The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
The connotations of "buggy"
UncleSporky
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Yesterday I was thinking about picking up Tomb Raider Anniversary on the Wii, but then I remembered that someone had said it was apparently buggy. This is off-putting to me, so I looked up a few reviews and Gamespot does indeed say the game is buggy. As I read it, though, I soon realized that their "buggy" apparently means "some shadows look weird and there are instances where textures overlap." Oh. I never thought about it much, but I guess I don't consider that buggy.
Buggy to me has always ranged from completely unplayable to major issues that interfere with normal gameplay. Outside of that, a game can have bugs (what game doesn't have a single bug?) but it isn't necessarily buggy.
The original Final Fantasy is a buggy game. There is a lot of equipment supposedly made to do extra damage to certain monster types and none of it works properly, and there is at least one spell that does nothing it all. That is the essence of bugginess.
Puzzle Quest on DS and PSP was buggy. The DS version had graphical glitches at times and could also freeze up, and in the PSP version you couldn't access the nether regions of your spell list and your party members did nothing.
In light of those kinds of issues, I never really thought of minor graphic issues as something that would classify a game as buggy.
Does it bother you when you hear a game is buggy, or is that business as usual? What do you consider a "buggy" game to be like, and how bad does it have to be to affect your enjoyment?
In the course of thinking about this I also realized that in many situations I would take a buggy game over a poor translation (FFTactics) or spelling/grammar errors (Phoenix Wright). Maybe this is because I've programmed before and know how easy it is for unnoticed bugs to crop up, whereas writing is generally pretty easy to fix. I almost see it as a bug of a different kind.
By the way, I did get TRA and I really enjoy it so far...and despite a few odds and ends I've noticed, I wouldn't call it buggy at all.
Buggy to me has always ranged from completely unplayable to major issues that interfere with normal gameplay. Outside of that, a game can have bugs (what game doesn't have a single bug?) but it isn't necessarily buggy.
The original Final Fantasy is a buggy game. There is a lot of equipment supposedly made to do extra damage to certain monster types and none of it works properly, and there is at least one spell that does nothing it all. That is the essence of bugginess.
Puzzle Quest on DS and PSP was buggy. The DS version had graphical glitches at times and could also freeze up, and in the PSP version you couldn't access the nether regions of your spell list and your party members did nothing.
In light of those kinds of issues, I never really thought of minor graphic issues as something that would classify a game as buggy.
Does it bother you when you hear a game is buggy, or is that business as usual? What do you consider a "buggy" game to be like, and how bad does it have to be to affect your enjoyment?
In the course of thinking about this I also realized that in many situations I would take a buggy game over a poor translation (FFTactics) or spelling/grammar errors (Phoenix Wright). Maybe this is because I've programmed before and know how easy it is for unnoticed bugs to crop up, whereas writing is generally pretty easy to fix. I almost see it as a bug of a different kind.
By the way, I did get TRA and I really enjoy it so far...and despite a few odds and ends I've noticed, I wouldn't call it buggy at all.
Switch Friend Code: SW - 5443 - 2358 - 9118 || 3DS Friend Code: 0989 - 1731 - 9504 || NNID: unclesporky
UncleSporky on
0
Posts
Aside from that, I'm pretty forgiving.
"glitchy" or "dodgy" to me is, and should be, the terminology used for something in-game that doesn't function correctly all the time, but doesn't cause the game to crash, or visual errors like texture popup. ie, glitchy physics might intonate objects that react oddly, lose gravity, ect.
certainly, I agree with you that it's a distinction that needs to be made, as there's a HUGE difference between a glitchy game and a buggy game. a glitchy game is unpolished, sure, but a buggy game is simply unacceptable.
I'M A TWITTER SHITTER
But then I remember one time where there was a huge forum fight over this with a bunch of people insisting that the terms could be used interchangeably and there were articles and dictionary definitions thrown around and everything. So now I hesitate.
Dodgy is an awesome word though.
A Bug is something detrimental to the gaming experience, I.e Crashing completely or makeing a section unplayable. Most people Ive met use these definitions too, and a game with dodgy graphics certainly whouldn't class as "buggy" with my.
Not the best first experience for what is otherwise a rather polished interface.
I'm happy with the "Fallout 2" or "Operation Flashpoint" style of glitchy / rough gameplay, but if there's something broken in the game that prevents me playing it, or even having fun with it.
