"Before we fall apart at the seams.” The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll may not have been referring to the video game industry, but that’s the name of the game. And what name might that be? Patching, patching and patching.
You know those updates you get, either on Xbox or PlayStation that won’t let you play online until you download them? Those are the patches or updates that change something within the game to help fix something that may be broken or improperly working.
Usually fans will go to the developer’s forums and discussion boards to tell them that a specific aspect of the game is not working as it should. More often than not, developers heed the call of the fans and do their best to repair the error. What goes on behind the scenes of patching a game?
Six to seven years ago, the game that was released was the game that was released — no patches and no fixes. What you saw is what you got with the PC being your only salvation for patched content. In an article by Develop online and in regards to Xbox Live Arcade being a great platform for independent game developers, Tim Schafer disclosed the amount it takes to patch a game and why the price amount is driving away developers.
“I mean, it costs $40,000 to put up a patch – we can’t afford that," he says. "Open systems like Steam, that allow us to set our own prices, that’s where it’s at.”
This June, there was a bit of a patching snafu with Polytron (developers of the Xbox Live Arcade Game, Fez and Microsoft Game Studios). According to Ars Technica, Polytron “released a patch intended to fix some outstanding gameplay and performance issues with Fez.”
But the patch led to “causing their save files to appear as corrupted, in effect erasing their progress through the game.”
Polytron put up a patch and then Microsoft pulled it because they did not want the problem to spread but Polytron’s Phil Fish says it happened to less than 1 percent of the players. So rather than paying tens of thousands of dollars, he just decided to release an apology to that 1% and move on.
Microsoft released this statement:
“Polytron made the decision not to work on an additional update for Fez," Microsoft Game Studios says in support of Polytron's decision. "While we do not disclose the cost of Title Updates, we did offer to work with Trapdoor (the second publisher next to Microsoft Game Studios) to make sure that wasn’t a blocking issue.”
Now we get to day-one patches that fix facets of the game before you even play the game. Last October, Assassin’s Creed 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter received day-one patches. Assassin’s Creed 3’s patch fixed several bugs and crash fixes, which is “normal” in this day and age. However, Medal of Honor: Warfighter has a much more extensive list of fixes and tweaks to: User experience, weapons, visual polish, miscellaneous fixes, multiplayer gameplay, singleplayer gameplay, and the list goes on and on and on. That to me is unacceptable and speaks volumes about Electronic Arts more than the developer, Danger Close.
Follow me on Twitter @MaroonandGamer or send me an email at shfawcet@asu.edu
