The Great British Acknowledgement

Like most Brits, I find plenty of things to complain about in my daily life and, just like most Brits, I’m nearly always too polite to actually say anything about the things that dissatisfy me. I'm more content to mutter something profane in a barely audible tone, sigh a lot, roll my eyes a couple of times, and leave it at that. Brits seem to feel uncomfortable with conflict and, therefore, often try to sidestep it altogether. This is why most of us have, at some point, handed over a credit card in a restaurant despite receiving nothing more than a savagely undercooked chicken and some overcooked carrots, it's why most of us have sat patiently behind some tit wank on the road who may own a nice car but has forgotten how to drive it, and it's why most of us refuse to return faulty products to manufacturers despite being vocal with our friends about how inexcusable it is to sell such faulty goods. 

Recently, I have been playing a series of games called Assassin’s Creed on my Playstation 3. The first two games in the series were flawless works of programming art. Naturally, I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. The third one, however, was riddled with small glitches, one of which meant that I had to replay an entire level. No big deal – these things happen. To be honest, as long as the gameplay is fun and fast-paced, the odd bit of backtracking and the occasional floating character doesn’t bother me too much. So, I went ahead and bought the fourth game in the series.
Half way through it, and 26 hours of my life later, I hit a problem – a plain white loading screen that didn’t actually lead to the loading of anything. Indeed, it just sat there on my TV like a foggy ‘fuck you’. As it happens, this glitch has been encountered by many gamers, leading to a lot of sorely disappointed geeks and the origin of the term ‘The White Screen of Death’. Apt, if nothing else, considering that this bug kills your game and what's left of your enthusiasm for it. Ok, I know it’s just a game, I know it only cost £8, I know there are more important things in life, but I paid for a product and all I actually have is 48% of it. In the end, I pushed my inner Brit aside and wrote a long message to Ubisoft (producers of the game) and sent it to them via their customer support system which, quite frankly, is a bit of a misnomer considering that there is more support on offer from a tesco value bra. Allow me to explain.

Ubisoft provide an online form for complaints, which ensures that your issue goes straight to the right people – basically, you select your console (PS3) from a drop-down menu, you select your game (Assassin’s Creed) from a drop-down menu, you write your complaint in the free-text box and click ‘send’. Voila!  It should go straight to Mr Assassin’s Creed in the PS3 department. Bullshit. It went straight to George in the PC department who wasted 546 words telling me how to fix the problem on a desktop computer. Fantastic – do I reply, or do I simply draw the logical conclusion that he can’t read and give up now? In the end, I decided to be optimistic and replied very calmly with “this response does not seem to apply to me. I own a PS3, not a PC. Isn’t there a patch I can download?” For anyone who doesn't know, a patch is a piece of software that you can download that is designed to fix certain problems. Patches often become available after a game is released because, although testers can detect and rectify 80% of glitches before it goes on sale, some bugs only become evident following large-scale use e.g. once people around the world start playing in large numbers. Anyway, I digress. So, what was George’s response? Well, I don’t know because I haven’t received it yet. In fact, I waited so long that I wrote a rather aggressive follow-up to the earlier message, only to discover that Ubisoft’s customer support system was ‘undergoing maintenance’. Unsurprising. One can only assume this is due to the large number of complaints emails currently placing unforeseen demand on some shitty little server in the basement of Ubisoft Montreal. To cut a long story short - I have now given up on my futile attempt to receive any sort of customer support from their customer support system.

So why am I writing about this? Well, I believe that we all experience glitches in life – some of them can be patched up or repaired, and some can not. Irrespective of the overall outcome, it is not the situation that counts, but the way it is handled. When I was a barmaid, my boss used to tell me that, even if I was ragingly busy and customers were waiting, it was imperative to acknowledge everyone standing at the bar. He was right. People are a lot more forgiving of imperfect service if they know that you have at least been respectful enough to acknowledge their presence and apologise for the wait. Ignorance, on the other hand, irritates people. Indeed, I wrote to Ubisoft with two aims 1) to make them aware of the problem 2) to investigate a possible solution. I'm not even that bothered about the money I wasted. When I wrote my letter, I felt calm and rational, but the way it was handled pissed me off. I guess what I’m saying is that, in a world where nothing is perfect, we have to learn to expect the odd glitch, but if a problem can be fixed, then we should be brave enough to speak out about it and grab the opportunity to find a solution. If, however, a problem can’t be fixed, then the people who are responsible for it should at least have the decency to acknowledge the situation and pretend to care.