A Bug's Life: Why We Forgive Some Glitchy Games and Criticise Others

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim can launch with characters running under the floor, giants smashing you until you reach orbit, and NPCs following you out of their homes or into yours just to keep a conversation. Yet, we loved that game when it launched and we love it now. Cyberpunk 2077, on the other hand, got absolutely mauled by critics and fans alike when it launched. The game may be one of the best RPGs you can play right now, but it suffered for years because of that bad rep.

On paper, though, we surely should have had the same reaction to both games. Bugs are bad. They're a sign a game is unfinished, they can break immersion, and they can even lead to progression being outright blocked. And yet, for some games, we don't care about them, while in others we find them to be the root of all evil. What makes us flip-flop like that? Why can we still, decades on, not decide whether we can give buggy games a pass? Hopefully today I can shed some light on this topic.

What you might be thinking right out of the gate is that today's audience is much harsher than the gamers that accepted Skyrim into their hearts well over a decade ago. I'd say you're right about that, at least in a way. If a game launches with bugs now, people are much less likely to tousle its hair and see glitches as a simple part of its charm. But, this still happens. Baldur's Gate III was a mess in places at launch, so much so that Larian believed the game would get 6/10 reviews across the board. Yet, it remains one of the best-reviewed games of the 2020s. Bugs are largely gone from it, but they were there at release and largely we didn't care. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was somewhat of a similar case, with fans and critics largely willing to ignore the bugs for one reason or another.

So, we can't just blame uptight modern gamers or a change in reception to bugs on who gets a pass. Instead, we've got to look at the games themselves. Now, as with most subjective mediums, each game has to be judged on a case-by-case basis. There are a multitude of factors that may or may not make a release buggy, and just as many if not more factors that determine an audience's reception. However, if I went over every reason and game, I think I might be here until 2027. I've instead brought some key elements that can be found in all the games so far to discuss.

The first thing we'll talk about is the overall quality of a game. Bugs in this sense are a bit like a red flag for a potential boyfriend or girlfriend. They're gorgeous, but they pick their nose. Do you see what I'm getting at? Bugs in this sense are the rough skin like the first layer of an onion. If you peel them back, what have you got? In the case of Skyrim or Baldur's Gate III, you're left with an all-timer video game, which is why they've managed to succeed despite their rough starts. Cyberpunk 2077 can also be a great example here, as a lot of folks understood that CD Projekt Red had something special. It's just that the game was thrown under far too many bugs compared to the aforementioned games, which meant that it was harder to see what CDPR was cooking. Also, the performance sucked, which meant people had two outlets for their rage. On that point, we've got to remember that games have multiple things that can go wrong for them. Bugs are just one negative factor, but if they're the cherry on the top of a garbage cake, they're not going to help make matters any better. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was bad slop, and would have been slop no matter whether it was buggy or not. In short, if the game you've got is great underneath, then people will let bugs go here and there, so long as they don't dampen the experience too much.

This leads me onto my next point, which is the severity of the bugs in a game. Progression blockers, crash-inducing glitches, immersion-breaking visual flops, they all suck to see and can really ruin a good few hours of gaming. When bugs are this bad, they rarely get a pass, but even so they can be forgotten about so long as they're not too severe. If one questline or one NPC is the root of these awful interactions, then players can know to steer clear of them until a bug is fixed. If however, you don't know when your save file might be randomly corrupted, or some large aspect of the world like the lighting or environments never look right, then you'll feel less like a player and more like a playtester for a project in its early stages. What helps in modern times is how players can expect much more communication from developers, which means that creators can extend a bit of goodwill by saying certain issues will be fixed promptly. However, that goodwill only lasts so long, and if players find a game unplayable, they're unlikely to persist with it even if the game beneath the bugs is a potential GOTY winner.

A final main factor I'll discuss is the humour in bugs. No one's laughing when they see a black screen before their game crashes, but how many viral videos have you seen of a Bethesda bug? Or early Baldur's Gate III shenanigans? When bugs are funny and not too ruinous on the overall experience of a game, then they can actually draw players in rather than push them away. Being viral is a huge thing nowadays, and while no one should be making their games buggy in the hopes people laugh at them, sometimes accidentally they can turn into a great selling point. It's why even today you can find a lot of Skyrim's bugs out in the wild. They're seen as part and parcel of the experience for some games, but only a select few can get away with it.

I'm not sure I see us ever developing a proper gamer law around what we think of bugs. Gamers are too fickle and like what they like until they don't like it anymore. That said, with so many games coming out nowadays, and so many titles taking longer and longer to release, the space for buggy but charming games is rapidly thinning. You've either got other things to play or feel so shunned after waiting 5-10 years for a new release only for it to turn out buggy that you'll just move on. I am and always will be a bug forgiver, but in an age when you might have to wait a year until after a game launches for it to be bug-free, you kind of have to learn to get snug in a rug with some bugs.