This thread was "inspired" by my recent time on Burnout3 so I am sorry if I focus too much on this particular game through this post.
When I play a game I like to be playing - testing my reflexes, being challenged or somehow influencing what is going on on the screen. Most people here know I love games like Ikaruga, but I am also happy to sit through something like Paper Mario or Final Fantasy 3/6j. In each of these games I turn them on, wait a short while and then begin to influence what is on the screen. This is how I would define a game, and its how games generally used to be.
However, recently I have witnessed a worrying trend away from this which just seems to get worse and worse. I was hugely looking forward to finally getting my hands on Burnout3 after the glowing reports it has had everywhere - NTSC-UK included. I turned the game on with anticipation, and then almost exactly 1 hour later I turned it off again. Sixty minutes of my life were spent on a video game. Twenty minutes of those were spent playing a video game. Where did the other forty minutes go?
Loading
I am mainly a Gamecube gamer, but I also own both a PS2 and an XBox. The loading on the GC can sometimes annoy me - it breaks up action and hurts immersion, but recently I have been playing more and more games on the PS2 and XBox and found loading almost universally shocking. Burnout3 pauses for loading before doing anything and everything. Some of these breaks are short and some much longer, but they always manage to break up the action often to load stuff I didn?t ever ask to see! I have been really enjoying time trialling in Outrun2 recently - but every time I make a minor mistake and want to restart I have to wait for the whole stage to load again before I can have another go. It?s tiresome, breaks up immersion and is frustrating. I understand loading is sometimes necessary but how come large games like most of the GC line up manage to avoid it? Grand Theft Auto 3 - turn the game on and wait 10 minutes. You might be able to play by then - that?s worse than my spectrum! What is going on? Loading times are important - it?s about time more developers/console manufacturers put some effort into cutting them down.
Cut scenes
Rule 1: enable cut scene skipping. What possible reason can there be for ever forcing a player to watch a cut scene if he/she doesn?t want to? Cut scenes have become the norm in games; they are expected, but why? They add absolutely nothing to a game that cannot be done with interaction, and, in my opinion, is nothing more than lazy programming. In Burnout3 (sorry to harp on) I had to wait while the game individually panned around 6 separate (identical to me) cars which I had unlocked. This took a few minutes, and all I could do was watch. Why would anyone want to be put through that? What made the developers think we wanted our time wasted in this way? If I wanted to look at them I could always see them the next time it forced me through my car selection process for the 100th time.
Panzer Dragoon Orta is another example of a game cut to pieces by pointless cut scenes. The very epitome of reflex based action - the on rails shooter, torn to pieces by stop start action while the game loads (see above), or while I am forced to watch a cut scene which adds absolutely nothing to the experience. Why? The momentum is lost, the excitement is lost, so some pathetic "story" can be explained to me about something which is totally separate from the game. I don?t play that game because I feel a connection with the character; I play it because I like reflex based action and a challenge. It?s madness. Imagine Super Mario World being cut up while we watched the plight of the Princess, or while it explained to us why Mushroom Kingdom is the way it is. I DONT CARE! Miyamoto got it right - the story is the least important aspect of a game so why do so many developers place such an emphasis on it?
Tutorials
If a game needs a tutorial then it?s badly made. It needs better introductory missions/levels that can be skipped. Some simulation based games can be very complex, and I will treat them separately here - although in many cases proper explanation of the controls can be achieved with the methods just described. Black & White sort of achieved this, although it was far too slow paced.
Again I turn on Burnout3. Eager to get into the action I make a profile... then I enter my name, then I wait for it to load, then I am shown some video - explaining to me the whole purpose of the game. I don?t go to a movie and get the end spoilt for me at the start, who wants to know about all the nuances of the game before it has even begun? That?s part of the enjoyment of a game! As I hammer the X button, along with the other buttons in the vain hope of making it go away it dawns on me - are people so stupid that they would rather be told what to do than work it out for themselves? But the video continued. On and on. Why would I want to sit and watch someone telling me how to play a game instead of actually playing the damn thing? That?s why I bought Burnout3 the game, and not Fast and Furious the movie. This wasn?t so much a tutorial more a complete summary of the game - to the point where there was little point bothering to actually play it. Why not just show me a 20 hour movie of someone else playing the game - then I wouldn?t even need to bother using the controller at all.
