Does the video game industry treat us as beta testers?

  • Two Factor Authentication is now available on BeyondUnreal Forums. To configure it, visit your Profile and look for the "Two Step Verification" option on the left side. We can send codes via email (may be slower) or you can set up any TOTP Authenticator app on your phone (Authy, Google Authenticator, etc) to deliver codes. It is highly recommended that you configure this to keep your account safe.

Capt.Toilet

Good news everyone!
Feb 16, 2004
5,826
3
38
41
Ottawa, KS
How do you gauge the game being sold? Previews and such can be extremely misleading, and reviews are often paid for. Someone has to actually buy the game and try it and tell me about it. Perhaps I'm just a bit bitter about games I've bought that turned out to suck.

APB is an extreme example of this, but a fitting one. How many glaring technical issues did they ever address? The spent their post-launch development cycles working on game balance when a large portion (probably a majority) of the player base was having a terrible playing experience due to latency and low framerates. Would working on those have saved the game? Probably not, they were doomed before launch. MMOs are in general at the extremes of this particular issue, due to their massive nature. I know the early days of World of Warcraft were rough, mostly due to the fact that they were completely unprepared for the absolute flood of subscribers. The game wasn't even complete then, the hunter class didn't even have a talent tree!

APB had a beta test, from what I've read around the interbutts it was more of a publicity thing than an actual testing exercise. The complaints that were issued by the beta testers were not addressed, for the most part.

UT3 was brought up. I played the demo, I enjoyed deathmatch and decided I would buy the game. When I bought the game I was surprised to find that it was less than polished, this coming from a game studio who had been there and done that and who had already delivered some high quality games. Overall it felt more like a tech demo of Unreal Engine 3 with an unfinished and clunky interface that made the process of configuring the game and finding a server to play on a pain in the butt. Sure, they ended up fixing a lot of that, but it was too little too late for the most part. Why did they "fix" what wasn't broken between UT2004 and UT3? I guess that's neither here nor there.

An example of misleading previews I would say is Bad Company 2. The demo for that was awful. I really did not enjoy it. But I got a chance to **** around with the full game on my buddy's computer and I loved it, and then I got to buy it for $20 so I did. If I had to go solely on the demo I would never have purchased the game. That blade swings both ways, and can easily stump the developer.

So, yeah, I guess it is a balance. Nothing is perfect, and in particular software can be a very complex world of interlocking quirks that topple like dominoes and cause extremely bizarre problems. I'm not saying patches should never happen, that's one of the nice things about PC gaming: broken doesn't mean forever. But if you release your game and people aren't able to even configure or access their dedicated servers from your glorious One Server Provider to Rule Them All, and the vast majority of people are experience debilitating lag and framerate issues, then I think perhaps it can be said that didn't try real hard and probably don't deserve my money.


EDIT: I just wrote a dissertation on video games. What have I become?

You will have my babies here and now big guy.
 

Mozi

Zer0 as a number
Apr 12, 2002
3,544
0
0
In the Borderlands..
www.mozidesign.com
Now that I am awake with caffeine in my blood let me share what I think is happening. Long post in coming for TL;DR folks...

Back in the day before all these fancy consoles in the market and the general notion of console gaming we had PC games and simple consoles Nintendo and Sega systems. In that time almost everything was exclusive, PC had their own games, Sega had their own, and Nintendo had their own. Zero to no cross platform gaming.

With conditions like that, developers of PC, Sega, and Nintendo games focused on a single product for a single system. And if you all recall games back then were solid for what ever system you got it for, rarely did you encounter bugs.

Also in that time period (or a bit after it)PC's were pretty high tech but in a way almost standard, meaning most people had the same amount of ram, processor and video card hardware. (I could be totally generalizing this right now but just speaking from example, as my friends and I growing up all had similar rigs, now we are all over place in terms of parts and specs)

With similar specs between PCs (with some being a little lower and higher end than the standard) PC devs could easily make and test a game with a given standard and be sure that it works for lets say 80-90% of consumers.

On the flip side at that time with the consoles that were around (I think the gensis had died off near the late 90's) the developers had it easy, they can make a game and be sure that it works to a certain degree perhaps closer to 95-98% of the time because they knew that the consumers all had the same machine with the exact same specs in their living rooms.

