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The Player's Bill of Rights
Gamasutra has a Designer's Notebook column up this week offering up a Player's Bill of Rights. Written by Ernest Adams, the article decries the many indignities that we as players should never be forced to suffer. From the article: "The Right to Feedback: The player has a right to know how she's doing, and in particular, to some means of determining if she's in danger of losing the game. If the player doesn't get feedback, she can't adjust her strategy, and the outcome will feel random. Players need to know whether their approach is working or not."
This and other bills are too long. I think that all of the points in all of these bills will be addressed if we only get the right to
(0) Return a game for a full refund if we do not like it.
I just knew someone would reply like this. Look at what website this is posted on. Look at the name of the column. Now, actually read the article.
It's not a list of demands to game companies. It's some tips for game designers, like pretty much everything on GamaSutra.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
I think there's a difference betwen insulting the player (what the article seems to dislike) and insulting the player's character (what you're talking about). Having an NPC call my character "a fat, smelly elf" is much different from a game actually insulting me.
I will say that the article was complete trash though... most of these aren't "rights", they're just guidelines for good games--and incredibly OBVIOUS ones at that! I mean, c'mon, look at these:
-The Right to Quit, Pause, Save and Resume the Game
-The Right to Instructions
-The Right to Win
I'm looking through my collection of games right now (from all the major consoles), and I can't find a single one that didn't come with a playing manual, didn't allow you to save your progress, or which I felt was impossible to beat.
From the article: The majority of the time a player spends in a game, he should be making decisions, exploring, creating, overcoming challenges, or otherwise acting upon the game world in some way. Players come to play, not to watch cut-scenes. Notice that I say the majority of the time. Non-interactive elements are not forbidden, but they should not take up more than 50% of the playing time of the game. (This is the absolute maximum; many gamers would contend that non-interactive elements should take up no more than 1% of the playing time of the game, if that.)
Uh, well the Metal Gear Solid franchise seems to be doing just fine, and that series is notorious for its long and numerous cut scenes... But whatever.
I have an idea: Why don't we just let the market decide which games people will buy, instead of some guy who is spouting off his opinions and calling them "rights."
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
No, it's intended to mean that the author cannot accept the possibility that "he" is essentially geneder neutral in English.
or even better "to some means of determining if they're in danger of losing the game."
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The points forwarded in the article are mere childsplay. For the most part, game designers have been doing all of these things for years; we're talking standard fare. Individual games and genres tend to suffer differently in these cases, but I don't think the problem is as rampant as the author makets it out to be. Right not to be insulted? I've never played a commercial game worth a lick that was like that; the best example they could come up with was a cell phone clone of minesweeper? Apparently this is not such a big problem.
Instead of focusing on things that games ALREADY do, I'd rather like to see some rights that consumers need such as the right to fresh, creative content. It seems like the most popular games today are sequels and/or rehashes of old game engines and ideas. Where's the excitement?
Also, gamers should have the right to OWN their games. That's right folks; they should be able to pay once and get a full copy, preferrebly with source. Along with this goes the right to play your game; I own dozens of Windows and DOS games that are no longer playable on my current systems. More games should be liberated so that we can port our treasured games and continue playing them.
See, now we're talking about rights, not this "I can't figure out what the buttons for my game" nonsense.
Likewise, game designers should not needlessly impair the player's progress. Designers should keep the characteristics of the player-character in mind and design environments accordingly. If I am playing a fireball-hurling Mage, a wooden chest should not prove too difficult for me to open, key or no key. If I am playing a human, when confronted by a waist-height fence, I should be able to hop over it if I choose instead of worrying about the silly lock. (That doesn't mean I shouldn't be looking over my shoulder when I get to the other side, watching for dogs, guards, or laser turrets.) Any player should be able to ask, at any time, "Well, why can't I do this?" and receive a better answer than "Because you're not supposed to do it that way" (e.g. "Because you won't fit there" or "Because you'll die"). Being blocked by an invisible wall for no apparently good reason is frustrating and insulting. Put some thought into it and make a game that we can get into.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
Software generally has a return policy of a) no returns if it's opened or b) exchange for the exact same title (to protect against defective media).
OK, so how many exchanges for the same title does it take to convince a store that every copy of a given work will be defective in the same way?
could easily be "to some means of determining if the player is in danger of losing the game."
This sounds a bit awkward if used repeatedly.
or even better "to some means of determining if they're in danger of losing the game."
