Players less concerned by bugs than bad game design, study finds

Armenius

Armenius

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Interesting article on Games Industry.biz talks about the results of an empirical study of game reviews on the Steam platform.

Key takeaways from negative reviews:
  • Only 17% mentioned bugs
  • 57% noted game design issues
  • Overall, found to be useful to developers, containing fewer "not helpful" statements and higher proportion of qualified negative feedback than positive reviews
On positive reviews:
  • 42% mentioned bugs, suggesting that bugs don't necessarily lead to a negative review
  • 29% provided cons in addition to the pros
  • 7% mentioned bugs
On reviews, overall:
  • 71% contained statements of emotion without providing a specific reason and were therefore not helpful
  • 42% contained what was considered valuable feedback with qualified statements
  • Only 8% contained any mention of bugs
The data in aggregate was a snapshot taken in March 2016 of 6,224 games with 10,954,956 reviews. I feel that this sufficiently argues against the prevailing narrative that user reviews are made for ulterior motives and/or are not useful.

Study: An Empirical Study of Game Reviews on the Steam Platform (requires paid membership)
https://www.researchgate.net/public...l_Study_of_Game_Reviews_on_the_Steam_Platform

Gamesindustry.biz article:
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/artic...rned-by-bugs-than-bad-game-design-study-finds
 
Well, yeah it makes sense as people nowadays are complete morons. If I buy a game and I find bugs and glitches, I request a refund straight away. I'm not paying full price to be a beta tester.
 
Depends. Game breaking bugs like can't complete a quest or loses saves, that's a big nope. Things that happen in say a Bethesda game like Fallout/Elder Scrolls I find funny.

Prepare for Red Dead Redemption 2 to have lots of bugs.
 
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I'd be curious to see the relationship between purchase and release cross referenced with reports of bugs vs gameplay.

I can't remember the last time I bought a steam game within 3 months of release, and i imagine by then any major bugs are reported and either fixed or being worked on.
 
polonyc2 said:
bugs can be fixed...bad game design cannot...therefore I agree with the survey
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Sure it can, does not mean it will happen. FFIV for example got redone to great results. They also redid most of DOOM 2016 as the original design was subpar.

The problem with bad game design is that it is not necesarily bad just not what the player wanted. Too many entiteled players want that every game is to be tailored specifically to them or it is bad iso looking for the games they like.
 
Denpepe said:
Sure it can, does not mean it will happen. FFIV for example got redone to great results. They also redid most of DOOM 2016 as the original design was subpar.

The problem with bad game design is that it is not necesarily bad just not what the player wanted. Too many entiteled players want that every game is to be tailored specifically to them or it is bad iso looking for the games they like.
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Those game design changes happened before the game was released. Games very rarely have changes made to its design post-release, and when changes do happen they don't change the game in any significant way.

Yes and no on your second point. I have seen people argue that a game design or feature of it is bad because it prevents them from playing said game how they want or expect instead of adapting to the way the designers intended. However, there can be a conflict to where the game designers themselves do not have an understanding of why genre tropes are the way they are, which goes to game theory and the psychology of conflict and challenge when people play games. The designers want to be different, so create change for the sake of change instead of trying to engage players in the best possible way. My anecdotal experience is that most reviews I read contain legitimate criticisms when it comes to gameplay systems, but nearly all of them do have what could be considered "entitled opinions."
 
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Denpepe said:
Sure it can, does not mean it will happen. FFIV for example got redone to great results. They also redid most of DOOM 2016 as the original design was subpar.

The problem with bad game design is that it is not necesarily bad just not what the player wanted. Too many entiteled players want that every game is to be tailored specifically to them or it is bad iso looking for the games they like.
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I'm sick and tired of entitled developers who want to tell the player what they should like and how they should play games. For example Adrian Chmielarz and Cliff Blezinsky two of the worst offenders of this kind, who will insist that their game is good even if everyone hates it. And they'll go as far as calling people stupid for not wanting what they think they should.

There are a few cases where design changes can work and improve games, and there are always a few people who will have an opposing opinion but generally speaking if gamers reject your game then there is something definitely wrong with it, it's not just "player entitlement". Of course there are the occasional exception when players reject your game without even trying it, like in the case of infinite warfare. But that's about the only case when I can truly blame player entitlement for a game's failure.

Even Mass Effect Andromeda which was portrayed in an unfairly negative light was a very different case, I don't even know what to call it, when a few bugs were spun out of proportion and made to look like the entire game was badly designed and buggy, when that was definitely not true. That's not player entitlement, that's a few loud community leaders condemning something, and then the rest just picked up the line from there.
 
PC games have been buggy since the dawn of time. As long as it isn't game-breaking or overly frequent I'm just willing to deal. We're still light years past what PC games were like in the 90's.
 
Domingo said:
PC games have been buggy since the dawn of time. As long as it isn't game-breaking or overly frequent I'm just willing to deal. We're still light years past what PC games were like in the 90's.
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Back in the day, games were far less complex than they are now. Even games that feature a relatively high amount of scripted content are still fairly complicated. Bugs and various issues are pretty much unavoidable.
 
