Bad practice in Video Games Industry

[AX3HEAD]

Bioshock Infinite is another example of the bad practices within the vg industry.

Simcity not working for a month, bioshock infinite 6 weeks and still broken, many other games in the past decade have been broken and an alarmingly large number not fixed to date.

There needs to be serious changes to how QA works and guarantees to consumer refunds if games are a technical mess. For example in this case a player should not have to bear constant stuttering through 25hrs of play time. I've done it and believe me its not pleasant.

The game devs and publishers are really having a laugh and getting away with such bad practice and consumers are too busy worrying about sequels and fanboy nonsense that the game industry is now one of the most accurate if not the most accurate example of text book bad practice/bad ethics.

Do something about it STEAM, give players refunds, you know we are right.

[Migz - DH]

"Broken" is a strong word to use for BioShock Infinite.

It's true that there's a stuttering problem, but for the vast majority of players, the game functions and is playable.

The stuttering is mostly an aesthetic issue.

Edit: to new readers of this thread, please make sure to read posts 10-34. Those show that all PC users have this issue even if they don't notice it normally.

[AX3HEAD]

Автор сообщения: Migz - DH

"Broken" is a strong word to use for BioShock Infinite.

It's true that there's a stuttering problem, but for the vast majority of players, the game functions and is playable.

The stuttering is mostly an aesthetic issue.

Gamer denial or gamer conditioning, dunno what to call it.

It is a pretty serious issue. Why should anyone have to look past this when it happens every 20 seconds?

Also how can you call it an aesthetic issue? I would understand if some textures never loaded and the game was still smooth and playable. But freezes and stutters are serious

[Ser_Rule1]

Are you using a Radeon HD video card Axehead? The main problem right now is the newest drivers. Despite having the right setup, my computer will still crash to a black screen with audio stutter when it comes to running a high-end game on max settings. This never happened with previous drivers.

[Migz - DH]

Автор сообщения: Axehead

Автор сообщения: Migz - DH

"Broken" is a strong word to use for BioShock Infinite.

It's true that there's a stuttering problem, but for the vast majority of players, the game functions and is playable.

The stuttering is mostly an aesthetic issue.

Gamer denial or gamer conditioning, dunno what to call it.

It is a pretty serious issue. Why should anyone have to look past this when it happens every 20 seconds?

Also how can you call it an aesthetic issue? I would understand if some textures never loaded and the game was still smooth and playable. But freezes and stutters are serious

I'm not in denial. I was one of the first people who identified the issue right after launch. That as well as the dynamic shadows problem, the special effects on horses problem, and a group of other bugs. But, these aren't game-breaking in any way for most players.

I can call it aesthetic and not a serious issue, because thousands of players have gone through the game and never even noticed any stuttering.

In fact, about as often as not when I say that everyone is affected by the texture-streaming stutter, I get told that I'm wrong, and that only a small % of people have the stuttering problem. (They're not right. They're just mistaken, because they don't notice the stutter)

[AX3HEAD]

Автор сообщения: Sir_Rule

Are you using a Radeon HD video card Axehead? The main problem right now is the newest drivers. Despite having the right setup, my computer will still crash to a black screen with audio stutter when it comes to running a high-end game on max settings. This never happened with previous drivers.

My specs are:

i7 740qm 2.93ghz
8GB Ram 1333mhz
Nvidia GTX 460M 1.5gb
240 Samsung pro ssd

Playing on low-medium settings and still the issues persist, even at lowest its there.

Almost every other game even 'Rage' works fine on high or max settings. Atleast id fixed Rage.

[AX3HEAD]

Автор сообщения: Migz - DH

Автор сообщения: Axehead

Gamer denial or gamer conditioning, dunno what to call it.

It is a pretty serious issue. Why should anyone have to look past this when it happens every 20 seconds?

Also how can you call it an aesthetic issue? I would understand if some textures never loaded and the game was still smooth and playable. But freezes and stutters are serious

I'm not in denial. I was one of the first people who identified the issue right after launch. That as well as the dynamic shadows problem, the special effects on horses problem, and a group of other bugs. But, these aren't game-breaking in any way for most players.

I can call it aesthetic and not a serious issue, because thousands of players have gone through the game and never even noticed any stuttering.

