Back before the rise of the internet, games launched in a very different state. It’s hard to implement fixes post-release, and game testing had to be near airtight. A game that shipped was going to be the game that people played. Updates to later printings could’ve happened; the changes contained within were often so small that they escaped the notice of most players.
The New Normal
Today, we’re in the age of a ‘release now, patch later’ philosophy. This can be the result of increasing complexity in games and difficulty in testing. Other times, it’s the result of publishers pushing unrealistic release dates of developers under the belief that initial poor impressions can later be recovered. Whatever the reason and intent, the result of this process can be frustrating for players.
A famous example of a rushed release came last generation with the release of Street Fighter 5. Lacking story modes and the compelling gameplay hardcore fighting game fans expected, SF5 provided an enormous reputation hit to developer Capcom. On the other hand, it also lit a fire for the developers to create a better product. SF5, at the end of its lifespan, was a very different game, full of content and widely loved. The issues with SF5 at launch also led Capcom to invest more heavily in the launch of Street Fighter 6 in 2023, which arrived to universal acclaim.
To Evolve Or Stagnate
The other side of the patching coin comes from the updates that combine fixes with gameplay changes or additions. These can repair holes that cause complications in gameplay, introduce new content, and make titles more reliable or performant. Evolutionary changes can again run the gamut, where some can update entire systems and save the games from extinction, while others can drive away those who enjoyed what originally made a property great.
In the related field of online casino gaming, the games used to run on a platform called Flash, which eventually became obsolete. Every online casino game had to be patched to work on newer HTML5-based technologies when this happened. This gave rise to a newer generation of more reliable, accessible, and efficient online titles, like today’s live dealer games for Canada available today. These games, like Lightning Roulette and Mega Ball, have raised the bar on what online casino gaming can do, making the overall market healthier.
Those games improved because of the updates, playing better on PC, mobiles, and every other device thanks to the changes. On the trickier side of the equation, we have the famous example set years ago by the MMORPG Star Wars Galaxies. Patches here developed to streamline gameplay were seen as oversimplifying for many players. The once rare and always overpowered Jedi class became commonplace, dozens of complex abilities were cut down in the name of simplification, and the feel of the game suffered as a result. This spelt the end of Galaxies and what was one of the greatest MMO experiments of its time.
Do Patches Matter?
The one central takeaway we have from the age of patches is that they’re tools. Like any tool, they’re not necessarily good or bad. Rather, the advantages and disadvantages of patches depend on how they’re used. Used negatively, they can be a scapegoat for poor design practices. Used positively, patches can save games and improve them far beyond their roots. The only thing we know for sure is that we’d prefer to avoid more 100-gigabyte day-one patch downloads.
