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Reader Discussion: Will Ease Of Sharing Footage Change The Way Publishers View Glitches?
People have been capturing and sharing game footage for years, but with the advent of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 it’s easier than ever. Players don’t have to purchase and connect any additional hardware to do it now; both consoles automatically buffer gameplay in the background, which can be captured, edited, and posted online. That means that users can share embarrassing bugs and errors with the press of a button. Will that capability provide extra motivation for patches and fixes?
I’ll pick on Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag for a minute. I’ve gleefully captured a few of the sillier moments in the game, and it appears I’m not alone. For whatever reason, I haven’t been tempted to delve into the footage and post some of my most impressive moments, such as winning a naval battle against all odds or assassinating a heavily guarded target without alerting anyone. Instead, I’ve snickered while editing clips of people flopping around after being killed or guards fatally stepping off towers for absolutely no reason.
Glitches aren’t anything new – we mark our favorites every year, and we’ll have a new installment to the Glitchies in a few days. But I do wonder if publishers will take some of these bugs more seriously now that nearly every player has the ability to share them. It’s going to be increasingly hard for companies to wave off concerns as being isolated incidents when people are not only able to reproduce some of those glitches, but post them online for all the world to see.
What do you think? Will the ease of sharing bugs and glitches inspire more stringent QA and post-release fixes?
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