Artificial Extension
This is a bit tenuously linked to this rant, after all during artificial extension you are actually playing the game; you just generally aren?t enjoying yourself much. This is quite baffling to me. I would define "artificial extension" of a game at being any method used to stretch the lifespan of a game by repeating previous sections or forcing people to repeat events. Many many games suffer from this - in fact just about any game released in the past few years does. It?s so important for a game to last 20 hours now this seems to overtake the importance of actually enjoying a game. See Burnout3's 100s of identical missions, or Outrun2's 10s of identical missions, or Wind Waker sending you around the map again and again, or Metroid Prime sending you back and forth across the entire map every other objective. People seem so intent on fully completing a game 100% they are willing to do the most boring things. So many people complained about the blue coin challenges in Mario Sunshine - why are people doing them if they are boring? Why are people trying to complete a game 100% if they are finding it boring? Often this manages to not get in the way of the main game (see Mario Sunshine, I don?t have a problem with this, I can simply avoid it if I am not enjoying it), but often it directly gets in the way in that it stops you progressing until you have completed a given section (Metroid Prime and Wind Waker are both guilty of this). Why do people need a game to be 20 hours long before they will buy it? Luigi's Mansion is one of my favourite games on the GC - it has about the same amount of content as Wind Waker it just isn?t overly drawn out. It?s concise and complete. Every part of it is enjoyable and every bit is new. This is surely the way games are meant to be! If I wanted to repeat a section I would play the game again.
I was absolutely staggered when I loaded up two of my favourite games of the past few years (Radiant Silvergun and Super Smash Brothers Melee) and looked at my profiles. Both games I have spent 50+ hours on. According to the time keeping facilities of these games almost half of the time I had spent playing these game were not in the main game but in the menus, setting the game characteristics, and anything else other than actually playing the game. I am the sort of gamer who mashes the buttons until the action starts, yet in both of these games none of which suffer from any of the above problems outlined, I had still spent almost as much time not playing these games as playing them. I don?t dare think what proportion of time the average gamer actually spends playing (really playing) Burnout3, or Final Fantasy 10, or any one of the games now that seem more interested in letting the player watch action, wait for the game to load or tell the player how to play the game rather than actually letting him play it.
It is so important now for games to have a good lifespan that companies will do anything to extend it using a variety of the above techniques (although loading must just be put down to poor programming rather than a method for extending lifespan). I believe this is why so many people find solace in old games, each of the above points are all but non-existent in many of the older games because hitting that 20 hour lifespan was never so important. Games were made, and they finished when they needed to finish.
I wish developers would spend more time making a game FUN and less time making it 20 hours long.
When I play a game I like to be playing - testing my reflexes, being challenged or somehow influencing what is going on on the screen. Most people here know I love games like Ikaruga, but I am also happy to sit through something like Paper Mario or Final Fantasy 3/6j. In each of these games I turn them on, wait a short while and then begin to influence what is on the screen. This is how I would define a game, and its how games generally used to be.
However, recently I have witnessed a worrying trend away from this which just seems to get worse and worse. I was hugely looking forward to finally getting my hands on Burnout3 after the glowing reports it has had everywhere - NTSC-UK included. I turned the game on with anticipation, and then almost exactly 1 hour later I turned it off again. Sixty minutes of my life were spent on a video game. Twenty minutes of those were spent playing a video game. Where did the other forty minutes go?
Loading
I am mainly a Gamecube gamer, but I also own both a PS2 and an XBox. The loading on the GC can sometimes annoy me - it breaks up action and hurts immersion, but recently I have been playing more and more games on the PS2 and XBox and found loading almost universally shocking. Burnout3 pauses for loading before doing anything and everything. Some of these breaks are short and some much longer, but they always manage to break up the action often to load stuff I didn?t ever ask to see! I have been really enjoying time trialling in Outrun2 recently - but every time I make a minor mistake and want to restart I have to wait for the whole stage to load again before I can have another go. It?s tiresome, breaks up immersion and is frustrating. I understand loading is sometimes necessary but how come large games like most of the GC line up manage to avoid it? Grand Theft Auto 3 - turn the game on and wait 10 minutes. You might be able to play by then - that?s worse than my spectrum! What is going on? Loading times are important - it?s about time more developers/console manufacturers put some effort into cutting them down.
Cut scenes
Rule 1: enable cut scene skipping. What possible reason can there be for ever forcing a player to watch a cut scene if he/she doesn?t want to? Cut scenes have become the norm in games; they are expected, but why? They add absolutely nothing to a game that cannot be done with interaction, and, in my opinion, is nothing more than lazy programming. In Burnout3 (sorry to harp on) I had to wait while the game individually panned around 6 separate (identical to me) cars which I had unlocked. This took a few minutes, and all I could do was watch. Why would anyone want to be put through that? What made the developers think we wanted our time wasted in this way? If I wanted to look at them I could always see them the next time it forced me through my car selection process for the 100th time.
