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No Barriers to Fun!
We met our friend Giddeon at the AbleGamers Accessibility Arcade in Atlantic City, New Jersey. When he first sat down with the AbleGamers crew, Giddeon didn't want to play any games. He told us that with his disability gaming was difficult. Giddeon has a rare disease that caused the growth of his arms .. Read More -
A Window to the World
Shepherd University invited the AbleGamers Foundation to come on campus and do one of our Accessibility Arcades for the students and local disabled community. The event was a roaring success with hundreds of children and adults coming out to see the technology and in some cases experience gaming the first time. Read More
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About the AbleGamers Foundation
Since 2004, the AbleGamers Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity, has served more than 56 million members of the disabled community by advocating greater access in video games. Today, AbleGamers is a leader in the development of equipment, programs and services to those living with disabilities, hardships, and quality-of-life issues that are a result of chronic illness or trauma. It is our goal to ensure that all people, regardless of their disability, can use gaming as a tool to have enriched social experiences with friends, family, and the world at large.
{sidebar id=1}By now, anyone paying any amount of attention to any reputable gaming site is aware that Fallout: New Vegas, released on Tuesday, October 19, has bugs and glitches in it. How buggy?
Fallout: New Vegas is so buggy that Bethesda Softworks, the game’s publisher, announced patches were in development on Wednesday, October 20. PC gamers received the first patch on Thursday, October 21, with console gamers getting their patch on Friday, October 22.
Instead of release week press for this AAA game focusing on glowing reviews and outstanding game mechanics, the press was focused on frame rate issues, lag, spawning problems, save file corruption and other concerns.
There’s just one problem – in my experience with the game so far, the patch appears to have made the game less stable and more prone to game-breaking bugs.
While glitches and bugs in a game as large as Fallout: New Vegas are, to some extent, expected and understandable due to the game’s size and scope, these bugs are not the result of standing on, for example, the single pixel in the game that will cause a random, catastrophic failure. Many of these bugs occur in basic gameplay, such as playing mini-games, buying and selling items with traders, avatars which are not fully rendered, disappearing game interfaces and odd mob spawning (in rocks and other terrain).
While some of these bugs can be fixed by restarting the game, others may cause more serious problems which require players to turn their consoles off or clear the console’s cache. In the worst cases, bugs can corrupt a player’s save files, forcing them to start over. Moreover, it appears that these glitches occur in all versions for all platforms.
Although I’m working on an accessibility review for the Xbox 360 version and believe patches will eventually stabilize the game enough to allow people to play it without incident (or at least with minimal incident), at this point, players should not purchase Fallout: New Vegas for any platform until these issues are resolved.
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AbleGamers Foundation News
- Disabled Gamers to Appear at First Booth at PAX-E 2012
- Game Accessibility in Videogames Wins National AAPD Award
- The AbleGamers Foundation Awards the 2011 Accessible Mainstream Game of the Year Award. May the Force Be with You.
- Landmark Controller for the Disabled Unveiled at PAX Prime
- AbleGamers.com Launches First of its Kind Video Game Review Section with Accessibility at its core.
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Comments
First make your basis, and then work out your content while releasing it ep by ep. Provided there is a reasonable time between episodes and the end price for full game/season isn't higher than a new retail game. (Unless it's longer of course.)
Seems like developers have become more lazy thanks to the ability to update/patch games after launch.
it is finished too short before official release so it is not possible to allow a group of players to go into the game and play it as customers would do. It's rather impossible because a thorough play through takes time and dedication. [fallout three took me about three weeks.] if a company wants to stick with their official release date, they have to Skip this process at the cost of reputation and revenue.
One big player in the business is the customer who is mostly the first who stomps the ground and starts crying and protesting if a long-awaited game is not released the day it was initially announced for.
that said I strongly believe that game developers purposely abuse their customers as a huge group of beta testers that gives feedback for free. If the producer quickly starts to release patches customers won't be angry anymore. After a while the game will be playable and sales will raise again.
I don't know for sure but I bet that developers and publishers calculated what will be more expensive. it seems to be rather affordable to disappoint prerelease and early bird buyers and to not invest in a thorough beta testing session. I'm not saying that they don't test but what I am saying is that they seem not to have tested their games in a somewhat real life situation. If they did, the game were not that buggy. It's not like 'oh, I have found a glitch' which is totally normal and understandable. It's rather like 'how many minutes can I play before bumping into the next glitch?'.
Players have to shut up if a company can't stick to it's official release date, unless it is a halflife two'ish handling as shown by valve.
Companies should either invest in beta testing or release a more or less untested game at a lower price accompanied with quick patching.
The fact that almost all of them are now bought up by one of the 3 main US based giants tells you the rest.
What I do not understand is why there isn't better quality control on the consoles. On pc it hurts the game maker, but on console it hurts that brand too. The whole pro about consoles was "pop in and play'. Now it's wait for patches or GOTY version. Suddenly being on console is a major drawback. Where we on PC can modify our files, use community patches and so on. The console users are stuck, and usually for quite some time.
(Btw, German based studios have a bad track record with me. Gothic, sacred, Divinity 2. All bugged beyond belief at release. And they always release a "gold" version later that is what the game should have been initially.)
I rarely buy games anywhere near release date, but I make exceptions for games such as this. I'll be putting this one off for several months now.
Am I the only one that is getting increasingly fedup with games being released with often alarming bugs and glitches in? I don't wish to disrespect any American people here, but I've found it to be predominant in US-developed games (not always, mind).
I don't know what the trading laws are in the US, but as far as the UK (and naturally a lot of Europe) goes, you buy a game with bugs like these, you're fully entitled to a full refund at the very least (the Sale of Goods Act states that goods must be "of satisfactory quality" and "fit for the purpose" of which you bought it.
I'm possibly a bit more astute and patient compared to the average game buyer, and I now treat any US-developed game until I've found out for sure it's not bugged - obviously this means that other, more sincere developers are losing income from me for the reason they're getting tarred with the same brush. I wonder how many other game buyers will start to think like me to some degree?
Apologies for this rant, but it's something I feel VERY strongly about. Also, if we the public sit back and let this continue, I find it quite likely it'll get worse.
Once more, I repeat that I intend no disrespect to Americans in any way.
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