Assassin's Creed Unity, Halo, and the Broken State of Gaming

Editor's Note: A version of this article ran on Nov. 21, 2014.

As of this update, there have been plenty of patches for both games. GB after fatty GB, these games have improved a bit from launch, but are in no way perfect. It took more than a month to get these games in acceptable shape.

Anyone that's been following the news lately knows of the issues with current video game behemoth titles Assassin's Creed Unity and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Although hailed as two of the biggest releases of 2014 by their publishers and (in earnest) much of the gaming press, the botched arrivals of both of these titles opened up a much larger conversation about the industry.

Remember that time you looked forward to playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection and/or Assassin's Creed Unity, and your fandom was repaid with several GBs of broken?

Ubisoft, who a few weeks ago was declared the "new EA" by Forbes, has already rolled out several patches for AC: Unity to counteract gameplay gitches such as getting stuck in a cart or hanging off an invisible ledge in the sky. You can catch more of those glitches spread out across this article. If you want to know more about the glitches, check out our review of the game.

On the Halo front, there's still no perfect fix to matchmaking. It may take several minutes (or more) and several re-tries to get into a match on The Master Chief Collection. Poor matchmaking has really brought the experience down for some fans who try to jump into multiplayer as soon as they opened the box. Personally, I still think The Master Chief Collection is an amazing piece of fan service (as I said in my review back in November), but the broken multiplayer really hurts the experience. 

343 has had to apologize, and is giving away a ton of free stuff to players who stuck with the game, hoping that one day they'd be able to play a multiplayer match without first having a coffee break. 

There is a lot to be said about the broken state of gaming this year -- a year in which it seems we've faced a lot more disappointments than we're used to. Can we conclude that the gaming industry has moved to a new business model, one where console publishers push out games that aren't completely polished for a quick profit? PC has been doing this for quite some time, after all.

(I guess Ubisoft was right when they said women were too hard to animate.)

Steam's Early Access model allows smaller developers/publishers to release glitchy games onto the world for a profit. Yes, there's something good to be said about helping out your favorite developers finish their next game. Alphas/betas add an entirely new level of interaction between gamer and developer that we could've only dreamed of a few years back. But when a BIG publisher tries to do the same without telling us what they're up to, there's a problem. 

Not only have there been several cases of misleading the consumer this year (looking at you, Watch Dogs, Alien Isolation & The Sims 4) through dishonest marketing and manipulation of the press through strict NDAs and inaccurate game footage, but there is larger divide between companies that are willing to delay their games to ensure quality (Nintendo and Warner Bros. Interactive, for example) and those that want to make very quicky, easy bucks off franchising (Ubisoft, Activision, Electronic Arts, Microsoft Studios, etc.). Releasing a game a year isn't a sign of quality.

As long as gamers keep buying into the quantity model, the quality is just going to keep falling. Assassin's Creed, which has received several new installments on a yearly basis since 2009, was bound to burn out sometime. Also consider the poor reception of the latest Madden game, Assassin's Creed (both Unity and Rogue), Battlefield, etc. These are all good examples of publishers profiteering off of the loyal gamers. The same can be said for Call of Duty: Ghosts, which many have called devoid of original ideas. Luckily, Activision has at least taken on some new talent since then and released a game worthy of its fans. We have a review of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, as well.

What happened to the days when developers only had one shot to deliver a good game? For the last ten years or more, consoles have allowed developers to drop quick fixes to bugs in their games (PC developers have been able to do this since the stone age). While that capability is often met with glee from fans who just want to play the best non-glitchy game possible, it is frustrating to have to deal with games so broken that it's obvious there was no quality control. I can't remember the last time I purchased a game that didn't need a Day 1 patch before playing it. It's disrespectful to the players and fans that support the industry.

Maybe we (gamers and a press that honestly works for YOU) should stop fighting over what female indie developers are doing (making great games) and start focusing on the irresponsible companies that are feeding us spoonfuls of shit every year.

John Saavedra has lots of opinions he'd like to talk to you about on Twitter.