Now let's move forward in time. PC modding is pretty much rampant, so many video card options, mobo options, various amounts of RAM 2GB 4GB 6... and in console land we get the xbox 360 and PS3.

At this point developers can place a sure bet that any game they make will work to a higher degree on console than someone's modded rig, because like before all the consoles have the exact same hardware. Given that they know the consoles have the exact same hardware they know what the hardware can and can not do, and build their games around it.

However, there is something new that has emerged over the years that did not exist as much back in the day. Consumer demand (or publisher demand) for cross platform. Let's say a game comes out on console A. It's good, really good. Console B owners say, we want it too. So it get ported. Then down the road the PC guys that don't own console A or B say, wait we want this awesome game too, so it gets ported a third time.

Now this is where I think the break down occurs in modern game development. When a game is made on 360 first (for example) the devs know what they have to work with in terms of memory, graphics optimization, controls, etc. It's standard. Now if that game needs to to go PS3, it can be done but some things may need to be tweaked, to get to run on the PS3 architecture but again for the most part that port will follow some standard rules to make it work on the PS3. But wait...PC gamers want the game too!

In this day and age there are hundreds(okay that may be a stretch) of possible PC configs. Now a dev house has to go through the process of porting their game to various different settings, low end machines, high end machines and everything in between. Doing this does leave the door open for chance of bugs and performance issues to be more prominent than consoles.

So what does this all mean? You may ask why not make a PC game from the get go and forget console gamers. Well in today's market, the PC gamer priority is on very few developers minds (perhaps only Blizzard and Valve). Yes there are people like me that would love to make the game as awesome for the PC gamer as possible, but sometimes in any dev house the powers that be, shareholders (if you are an activiblizision or EA) want to get the most bank off their games. And how do you do that? Make the game for a console, a standardized gaming market, where all the consumers have the same setup.

Now some studios still pull the exclusive card, but again only on consoles and a little bit on PC (like Starcraft2) And guess what, that gives the devs even more power to focus their time and effort for making the game as awesome as possible for one system.

However, when games go multi platform, issues can arise due to different architectures. But more often than not from the games I have played on PC I can clearly tell it is a console port. Why? Well devs sometimes cut corners to make the game on PC just for the sake of being on PC. Perfect example, recently I played Transformers: War for Cybertron on PC. In that game the clear sign of console port was the lack of functionality to change controls and keybindings! Seriously that's ****ed up! But I see why it happened. Transformers on console don't need key bindings or control modifiers, it's all standard, everyone has the same controller. So be it laziness, or just cutting corners to put the game on PC just to have a PC copy stupid things happen.

Now look at Black Ops, on 360 that thing has great frame rate, and with matchmaking MP minimal lag. Again, the devs know everyone has the same 360. But on PC, there are so many configs people have, it's hard to account for the possibilities. Sure, a minimum spec chart is released for most PC games, but sometimes **** happens under the hood of the game which makes it not work with the PC you have. And to take the time to setup multiple different rigs costs money, compared to getting the game to run on standardized console.

Which leads me to another point. Perhaps for another discussion but when games go console exclusive, like Gears, Uncharted, God of War, people complain that it should also be on the console they own or even on PC. But from a business view, going exclusive like games back in the day, only exclusive to Sega or Nintendo, gives the devs a better chance to make a better game for a standardized system without having to sacrifice time and money to make it work for other systems.

So does the game industry treat us like beta testers? I say no, what I do think is that the advent of multiplatform gaming has caused more issues for consumers and developers. Now it's up to developer to take the time to consider all the possible edge cases for multi platform development but to what cost? That's a question dev houses need to answer. Do they want to take the time to make sure the game runs perfectly on all systems or do they cut corners to make it work? Or just take the route of old school gaming and keep things exclusive.

However, I do agree to one point. If you are going to make a multiplatform game or even an exclusive, please make it work to a degree where at least 85-90% of ones consumer base is happy with the end product the dev studio put time and money into making!

If you got this far, I salute you. Hopefully this makes some sense. The lunch break in the middle may have derailed or extended this rant beyond it's normal means of getting a point across.
 

DeathBooger

Malcolm's Sugar Daddy
Sep 16, 2004
1,925
0
36
44
Game development isn't as complex as you think. Most of the time developers are just lazy and/or incompetent. Nintendo and Sega had plenty of cross-platform games that they shared. The only ones they didn't share were the 1st part games, just like today.

