While writing our Fallout: New Vegas review, Andrew Webster contacted me to ask for guidance on how to give a verdict to a very enjoyable game that was filled with bugs. I told him to go with his gut, and he gave it a "Buy" rating. We weren't alone in our verdict, as the game scored between 82 and 87 on Metacritic. Based on my Steam and Xbox Live friends list, the chatter on the forums, and posts on Twitter, it's selling very well.

So why are we all so tolerant of bugs in a major release?

"I think when you create a game as large as Fallout 3 or New Vegas you are going to run into issues that even a testing team of 300 won't spot, so we're just trying to address those as quickly as possible and so is Bethesda," senior designer Chris Avellone told CVG. The first patch is already live for the PC version, with console patches on the way. This patch is likely to be part one of a long-running series. Is it really that simple? Should we be more understanding of bugs in an ambitious, open-world game?

You can take a look at some of the bugs in the embedded video, or hit up YouTube for even more. The bugs were a major part of almost every review, so the public should have been aware of the issues the game suffered from at launch.

Fallout's glitchy debut hasn't occasioned many debates about the level of polish expected in a game at release, and Amazon has yet to be carpet bombed with one-star reviews. People seemed to be annoyed at the news of the game's flaws, but they were annoyed while on their way to the store to buy it. It seems the gaming public has largely shrugged its shoulders and gotten over the fact that Obsidian is going to release games that don't work perfectly at launch. The gamer who decided against picking up the game due to these issues was a rare find in our forum thread discussing the game; a thread that is now 23 pages long.

This is why games are released buggy and unfinished, with developers beginning work on patches as soon as the game is out the door: we tolerate it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't buy New Vegas—if you feel like it's worth the money, good for you. As long as the other aspects of the game are sound, we can keep our composure when it comes to bugs or an unpolished release. When you throw the inherent chaos of an open-world game into the mix, it becomes clear that Bethesda has little bug fallout to fear.

It's hard to break an experience

You can argue that we wouldn't buy a defective car, or a scratched CD, but the experience of playing a game is much more subtle than just listening to music or driving to work. If a car catches fire while you're driving, you could, well, die. If a CD won't play, you can't listen to the music. If a game crashes, we're momentarily annoyed. If we're presented with an epic, enjoyable battle after restarting, however, we're likely to remember that moment of triumph, not the disappointment of the crash. If we love characters, mechanics, or setting, we're going to suffer through some the occasional visual glitch in order to spend time with them.

Not every developer can get away with this. You need a franchise with a large amount of goodwill up front and gameplay that's strong enough to combat a high number of bugs. New Vegas has both, which is why we're seeing the game gain critical accolades, as well as funny YouTube videos covering the game's technical flaws. There may not be outrage because so many gamers found the game to still be worth their time and money. The problem is that it could send a dangerous message to other publishers readying big-name sequels.