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.

Death in gaming

[Henry V .009]

Where death in games matter most is multi-player FPS titles. It is boring to wait for the next round once you have been killed. On the other hand, the game is pointless when there are immediate respawns. Counterstrike tries to solve this be letting you watch through the other player's eyes. RTCW tries to solve this by respawning in waves. The way I would like to see it done, is once you are killed in the 'real' game, you get transported to some secondary site with the other dead players. That way there is no down time when you get killed.

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.

Children, parents and games

[yurigoul]

As a parent of two I know what a burdon a game with not enough save points can be especially when it is time for the other child to play (or time for homework or bed) Games without an easy save system are simply banned.

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...

If repetition is punishment ...

[Lumpish Scholar]

... what does that mean about playing Everquest?-)

Mr. Surly strikes again!

[Asprin]

Hrrrummph! As usual, everything in RL is backward from video games.

Do you people even realize, if RL had savegame capability, how many times I would have blown away the idiot at Taco Bell who can't get my order right beause he's too busy IM-ing his girlfriend to be interrupted with customers?

Save points as punishment, indeed! *NOT* having save points is the *REAL* punishment!

Other reasons for save points

[MilenCent]

In some games that enforce save points, even having to go back isn't really that bad. Final Fantasy VI returned te player to the previous save point upon death, but let him keep all experience and cash earned. (It made him lose items, however, which makes sense.)

But there is also a strong intuitive basis for save points, akin to not being able to rest just anywhere in a dungeon in a D&D adventure. A save point should be a "safe" location. Being able to put a bookmark in the middle of a series of tough battles breaks them up. If the player can just once get through all the hard parts of such a sequence without taking serious losses, then it's as if they don't exist! The player will then save at that point and not have to worry about going through it ever again. If those obstacles have a strong random (or not obviously deterministic) component, then this can break a level.

Let's say someone's challenged you to a little game -- if you roll a six-sided die ten times and never get a one, he'll give you a lot of money. In a computer game, the player would save after each successful roll and practically ensure an eventual win. Taken as a sequence, such an obstacle is more troublesome than if the player can bookmark after each roll.

Something in me kind of rebels against this question, actually, the assumption of "punishment." This question only makes sense if the listen intuitively accepts that all a "save" does is record the player's location and state, monster locations and states, which items are collected and the state of a few minor puzzles. In a more complex game (such as Black & White, where great portions of the game's environment is editable), you're saving and loading a lot more than just player location, and although B&W did have a quicksave feature, the idea of making a "bookmark" doesn't make as much sense. Although it is long, playing through the whole level each time makes a kind of sense.

Of course, understand that I'm a Nethack fanatic, and games which feature permanent character death appeal to me, so I'm obviously deranged.

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.