Right now the big issue is that developers are developing backwards. They worry about consoles first and PC afterward. They should be focusing on PC first because it has more variables. If the game engine works as designed on a PC, then a Xbox or PS3 port should be easy and painless. ALL games start on a PC. Coding, asset creation, everything, starts on a PC. They should finish on a PC until everything runs right instead of cutting corners in the development cycle.

People should be able to sue Activision for releasing a crappy PC version. There should be a lemon law for bad software. It's the only way to fix the problem.
 

Capt.Toilet

Good news everyone!
Feb 16, 2004
5,826
3
38
41
Ottawa, KS
While what you say is pretty much the truth, that doesn't excuse the ****storm that BO is going through right now. The fact that it is happening to a majority of the populace leads many to think they didn't even test the pc version. If they had even bothered to test it on half a dozen setups they more than likely would have found the cause before release.
 

DeathBooger

Malcolm's Sugar Daddy
Sep 16, 2004
1,925
0
36
44
PC testing isn't that hard. You have a single platform, Windows, and a few hardware variables. All the processors run x86 architecture, not much varies there. They just have to test threading on multiple cores. Then they just have to test AMD and Nvidia GPUs. They don't have to test every single card. Just a single card in each GPU family. Nvidia might have 5 different cards in a family, but they're all the same architecture. There are some issues that can't be fixed, Nvidia or AMD can screw up drivers and it might turn out that a sound card developers never tested has weird results with their game software, but that should be minimal.

Probably 75-90% of people complaining about a game not working right most likely screwed up their PC somehow on their own before they even bought the game. Owning and operating a PC should require a license.
 

Jacks:Revenge

╠╣E╚╚O
Jun 18, 2006
10,065
218
63
somewhere; sometime?
If you don't like the game being sold, don't buy it.
lol.
wut?

the idea here is that someone has already bought the game, gotten it home, and installed it before any problems are discovered. there's no way to know how the game might perform on your specific setup (referring to PC titles) without buying it first.

it's not like reviewers are going to tell you.
 

BITE_ME

Bye-Bye
Jun 9, 2004
3,564
0
36
61
Not here any more
My Mommy was a Beta tester. She got married 7 times.


They games just needed to be coded, then tested right the first time.
If a game is crappy, yes they might sell 10 Million the first day.
So just wait till the games are out first, them buy them.
 

Grobut

Комиссар Гробут
Oct 27, 2004
1,822
0
0
Soviet Denmark
it's not like reviewers are going to tell you.

Indeed, even with the most bugridden and unplayable releases that have slipped through the cracks from time to time, i don't think i have ever seen any of the big review sites even comment on any bugs or problems.. unless, of course, it's a cheapo indie title with no ad budget, thouse they will brutally murder with every word.
 

Capt.Toilet

Good news everyone!
Feb 16, 2004
5,826
3
38
41
Ottawa, KS
it's not like reviewers are going to tell you.

Indeed, even with the most bugridden and unplayable releases that have slipped through the cracks from time to time, i don't think i have ever seen any of the big review sites even comment on any bugs or problems.. unless, of course, it's a cheapo indie title with no ad budget, thouse they will brutally murder with every word.

Proof of this is the Gamespot review for BO. Not only is it a copy/paste of the console versions, the only thing listed in the "bad" category was that it had a short campaign. How many uncut dicks did these idiots jerk off?
 

shadow_dragon

is ironing his panties!
I think saying that the industry treats us as beta testers is generous really, I believe when we're sold a shoddy game then it's a shoddy game, they undoubtedly know all the faults but had to meet deadlines regardless and put out what they deemed "reasonable" and i tend to think that the larger the fan base for a series of games the lower the standard of "reasonable" can be.

I don't think the game industry treat us like beta testers i just think they treat us as if we're gullible... It's not like we demanded testing reports before "we" pre-ordered the thing. We put money on the table based on a promise that they could provide a finished product with no reason to believe they would.

Now that I am awake with caffeine in my blood let me share what I think is happening. Long post in coming for TL;DR folks...
Very good post Mozi i pretty much agree with everything you said.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
I think DeathBooger really hit on what should be happening here. I don't think that games being multiplatform has anything to do with it, I think it has everything to do with the order different platforms are developed toward and the disinterest developers have in the PC in general.

