The Gamer Generation Gap

[Curlypaul]

Great article, really made me think.

Dying and respawning has always been a sticking point of mine and I've completely changed viewpoints in recent years. I used to be mainly a PC gamer so I was used to having a quicksave function that I could call whenever the hell I liked. Console games frustrated me because at the time I could only save at certain points in the level. I used to argue that if somebody imposed rules on reading a book, and one of those rules was that you could only stop reading at the end of the chapter and if you put the book book down in the middle of a chapter you would have to start that chapter again.. well people would quickly get pissed off with reading books so why should games be any different?

I've completely changed point of view now though, quicksave destroys any challenge that a game might have and prevents me from ever having to repeat any part of a game and we all know that repitition leads to mastery. Sure, I could not use the quicksave after every kill but that takes disipline that I dont think that I've got

It annoys me that the sense of challenge is missing from recent games

[o.pwuaioc]

I used to argue that if somebody imposed rules on reading a book, and one of those rules was that you could only stop reading at the end of the chapter and if you put the book book down in the middle of a chapter you would have to start that chapter again.. well people would quickly get pissed off with reading books so why should games be any different?

I tend to stop at chapter or breaks within a chapter anyway. Have you ever tried stopping in the middle of a dialogue? It's not really that easy to pick it right back up.

[Curlypaul]

Yes it can be a bit difficult to get back into it, but you do have the choice of when you want to stop reading and you just carry on reading right where you left off if you can remeber what was happening

[o.pwuaioc]

Yes it can be a bit difficult to get back into it, but you do have the choice of when you want to stop reading and you just carry on reading right where you left off if you can remeber what was happening

Pause? Hehe. The medium is so different, though, that you can't really compare. It's not that the programmers were removing saves from games, but rather not including them.

[Curlypaul]

Yeah the analogy doesnt hold up that well, but you know what I mean.

At the time you could tell if a game you were playing was a console port because it would be checkpoint save only and a game made for the PC would have a quicksave

[pakopako]

Yes it can be a bit difficult to get back into it, but you do have the choice of when you want to stop reading and you just carry on reading right where you left off if you can remeber what was happening

Pause? Hehe. The medium is so different, though, that you can't really compare. It's not that the programmers were removing saves from games, but rather not including them.

Pause doesn't always work so well. I remember I had to leave a game on Pause to go eat... turned off the TV and then forgot about going back until the next morning.

[Gao]

2. Excessive cut scenes

A few are cool, but lately they've been overkill. I've yet to see really well-done acting in a game, and honestly I'd rather save them for special spots rather than go through an "interactive movie".

I agree, and I think one of the big problems now is that they're putting constant cut scenes in games where the plot is completely superfluous, anyway. I recently played Killzone 3, and despite the fact that there were at least brief cutscenes at least every 10 minutes, the plot added absolutely nothing at all to the game. Heck, I barely even remember it aside from (spoiler warning) the bizarre "Surprise, you just committed genocide!" ending. It would have made no difference to me if they had just had constant action without explanation, and I now wish I'd just skipped through the cutscenes to get through that mediocre game faster.

[flamepanther]

Your analogy breaks down a bit. I'm going to change it a bit to something that I can relate to more (because vegetables are horrible). Let's say you had a boston cream donut. You can remove the custard feeling before you eat it because you don't like having something cold and gooey when you have a donut, but you can't then complain that you don't get that custard flavor.

But he still gets to enjoy the rest of the donut, which is what he wanted. If someone chooses to skip all the cutscenes in a game, they're not likely to complain about missing the cutscenes or the exposition they contained--unless skipping the exposition somehow breaks the gameplay. In other words, if the exposition is really necessary then work it into the gameplay. Otherwise, make sure the game is playable with or without the story.

Personally, I sit through all the cutscenes in a game, but I do find it irritating that the gameplay is interrupted. Seamless incorporation of the story is a much better approach.