While reviewing Asgard’s Wrath 2 over the last few weeks, I encountered a few egregious bugs that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. I’m not one of those people who gets hung up on the occasional invisible floor or broken cutscene, but bugs aren’t always so easy to overlook, especially when they’re detrimental to the experience that developers intended you to have. Bugs can be funny and forgivable, but they can also be malicious, evil things that can make you feel like you’ve lost your mind and there’s no hope left in the world. It occurred to me that this spectrum isn’t something we often discuss, but having a shorthand to differentiate the severity of bugs could be useful. Not all bugs are created equal, so the way we talk about them should reflect the severity and impact they have on the game. Here’s my hierarchy of bug types from least to most severe
The first type of bug is so harmless that I would actually consider them to be a good thing, so I call them Level 0 bugs. These are the goofy ones that get passed around social media because they’re absurd and they make us laugh. Alternatively, we can call these Bethesda Bugs. Enemies T-Posing, NPCs doing strange and unexpected things, weird physics glitches that make people and objects defy the laws of gravity - these are all examples of good bugs. They’re funny, they don’t take much of anything away from our experience, and they remind us that making games is really hard. Games would be worse if there was no such thing as Level 0 bugs.
Level 1 bugs are only visual. Any kind of aliasing, miscoloration, draw distance issues, missing assets, or weird lighting falls under the scope of Level 1. These bugs may represent a lack of polish, but they don’t have much of an impact on the actual game and they’re usually fixed pretty quickly after launch. Visual bugs can be more serious if they are distracting, like a muzzle flash that’s too bright or a strobe effect that could trigger an epileptic reaction, but generally speaking visual bugs are going to be on the lowest tier of the severity chart.
One step above visual bugs are the bugs I like to call annoyances. These are the things that won’t impede you from playing the game, but definitely hinder the experience. These are things like perks on the skill tree that don’t actually do anything, getting shot or hit through walls, quest markers that point in the wrong direction, and unresponsive menus, to name just a few. When people describe a game as “buggy” these are usually the kinds of bugs they’re referring to, as everything lower down on the list tends to get a pass. They’re difficult to ignore, but they’re not hard to work around. It feels like most games released today start out with a handful of these Level 2 bugs.
Level 3 bugs are the ones that have a major impact on gameplay, and may even be severe enough to make you want to put the game down until they get fixed. They’re not game breaking necessarily, but they would require a tremendous amount of patience or commitment to finishing the game to look past. I consider any fully broken mechanic to be a Level 3 bug, as well as bugs that delete or undermine the progress you’ve made, such as defective checkpoints, corrupted saves, bosses that don’t die when you reduce their health to zero, collected items that disappear from your inventory, floors you frequently fall through, and especially anything that kills you in a way that’s inconsistent with the rules of the game. I also put broken cutscenes in this category, though others might consider that just an annoyance. This is the first level of severe bugs but it gets considerably worse from here.
The second-highest level, and this may be controversial, is reserved for true game breaking bugs. This is any bug that fully prevents you from progressing either permanently or until the game is reset. Quests that don’t progress the way they should, NPCs who won’t talk to you when they should, cutscenes won’t trigger, and any other bug that would otherwise stop you from moving forward in the game is considered a Level 4 bug. These are serious bugs that should be addressed immediately, but they’re still not the worst kinds of bugs.
Level 0 bugs make games better.
Finally we come to Level 5, the most severe type of bug you can encounter. This category is reserved for bugs that can only be described as pure evil. These bugs are more than just flaws in the game, they’re a scourge - a crime against humanity that exists to feed on your suffering.
Level 5 bugs will make you question your own sanity. The one I encountered in Asgard’s Wrath 2 - the impetus for this entire project - was a door that did not open when it should have, or more specifically, a puzzle that did not reward me when it was solved. Opening the door required a specific sequence of levers to be pulled in a certain order, and though I did that successfully, the door refused to open until I restarted the game.
The reason bugs like that are so malevolent is because they destroy the unspoken agreement we have with games that says they will follow the rules. Once that trust is broken, there are permanent consequences. For the rest of my time with Asgard’s Wrath 2, I could never be sure if I was solving a puzzle incorrectly, or if a Level 5 bug had cropped up. Whenever I got stuck my first instinct was to think there was something wrong with the game, which ruined my ability to problem solve and find the correct solution on my own.
Level 5 bugs are any that fill you with rage, despair, or otherwise break your trust in the game. Your entire opinion about a game can be shaped by a Level 5, and experiences with Level 5s can stick with you for life. These bugs are inherently sneaky. The longer it takes you to realize what you’re experiencing is a bug, the more likely it is to be a Level 5. This year’s Dead Space remake had a Level 5 that turned NPCs invisible. I spent an eternity walking in circles, trying to figure out where to go, until I eventually gave up and watched a video, at which point I discovered that a character I needed to talk to was standing in a corner, completely invisible in my game. I thought I was a moron, I was convinced I was too stupid to play this game, but it turned out to be a Level 5 making its best attempt to drive me out of my mind.
The hierarchy of bugs is not an exhaustive list, but a tool to help recognize the severity of the bugs you might encounter. Much like the DEFCON program, I offer this guide to help assess threats and prepare strategic defenses. In the event that you should encounter a Level 5 bug, remain calm, remember that you are safe and in control, and proceed with caution. Remember that bugs aren’t real and they can only hurt you if you let them.
