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Sin And Punishment In Games

Posted by simoniker on from the saving-good-saving-more-better dept.

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?

1 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. Too much of a good thing... by neostorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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.