Domingo said:
PC games have been buggy since the dawn of time. As long as it isn't game-breaking or overly frequent I'm just willing to deal. We're still light years past what PC games were like in the 90's.
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Back in the day, games were far less complex than they are now. Even games that feature a relatively high amount of scripted content are still fairly complicated. Bugs and various issues are pretty much unavoidable.
 
Armenius said:
Those game design changes happened before the game was released. Games very rarely have changes made to its design post-release, and when changes do happen they don't change the game in any significant way.

Yes and no on your second point. I have seen people argue that a game design or feature of it is bad because it prevents them from playing said game how they want or expect instead of adapting to the way the designers intended. However, there can be a conflict to where the game designers themselves do not have an understanding of why genre tropes are the way they are, which goes to game theory and the psychology of conflict and challenge when people play games. The designers want to be different, so create change for the sake of change instead of trying to engage players in the best possible way. My anecdotal experience is that most reviews I read contain legitimate criticisms when it comes to gameplay systems, but nearly all of them do have what could be considered "entitled opinions."
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FFxiv was blowned up and completely changed about 2 years after release. Still was a shitty game tho. They just made it simplier and repetitive.
 
Well, I am not going to be popular for saying this, but most gamers are not good game designers. Most gamers do not think through what they think they want. So I take any study along those lines with a grain of salt.

One of the things a developer can fall prey to and it is the single biggest failure in game design, is not knowing when to quit. You can drive any good game mechanism into tedium if you are not careful. On the other hand, if the game mechanism happens too quickly, then the player gets no satisfaction from the accomplishment.

It is all about walking a fine line. Very few games do it throughout the entire game. It is an intangible to most gamers, which is why most gamers are not good game designers.
 
vegeta535 said:
FFxiv was blowned up and completely changed about 2 years after release. Still was a shitty game tho. They just made it simplier and repetitive.
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And here's a good example why you should always get more than 1 review as the changes to FF14 from 1.0 to 2.0 allowed it to reach almost the same level of player count as WoW and is still being updated.
 
BSmith said:
Well, I am not going to be popular for saying this, but most gamers are not good game designers. Most gamers do not think through what they think they want. So I take any study along those lines with a grain of salt.

One of the things a developer can fall prey to and it is the single biggest failure in game design, is not knowing when to quit. You can drive any good game mechanism into tedium if you are not careful. On the other hand, if the game mechanism happens too quickly, then the player gets no satisfaction from the accomplishment.

It is all about walking a fine line. Very few games do it throughout the entire game. It is an intangible to most gamers, which is why most gamers are not good game designers.
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Most gamers are not game designers at all, but you don't have to be a chef either to tell if the food tastes funny.
 
M76 said:
Most gamers are not game designers at all, but you don't have to be a chef either to tell if the food tastes funny.
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I think a more accurate analogy would be, you ordered something you had never had before and you did not like it. Just because a gamer does not like something about a game does not make it a bad thing to have in the game. It might just be the gamer is not geared to that game or feature.

That is not to say there are some lousy games out there. There are, but the lion share of complaints I hear from gamers always has the phrase, "....you need to do this....." in it. Most of the time those are due to the player not getting exactly what they thought they should from the game.

Putting it another way. I have run into far too many gamers who think a game should be played one way and if it is not, then they think it sucks and demand changes be made to cater to how they want to play the game.
 
BSmith said:
Putting it another way. I have run into far too many gamers who think a game should be played one way and if it is not, then they think it sucks and demand changes be made to cater to how they want to play the game.
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How many times did developers actually change games based on player request? If a game is good it will find it's audience If the majority of people want the game to be changed then it either sucks or it was marketed to the wrong people.

There are designers who put pointless changes in their games deviating from the norm, that doesn't make the game better, just different, for the sake of being different.

It's not that I ordered something I never had before, but order something that I had a thousand times before, and now it tastes completely different.
 
I do not disagree with what you are saying. I just do not agree that players should be the voice developers listen to when designing a game or when they need to make changes. Yes, most gamers can say, "I do not like that" and that is fine. Trying to figure out why they do not like it is the responsibility of the game designer/developer. If they fail in figuring it out,then they wre not very good to begin with and the game was destined to fail anyway. Most gamers are not capable of elaborating on the real reason they do not like something. It is usually a very superficial approach without much thought into maintaining balance in the game.

This is a multi-headed beast. There are bad game designers, there are bad game features, and there are players who think they can design games. There are developers who cow-tow to players requests and end up with a horrible game.

There is good and bad at every step.
 
1) Most bugs only affect a portion of the player base. I have probably 6-7 games that the internet raged over game breaking bugs that I played start to finish without incident before said bugs got patched.

2) Bad game design is there for everyone, and a game design decision that is divisive rather than seen by the majority as either good or bad is rare.

3) Many bugs only affect a portion of a game, perhaps in certain circumstances, or with certain settings turned on. Many, MANY bugs have workarounds that aren't horrible and let you enjoy the rest of the game other than that one spot.
 
M76 said:
I'm not going to find bugs in a badly designed game because I won't even play it.
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Yeah, bug-riddled game will be an instant uninstall for me. I'm much more likely to stick around and comment on the game's design if I can play it without it crashing every ten minutes.
 
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