I'm not sure if it's just me, but although game quality in terms of innovation, advancing gameplay, graphics blurring of genre lines etc is healthy, it seems the finished product these days is closer to raw than anything else. For example, Gears of War 2 is an awsome game, with great gameplay and online play, but the bugs people found was a list to be reckoned with(not counting the ones not found) and actually getting past the matchmaking phase online had as much to do with your rank as wether or not u got on your knees and prayed beforehand. Since, the gears developers have fixed alot of the bugs, introduced a new ranking system (the one prior of which no one quite understood) and "reportedly" fixed the matchmaking ailments that plagued it in the past. This was after aproximately 4 patches in the span of 6-7 months. This is just one example of many (e.g, COD franchise, Madden franchise, Fallout 3 has some serious glitches, 99% of shooters developed post 2006). My question is, is it fair to us, the consumer to dish full price at launch time, for an unfinished product just because developers now have the luxury of patching up their mistakes at a later date no charge? Perhaps the charge is the time gamers have to spend with, at times broken gameplay and subpar performance just cause the ready availability of console patches has developers approaching the testing phase with a lackadaisical attitude?

Are there any other specific games you can name or inside info on supposed "bug lists" amongst developers dirty laundry?

It's better than the alternative, which is glitchy games that fall through the cracks and then can't be fixed. I mean patching isn't an ideal situation, but at least it's an option. Overall it's usually a problem with the online, which is a unique problem on consoles since most past systems didn't have online gameplay. So yes I'm glad they have a way to fix netcode problems and it would be better than them releasing crap online they thought was good until the buying public in it's enormity fucked it up and then developers say "oh well, nobody likes patches so let's just leave it". There's also an instance like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts where the writing was unusually small and basically unreadable on SDTV's. On previous consoles that would have been it. Live with it. Now Rare was able to address a problem they didn't know they had with the game and give gamers a solution.

Overall it does cause a bit of laziness on the part of developers, as can be seen from SOCOM: Confrontation and Gear of War 2, but it's still a benefit to have the option for problems to get fixed post release to make games better so they don't have to live as duds.

I agree patches are better than no patches of course, but maybe there should be a price to pay for ignoring KNOWN bugs and broken online systems/servers just to make a deadline. Like a penalty of some sort if it can be proven by an overseeing authorative entity. Games are getting real huge and so are dev teams and their pockets. This kind of buisness practice is rarely tolerated elsewhere in big buisness and maybe developers (and the publishers that hound them) should begin to be treated as such, big buisness with big consequences.

Do you perceive though that whereas pre online patch games being too glitchy was the exception (albeit a tedious one) that post patch games being bug ridden is becoming the norm? Patch or no patch, raw games should never become the norm, and if they do, they should never be tolerated, at least i think.

I don't think they're doing anything illegal. What is an authorative enetity going to do? They're going to punish Epic because there's a 10 minute wait to get into a Gears 2 match? What's the industry standard? There isn't one, and it was never advertised that a certain waiting time in Gears 2 would be in place.

Raw games aren't the norm. They are currently the exception. Unfortunately you can't test something like Gears 2 and it's huge 2 million opening before the game comes out. You test a few thousand and hope when you multiply that it accounts for the massive overload of people that will test the system all at the same time on release day. Betas do help, so maybe that is an answer for games with online components. COD:WaW had one and the game had flawless online come release.

Well, alot of things weren't illegal until someone pointed them out. And what i think is wrong (and i think should be illegal) is KNOWINGLY leaving bugs in just because you're trying to make a deadline or can take care of it later. Patches should be plan b not the default. I don't think glitchy games are the norm...YET but they are certainly crawling in that direction. Maybe the online problems for gears 2 was a product of the games own success, but they have since patched it up and it still takes massive amounts of time to match you up on any given day. I love gears and this really deters my gaming experience for an otherwise great game to the point i have to pop in another game because ive just spent 2 hrs waiting and only about 40-60 mins actually playing. Fallout 3 is another great game and rpg but it contains nearly 10 game ending/crashing glitches. I really don't think consumers who are paying top dollar for OVERPRICED IPs should have to potentially deal with such issues.

And whats to say about these rumored bug lists developers seem to have but never reveal and seemingly (if rumors are true) guard with their lives. This would be proof that a dev team knowingly released a broken IP or overly glitchy game that could have otherwise been rectified.

I applaud you for being so gung ho about software patching, but I find your ideas about policing it rather silly. There's nothing there to police.

Lol, if it sounds like i feel very strongly about an issue, it doesn't mean i neccesarily do, although i do sometimes. I use this site and others for practice. I'm on a debate team and am thinking about maybe taking up pre law. It's really good to learn to argue for any side of an argument and wether or not u neccesarily agree with what you argue or even care. ANd i love games!

Killing birds with one stone since 1999!