Inelegant. The player is not plural so should not be referred to as "they".
From the first right: >>The majority of the time a player spends in a game, he should be making decisions, exploring, creating, overcoming challenges, or otherwise acting upon the game world in some way. Players come to play, not to watch cut-scenes. Notice that I say the majority of the time. Non-interactive elements are not forbidden, but they should not take up more than 50% of the playing time of the game.
Maybe I'm the minority, but I like cut-scenes. I play games instead of watching movies or TV. While I enjoy action games, I love JRPGs that have hours and hours of cut-scenes, and I really wouldn't notice if the cut-scenes took up more than the 50% of the game (though I usually do all the sidequests, so I highly doubt even close to the time I spend is half cutscenes). I could even imagine a developer making a RPG-like game that didn't have battles, just exploring and cut-scenes for non-gamers. My point is that people like different things, and that as a group demanding that games have a limit to cut-scenes is about as pointless as demanding no more Ecco the Dolphin games. If you don't like it, don't buy it, but trying to stop if from being made makes no sense at all.
Of course, it's not like this matters as all, this article will be forgetten by the time the next thing is posted on slashdot (or it will be the next thing posted on slashdot), but I just felt like giving out my two cents.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Don't forget:
1. the right to make a backup of your disc.
2. install and play your game without having to reinstall bare Windows to do so (Starforce: hostile anti-user copy protection and Punkbuster, which currently hates GetRight of all things. Both quickly pronounce users as guilty of hacking without a trial)
3. install and play your game without needing ANY kind of internet connection whatsoever. Half Life 2 and the (currently vaporware) Prey will never touch my systems because of that.
I think it's highly insensitive to pander to the few female gamers and ignore the masses of males that play most games.
Have we gone completely Politically-Correct Banana's here? If I were a "she" gamer, I would take offense to all these 'sensitive' game reviews/etc. that act like female gamers are the norm.
Let's get fscking real people. We aren't idiots, and women can see through the pandering you dolts make when you try to make statements to the effect that "She" is the stereotypical gamer.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Here's my bitch list... err, gamers bill of rights I mean:
Physics: If you are going to try to make a realistic combat simulation game, make sure that those nicely detailed 50 ton tanks don't come to a dead stop when you run into a wooden crate! (Battlefield 2)
Keyboard Controls: If you are going to make a racing game that allows keyboard controls, make sure the controls are usable on more than the 100hp car you start out with. Nothing sucks quite as much as spinning out on every little turn. This one is for Juiced. NFSU2 got this right.
Splash Screens: If you want me to know that X, Y, and Z all made parts of the game, give me a way to skip past them! I don't want to sit through 30 seconds of mandatory splash screens each time the game loads. This is really sickening when the game has a problem and keeps crashing. I didn't spend a ton of money on a PC that can load stuff damn near instantly just to be delayed for marketing purposes. At least make the video files easy to find so I can delete them.
Well, then, if "he" can be used to mean any gender, then why can't "she" be used in exactly the same way? It's just as clear, it's certainly familiar (it's one word you hear every day), and it's just as concise (one extra "s" now and then won't lengthen the whole article by any significant amount. And when you read it, it's still one syllable.)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating either of them as such, but I _do_ find it peculiar that someone would need to throw a "what's with this 'she' crap?" tantrum. Using 'she' was insulting... how?
I don't know, I'm a guy myself, but I find it anywhere between hillarious and idiotic (or most often a mixture of both) the way some guys absolutely have to defend their supremacy in some field as if their manhood depended on it. As if, god forbid, even acknowledging that women gamers exist (e.g., by using a 'she' now and then) could make their dick shrivel and fall off.
Let me rephrase that: I don't even think it's a "guy thing" as such. It's not about "guys" as such, it's about complexed insecure guys who need to put someone down just to mask their own insecurities.
And you'd thing that what with being the victims of that, nerds would know better than to do that. In practice, frankly, it's the exact opposite. When you see someone blanketly insulting whole population segments, for the most idiotic and irrelevant pretexts (e.g., that they don't use vi, or that they play on a non-PK facet in a MMO, or whatever), chances are it'll be a nerd.
To anyone falling in that category: folks, get a life. Gaming is just a passtime, no more. It doesn't make you a "man" or anything, it just makes you less bored. Noone will come and beg to carry your baby because of your clan's scores in CS or your Linux PDA or whatever.
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