Sin And Punishment In Games

Thanks to NTSC-UK for their article discussing how games punish players for dying. The article starts: "Repetition has always been considered to be a pretty basic form of punishment and is still quite commonly used form even today. Fail a task, go back to the start of the level. Fail too many times and you go right back to the start of the game." It goes on to highlight save/restart points as changing this dynamic, saying that "...the most controversial aspect of the save point's growing role in videogames was the confusion between its two roles: acting as a marker which players are taken to when punished, and as a point where players could stop in order to resume play later on." Is there such a thing as being able to save too often?

Comments

Too much of a good thing...

[neostorm]

"Is there such a thing as being able to save too often?"

Oh yes! Quicksaves are really convenient, but they take all the challenge out of some games.

- progress. save. progress. save. progress. die. reload. progress half as far. save. experiment. save. etc. etc.

There are two drawbacks to quicksaves, or saving too often in general.
- No risk experimentation.
The player really isn't afraid to jump out that window or off that cliff. They can dive into a room full of armed thugs without any fear at all. The lack of risk and fear of losing your "life" takes both immersion and reward out of passing an obstacle or event.

This is sort of a side-effect of having too many saves, but:
- Spoiled gamers? Not really, but in a way its really difficult to go back to games that don't offer such lenient save functions. I was just playing a game the other day who's title completely slips my mind, but it was a FPS with no quicksave function. It drove me nuts. Forced me to complete whole stages without using my magic F5 key (Oh the horror!). It really made me think of the impact it has on a player to be given such powerful tools and abuse them without knowing it. And when a game imposes stricter saving rules on the player (me), I get really peeved about it.

So in a lot of ways, saving too many times is more than just a placeholder so I can stop playing momentarily, or a punishment. It's a cheat.

Re:Too much of a good thing...

[Goldberg's Pants]

There is NO SUCH THING as too many saves. You should be able to save as much as you want. Many of us have REAL lives that take priority over games, so being able to save when I want, as often as I wantis vital.

Plus the fact, on PC's, games tend to crash without warning, even the most well coded ones, so not only would limited saving "punish you" for not doing well at the game, it punishes you for the piss poor design of the system it's running on.

I've been a gamer for 23 years now. I consider myself above average when it comes to my ability, but I'm still below the hardcore who play games obsessively and don't have wives, children etc...

Why the hell should the gamer be punished for not being good at a game? They paid their money, what they do with the game is their own business.

Besides, witness what happened with other titles that limited saving. Outcry from the buyers, and usually saving anywhere is added in the first patch.

And finally, there is also the fact that a LOT of games, you forget to save if you get caught up in it.

There is NOTHING WRONG with saving as often as you want. YOU paid for the title, you can play it whatever way you want. If you don't like it, then fine, don't save your game, it's as simple as that.

Re:Too much of a good thing...

[atomicdragon]

Having dedicated save places, or just saving at the end of a level, etc. is a real pain for someone who wants to stop playing. I remember when I was younger and would have my mother trying to get me to turn off a game while I was trying to find a save point. In similar games now days, it might take a long time to get to the next save point, and I will be tired the next day at work as a result. Being allowed to save at any point is the only solution I can see to this (unless someone more creative can come up with something). The system I liked best was where you were given a limited number of saves to be used anywhere like a quicksave. The only game I played like this was one of the Delta Force games. Although I thought they gave a few too many, the idea worked well. Times I might have quicksaved in other games I had to stop and think if it was worth using one of my remaining saves. This system allows me to leave when I want to (the missions were short enough that I don't use all of the save points up just to leave for something else) and I could use one if I wanted to experiment (there is always a point you wonder "What if I just shoot/blow up this?" but dont want to actually play the whole game with the results). I would like to see more games use this system, possibly with the number of allowed saves controlled by the difficulty level.

Re:Too much of a good thing...

[anti-double-negitive]

Besides, witness what happened with other titles that limited saving. Outcry from the buyers, and usually saving anywhere is added in the first patch. This is exactly what killed gaming. This is why major games lack creativity and look like they were designed in Hollywood. Deviate slightly from the 'marketable' algo and your sales drop. I miss the inventiveness aspect of gaming... Remember when you used to be able to go to the $9.99 section of a software store and actually be able to purchase high-quality multi-platform games that didn't all look like a variation of Quake || Myst || Warcraft || Diablo? Sigh...

Re:Too much of a good thing...

[Doctor_Jest]

Simple. Don't use the quicksave. Let those of us who enjoy the convenience of not sitting down for a 5 hour marathon gaming session the ability to save when we want. It's not like you're forced to quicksave. :)

Re:Too much of a good thing...

