Poll: Do you think there testing games before they ship them?

[Nanissimov]

Ive bought ALOT of games which sounded like GREAT ideas but they were shrouded with glitches, bad controlls or something, And im like WTF? Was this made by a retarded bannana! Example, Alone in the dark, had great ideas but they didnt test it for glitches, The glitches were the biggest problems, they didnt think about how annoying it would be to do certain missions, How switching from first person to third person is a MAJOR PAIN IN THE ASS. Seriously dont they test games before there shipped, There are very few companies i trust in making games, Valve (Even though i HATED half life series (Dont send me about that) they still make some pretty good games) I trust 2k, Bioshock was great i loved it, I trust THQ i loved summoner and saints row, Im losing some trust for Rockstar cuase Gta4 was monsturous pile of crap but i still trust them, And everyone else is crap until proven outherwise,

So what do you think do some companies just ship games out without even testing them?

 

[Projekt Spartan]

Im not sure how serious you are about this... but EVERY game is tested before it ships. Its true that some test less extensively, but without them being tested, you probably wouldn't even be able to turn the game on. The problem is that there is no way to predict every single thing that can go wrong with a game before it is actually used en-masse. Which is why there are usually a series of patches released a few days after the game to fix these bugs.

 

[Nanissimov]

Im not sure how serious you are about this... but EVERY game is tested before it ships. Its true that some test less extensively, but without them being tested, you probably wouldn't even be able to turn the game on. The problem is that there is no way to predict every single thing that can go wrong with a game before it is actually used en-masse. Which is why there are usually a series of patches released a few days after the game to fix these bugs.

You got a point there but if your telling me they could go through Alone in the dark without experiencing one glitch i will hang myself. Same thing with fallout, i know its a big game glitches are hard to catch but seriously, i had a glitch were i was stuck in a room and had to RESTART THE WHOLE BLOODY GAME cuase of one glitch, that still isnt patched

 

[Moormur]

I do honestly believe that all companies, even if it is just their publisher, test the game in some way. All companies want their product to sell, so they at least try it out. In the end, the executive producer makes the call on what to DO with the testing results and most likely, more often than not, that ends up in the trash.

Also, your title has an attrocious typo...it is 'Do you think they're testing' not 'there testing'

 

[Projekt Spartan]

Ya, and I had (SPOILERS) Liberty Prime get stuck at the ending sequence, and he wouldn't move no matter what it is that I did. You cant finish the game without him, and I had to restart too. (END SPOILERS) One problem could be the downloadable content, and it interacting with other parts of the game in unexpected ways, or maybe the glitch you experienced was one in a billion, and only a handful of people have had it happen, which is why they don't bother to fix it. As for alone in the dark, i never played it, so I wouldn't know. One thing I DO know however, is that most game studios have a deadline which they have to ship the game by, and they might release a less-than-finished product just to meet the date. Its unfortunate, but it happens.

 

[Starnerf]

Testing takes time, and time is money. Money better spent getting to game to actually work, not necessarily work well.

 

[ExaltedK9]

Sometimes testers are willing to overlook certain short-comings in a game...

 

[Agayek]

You would be amazed at some of the bugs that can appear in perfectly simple programs, let alone the thousands of lines of code in most games nowadays. If they didn't test, you wouldn't be able to play it, period.

That said, a lot of the time, debugging takes more time/money than is feasible, given deadlines and the complexity of the code. It is very, very, very rare that any of the bugs you will ever experience have a simple solution, or, at least, an easy way to find a solution. It's just more economically feasible, for the vast majority of games released, to simply have a handful of bugs in them than to spend hours upon hours fixing them, creating more bugs in the process, and delaying release.

 

[squid5580]

You would be amazed at some of the bugs that can appear in perfectly simple programs, let alone the thousands of lines of code in most games nowadays. If they didn't test, you wouldn't be able to play it, period.

