The Biggest Problem With Modern Gaming
Can I offer you some patch notes?
It’s no secret that the modern-day gaming industry is booming. Video games are more popular than ever, with a wide variety of genres guaranteed to tickle the fancy of just about anyone. Free-to-play games such as Fortnite have allowed people who are financially unable to pick up AA titles to get into the hobby, and there are now more gamers in the world than ever before.
But the standards have dropped. The internet has done many wonderful things for the gaming industry by connecting people through multiplayer lobbies, allowing space for creatives to do their thing, and letting even tech-illiterate nerds like me have access to the craziest of mods. However, there is a downside – it has allowed developers to become complacent.
Whether it is due to time constraints, last-minute changes, or an overly ambitious vision, it has become commonplace for most games to release riddled with bugs. Day one patches have become the norm, and as I’ve traversed the forums I’ve begun to realise that we, as an audience, are not happy about it. So why isn’t it changing?
The Problem with Patches
Preordering has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Get the game on release with perhaps a few in-game bonuses or pieces of merch, load up the game, realise it’s broken in some way, sit and wait for the patch. Rinse and repeat.
It’s completely unacceptable, but because the games keep selling nothing is likely to change. In the good ol’ days of console gaming, there was no such thing as a patch – the game either worked, or it didn’t, and if it didn’t the studio faced the monetary consequences. But now? They can keep their strict deadlines and ship out a half-finished game, knowing that things can be fixed later on.
I’m guilty of preordering a game or two in my time, but nowadays I just won’t risk it. After the absolute disaster that was the Cyberpunk release in 2020, I swore to myself that I would wait for player reviews before wasting my money because I don’t have a lot of it and on the rare occasion that I can treat myself to a new title, I want to make sure it’s playable. Some of the problems with Cyberpunk are still being fixed to this day, nearly two years after its initial release! They’ve only just added in proper water physics.
Sims 4 is notorious for this sort of thing. I’m a huge Sims fan and I so desperately want it to be good, but recent releases have just been devastating. I remember playing The Sims 4 base game on release, so very excited for the next generation of one of my favourite time wasters, only to get bored an hour in and switch back to The Sims 3. I didn’t touch TS4 until around a year ago when most of the packs were selling for pennies and it wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg to get an enjoyable gameplay experience.
The PC community relies heavily on modders to fix the game's bugs, and without the dedication of those fans, I doubt the series would still be as popular as it is.
I’m only complaining because I care. Gaming is my biggest hobby, and I dread to think that some of my favourite franchises could suffer down the line. I’ve still yet to play Elden Ring (payday couldn’t come sooner) but after reading some reviews I’m hopeful that it will live up to expectations.
Perhaps I’m in the minority here, but I really wouldn’t mind waiting longer between releases to ensure the quality of the product. Do you agree? Let me know in the comments and thank you for reading!
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