Good work, testers.
Stalker was widely considered to be a very buggy game, but I bought it and played through the whole game without a real hitch before it was patched at all. I had a total blast. Worst 'bug' in the game that affected me was that all artifacts that were supposed to increase bleeding as a trade-off for a good effect did the reverse in reality - they staunched bleeding, so such artifacts were actually a double-positive. so it was more of an exploit than a bug in my case
I remember back in the day, Syndicate Wars on the SNES was pretty buggy... clipped through the world a couple times there and stuff. still, not many games I remember more fondly.
Details?
I really should finish that game someday. I think this proves I have an epic backlog.
猿も木から落ちる
I think you've just outlined a matter of scale. Broken shadows or the occasional texture being fucked is "slightly" buggy. A game breaking issue is "very" buggy.
Both suck.
I've just taken a job in video game QA so hopefully I can stand between the darkness and the light for everyone.
猿も木から落ちる
To unlock the final stage, you needed to collect every trophy from every level. One level has the hit detection for the trophy turned off so that you can never collect it. Ever.
Indeed, stand there, take some snapshots and e-mail them to whoever did the shadows for the new Naruto game on the Wii.
Either way, a bug is a bug. I just think that reviewers should be more specific and precise in denoting what "buggy" means in a particular situation because, as some of you accurately point out, there is a wide range of bugs with a wide range of severity between them. But "buggy" is still the appropriate term. If Lara Croft should be casting a shadow of herself but instead casts one of Samus Aran, well that's a bug.
Also, Gamestop is trash.
So nobody anywhere can finish it at all?
How did I never hear about this?
猿も木から落ちる
I've never heard of it either, but I'm sure I'd be able to finish it anyway. I'm just that damn good.
Don't be silly. A quirky oddity or misbehaving functionality of an inconsequential nature should not be consider equivalent with, say, crashing.
They do both suck, and are both bugs, but if a game is really awesome in can be worth some fussiness.
猿も木から落ちる
In one Operation Flashpoint box I bought there was a message inside the box telling me no to bother installing the product as it would not work. What I needed to do was send proof that I bought the game so they could mail me some CDs with a working version. I raged for days over that.
There are codes that let you skip to the last level. There is a half assed quasi-ending if you don't collect all the trophies, but there's another whole level and whatnot if you do.
So weird.
猿も木から落ちる
Game-breaking means you cannot continue the game in some way because of a bug, like in Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, a bug which sometimes or always breaks the game.
/agree. to paraphrase Braveheart: every game has bugs; not every game is truly buggy.
I'm not saying they are equivalent, but a bug is a bug and the term "buggy" shouldn't really have the connotation being expressed here. A bug that crashes a game is "equivalent" to a bug that causes something quirky in a game the same way a small, one-legged slab of wood and and huge, well-polished mahogany beast are "equivalent" - they aren't, at all, but they are both accurately referred to as "tables." That's all I'm saying. A table is a table and a bug is a bug regardless of what they look like.
It's appropriate to call either a "bug" but it is necessary to explain what you mean by "bug" or "buggy" the same way it would be necessary to describe a table.
I'm being pedantic, sure, but this is a thread about connotations, isn't it? So I think my pedantry has some use here.
Besides, when I hear "buggy," the first thing I think of is this, if you really want to talk about the connotation of "buggy":
:P
That may be your definition, but that's not the universal definition of "gamebreaking." Yours seems the most logical, in truth, but if you think of what a "game" means, then there is logic in saying that a missing feature or a bug that prevents a particular feature from functioning properly is gamebreaking even if the game does not fail to run outright - it simply fails to run the way it should.
So I don't really agree with your definition. If a bug prevented spellcasting in The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, for instance, that would be a gamebreaking bug even if the game ran flawlessly otherwise.
But it isn't unless (a) the reviewer fails to provide context or (b) the reader fails to read the context. Context is necessary when using the word "buggy." Buggy means that a game has bugs and bugs can be big or small.
Buggy is not suitable to be a keyword. If a game has a million niggling but unimportant bugs, I would call it buggy even if the end user were never really aware of of most of them because buggy really just means "full of bugs." It's the reviewer's job to provide context for the term and it's the reader's job to read the context if it is provided.
The word out of context is indeed meaningless except to communicate that the game includes bugs and I think it should remain that way.