Panzer Dragoon Orta is another example of a game cut to pieces by pointless cut scenes. The very epitome of reflex based action - the on rails shooter, torn to pieces by stop start action while the game loads (see above), or while I am forced to watch a cut scene which adds absolutely nothing to the experience. Why? The momentum is lost, the excitement is lost, so some pathetic "story" can be explained to me about something which is totally separate from the game. I don?t play that game because I feel a connection with the character; I play it because I like reflex based action and a challenge. It?s madness. Imagine Super Mario World being cut up while we watched the plight of the Princess, or while it explained to us why Mushroom Kingdom is the way it is. I DONT CARE! Miyamoto got it right - the story is the least important aspect of a game so why do so many developers place such an emphasis on it?
Tutorials
If a game needs a tutorial then it?s badly made. It needs better introductory missions/levels that can be skipped. Some simulation based games can be very complex, and I will treat them separately here - although in many cases proper explanation of the controls can be achieved with the methods just described. Black & White sort of achieved this, although it was far too slow paced.
Again I turn on Burnout3. Eager to get into the action I make a profile... then I enter my name, then I wait for it to load, then I am shown some video - explaining to me the whole purpose of the game. I don?t go to a movie and get the end spoilt for me at the start, who wants to know about all the nuances of the game before it has even begun? That?s part of the enjoyment of a game! As I hammer the X button, along with the other buttons in the vain hope of making it go away it dawns on me - are people so stupid that they would rather be told what to do than work it out for themselves? But the video continued. On and on. Why would I want to sit and watch someone telling me how to play a game instead of actually playing the damn thing? That?s why I bought Burnout3 the game, and not Fast and Furious the movie. This wasn?t so much a tutorial more a complete summary of the game - to the point where there was little point bothering to actually play it. Why not just show me a 20 hour movie of someone else playing the game - then I wouldn?t even need to bother using the controller at all.
Artificial Extension
This is a bit tenuously linked to this rant, after all during artificial extension you are actually playing the game; you just generally aren?t enjoying yourself much. This is quite baffling to me. I would define "artificial extension" of a game at being any method used to stretch the lifespan of a game by repeating previous sections or forcing people to repeat events. Many many games suffer from this - in fact just about any game released in the past few years does. It?s so important for a game to last 20 hours now this seems to overtake the importance of actually enjoying a game. See Burnout3's 100s of identical missions, or Outrun2's 10s of identical missions, or Wind Waker sending you around the map again and again, or Metroid Prime sending you back and forth across the entire map every other objective. People seem so intent on fully completing a game 100% they are willing to do the most boring things. So many people complained about the blue coin challenges in Mario Sunshine - why are people doing them if they are boring? Why are people trying to complete a game 100% if they are finding it boring? Often this manages to not get in the way of the main game (see Mario Sunshine, I don?t have a problem with this, I can simply avoid it if I am not enjoying it), but often it directly gets in the way in that it stops you progressing until you have completed a given section (Metroid Prime and Wind Waker are both guilty of this). Why do people need a game to be 20 hours long before they will buy it? Luigi's Mansion is one of my favourite games on the GC - it has about the same amount of content as Wind Waker it just isn?t overly drawn out. It?s concise and complete. Every part of it is enjoyable and every bit is new. This is surely the way games are meant to be! If I wanted to repeat a section I would play the game again.
I was absolutely staggered when I loaded up two of my favourite games of the past few years (Radiant Silvergun and Super Smash Brothers Melee) and looked at my profiles. Both games I have spent 50+ hours on. According to the time keeping facilities of these games almost half of the time I had spent playing these game were not in the main game but in the menus, setting the game characteristics, and anything else other than actually playing the game. I am the sort of gamer who mashes the buttons until the action starts, yet in both of these games none of which suffer from any of the above problems outlined, I had still spent almost as much time not playing these games as playing them. I don?t dare think what proportion of time the average gamer actually spends playing (really playing) Burnout3, or Final Fantasy 10, or any one of the games now that seem more interested in letting the player watch action, wait for the game to load or tell the player how to play the game rather than actually letting him play it.
It is so important now for games to have a good lifespan that companies will do anything to extend it using a variety of the above techniques (although loading must just be put down to poor programming rather than a method for extending lifespan). I believe this is why so many people find solace in old games, each of the above points are all but non-existent in many of the older games because hitting that 20 hour lifespan was never so important. Games were made, and they finished when they needed to finish.
I wish developers would spend more time making a game FUN and less time making it 20 hours long.
ft: - the way journalists drop that garbage on games makes me sick. Psyvariar 2 can be finished in about 20 mins, but I've put around 150 hours playtime into it. It's nothing to do with the length of the game, but the expectation that most gamers have now that games have to do everything for them and the length is determined by the time taken to get from intro to ending and nothing to do with the process of learning and improving your game.
Comment