The thing is, if you made a PC game with Direct3D and OpenGL support, you'd have the makings of a relatively easy 360/PS3 port. And simplifying a game for a console is easy as pie, while making a game more complicated for PC is not always so.

Developers simply think that there is no money to be made in making good PC games right now, even though a recent article (linked in the other thread) shows that PC gaming revenue (in general) was pretty competitive with consoles when big exclusive console games weren't coming out. What would happen if there were big exclusive PC games coming out?

After seeing those numbers, I don't see how anyone can whine about PC piracy causing huge drops in revenue. The reality is that the PC is earning people money just fine when they aren't making games that suck. If your game on 360 sells 5 million units is pirated by 500,000 people, who cares if your game on PC sells 5 million units and is pirated by an additional 5 million people? The revenue is identical.
 

DeathBooger

Malcolm's Sugar Daddy
Sep 16, 2004
1,925
0
36
44
With PC games comes tech support. Most developers these days just want to move onto the next cookie cutter game to make more money instead of spending resources on support. Piracy is a scapegoat.

It used to be about a group of smart nerds getting together and designing a cool game, now it's about company profit margins. This is why there is a resurgence of indie games. Those games are actually inventive and original. People notice. Valve and id are the only two devs I know of that work on original games until they're personally satisfied with them. They also develop in the right order, PC first, then port to consoles.
I've owned a 360 for 6 years now. I bought maybe 4 or 5 $60 360 games over that time, but I've bought so many $10 indie arcade games I lost count.
 

Sjosz

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Dec 31, 2003
3,048
0
36
Edmonton, AB
www.dregsld.com
I think DeathBooger really hit on what should be happening here. I don't think that games being multiplatform has anything to do with it, I think it has everything to do with the order different platforms are developed toward and the disinterest developers have in the PC in general.

The thing is, if you made a PC game with Direct3D and OpenGL support, you'd have the makings of a relatively easy 360/PS3 port. And simplifying a game for a console is easy as pie, while making a game more complicated for PC is not always so.

Games are developed towards the biggest bottleneck we come across. Consoles have less memory and CPU power than most PCs, so developers work on a console version first and upscale from there. Simplifying/downsizing is not easy at all when you want to keep the best level of visual and gameplay fidelity, so it's best to start at what you can deliver at the base, and work your way up to what platforms that have more capacity can handle.

Developers simply think that there is no money to be made in making good PC games right now, even though a recent article (linked in the other thread) shows that PC gaming revenue (in general) was pretty competitive with consoles when big exclusive console games weren't coming out. What would happen if there were big exclusive PC games coming out?

After seeing those numbers, I don't see how anyone can whine about PC piracy causing huge drops in revenue. The reality is that the PC is earning people money just fine when they aren't making games that suck. If your game on 360 sells 5 million units is pirated by 500,000 people, who cares if your game on PC sells 5 million units and is pirated by an additional 5 million people? The revenue is identical.

Developers do not think there is no money to be made on PC, just less. Since the 360 and PS3 are fairly similar in what they can handle, hitting 2 platforms that will earn you more is obviously the logical choice over a platform with a lot of different possible configurations.
I disagree with your views on revenue. The problem is that once you consider to spend development time on the PC platform, you do so because the additional development cost will gain you revenue on that specific platform, and not because the other platforms will cover a revenue loss for whatever reason (including piracy). The revenue might be identical, but the profit will be less because development time/cost has been spent on reaching another platform.
 

DarkED

The Great Oppression
Mar 19, 2006
3,113
17
38
38
Right behind you.
www.nodanites.com
  • Fallout 3
  • Grand Theft Auto 4
  • Black and White 2
  • Test Drive Unlimited

I can't speak for Empire: Total War, but otherwise, the above list is quite full of lulz considering that all four of the above games were far from perfect on launch day. Fallout 3 and GTA4 being the worst of the two.

NOTE: Above statement is only referring to bugs and game-breaking glitches. Fallout 3 and GTA4 were both very awesome games.
 

