Games are able, at their best, to enlighten us. To involve
us emotionally in something that movies and books can't hope to compete with.
Interactivity may well be an old-fashioned buzz word, best left to the confines
of the time period that spawned it, but it is also a perfect word to use to say
just what the edge that games have is.
You read a book, and watch a movie. In both cases you are
only passively involved in the entertainment that is placed before you.
Whereas, in a game, you interact. You are not just involved, you can conduct.
You make decisions, you have input, you have control. You are no longer just a viewer;
you are a part of the experience. You are instrumental in the magic. Without
the active participation of the player, a game is completely and utterly
pointless.
There exists, therefore, a contract between game developer
and player. They make the fun for us, and we do our best to enjoy it. In return
for enriching our lives, we offer up some of our earnings. Or, to put it into
the form of a sound bite; In order to play, we pay.
We (being the players) do this willingly. At every single
point of the game buying process, we assess the situation in front of us, and
determine if the likely outcome is "A good time" being had. If it is,
we then predict how good a time this will be, divide this by the length of the
time we expect to spend with the game, and if this number is above whatever our
own personal threshold figure is for expenditure we drop the required money. I
could probably go on and make this into some cool equation, but I hope to have
this blog read by people who don't get all wibbly at the sight of such things,
so I shall avoid the temptation. (And, believe me, it is a HUGE temptation!)
So, with all this in mind, I have to profess to being
absolutely mystified whenever a game developer goes out of their way to muddy
the waters. When they make a decision that actively gets in the way of people's
enjoyment of their product. Why would anybody do this?
More importantly, why do so many game developers do this?
Let us take a hypothetical situation. I have decided to make
a videogame. Being a bit (ok, a lot) of a nerd, I decide to theme it around
Star Trek. But, that isn't enough. No, I want authenticity in my game. So much
so that all the text and dialogue, including the manual, is in the Klingon
language.
How many people in the world can read Klingon? Not many,
I'll wager. But, the figure becomes massively important to me. Because, that is
the MAXIMUM amount of people who will buy my game.
By placing this restriction, I am applying a barrier to
potential sales. Similarly, by placing ANY restriction, I am doing the same
thing. The more barriers I place, the more limited my potential market is. So,
I should strive to remove any restrictions. I would not want there to be any of
them at all. I would, in fact, want every part of the process of playing my
game to be as straightforward as possible. For the entirety of the experience
to be, to use another 90's buzz word, user-friendly.
The App Store has absolutely mastered the art of making it
easy for people. Users of iDevices are never more than a couple of taps on the
screen away from spending money. Factor this alongside the general low amount
of money that users are asked to spend, and it becomes of no surprise to
anybody with an ounce of logic or reasoning skills that the App Store is making
an OBSCENE amount of money for developers. Everything is easy, everything is
quick, and everything is cheap. It is worryingly simple to spend a small
fortune in the App Store, and it is for this very reason that there are
literally thousands of games available there.
Console gaming has a lot of this kind of mentality applied
to it, as well. Buy the game; put it in the machine, play. At least, if it is a
Wii game. For the XBox 360, there may be the additional step of updating the
game. Generally, this takes an extra 25 seconds of your life before the game
starts up. On the PS3, though, things start to develop a slightly sour taste as
the update procedure may take an hour or so. And this is assuming that the
console itself doesn't require an update. There are times when downloading and
installing a PS3 system update followed by downloading and installing a game
update FOLLOWED BY A MANDATORY INSTALLATION OF THE SODDING GAME ITSELF can take
all night.
And in the case of PC gaming? Things get ... the only real
word to use for it is SHIT.
I understand that there are a million different
configurations of PC out there. I get that the hardware I have may not be the
same as that in my next door neighbours PC. I also fully understand that
different operating systems exist, and that people will use different programs
to do the same jobs.
Know what I struggle with? WHY this is a problem.
Right now, you are probably reading this on a monitor. It is
probably capable of outputting at any one of 10 different resolutions. It may
not be able to output at 1920 x 1080 like mine can, but I would be willing to
bet a month’s wages that it can handle 1024 x 768.
Similarly, with input mechanisms. Everyone has a mouse and a
keyboard, but not everybody has a gamepad. However, those that want to use
their PCs to play games? They'll have a gamepad. And, in an amazing slice of
serendipity, every gamepad made in the last hundred years or so comes in a
fairly standard configuration. 4 face buttons, 2 shoulder triggers, and one
analogue stick. Yes, there are other types, but most have that lot as standard.
So what should a games developer do when faced with this
bewildering array of configurations and hardware?
Ignore it. Build to a standard that everyone already has. In
the case of controller options, include the ones that are most likely to be
used. Don't make a game that can only be played by widescreen monitor owners. Make
one that runs in 1024 x 768, or even in 800 x 600!
What do PC developers tend to do? The exact opposite. They
program games to work on their theoretical perfect machine, which often only
they actually have. When they meet a problem in development, they usually buy
whatever extra stuff they need to get round this problem, and thus end up with
a game that speaks Klingon. Or, for the benefit of those who are not quite so
adept at translating forced metaphors, a game with restrictions to entry. A
game that, and this is really important to note, not everyone can play
immediately. Sometimes, customers need to install new drivers for their graphic
and sound cards. Sometimes they need to buy whole new cards. Sometimes they
need to add extra memory, or get a bigger Hard Drive, or sacrifice a small
animal in order to play. (Admittedly, this is an extremely rare occurrence.)They
may have to sign up to some obscure web site, make payments in foreign
currencies, agree to ridiculous terms and conditions, and this is usually
before they ever get to play the game. Playing the game itself can often be the
most laborious of tasks, involving verifying that they are indeed allowed to
play it in the first place by means of some external control system. "This
game can only be played by those who I specifically allow to, when I say, and
how I say!" does not make for a very friendly pre-game atmosphere.
Similarly, I might not want to install your game onto my C:,
perhaps I have filled this already? Or, perhaps I save that drive specifically
for my OS, and instead install all my games onto D:? It is nice to have the
choice, and yet games are still being made that require installation to the
main drive. What if I don't mind the noise and would actually be quite happy to
run the game straight from the disc? I can't honestly recall the last time I
had that option, apart from when it was essential to have the game in the drive
to prove I owned it, usually despite having already installed it to the C: in a
folder that I didn't get to choose myself...
Dear PC games developers everywhere, I implore you to heed
this advice. History has shown quite conclusively that there are literally
millions of people out there who are more than happy to give you their
hard-earned tokens in exchange for entertainment. We gamers are ready to hand
over our cash in order to allow you to buy your Lamborghini. It continues to
astonish me just how difficult some of you want to make it for us to actually
do that. By requiring us to jump through hoops before we can play, you are
subtracting from our enjoyment. In the equation that I never wrote, this will
lead to a greater likelihood that our expected enjoyment quotient ends up being
significantly below our personal threshold for willingness to spend. Or, for
the benefit of those who don't speak geek as fluently as others, we get turned
off before we get turned on and aren't gonna pay for that crap!
PC development is incredibly guilty of this attitude that
seemingly goes out of its way to preclude people from playing. Developers have
some kind of smug superiority complex, and thus pile the agony on for the
average end user out there. Nobody wants to have to perform major
reconstructive surgery on their computer just to shoot an alien, especially
when they can do it for £0.69p on their phone. Nobody wants to be made to feel
unworthy of a game when the minimum requirements match a machine that only
exists in movies. Nobody wants to prove they are the person who bought the game
every single time they attempt to play it.
There is a reason that console gaming is more popular than
PC gaming. And it is because PC games developers are making it happen.
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