as for me I never complain about small, non-critical bugs. But There are sometimes bugs that make the game unplayable. I remember myself having fun at times fixing small bugs and exploits

Yeah correct! It's like the game developers think "Bugs? Testing? Big deal! Let's make a game we can release a patch later when we figure the bugs out through the community feedback"

The funny part that it not always help. Like when in Left 4 Dead 2 they were making mutators for fun and releasing them via Steam the pirate communities had a patch up and running right the next day. Depends on the game though. No pirate firm will be doing that with some game that has little interest of people to it.

Just the same for me I won't mention the Twilight of Arnor here 

First, maturity have nothing to do with age... i know teenagers who act like adult and i know some older people who act like child...

About game, teenagers can be good placed for comment them... they are mainly the number one users... i am a old guy and i like game but i spend very little time gaming... real live taking most of my time... a teenager playing numerous hours each week will have more chance to find a bug that me...

The real problem is more about the form of presenting the bug... teenager will more easily complain and a adult will maybe simply report it to dev in a more constructive way...

I am posting this on the sins of solar empire forum... and the sins game is a perfect example... far to be perfect at the release time, the game have evolve due to these numerous bug/problem report... without these teenagers comment, the game have never evolve to his actual state...

Because of the internet, people can critic more... let these critic be constructive one who allow better game... we have now the chance to be able to communicate with devs, all this in the best interest of the gamers... 

In my experience software in general, not just games, has continually become buggier over time.

When I started programming in the early 70s the prevalent attitude among developers was zero tolerance for bugs. Any bug in a system was a top priority to address. Bugs in vendor software were kept at a low enough level that fast paths to core developers for reporting and resolving bugs were possible and existed.

Sure software was generally simpler in those days. But against that much vendor code was written in assembler. I even wrote a bit of stuff directly in machine code in those days.

Over time lower and lower quality code has become acceptable in the world. There are still exceptions such as large inhouse commercial systems, mainstream database servers, automobile computers, many console games, GPS devices, etc. But most stuff is bug riddled these days. Even my PVR has a handful of trivially observable and very annoying bugs in its firmware.

I think that Microsoft is the single player most responsible for the downward trend over time. They were the first vendor who consistently prioritized new features over solid code. Their apologists convinced many people of the now generally accepted but incorrect belief that all complex programs have bugs. I.e. that it is the nature of the beast, which it definitely is not.

Another factor which has increased bug counts is the current common practice of separating developers from testers from maintainers. Developers should be more responsible for producing relatively bug free code in the first place. And the original developers of code should be its maintainers - the current practice of having separate maintenance teams prevents developers from the painful learning experiences they'd have if they had to clean up their own messes.