Really now? I couldn't stand STALKER because of the bugs... I played for about 4 hours wading through bugs, and they released a patch that supposedly fixed everything; Downloaded it, and then found out that it erases all the saved games. Cool. I'll just play through it with less bugs.... No. They were still there... So I got about 4 hours into it again (a little further this time) and they released yet another patch that erased the saved games. At that point I said "fuck it." and probably wont go back again.
Either we always need to be specific about the nature of the problem or I should quit reacting negatively to the word automatically.
Or, you should stop reading reviewers that don't do their fucking job. Because "buggy" is really a programmer term meaning "has bugs." That's really it. Reviewers that use it as a keyword, without explaining the nature of the game's "bugginess" are being lazy and not doing what they should be doing. "This game is buggy" is a very irresponsible and lazy reviewer comment no matter if the game has one bug or a billion bugs.
Reviewers rarely take the time to actually attempt to communicate properly with their readers. Some do. Most don't understand the very words they, themselves, are typing.
The really bad stuff is generally very specific, though, no matter the case. If you can't get all the way through the game, everyone knows about it, for example that one Bubble Bobble DS a few years back where a boss just didn't show up.
I just think buggy means "has more than one bug." If I'm just chatting with friends, I would imagine they would qualify the word somehow - "it's slightly buggy," or "it's very buggy." That's usually how people shoot the breeze about a game. If they just say "it's buggy," it honestly wouldn't mean anything to me. The phrase is meaningless. I would ask "how buggy?" or "in what way?" because "buggy," alone, without a qualifier, doesn't hint at severity. You are saying that it does for you but I don't think it should, really.
If a reviewer says "this game is buggy" I really need to see why or how or how badly, but even the latter isn't sufficient in a supposedly-professional review because, as I said before, even "gamebreaking" means different things to different people.
What you described with Tomb Raider is what I would have called "minor graphical glitches".
A means either a full crash or freeze that can be reproduced consistently.
B means a major bug that would be glaring to whoever played the game, and which is normally required to be fixed before release (if there's enough time...)
C means a minor bug, what some of you call glitches. The problem is that some of these bugs really affect the gameplay, but only in minor ways. Like those weapons that don't have the expected effect in the original Final Fantasy for NES: the game is still very playable and fun.
It all depends on the type of game, too. For example, I tested the game Syberia 2, which is a point and click adventure (in the old Sierra/Lucasarts mould, but not specifically humorous) where the background is pre-rendered and some objects and characters are in 3D (like, say, the first few Resident Evil games.) Since we had enough time for testing, we reported and fixed each and every little glitch or stray pixel we found, because the game sold on its aesthetics more than its gameplay (was all based on some French dude's artwork.)
Many of the puzzles didn't make much sense, but the game had to be pixel-perfect. Compare that to, say, Halo 3, where it was more important that the framerate not dip than it was to offer full 720p resolution.
Check out my new blog: http://50wordstories.ca
Also check out my old game design blog: http://stealmygamedesigns.blogspot.com
I've heard some pretty pathetic and minor issues be called "gamebreaking" before, just because some grapgics-whore couldn't get their mind around a texture seam or some other equally pedantic issue. More clarity is always welcome.
Pokémon HGSS: 1205 1613 4041
Well that's their opinions.
Their opinions are wrong though.
I mean, most games, they at least appear to have tested it. It's only with a truly buggy game that you know something interesting had to be happening at the company.
I still think the word 'buggy' implies a certain level of bugginess, though. We're debating how big a game's list of bugs should be before it's called 'buggy', but I think most of us agree that a game should have more than one or two completely invisible bugs to be called buggy. if a program is flawless except for one missing semicolon in line 923549 of the code, and that missing semicolon doesn't affect the game in any way, shape, or form, the game is still 'buggy' if you want to be anal about the dictionary definition of the word... but would anyone ever say the code is buggy? no, they wouldn't, because if they did, the word would be meaningless. saying this essentially flawless game is buggy would be like saying the game is a game.
if I asked a programmer about his code and he said it was functional but still buggy, he would be telling me he knows there's problems that are preventing the code from working completely as intended. he wouldn't say it was buggy if one or two typoes are causing no problems whatsoever.
It's definitely true that, if someone says a game is buggy, they should generally elaborate on where the major bugs are or the word is pretty meaningless. when reading a review or whatever, I'd definitely want to know if a 'buggy' game has some small graphical glitches, or frequent crashes, or inaccessible content or what have you...