After reading Ian Jones' piece on the minecart boosters in Minecraft and how players were so upset about it being changed, it got me thinking about games are now living pieces of art. It used to be that the game you brought home from the store was just that, and if it was broken, maybe you got a refund at the store. Maybe. What was more likely to happen was that you would play the game, reach a broken part of it, and either slog through it or have progress impeded. Not anymore. With games being more digital and the Internet being involved, games can be updated at the drop of a hat, fixing issues and maybe producing more as well. At the same time, the idea of the patch may cause players to become very unhappy with the games they play. Cries of an aspect of a game being "OP", for overpowered, ring out with pleads for developers to fix this issue. Issues like this often accompany games that are multiplayer, such that, in theory, they ruin the game for those not using the OP item. Examples of such include certain guns like the Famas in COD: Black Ops 1 or the Golden Gun in Goldeneye. Touching on the topic of metagaming, players often make rules for those playing with them, such as "No Golden Gun", in order to keep competition fair. Of course, these rules are arbitrary, and people can come in and wreck all other players with their OP items, if they so choose. This is temporary now though, since items can be patched such that other items in the game re-emerge as viable options. If the game isn't patched though, people may abandon the game, which means that developers have to constantly be on top of their games in terms of balance, to ensure that consumers are pleased with the product. Either that, or spend more money on quality assurance to make sure that stuff doesn't need to be patched in the first place!
Don't use this, it's unfair! Or just git gud skrub
I feel like this post-release modification matter (I'll call it "patch culture") goes outside the world of video games in interesting ways too, especially in the music industry. I'm thinking about The Life of Pablo and its several versions—from the TIDAL launch version at the Yeezy Season 3 show, to the lyric changes in "Famous," to the removal of Sia's and Vic Mensa's guest vocals from "Wolves" and the reworked tracklist. Kanye called The Life of Pablo a "living breathing changing creative expression," and even though I personally hated the edits, I thought it was a really cool concept that could really push the medium of music albums in the streaming age. No longer does a music album have to…