That said, a lot of the time, debugging takes more time/money than is feasible, given deadlines and the complexity of the code. It is very, very, very rare that any of the bugs you will ever experience have a simple solution, or, at least, an easy way to find a solution. It's just more economically feasible, for the vast majority of games released, to simply have a handful of bugs in them than to spend hours upon hours fixing them, creating more bugs in the process, and delaying release.

Then why do these patches for these glitchy games come like a week or less after launch? It seems to me that yes they obiously test it and makes the game function. It hits the shelves and we gamers ***** about these problems on different forums. They read some posts from some forums and realize the problems and then fix them. Making us game testers only we pay them instead of them paying us.

Here is an example. I am on a board talking about Sacred 2 when the IGN review came out. The big thing was the reviewer's character was erased for no apparent reason. Now a person claiming to be one of the developers joined in the convo (he did have the achievements before it came out so it did give him some credibility). And he told us that reviewers don't use retail consoles that they have special consoles and that is why this glitch happened to him. Today exactly 9 days after launch a patch came out for it. And sure enough the character deletion problem (the one that didn't effect retail consoles) was addresses and patched.

I can understand problems with MP games. There is no way to know what will happen when a million people all try playing the same game together. Although a million people playing a single player game and finding the same problems is different. It wouldn't matter if only 2 people were playing it those problems would still be there.

 

[ThePocketWeasel]

I'd have to agree with you about GTA4. I don't find it a fun game at all tbh, unless they managed to find the most boring testers on the planet.
There were so many flaws in this game and it's so different from the other games they released it's hard to see how they missed the issues with this game.

 

[dmase]

when games get released for all system i honestly thing that they test just the 360 and PC and leave ps3 owners with glitches and huge freezes, I'm looking at you Oblivion.

 

[Agayek]

Then why do these patches for these glitchy games come like a week or less after launch? It seems to me that yes they obiously test it and makes the game function. It hits the shelves and we gamers ***** about these problems on different forums. They read some posts from some forums and realize the problems and then fix them. Making us game testers only we pay them instead of them paying us.

If they're gonna patch it at all, they know it from the start, and have been working on all the bugs they did find during testing while the game is being printed/copied/distributed. I'm not sure, but I believe that process starts 1-2 months before the game is actually released. They simply release the mostly finished version to meet their deadline.

I guarantee, no matter how good a coder the developers are, the users will find ways to break it. It's simply not possible to eliminate all bugs, as the developers are human and thus fallible. Try writing a complex program more than ~2,000 lines of code. Even something that size, which is less than a single percent of most modern games, is incredibly annoying to debug. Especially if the original author of that section is no longer around.

 

[squid5580]

Then why do these patches for these glitchy games come like a week or less after launch? It seems to me that yes they obiously test it and makes the game function. It hits the shelves and we gamers ***** about these problems on different forums. They read some posts from some forums and realize the problems and then fix them. Making us game testers only we pay them instead of them paying us.

If they're gonna patch it at all, they know it from the start, and have been working on all the bugs they did find during testing while the game is being printed/copied/distributed. I'm not sure, but I believe that process starts 1-2 months before the game is actually released. They simply release the mostly finished version to meet their deadline.

I guarantee, no matter how good a coder the developers are, the users will find ways to break it. It's simply not possible to eliminate all bugs, as the developers are human and thus fallible. Try writing a complex program more than ~2,000 lines of code. Even something that size, which is less than a single percent of most modern games, is incredibly annoying to debug. Especially if the original author of that section is no longer around.

See this is how I see it as a consumer not as 1 in the biz. I can run out on release day and spend over 60 bucks for a brand new game, run home and put it in my console. And have a sub par experience due to glitches (especially FR slowdown in a single player game that is unacceptable I don't care that should be basic, SP only). Or I can wait for a month til EB or Gamestop lowers the price, the game is patched and I can enjoy the game to the fullest. It seems to me that by telling people "we are working on a patch go play another game til we are done" is damaging to both the company itself and the industry. I understand that there are unavoidable bugs that can happen. And some can slip by them. I just find it pretty bad when the new games I have bought that were pretty much perfect (meaning non glitchy) are far outnumbered by the ones who has serious or noticeable bugs.