Patience, Grasshopper - On Long Load Times For Games

Thanks to GamerDad for its editorial discussing the thorny, still present problem of long videogame loading times. Although the author points out "It used to be worse than it is now. I do count some of my blessings", he still argues: "I know that optimizing load times is probably low on the list of priorities when developing a game... [but] if you load the game so quickly that no one knows it's happening, or keep it streaming in chunks to not interrupt the flow of play, the player will be far more immersed in what's happening in your game and less likely to ever put it down until forced to do so." In conclusion, it's even suggested that a return to game cartridges might be a good thing: "You just can't beat that instantaneous gratification of playing games you just plug in, turn on and play. When the capacity is there for today's games, a return to carts would make me one happy gamer."

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[Vexware]

Unless my memory is failing me, isn't it Namco's [1] [2] Ridge Racer (or it's sequent title Revolution) which boasts a game of Galaxian while the game loads? And as a little bonus, killing all the invaders before the timer runs out gives the player a choice of nine cars, instead of four, when comes the vehicule selection. Ah, the old times -- you couldn't even save your game, I think. That was truely an arcade game.

I think that what was a pretty good idea back then could even be welcome nowadays; after all, in most games we are presented with a boring and frustrating loading screen which simply presents the player with a loading progress bar. Instead of this, game developers could get the main game to load a small, light mini-game which could serve as an intermediate screen to avoid a sudden break from interactivity (for example, in a football game, one could imagine a Pong-like mini-game to avoid long pauses during the loading times which just bore the player, long loading times which are recurrent in the FIFA series which comes to mind). The subsequent problem is, such mini-games would be a good way to occupy the player in out-of-game loading screens, but what about in-game transitions? A good method which avoids in-game loading times -- and perhaps also laterally reduces out-of-game loading times -- is to load the upcoming in-game elements, such as maps and FMVs, during the more inactive in-game moments. This has several advantages, first of all being that the player does not notice a slowdown in play since the loading should take place when the game is more inactive. Then, the said elements already loaded into memory appear instantly and there is no break in in-game playing whatsoever. And I shall also develop what I have minimally said, about the out-of-game loading times being shorter since the loading is done in-game. I am not a game developer (being only 14 that would be a mean feat) so I do not know if this could be accomplished but perhaps the "inactivity loading" concept could be taken even further, with the in-game content being loaded while the player goes through the starting menus, or even when the introducing FMV is being played.