An open letter to game developers:
This letter stems from a recent issue I had playing two games, Fear 2 and Mirror's Edge, though I have no doubt it applies to many others. The issue was that my PlayStation 3 went belly up and would no longer boot. The short of it was that the data was unrecoverable and while Sony replaced the system under warranty, they would not recover the data for me. I had in effect lost all saved progress in all my games. Of particular interest to me though, I was half way through Mirror's Edge and almost finished with Fear 2. The issue with the PS3 was certainly not the game's faults, I hope..., however I believe they very poorly recovered from this increasing issue of hardware failure.
Neither game would in anyway allow me to restart where I had left off or anywhere else in the middle of the stories despite my best efforts. I tried finding save games online only to find that the games would simply reject them. I tried finding cheat codes and came up with nothing. I was left with two options, abandon the games, or restart them. I choose to abandon both games. Before I list the reasons this is bad for you and for me, let me provide an instance of a success in this area. At the same time I was also playing Half Life 2: Episode 0 and also lost my save game for it too. However, with very little work I soon found a cheat code that allowed me to start at any chapter. I was thankfully able to finish my game where I left off and as well have gone on to play Episodes 1 and 2, as well anticipate 3.
So onto why this failure scenario of Fear 2 and Mirror's Edge is bad. The obvious consequence is that for me to finish these games I must waste my time to recreate the achievements I had already gained. I don't know about you, but I do not like repeating things. I decided it was not worth my time to replay many hours of these two games, let alone effectively reread the start of a story and as such simply put them down. Unfortunately, the best case recovery scenario for me was to simply eat the time and money spent on these games and move on. While this was the worst case scenario for you, you unfortunately made it the best case scenario for me. But it gets worse. The hidden consequence is that not only did I waste my time and money on these games and not actually get to finish the stories, but you have now effectively prevented me from buying and enjoying any of your sequels or add on content. This is certainly a loss for you, though given the annoyance incurred so far, I'm unsure where it ranks for me.
So that's where we are right now; maybe try and learn from this.
Having no actual discussion with you, I can only assume that since a number of games, such as Half Life2, do provide a way to start in the middle, that someone made a distinct decision to not allow it on these games. (If that is wrong, well then problem solved I hope.) While it doesn't make much sense to me, I can only speculate that the reason to specifically disallow this is somehow rooted in the 'hard core gamer' mentality of core gamers, or simply in hubris of developers.
For hard-core gamers, a way to skip through a game is a way to skip some challenges and reap the rewards of boss fights, cinematics or perhaps trophies on the PS3 without actually doing the work for them. If two people have beaten the same game then they have gone through the same trials and tribulations as each other, there is something here to bond over.
For developers, this ability is a way to skip your well crafted story and interaction elements. There was the pit with awesome fire that shot up to get past, the balrog that required precise button hits to defeat, and the tricky puzzle that required assembling items from around the island to solve.
Unfortunately all these things are pretty much already skippable in some various form. As for the challenges, games already allow for different difficulty levels so there's little in common with the challenge of an easy run through and a hard one. As well there is no end of pay and free walkthroughs everywhere. There is no more challenge needed than reading if desired. As for experiencing your content in full, people very frequently record full game plays and put them online, so you can not only get a visual cheat guide you can simple watch the pieces you might want if you desired as such. I can understand the trophy/leader-board issue, but how about just disabling them completely in these situations?
This letter stems from a recent issue I had playing two games, Fear 2 and Mirror's Edge, though I have no doubt it applies to many others. The issue was that my PlayStation 3 went belly up and would no longer boot. The short of it was that the data was unrecoverable and while Sony replaced the system under warranty, they would not recover the data for me. I had in effect lost all saved progress in all my games. Of particular interest to me though, I was half way through Mirror's Edge and almost finished with Fear 2. The issue with the PS3 was certainly not the game's faults, I hope..., however I believe they very poorly recovered from this increasing issue of hardware failure.
Neither game would in anyway allow me to restart where I had left off or anywhere else in the middle of the stories despite my best efforts. I tried finding save games online only to find that the games would simply reject them. I tried finding cheat codes and came up with nothing. I was left with two options, abandon the games, or restart them. I choose to abandon both games. Before I list the reasons this is bad for you and for me, let me provide an instance of a success in this area. At the same time I was also playing Half Life 2: Episode 0 and also lost my save game for it too. However, with very little work I soon found a cheat code that allowed me to start at any chapter. I was thankfully able to finish my game where I left off and as well have gone on to play Episodes 1 and 2, as well anticipate 3.
