In Theory: How SSD Could Radically Change Next-Gen Games Beyond Faster Loading (Digital Foundry Video)

[mjk45]

JWeinCom said:

mjk45 said:

While there are some who use patching as a cop out it's not all negative, as to buggy games pre patch there were plenty but since the world was less connected you didn't have  the awareness that you have today or the critical audience feedback,I started gaming on a secondhand C64 moved onto Amiga then PC and consoles, so I have been gaming for over 30 years and I recall bugs ranging from nuisance value up to game breaking ever since I started, now whether it is worse or better today, I don't know.

What I do know that the more complex the system the more things can go wrong and with today's games becoming more complex as well as more open and less linear, the chances of bugs have increased, the numbers of bug testers you see in game credits is a testament to that, the response of using day one patches and patching when necessary to fix the problem seems to me to be driven by publishers preferring not to hold back releases when a day one patch will do the job.

I honestly can't remember many major releases back in the day suffering from major game breaking glitches.  Even up to the Wii, where Nintendo didn't really patch stuff.  There were some odd things here and there that activated in weird circumstances, (like something in Skyward Sword if you talked to a particular NPC at a weird point where you probably wouldn't) but I can't recall that many truly bugged out games.  

Obviously patches could be a good thing, but the original point that was brought up still stands.  I can still to this day bust out my SNES and play my favorite games.  What happens in a couple of decades when patches are not supported, I don't have access to a patched system, or deleted the data due to limited hard drive space years ago, and I want to play a game that was reliant on a day one patch?  This trend is fine for now, but its very not future proof.  

I agree with your concerns, my first post talked about how patching has meant a reliance on publishers but that's the connected world we now live in and that same world also means we have a the fine history of people using the net to archive material so  it should be possible to find those patches elsewhere, this along with the cloud and judicious backing up means we at least have options.

The situation between pre patch and today reminds me of a doco I watched recently about the last flight of the tornado bomber and their talk about how 75 year old spitfires are able to be kept airworthy  but not the more modern  tornado and it came down to the spitfires simplicity, still google pre patch game bugs and you will find many examples including yours.