In the Last 5 Years, I Haven't Played a Game That Didn’t Have a Fault.

Do you remember the good old days when you would buy a new game from your local video game distributor?

There was never a need to download additional assets in order to fix certain faults or bugs. Gamers were able to simply buy and play a game without having to worry about potential bugs interfering with their experience.

This brings me to the state of games nowadays. It seems like every new game that has been released recently always has some type of game-breaking fault that hinders players' experiences for a while until it has to be fixed via a game update.

Even after that fault is fixed, somehow, additional bugs keep surfacing, which either ruin the experience or give certain players an unfair advantage.

This type of thing isn't even exclusive to multiplayer games. Multiple single-player games I’ve purchased recently have almost always had some type of major fault, which subsequently ruined the initial experience and demotivated me to continue playing even after the issue was fixed.

Here are a few examples of the biggest faults in games I’ve played in the past few years. I also wear my designer and media hats while making these comments.

1 — Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is an action RPG developed by CD Projekt Red which was released at the end of 2020. It was initially announced back in 2012 but went through multiple delays in development.

After gamers began to grow impatient, CDPR apparently decided to rush the final development process in order to release the game as soon as possible.

Unfortunately, this means they didn't forgo enough playtesting since the state in which the game was released was an absolute disaster.

There were so many bugs and glitches that most players couldn't play through the story without being interrupted by some stupid visual or technical fault.

Personally, I experienced a number of visual glitches, which made me feel as though I was playing a pre-alpha version of the game instead of the final commercial version.

Additionally, many players, including myself, could even get the game running properly. At launch, the optimization of the game was so bad that even people like me, who had a more than capable PC, couldn't even get the game to run at a stable 60 FPS.

In order to actually play the game at a stable FPS, I had to lower all of my graphical settings and even set my resolution to 720p.

Having to play a modern RPG on a very powerful computer at that resolution seriously demotivated me to continue playing.

I didn't end up getting back into the game until a few months after most of the bugs were fixed. At that point, the initial excitement for the game was gone.

I recently started playing again after watching Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which is an incredible Japanese anime-style cartoon set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe.

But my motivation to play still didn't match the amount during its initial release.

2 — No Man’s Sky

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival game developed by Hello Games., which was released in 2016. Although it didn't have that many bugs or glitches, it did have faults in the sense that what we got was very different from what was promised.

During development, one of the features that HG promised was procedurally generated planets. Planets would generate differently in each universe depending on their distance to the sun.

With closer planets being warmer and further away planets being colder. These planets would even have procedurally generated creatures with different features based on the type of planets they inhabited.

But unfortunately, these promises were not kept since the generation of the planets, and the creatures didn't seem to follow a pattern or algorithm. It was just a huge mess with different characteristics mashed together to create a “unique” generation.

Additionally, HG promised a procedurally generated universe with up to “18 quadrillions” planet possibilities within the universe. This sounded absolutely amazing before the game was released, but it was quick to disappoint.

Instead of allowing players to explore a huge universe with multiple different procedurally generated planets, what players actually received was a huge deception.

Once you left a system, you were unable to re-visit the planets you discovered in that system. It would just be deleted, and the new system would be created.

Instead of having this huge universe to explore, players essentially had an Etch-A-Sketch-like universe that would delete the previous system if they wished to explore a different one.

After the massive backlash the game received, fortunately, HG actually decided to try to fix the players' experience. They updated the game with additional features which were originally promised and are continuously releasing new content.

3 — New World

New World is an action-combat MMORPG developed by Amazon Game Studios, which was released at the end of 2021. New World is a game I still actively play on a daily basis, but even I can’t ignore its very rocky launch.

Even though New World had a very successful launch with around a million players after the game's release, many of those players left due to game-breaking bugs and a lack of communication from the development team.

The first major issue was the stability of the game. Even though I didn't experience too much of a hindrance to my gameplay, there were multiple posts I saw on Reddit of people claiming their GPUs overheated and failed while attempting to run New World. This issue was, of course, fixed immediately, but the damage was still done.

Additionally, there were a number of bugs and glitches which seriously affected the player experience. One of which was a ridiculous in-game money exploit that allowed players to duplicate their money.

I wasn't affected very much by these bugs since I was just working on leveling my character with a few friends, which is the reason I continued to play through it. But almost all of the people who were affected just ended up leaving.

On top of all that, in the first few months of its release, New World didn't have very much of an endgame. Many endgame players got bored within a week of reaching the max level since there was not that much to do.

Of course, a year later, AGS added a bunch of content and fixed a majority of the bugs, and even included some QOL (quality of life) features.

But the damage was done since a majority of the initial player base still hasn't returned to the game, even after multiple interesting content updates.

Final words

Although many modern games are released with at least a few faults that may hinder the players' experience, that doesn't mean we are going to stop playing altogether.

We just want developers to spend a bit more time working out the kinks with additional playtesting.

But I think I speak on behalf of most gamers when I say we don’t mind if new video games take longer to develop. As long as when they’re released, there aren't any major faults that may hinder our experiences.

I understand that multiplayer games can be very hard to thoroughly playtest due to a bunch of different unexpected variables. But that shouldn't be an issue for single-player games that don't have any multiplayer elements.

I just hope that in the future, gamers won't have to go through too much disappointment when they get their hopes up for a new unique game.

If you enjoy my post, please consider following my profile since I plan to post about exciting gaming-related news and talk about technology, design, and social media in my stories.

With that being said, thank you for reading my post, and have a good one.

The original version of this story was published on another platform.

About the Author

I write articles in my field covering gaming, filmmaking, media, technology, and design. You can subscribe to my account to get notifications when I post on Medium and Vocal Media. I support Illumination Integrated Publications as an editor and moderate the Slack Workspace, where you can share your Vocal Stories with thousands of members free of charge. I own and manage two publications, one for gaming and one for YouTube. You may join via my referral link if you are new to Medium. You can also join Vocal Media to share your inspiring stories. I look forward to reading your posts on both platform.