To my horror I realize my gaming time has just reached 100 hours in Steam, which I believe would earn me Eagle status for time spent playing using their service. I couldn’t help but laugh when it was because I’ve spent nearly equal time, 40 hours, in the Left 4 Dead editor as well as Left 4 Dead itself. The remaining 20 hours went to Garry’s Mod, which if I was a sane human being I would have stopped playing years ago due to the shear amount of time poured into it.
Why would someone put so much time into the same game for so long? It’s a fair question that I sometimes just answer with “because it’s fun”. Yet, there are thousands of new experiences out there to explore so why would I choose to replay the same games over and over?
Perhaps I felt the need to play another round of Left 4 Dead while writing this article because we are creatures of habit. When a new game arrives I am either really excited when it is part of a franchise I know or I’m hesitant to try it. It’s not like I’m losing anything by trying a new game demo or playing something new at a friend’s house but I feel more comfortable playing something I’m already familiar with.
More than being familiar, I feel more confident because of my previous experiences. Especially when playing a multiplayer game I’m sure most would rather have skill than being the one in the server asking silly things such as how to fly. Yes this is partly an internal fear to not spread our wings to something new but I can’t see a problem with that. Experience builds our confidence and confidence is why we keep returning to the same game time and time again.
Counter-Strike has earned its reputation by having a steep learning curve with great replay ability. How it’s so replayable is not so obvious because it’s arguably just a generic shooter, but you have to look past its chrome polish finish to see that. Yes it may be generic, but it’s so finely polished and fun that you keep coming back for more.
Garry’s Mod has the advantage of being a well rounded sandbox “editor” with loads of downloadable content by the public there’s nearly an endless amount of possible play time. Similarly, Grand Theft Auto has become so popular mostly due to its similar sandbox freedom.
Portal innovated with new gameplay and time trials/challenges by incorporating short levels with a short story and challenges, allowing the community to create custom content as well. Most importantly though was its unique portal based gameplay, story, and atmosphere which helped it stand out from most other games making you want more.
Don’t feel bad when you’ve reached your 1,000th hour in your favorite video game. Maybe that game has more you haven’t explored or discovered. Perhaps you found that one game that stands tall above the rest. Your skills could be improving as you build confidence at the game you love. Or maybe it’s just so well polished you couldn’t care if you’ve played the same level five minutes ago, it’s just plain fun. Regardless of the reason that’s what video games are all about right? Game on.
Upon dieing once again in the game Dead Rising I find myself staring blankly at the screen in an attempt to keep my mouth from uttering curses at the pixels which caused my frustration. Perhaps I simply suck at this title or I’m just under the expected learning curve provided to me, but I feel that this is the sort of game that’s simply in need of a quick save or some form of checkpoint system. I’ll spare you explinations of my horrific and yet pathetic deaths from unforscene boss fights and the like to begin my topic, which is modern saving in video games.
One of the first questions people ask me upon finishing a game is “How long was it?” and rightfully so. We pay upwards of $60.00 dollars a game these days, who wouldn’t want to get their moneys worth? However, the last thing we want is for the gaming experience to become long due to repedative dieing.
Most games (asside from arcades) don’t cost a quarter to play, luckily developers have realized this. Odds are most games released in the last few years have an option to save your game in it’s pause screen or at least checkpoints along the way coupled with an auto save. These ways to save have nearly become standardized due to players understanding them and of course because they work so well.
Unfortionately…some games try to hard to innovate.
Yes I’m looking at you Elika, the Prince of Persia’s companion who quite literally makes it completely impossible to die in the game. The latest Prince of Persia adventure decided to completely ditch any notion of a checkpoint/save system and simply respawn you back where you were before you last failed. Sounds good in theory, until you realize you no longer have the connection to care about your invincible character’s life.
Can one exist without the other? Is it impossible to create joy without difficulty? I don’t know. But Prince of Persia lost something significant (1 Kohler).
Let’s stay away from the drawing board and focus on what works, save for me or let me save my own games. I’m a perfectly intelligent human being who happens to have a trigger finger for the F6 quicksave key.
Save systems need as much thought put into them as any element of a game. What each game needs as a checkpoint depends entirely on its own gameplay style. Morrowind and Oblivion had convenient quick and slow saving, however it was arguably too convenient allowing you to bypass the luck of being caught whilst pick-pocketing or in-game gambling. Dead Rising had too difficult of a save system, which tried to put the feeling of fear into the player who didn’t want to die but due to the unpredictability of the gameplay it became too tedious running from savepoint to savepoint.
Games will continue to innovate saving systems such as Resident Evil’s successful typewriter saving but generally games should stick to the tried and true checkpoint, manual save, quick save techniques that gamers love.
Citation:
Kohler, Chris Can one exist without the other…?
July 26, 09
Not so long ago I was a big forum goer. Facepunch Studios (Garry’s Mod Forum) should have been my homepage because it’s where I spent a lot of my off-time just surfing around for nothing in particular except the social interaction. I would occasionally spread my wings to other websites to read about new topics and meet new people. Then rather suddenly I got sick of it, you could say I quit that partition of the internet.
Was it the people? The low average IQ of the commentors? Yeah that was part of it but a major aspect of my decision I believe had to do with the lack of progression not gained from scrolling through the seemingly endless pages of content laid out before me.
To maintain the interest of viewers I believe there needs to be a feeling of accomplishment gained from visiting a website. Obviously the core of the solution to giving this feeling to the viewer is having good content, but a simple method is to make the user feel like they know where they are on your/any site. Navigation is of course the overhead and probably one of the most important factors, but the design itself should also be there to guide the user throughout each page in obvious and not so obvious ways.
As I spoke about for horizontal spacing relating to backgrounds the same concepts can be applied to your allotted vertical spacing as well. The vertical treatment of your site has to move the viewers eye where you want it to go. All too often I feel disconnected from the content after scrolling down past the majority of a pages main design and want to either finish the article and leave or quit reading and return to the top of the site where I feel safe.
Designs such as these are wonderful and it’s truly a pleasure to visit, however, if too much content is placed on the page of such a site you find yourself in a void of gray as you scroll down to read. Subconsciously you know you want to get it over with and return to the top so you can see the rest of the site. That’s not what we want at all.
So back to our solution: make the user know where they are. We must think of our goal in many ways. Blogs for example must have obvious beginning and ending points for each entry with, preferably, an expected length. Every page needs a title for a sense of place and each entry should feel grouped together as a solid entity that when you are finished reading you feel accomplished at having read it and hopefully even gained something from it. I went one step further and experimented with a repeating gradient background to give a looping sense of progress as you read each entry. Play around with it, go ahead and scroll really fast and see how it makes you feel. I for one thought it to be rather successful.
There are many ways to fix the lack of progression from generic website scrolling. I’d love to see what your solutions are for this web design problem and if you have made or seen any elegant solutions then post them in the comments below I’d be really interested.