So onto why this failure scenario of Fear 2 and Mirror's Edge is bad. The obvious consequence is that for me to finish these games I must waste my time to recreate the achievements I had already gained. I don't know about you, but I do not like repeating things. I decided it was not worth my time to replay many hours of these two games, let alone effectively reread the start of a story and as such simply put them down. Unfortunately, the best case recovery scenario for me was to simply eat the time and money spent on these games and move on. While this was the worst case scenario for you, you unfortunately made it the best case scenario for me. But it gets worse. The hidden consequence is that not only did I waste my time and money on these games and not actually get to finish the stories, but you have now effectively prevented me from buying and enjoying any of your sequels or add on content. This is certainly a loss for you, though given the annoyance incurred so far, I'm unsure where it ranks for me.
So that's where we are right now; maybe try and learn from this.
Having no actual discussion with you, I can only assume that since a number of games, such as Half Life2, do provide a way to start in the middle, that someone made a distinct decision to not allow it on these games. (If that is wrong, well then problem solved I hope.) While it doesn't make much sense to me, I can only speculate that the reason to specifically disallow this is somehow rooted in the 'hard core gamer' mentality of core gamers, or simply in hubris of developers.
For hard-core gamers, a way to skip through a game is a way to skip some challenges and reap the rewards of boss fights, cinematics or perhaps trophies on the PS3 without actually doing the work for them. If two people have beaten the same game then they have gone through the same trials and tribulations as each other, there is something here to bond over.
For developers, this ability is a way to skip your well crafted story and interaction elements. There was the pit with awesome fire that shot up to get past, the balrog that required precise button hits to defeat, and the tricky puzzle that required assembling items from around the island to solve.
Unfortunately all these things are pretty much already skippable in some various form. As for the challenges, games already allow for different difficulty levels so there's little in common with the challenge of an easy run through and a hard one. As well there is no end of pay and free walkthroughs everywhere. There is no more challenge needed than reading if desired. As for experiencing your content in full, people very frequently record full game plays and put them online, so you can not only get a visual cheat guide you can simple watch the pieces you might want if you desired as such. I can understand the trophy/leader-board issue, but how about just disabling them completely in these situations?
Additionally, video games are pretty much the only entertainment medium that locks people into a linear progression. Movies, books, music do not prevent me from jumping right into the middle of them or even just experiencing the ending if I really want. A play even lets you come in in the middle if you really want, so why maintain such control over how someone who has paid you good money experiences your content? You're creation is not that amazing. While it's true that it would really suck to jump past that pretty awesome scene in BioShock and have no idea what's going on in the game, do you actually think people really want to skip random pieces of content if they haven't been forced to, and is it really going to hurt you if they do?
Let's talk about how you might be missing out by requiring people to play in traditional ways though, and why you might instead want to embrace it over simply allowing hidden cheats.
The wii has shown that casual games are a huge market, and further more Prince of Persia has shown that you can successfully create a game in which the player never dies or has to give up important progress they have made. Embrace this. Most modern games are simply elaborate Interactive Fictions. They are linear stories which the player is immersively experiencing. There is no reason that gamers of all skill levels should not be able to participate in your stories.
A game could implement a movie mode where it simply walks through for you. If the story is that good some people may actually want to just watch it if you make it interesting enough. ( probably not too bad for those late night parties where you want to replay some gorefests and are perhaps not quite capable of doing it yourself at the time) For players who still want some interaction, games can also offer walkthrough mode where you are hard or impossible to kill, enemies die really easy, and puzzles call out to you with assistance. Just because some people are too young or old, or didn't develop excellent straffing technique when they were 14, doesn't mean they don't want the viceral enjoyment of walking in, and then out of a firefight.
Take the simplest case though ( aside from my tradgic hardware issue ). Your game rocks, and on a bored sunday night years from now, I want to go back and relive that final boss fight. Guess I should have kept all my save games around after all.
Let's talk about how you might be missing out by requiring people to play in traditional ways though, and why you might instead want to embrace it over simply allowing hidden cheats.
The wii has shown that casual games are a huge market, and further more Prince of Persia has shown that you can successfully create a game in which the player never dies or has to give up important progress they have made. Embrace this. Most modern games are simply elaborate Interactive Fictions. They are linear stories which the player is immersively experiencing. There is no reason that gamers of all skill levels should not be able to participate in your stories.
A game could implement a movie mode where it simply walks through for you. If the story is that good some people may actually want to just watch it if you make it interesting enough. ( probably not too bad for those late night parties where you want to replay some gorefests and are perhaps not quite capable of doing it yourself at the time) For players who still want some interaction, games can also offer walkthrough mode where you are hard or impossible to kill, enemies die really easy, and puzzles call out to you with assistance. Just because some people are too young or old, or didn't develop excellent straffing technique when they were 14, doesn't mean they don't want the viceral enjoyment of walking in, and then out of a firefight.
Take the simplest case though ( aside from my tradgic hardware issue ). Your game rocks, and on a bored sunday night years from now, I want to go back and relive that final boss fight. Guess I should have kept all my save games around after all.
(I'll be mailing a copy of this to the creators of Fear 2 and Mirror's Edge)
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