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fatalmoon65's avatar
fatalmoon65
Seasoned Hotshot
4 hours ago

Does EA use AI for bug fixes?

This is something I've been wondering about, especially after the last bug fix that seemed to cause a TON of problems for my game. It's as though someone (or something) that has no knowledge whatsoever of how the game functions and operates is doing all the bug fixes. I'm sure there are all kinds of little intricacies in the code of the game that only a seasoned human expert would know about and know the workaround for. Without that human touch, strange bugs could start popping up that make gameplay worse.

Like, the tagging on items in CAS and Build mode being slightly off. It's like one tag gets fixed in the code, but instead of that extra little bit of code to say "that's all," the tags get moved over so even more items get tagged incorrectly. And the sims might not be obsessing over their phone anymore, but now they are washing their hands constantly. Like, there's still the same amount of obsession, it just moved to a different activity. I'm not a coder myself so I could be totally wrong about this, but it seems like a human might know of special circumstances as to why some piece of code is in there and know not to take it out, but the AI might just steamroll over it because it looks like it shouldn't be there. 

I first started thinking this when the High School pack had that weird bug that was supposed to be a fix for the daily menu being messed up, but the fix took away the daily activities checklist that used to appear. I mean, that was essential to game play but the "fixer" didn't seem to have any understanding of how that fit in to the game and just removed it. So I wondered if AI did that bug fix.

I know the Sims has been riddled with horrible bugs since the get-go, but it really seems to be getting worse and in a "dumber" way. Are there any humans that check the bug fixes? 

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2 Replies

  • CrispySims619's avatar
    CrispySims619
    Seasoned Hotshot
    4 hours ago

    The Sims 4 team are all humans and bug fixes are worked on by humans. As with any game, bug fixes have the chance of causing issues elsewhere in the games code and sometimes it is not clear why or what has caused that new issue. The Sims 4 is also a game that is played so differently by millions of players that so many player may experience a bug that someone else has never experienced. Major patch updates change a lot of the coding to the game and this sometimes has a ripple effect in other areas of the game. It's why bug reporting is very important because quite often it might be a bug that no one else has had before. The Sims team has a very large QA team by all accounts and does not use AI to fix bugs.

  • BlagultSimmer's avatar
    BlagultSimmer
    Seasoned Veteran
    3 hours ago

    Even though the results might lead one to suspect otherwise—and despite statements from EA (albeit ones concerning their future strategic direction) that seem to point in this direction—the answer is no. Such an AI would require a time-consuming training process, as the game itself is complex, and player behavior is even more so. Of course, as a CEO, I too would want to introduce automation wherever it is feasible and makes sense. But ultimately, the game in its entirety is simply very complex—creating a detailed test plan for it would likely be a challenge in itself. Add to this a certain degree of time pressure, given that new content must be released at regular intervals. Yet, strictly speaking, this isn't a problem exclusive to EA. Take car manufacturers, for instance: as the amount of technology built into vehicles increases, so too does the frequency of product recalls.

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