Between Bugs and Features

In the world of programming and applications, for certain things that seem off for certain users, there is a saying that goes "it's not a bug, it's a feature". It means that the part is designed to work the way that it works. However, when it comes to other things, if the results are contrary to what is expected, then they are rightfully bugs. It may be that the difference between the two is marginal, unlike some bugs that I've mentioned for the main series games. And yet, this issue may be worthy to be discussed based on a couple of happenings for Pokémon games.

Currently, the most bug-prone of Pokémon games is Pokémon Go - even more so as it gets updates on a continuous basis. Each update seems to have its own particular issues. When the Friends feature was first introduced, the Friend List was rather rudimentary, as it sorted friends by recently sent gifts in alphabetical order, followed by the rest in the same order; it was also summoned - by tapping on the player avatar - each time there were still gifts remaining to be opened, and jumped to the top each time a friend was viewed, much like the early Pokémon list before this was changed. For some players, this might be fine as a "feature", but for others, this might be off as a "bug". This is in contrast with a happening where a Pokémon that was given a Berry causes the game to hang if a player escapes and then returns to it, which is a bug through and through (and has been fixed since). Players' impressions are certainly the determinant for what happens next for these happenings.

The main series games are no strangers to bugs, of course; even the first games had their own, one of which resulted in item generation (a beneficial side effect) but mystery Pokémon in battle along with other glitches, and this is indeed a bug in every sense of the word. Some of the later games also had bugs outside of the battle system, but some players may not have recognized them as such - I recently read about a few of the bugs in the third-generation games, though they occur in scenarios that are not too typical, and I wouldn't have recognized them as bugs if I wasn't told about them. It's not hard to conceive that this may be the case for others. It is here that the bug-feature contrast is a bit blurry too.

When an application is programmed to deliver things with positive results, then they're features. If the results are negative, then they are bugs. If the results are indifferent, that's where things may be hazy and could go either way. At that point, it seems that the users are the ones to decide which way things go. As Pokémon games come and go (or appear, then get expanded continuously) this appears to be something to kept in mind, for they too are programmed applications at their core.

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