Should devs tell people about launch bugs in advance? “It’s an interesting problem” says Starfield and Skyrim designer
How do official Bethesda bug compilation videos coinciding with a game’s launch sound? Or at least, a proper list of known bugs on day one, to preempt any compilations created by vengeful players? Skyrim Lead Designer and Starfield Systems Designer Bruce Nesmith has spoken a little about the “interesting problem” of how open developers should be about technical issues on day one, given the expectation some players have that every game should be “flawless”.
When asked by Videogamer if lists of known bugs (Nesmith throws out ‘700’ as an example for Skyrim) should be shared with fans on launch “to temper expectations,” he responded:
It’s an interesting problem, because when you’re in marketing, what you’re looking to do is manage expectations. The players expectations are that the game is flawless, that it has no bugs. That is their expectation. You don’t have to like it, but it’s there. And you aren’t going to achieve it. So what marketing has to do is say, how can we get as close as possible to that expectation. How can we make it so these guys don’t hate us for what’s wrong and love us for what’s right?
“When a developer releases a game, they know all the things that are broken with it, these aren’t mysteries,” he continued. “I mean, every now and then you get a bug that’s like, ‘Holy s**t, I didn’t know that was going to happen’, but for the most part, you know it.”
“To have a bug free release is impossible. There is no game on the market that is bug free,” he continued, citing the amount of elements interacting with each other in their open worlds. To editorialise for a sec – this is a common issue with RPGs of a certain scope, and one that developers like Larian and Owlcat have remedied by launching their ambitious projects in some flavour of early access. It’s interesting how this reframes a playerbase’s relationship to both bugs and the developer as collaborative and exploratory, rather than antagonistic.
Bethesda have run early betas and other, more controlled forms of access prior to launch, but not what we might traditionally call early access. It could be that Bethesda simply aren’t set up for the kind of on-going community relationship proper early access requires, or perhaps they just want to preserve the excitement of a traditional, once-and-done release. In Starfield’s case, especially, there was also its place as a big Game Pass title, although whether this is fundamentally incompatible with early access, I’m not sure.
“I will be the first person to say that Bethesda Games could have a higher degree of polish,” Nesmith told Videogamer. “They have benefited, and when I was there I benefited, from providing such a wide and vast array of gameplay that a certain amount of lack of polish could be forgiven. Having an NPC run in place in front of a wall for a little while became acceptable because of the 17 things you could do with that NPC, whereas most games you’d be able to do two.”
Whatever your opinions on the breadth and freedom Bethesda’s worlds actually offer, I think it’s true that bugs in games like Skyrim and Fallout 3 were just accepted as part of the package – part of the cultural lore, even. To me, Bethesda’s bugs are like my cat waking me up early by sticking her paw up my right nostril. The same thing can either be unbelievably charming or massively infuriating, depending on whether you’re in the mood; if you’re actually enjoying the less tangible, less technical elements – atmosphere, story, and characters.
“That level of polish also comes at a price,” continued Nesmith . “Are you willing to let the game sit for six more months and be delayed six more months in order to try to polish it? You’re still not going to get perfection, it’s just going to be better. So at some point you have to make the decision to publish, and to publish something you know has bugs.”
It’s probably worth examining where the perception that “players expectations are that the game is flawless” comes from. Rising prices in a rough economy? Games being sold on their fidelity in a world where photo mode’s evil twin, the capture button, can easily put those claims to public scrutiny, within minutes of game being live? Collective memory of how a developer’s previous game ended up, rather than how it actually launched? It’s worth reading Edwin’s chat with Paradox CEO Mattias Lilja – who reckons players are less “accepting” right now that games will be fixed overall.