M.A.D.X.W

Active Member
Aug 24, 2008
4,486
5
38
I can't speak for Empire: Total War, but otherwise, the above list is quite full of lulz considering that all four of the above games were far from perfect on launch day. Fallout 3 and GTA4 being the worst of the two.
That's why they're in the list
 

SlayerDragon

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLADIES
Feb 3, 2003
7,666
0
36
40
Mozi, I respect your opinion. I think you give a little too much lee-way to development houses and publishers in terms of their quality assurance. For the most part I agree with you, though. Your last point in particular rings pretty well with my arguments.

I don't know how things are generally done, but it would seem prudent to me to at least have one team dedicated to QA on PC hardware of varied age and specification. Virtualization can also enable testing on different operating systems on the same hardware, as well as fairly simple ability to test different driver versions. This would also aid in post-launch support.

Cross-platform is not an excuse to deliver a poor product to one platform in favor of the ease of production on others. Especially since the developers and publishers both make a lot of money off that. Many previously PC-centric developers have, of course, adopted cross-platform development, and their products on PC have suffered in quality as a result.

I'm not going to cry "death of PC gaming" or anything like that, in a lot of ways there has never been a better time to be a PC gamer. Digital distribution and rights management like Steam means I have access to my full library (couple this with a fiber optic Internet connection and it's like Heaven), and the sundry sales have allowed me to expand my collection at a low price. Games like Team Fortress 2 are seriously kicking ass and taking names. Valve has really struck the mother lode with that game. I bought that game years ago and they're still releasing content regularly, and keeping it interesting. Not to mention the mod-ability of the game, which is another part of the glory of PC gaming. The level of freedom to play the game how you want. We're seeing a decline in that in a lot of games, again Black Ops is an example with their Gameservers.com deal. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad but their server hosting service seems very ill-equipped to handle the customer base they've acquired.
 

Sir_Brizz

Administrator
Staff member
Feb 3, 2000
26,020
83
48
Games are developed towards the biggest bottleneck we come across. Consoles have less memory and CPU power than most PCs, so developers work on a console version first and upscale from there. Simplifying/downsizing is not easy at all when you want to keep the best level of visual and gameplay fidelity, so it's best to start at what you can deliver at the base, and work your way up to what platforms that have more capacity can handle.
I respect that, I simply disagree with it. From an artist's perspective this may make a lot of sense, but from a programmer's perspective it really makes little to no sense.

Iterative programming means it is just as easy to make performance improvements for more limited systems in areas where it makes sense. Every programmer knows where their program sucks the most (or at least how to find where it sucks the most) and rewrite those parts to work better in more limited scenarios. That coupled with more limited art assets is all you can really do to go to consoles, anyway.
Developers do not think there is no money to be made on PC, just less. Since the 360 and PS3 are fairly similar in what they can handle, hitting 2 platforms that will earn you more is obviously the logical choice over a platform with a lot of different possible configurations.
What I'm saying is that those two platforms only bring you more if you have a hit game that is also a console exclusive. The numbers in the other thread clearly show that revenue can be made on PC, probably just as much revenue with the right kind of marketing/hype and overall game quality. But you're right that developers don't see it that way, they see it as inferior sales-wise.
I disagree with your views on revenue. The problem is that once you consider to spend development time on the PC platform, you do so because the additional development cost will gain you revenue on that specific platform, and not because the other platforms will cover a revenue loss for whatever reason (including piracy). The revenue might be identical, but the profit will be less because development time/cost has been spent on reaching another platform.
How does that make a difference, though? The development time on the console versions surely eat out of their profits, too, and if you sold the same number of units on PC as on consoles the ratio should be nearly identical. Presumably, if porting to the other platform takes less time, you make more revenue on the ported product. That's how old PC->Console ports were deemed worthwhile.

The biggest issue is that of piracy. People see 5 million pirated units as potentially 10 million sales (which it is not and never will be) with 50% loss. The way they should look at it is as 5 million units sold with no loss, because that is what it is. You can't lose a sale you never had.
 

blakegriplingph

New Member
Nov 8, 2010
25
0
0
Somewhere in San Andreas.
With PC games comes tech support. Most developers these days just want to move onto the next cookie cutter game to make more money instead of spending resources on support. Piracy is a scapegoat.

It used to be about a group of smart nerds getting together and designing a cool game, now it's about company profit margins. This is why there is a resurgence of indie games. Those games are actually inventive and original. People notice. Valve and id are the only two devs I know of that work on original games until they're personally satisfied with them. They also develop in the right order, PC first, then port to consoles.
I've owned a 360 for 6 years now. I bought maybe 4 or 5 $60 360 games over that time, but I've bought so many $10 indie arcade games I lost count.

