Black November

This past month has seen us report more about bugs, server issues, patches and related news than any previous month we can remember. November is the biggest month for new games year after year, but 2014 has likely left a lot of gamers disappointed and frustrated simply because the games they bought weren't ready at launch.

So what's the reason? The pressure of the short-term quarterly earnings economy and a reluctance amongst publishers to miss out on the lucrative holiday season sales? An Unwillingness to spend money on quality assurance? The complexity of new-gen development and modern PCs? A general shift in attitude towards games as an on-going service as opposed to a boxed product that ships and remains as it is during its lifetime?

The easy answer is all of the above. Not getting a game like Assassin's Creed: Unity out before Black Friday in America would be detrimental to the next quarterly report for Ubisoft. Shifting its release to early December would likely cut the sales almost in half. In a way the insane amounts of money that changes hands in America during Black Friday is partly to blame for the situation.

While we've had a year with the new-gen consoles, it is clear that the transition and adaptation is still ongoing. We lost many fall releases to that much feared delay monster. Perhaps we ought to have lost a few more...

The attitude towards the audience is shifting on all levels in the industry. It didn't used to be uncommon to ship a game, put it in a fancy box, even if it was a horrible piece of software, and just hope you could recoup some of what you spent on it. These days this practice isn't as commonplace, largely a result of mid-tier publishers having been weeded out over the course of the last decade or so. However, the introduction of Early Access and with many games shipping with online components that could have done with proper testing, it could be that instead consumers are being used as paying beta testers, placated with the vague promise that "soon things will be better".

That's clearly not acceptable, and you wouldn't ever hear a major developer or publisher say it out loud, but as the time period between "finishing" a game and releasing it has been shortened, it helps usher in these bad practices. The number of moving parts that need to come together in the final months and the ripple effect when fixes are integrated is sometimes difficult to appreciate from the outside.

Whatever the reason is, in each of the various examples we've seen of botched launches, the end result is that the early adopters, the core gamers, those who have pre-ordered the game months prior to release, are the ones that suffer. And ultimately that risks ruining the longterm prospects of the franchises, brands and the developers involved.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection

Sure the campaigns have bugs. Perhaps it's only natural given the wildly different technical backgrounds each of the four games have and the various parties involved in getting them prepped for Xbox One. We could have forgiven wobbly physics and the odd problem or glitch. But when online multiplayer (given the scope of it is a rather massive part of the package) is basically unplayable due to massive matchmaking problems there really is no excuse.

343 Industries' Bonnie Ross took responsibility in a recent letter to the community, and noted that even the huge patch that was supposed to improve things has failed to do so: "we have encountered unexpected issues that were not apparent in our internal test environment and that have resulted in a frustrating experience".

It is an explanation, but it also leads to more questions. Why didn't they test their matchmaking system publicly prior to launch via a beta? And why wasn't this part of the game made available for testing during the review period? It feels as if Microsoft and 343i knew there would be problems, they just crossed their fingers and hoped it would hold up better. Wouldn't it be ironic if the Halo 5: Guardians beta shipped with functioning matchmaking prior to the matchmaking in The Master Chief Collection working satisfactory?

Assassin's Creed: Unity

The warning signs were there. Ubisoft shifted the release by two weeks putting their biggest title of the year in direct competition with their other big Q4 release, Far Cry 4. That's not a decision taken lightly and had it not been for the harsh Black Friday deadline they would likely have pushed it back further. As it stands it came out and while not quite as bad as Assassin's Creed III (pre-patch), it's still riddled with bugs and glitches (with the PC version being particularly rough).

The latest patch for the game landed this week, and Ubisoft reckons that it fixes a huge number of issues (around 300). It's the third update. How many more are we going to see before Unity is in the kind of shape you'd expect from a premium boxed product?

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Much like Unity, EA pushed the release date of Inqusition from October to November so they could polish it. And while Bioware's expansive fantasy-RPG had nowhere near the amount of problems as Ubisoft's game, it has its fair shares of problems and the old-gen versions really came up short in terms of quality. We've experienced bugs in the conversation system, and the tactical view combat simply isn't capable of properly handling different levels in the environment. We've played it on Xbox One (mainly), but the game also suffers from the typical performance related issues that we have grown accustomed to on PC as of late, and work on a patch is underway.

Grand Theft Auto V

Some would say it's unfair to include new-gen GTAV in this company, but even if the game runs really well there were issues with transferring your GTA Online account and with the day one patch that was pushed but didn't download (for some). The good news is that things were sorted quickly.

World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor

Blizzard's MMORPG found itself struggling with a massive influx of players at the launch of the latest expansion. It's pretty much what you'd come to expect, tons of returning players and servers scaled to handle the normal load during non-launch periods. The queues for the popular servers were at times ridiculous (our Portuguese Editor-in-Chief waited for 5 hours at one point) and unlike most other Blizzard launches the problems persisted for days.

Blizzard finds itself in a difficult position with these launches as investing to make sure the increased playerbase around launch is catered for is an expense that you likely won't see a return on. So it becomes a matter of scaling as much as possible, while still maintaining a structure that makes sense for the non-launch periods. Perhaps free server migration at times like this would be a good solution to allow people to play their recently bought game without having to wait in-line for hours just to find that the game outside of the starting area is struggling under the strain.

Driveclub

While Evolution Studios' PS4 exclusive launched in October, its problems linger even if online is now playable, likely a function of improvements made with patches and the fact that some players have simply grown tired of waiting for it to work and have now jumped ship.

We're still holding out hope that the PS Plus Edition will bring life to the online game once Sony and Evolution are comfortable with launching it. Fingers crossed it won't be too long now, and that when it comes online it won't be hit with the same problems the ruined the launch the first time around.

At the end of the day the only things that can bring about a change is a vote with the wallet. If you were disappointed with the quality of a product, don't pre-order the next game from the same source. There are practices and attitudes that need to change, but it's not down to chance that we're forced sum up a rather disappointing month that should have been the highlight of the year.