[Dissonant]

The Diablo/Nethack style "Save and Exit" option seems to be the solution you're looking for (Nethack has the superior implementation). The player can save and quit the game whenever he wants, eliminating the look-for-a-save-point dance, but the save file is deleted when he resumes his game later, preventing him from using the save as a "cheat". If it's a game where you can try again after dying, just have "continue points" scattered about, or let the player make a permanent save file at the end of each level.

NetHack has really taught me the value of player mortality. The game would just be stupid if you could save and restore whenever you like. The system they use forces you to play carefully and thoughtfully, which is most of the fun of it.

Re:Death in gaming

[qengho]

Where death in games matter most is multi-player FPS titles....the game is pointless when there are immediate respawns

That's one of the things I hate about them (aside from the fact that I suck). There's no rankings penalty for getting killed a lot, so players just go kamikaze and boost their kill count. The old Air Warrior game had a statistic called "kills-to-death ratio" that was universally respected. It rewarded self-preservation and was a true indicator of skill.

Re:eh? i thought punishment was..

[FooAtWFU]

With regards to the 'die and restart completely' Nethack is not alone, but is certainly in a minority. I play Angband myself (another game in the Roguelike genre, which is noted for its permanent deaths) and, although I used to scum (briefly) I found a permanent death more exciting.
On the other hand, roguelike games usually have random dungeons, while most commercial games have fixed plots. Once you've been through it once, the second and third and ninth time are just boring and a waste of time...

As usual, two sides - no resolution for *all* game

[DrSkwid]

"save where you like" can make stuff too easy and it is hard not be tempted to press f6 after every success. And I'm sure everyone must have pressed quick_save instead of quick_load and saved yourself dead or in some hopeless situation.

In each new game I fear some mechanism that will lead me down a one way systems and my quicksave will be useless. Sadly, I've not found a game that does this, so all my file saving discipline is wasted.

I end up playing in bazai mode, run into every new room and spray bullets after so many times creeping round corners into no danger.

Seeing as games take like a zillion hours anyway anything that maximizes your chances you are going to take (well except invoke GOD mode, that's just *too* lame).

So, quick save good and bad. Be strong, don't save.

Remember this conversation (points for being either) :

"Come on, we've got go now!"
"Hang on, I've got to get Cloud back to the savepoint."

Nowadays part of the skill of parenting has been the ability to asses the level of trauma proportional to the save point time expenditure. The boy used to try and hoodwink his mum by saying "I need to get to a savepoint" to get himself another 20 mins play-time. He didn't reckon on me knowing how to play video games.

An interesting approach

[Cecil]

I really liked the approach that the earlier (dunno about newer) Wing Commander games took. Rather than worrying about making the game full of traps and difficulty that forces the player to save often, they used a rather extensive tree-based storyline -- it was possible to fail a mission and still complete the game. Heck, it was possible to fail every mission and still complete the game, you would just get a very lackluster ending where the Kilrathi rule the universe and the humans run away with their tail between their legs. :)

While not a magic bullet, I think this approach has a lot to offer, but has very rarely been used since. Even Deus Ex, hailed for its exceptional storyline where what you did made a difference, it was still very linear. You could make small changes and maybe save a few people here and there, but it still didn't offer much incentive in the way of replayability.

While in Wing Commander, it was still possible to 'cheat' the system by saving before every mission, and playing the mission until you 'won', it was not always clear which outcome was a win. And in any case, playing the game that way would clearly be a lot more frustrating than simply playing through and not caring whether you always win, and just do your best. In effect the players who try to 'cheat' the system in Wing Commander are actually punishing themselves with repetition of missions. The casual gamer never has to repeat anything.

Food for thought. I'd like to see more games like this. Even Wing Commander's storyline was fairly primitive. Only two branches per mission. There were no partial wins.

Suspend saves: the solution?

[Incoherent07]

Like the article says, quicksaves/unlimited saves are a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows players to leave at any time and come back to the game without losing too much progress (or having to go back to the last save point), but on the other hand players get complacent: save, try something, die, restart from save, try something else, until you've brute-forced your way through the whole game. Autosaving makes matters even worse by taking control from the player while still offering the same measure of safety.

Many people have posted many examples of the suspend save as a compromise: the player can save their game at any point, but as soon as that suspend save is loaded, it disappears. When you die, you return to your last "real" save point. The fact that you can save anywhere allows, say, the 8 year old to save as soon as his mom calls, but it doesn't allow people to game the system and keep trying something until it works, with no lost time.