I agree on that, although from what Sjosz said, they had to do the weakest-first protocol. There are also some factors to be considered, however, like if the underlying engine was optimised enough for the target platform besides the typical PC.

You may come up with architectural differences and stuff, i.e. porting x86 code to PowerPC and vice-versa, but given that the devs are competent enough, and that there isn't any corporate meddling just to pressure people to write things, then we wouldn't end up having a crufty mess of zeroes and ones in our hands.
 

Sjosz

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Dec 31, 2003
3,048
0
36
Edmonton, AB
www.dregsld.com
I respect that, I simply disagree with it. From an artist's perspective this may make a lot of sense, but from a programmer's perspective it really makes little to no sense.

Iterative programming means it is just as easy to make performance improvements for more limited systems in areas where it makes sense. Every programmer knows where their program sucks the most (or at least how to find where it sucks the most) and rewrite those parts to work better in more limited scenarios. That coupled with more limited art assets is all you can really do to go to consoles, anyway.

It depends where you're at with products too, though. An initial game? Sure, there may be enough optimization that can be done on the programming side to keep optimization for consoles relatively simple, but a second game or a third game in the franchise? Or a game on a relatively complete/refined engine? You're going to find that artists and designers are looking to flex the game's muscles, and although that's great for the people playing the game, we make our own lives hard because we need to figure out a way to get it all to perform within memory and performance limits.
Going from that perspective, starting at the biggest bottleneck and then upscaling (mind you, say that meshes and materials are made to spec so effectively we're downscaling to console even if we say we're upscaling to PC) just makes the most sense. For a development team, especially the side that plans everything, it is the best approach to a somewhat sane development cycle.


What I'm saying is that those two platforms only bring you more if you have a hit game that is also a console exclusive. The numbers in the other thread clearly show that revenue can be made on PC, probably just as much revenue with the right kind of marketing/hype and overall game quality. But you're right that developers don't see it that way, they see it as inferior sales-wise.

It *can* but by no means is it the case for all of the games out there that are cross-platform including PC. Companies/publishers don't avoid/flock to platforms based on what their gut says, either, they do so because the numbers on their side show it's the right course of action.

How does that make a difference, though? The development time on the console versions surely eat out of their profits, too, and if you sold the same number of units on PC as on consoles the ratio should be nearly identical. Presumably, if porting to the other platform takes less time, you make more revenue on the ported product. That's how old PC->Console ports were deemed worthwhile.

Sure, development time on console versions takes its resources, but it is easier to develop for (I know) because you have more absolutes to work with, whereas it's a nightmare to get things right on PC because of the different setups people can have ranging from GPU to CPU to PPU disparity to smaller/bigger monitors/monitor types to type of RAM. (granted, PPU not so much)
Additionally, you end up going into the GUI part of the game and you find that console development allows you to hit multiple platforms with mostly the same GUI elements, controller layouts, whereas PC most likely needs support for a different GUI so it's more flexible and more acceptable for PC users because of input differences.
The latter isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme, but it adds up. You also assume that sales for PC are similar to (combined?) sales on console, which isn't a given. And this is talking about porting and not separately supporting PC architecture in a different way, as well.

The biggest issue is that of piracy. People see 5 million pirated units as potentially 10 million sales (which it is not and never will be) with 50% loss. The way they should look at it is as 5 million units sold with no loss, because that is what it is. You can't lose a sale you never had.

I'm not so sure piracy is as big as issue as you say it is. I sincerely doubt a lot of people see piracy as a 1:1 paying customer lost. (that'd be insane to believe)

At the heart of it though, I'm not defending myself or the industry at large against proper game development for PCs. There have been a few posts I seriously disagree with (like JaFo's comparison of a videogame to a car as a product), but I support developers doing their best to make games available on PC. The trouble is at the end of the day that most developers have deadlines and most QA teams are so good at finding bugs and edgecases that we end up not fixing bugs we know are there because we've run out of time/budget. Holding a game back just to iron out every single bug/problem we know about becomes cripplingly costly in no time. Luckily for us nobody dies when they encounter a problem with a videogame, as opposed to not being able to brake in a car.