Science says, players care not about bugs

[NikKotovski]

@Yzneftamz

I’ll wager a possible explanation here: People who try out a game, and soon dislike it (enough to leave a negative review) don’t like the fundamental aspects of the game, and don’t even try to get deeper in the game and thus notice the bugs. So, they only mention the gameplay aspects of why they don’t like the game. The people who like the basics delve deeper into the game, and start looking beyond the gameplay, thus noticing the little troubles and bugs. They are also the ones who actually want the game to get better, and so bring attention to those bugs.

Yep, you’re right, and this assumption is even supported by the research itself.

The playing hours for negative reviews are significantly less than the positive reviews, with a small effect size. The median number of playing hours for positive reviews is 15.5 hours, while the median number of playing hours for negative reviews is 6.6 hours.

But this is exactly what I am trying to say! Idk how you don’t understand this, that you’re supporting my point of view: gameplay is many times more important for players than bugs; people are going to be pretty satisfied with the game despite minor bugs, if they like it in general.

Yet again, even researches say:

We examined the negative reviews with bugs, and found that most of the reported bugs in negative reviews can block players from playing or finishing the game, i.e., they are severe bugs. The most common reported bugs are: incompatibility, crashes and bugs blocking users from playing

So yet again, players almost exclusively dislike the game only if bugs are so severe, that they can’t play!

Also read this:

We manually examined the 63 negative reviews with the longest 1% playing hours. We observed that many of the players who posted such reviews are actually satisfied with the general idea of the game. However, the gaming community (e.g., players who ruin the gameplay), the quality of the latest updates, or the pricing of Downloadable Contents (DLC) of the games disappointed these loyal players, indicating that a badly maintained gaming community, or a poorly planned update may ruin the loyalty of the player base.

So even people, who disliked the game after spending significant time in it, did not care about bugs.

No one cares about any freaking bugs, as long as they are able to play the game! Neither those, who are satisfied with the game, nor those who are not.

@Yzneftamz

But also reducing a study’s results to simple yes/no statement is rarely useful.

@Yzneftamz

And finally, a reminder that correlation does not imply causation, and even when there is some, the causality may be different than what you think…

If you read the review before posting, which you clearly didn’t do, you would see, that their research involved much more, that finding correlations and building graphics. And the quotes I’ve given prove this once more.