Unfortunately, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed suffers from a multitude of problems and bugs after launch. The gaming media and player community all across cyber space has unleashed its collective wrath on Ubisoft with great fervor. Despite the initial promise of Assassin’s Creed Unity, an unpolished and imperfect product was released. Unfortunately, the change in game’s release date from October to November last September was not enough to provide the game the level of polish a title like this deserves and needs. My hope was that the delay by Ubisoft would give the development team additional time to smooth out any bugs. That did not happen. In cases like these, one laments: why are major publishers so willing to risk public rejection and the storm of releasing a broken AAA game title.
The obvious answer to the question is greed and the almighty dollar. However, more than that, companies like Ubisoft must fill stock quotas to fill and answer to investors. Stockholders and financial investors do not care about Metacritic scores. They care about the bottom line and filling the coffers. I fear this is where common sense goes out the window with the bigger decision makers. Big publishers need to meet certain financial quarterly goals, and they count on big game releases to fulfill those ends. Based on what happened with Unity, the development team bit off more than it could chew and did not have enough time to finish out the proper vision of Assassin’s Creed Unity for first next-gen installment of the franchise.
Another major problem concerns patches and downloads. I am not opposed to the idea of patches, downloads and updates after launch. However, it seems that more and more patches have become a safety net for developers and publishers to fall back on. Major game titles can now be tweaked weekly or patched incessantly after launch. Ubisoft recently started a live updates blog to inform players of fixes and patches that are being worked on or made to Unity. The game came out days ago, and the Ubisoft team is already having to tinker with ways to fix and repair the bugs in the game. Why should a publisher release a slick, polished and complete AAA gaming experience when it rushes out a buggy, unfinished product? With the progression of game patches, the game can be continually worked on post-launch. I am not trying to suggest anything as radical as doing away with patches. I am merely pointing out that the patch system provides a safety net to developers and publishers; and the safety net is not always well deserved.
The biggest issue of all is that despite all the warnings and outcry over a big game release that is full of bugs or “broken,” publishers can still get away with releasing the game and probably break even. Look at SEGA’s Aliens: Colonial Marines. Regardless of all the hardcore vitriol against the game, Colonial Marines still sold about 1.4 million copies (per VGChartz.com). Unfortunately, a publisher could release a bad game that can still be seen as a successful seller. Although there are now shockwaves with Unity, I do not see a major shake-up with these issues happening anytime soon.
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