In fact, about as often as not when I say that everyone has stuttering, I get told that I'm wrong, and that only a small % of people have the stuttering problem.

I dont think this is a small % of people. If you go through the numerous pages you will see a wide setup of computers facing this issue.

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?222176-Stuttering-Hitching-Pauses-even-on-high-end-PC-hardware

[Migz - DH]

I said above that *everyone* has the stutter. That includes PC, 360, and PS3, because it's, apparently, an engine issue.

But, many people don't notice it.

Also, as I said above, even though everyone has the stutter, it doesn't break the game for most of them. It'll break "immersion", but that's not the same thing as a crash or script event which fails to trigger properly.

And, yes, I'm quite familiar with that thread, as I've posted on it dozens of times. Name on those forums is mutrumbo (same avatar though).

[Migz - DH]

Now, if you want a list of truly broken games at launch, I have short list for you:

Myth II: Soulbligher (1998) - The release PC version's uninstaller had a flaw where it would delete the entire directory the game was installed into instead of just game files. So, if a player installed it into the Windows directory instead of the default location, it would erase Windows files as well as the game files. Bungie replaced as many bad disks as they could right away.

Star Trek: New Worlds (2000) - Couldn't even reach the first objective in the first map, because the scripting was broken. A patch was never released to fix it.

Oblivion: Shivering Isles (2007) - After playing for 50 hours or so, items began to disappear and save files became corrupt due to an odd filing glitch. Later fixed.

Comparatively, BioShock Infinite is great.

[Migz - DH]

As for games which had stuttering problems but took a long time to get fixed, how about Valve's well-loved Half-Life 2?

Released in November 2004, it took until early 2006 before the stuttering bug was considered squashed.

[Max (INFINITE)]

I'm sad to hear that you and others are having this stuttering issue, I've seen others that have it as well but to be honest, I never had it and neither did any of my friends (so this problem is not affecting everyone, at this point it is really uncertain what causes the issue for you and others). Just for reference, my specs : i5 3570k, GTX 460, 8 GB Ram

And about the refund that you want from Steam, I see that you played the game for 14 hours. Are you serious ?

[Migz - DH]

See? lol. Lots of people don't even notice the problem.

[Max (INFINITE)]

Автор сообщения: Migz - DH

See? lol. Lots of people don't even notice the problem.

Sorry to let you down on that, but I notice stuttering and microstuttering, and this game has none of them. The only hitch it has is when it's loading a huge new area, it simply pauses for 1 milisecond and then let's go (this happens maybe once every hour, and it's completely normal)

[Migz - DH]

Автор сообщения: Max (INFINITE)

Автор сообщения: Migz - DH

See? lol. Lots of people don't even notice the problem.

Sorry to let you down on that, but I notice stuttering and microstuttering, and this game has none of them. The only hitch it has is when it's loading a huge new area, it simply pauses for 1 milisecond and then let's go (this happens maybe once every hour)

It's ok, you just don't notice. For some people, it's a very, very small micro-load, so they don't even register it.

But, it is an issue with the engine which affects every system.

[Max (INFINITE)]

Автор сообщения: Migz - DH

Автор сообщения: Max (INFINITE)

Sorry to let you down on that, but I notice stuttering and microstuttering, and this game has none of them. The only hitch it has is when it's loading a huge new area, it simply pauses for 1 milisecond and then let's go (this happens maybe once every hour)

It's ok, you just don't notice. For some people, it's a very, very small micro-load, so they don't even register it.

But, it is an issue with the engine which affects every system.

So now you are going to say what I see and what I don't ? Have I been gaming since yesterday ? It's an issue that affects a small portion of the playerbase, I'm sorry that it happens to you and others, but it hasn't happened here :)

Just for reference, I never play games bellow 60 fps when they are perfectly smooth, so if stuttering would happen I would notice it

[Migz - DH]

Oi. I'm not trying to offend you. I'm trying to inform you that things are going on which you're not noticing.

Take a look at this video: http://youtu.be/jOE3pPJFj24

At times 0:48, 1:22, and 2:10, you should notice small hiccups. Those are what we're talking about. Those are caused by texture-streaming loads. They're more noticable the higher the quality (size) of textures the player is using.

The person who created that video claimed that she didn't experience any stuttering, but there's the evidence she was mistaken.