Listen Up! : Save Me!
 

<file open>

What has happened to us, gamers? We used to sweat like pigs when down to our last life, trying to avoid the unavoidable "game over". Now, we sit laid back in our chair or couch, a drink right besides us and maybe even something to snack on. Dead? Oh, no worries, just hit the "load" button or, if you're very lucky, the game will just let you continue from a checkpoint with no penalty. Or, even better: the game won't let you die at all! Anyone who has played the last Prince of Persia will know what I mean.

*quicksave*

Let's face it, gaming has changed a great deal over the past 25 years. It used to be all about high scores, boasting to your friends that you managed to get to level 25 and becoming a nervous wreck whenever you were in 'danger' of breaking your own record. Now, these thrills seem nearly extinct. It's no longer about how good you are but rather about how many games you've completed.

*quicksave*

The result is that games have become an experience instead of a challenge, where completing the game is just a matter of time instead of skill. Sure, this isn't all bad ... After all, being forced to replay the entire game fifty times over is not exactly quality gaming but companies have taken it too far. When it becomes imposslibe ... whoops *quickload*. When it becomes impossible to lose a game, they remove the thrill for the gamers among us (especially us retro gamers) that still crave a challenge. It's no wonder so many game mods actually increase a game's difficulty ...

*autosave*

The reason for all this, can be found with consoles: they have become family entertainment more than ever before: games are not only being played by boys but also their sister, mother and father and even the occasional grandmother. And what does this mean? A lot of inexperienced gamers who may, *gasp*, lose interest if games are too hard. So what does the industry do? They just design the entire game in such a way that it's easier for the inexperienced gamers among us. No surprise really: when looking at the success of the Wii and World of Warcraft, it's obvious where the money is ...

<CHECKPOINT>

So listen up, developers! Stop treating us like children! Stop holding our hands! We want to be challenged! We want to be thrown in the deep end, to sweat like hell, be taken close to a nervous breakdown, be brought to tears of frustration. Because, guess what ... it makes victory so god damn worth it.

<do you want to save your file?>
NO.

....thousands of
<press R to reload weapon>
.... thousands of
<press enter to switch weapon>
.... thousands of
<whatever and whatnots>
:no:

To anyone who feels this way, see Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. :D

Girls like hard games too. :max:

Useless rant. You can set your game to higher difficulty level.

Also the quicksave was always present on the PC, while it wan't on consoles due to memory restrictions.

Some games do it differently. Ever heard of Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate? (don't expect you did, it's from 1997)
Depending on difficulty you choose, your access to the save/load options changes.
Easiest difficulty allows save/load anytime you pleace.
Medium difficulty makes an autosave each turn, and that's the only thing you can load from.
Highest difficulty makes an autosave after each move and doesn't allow you to load game mid-mission.

a) a lot of games don't have proper difficulty settings - their idea is to simply make the AI cheat. It's not so much about skill as patience in that case

b) many games no longer have difficulty levels

c) many games are designed in such a way to accommodate the casual player - in Prince of Persia, for example, you can't die, no matter the difficulty level.

d) not all genres work with higher difficulty settings: adventures, for example. Never played Dreamfall?

The biggest result is how the interface & structure of games are adapted to be simpler which, in turn, makes games more shallow.

PC games have NOT always had quicksave. Quicksave only became widely used in the late 90's. Before, you had to manually go the the menu and save your game - it stopped you from exaggerating. Before that, some games let you save and even then, only between levels in many cases.

Besides, the article is about how things are getting worse. Games are now piss easy on "normal" while they used to be hard on normal. Now, "hard" is the old normal and easy is ... a walk in the park. You can argue that the modes are closer to what they should be, but when you can play a game you've never played before on hard without a problem, it does say a lot.

What has any of that got to do with quicksaving? Any game that uses saving system to make it harder/easier is IMO a poorly designed game where creators had no idea how to make the game challenging so they just decided to put restrictions on the amount of times you can save/created cehckpoints far apart etc.

The article was NOT about quicksaving. Did you even read it? It was about how games simply got easier to complete. Quicksaving just happens to be one of the reasons.

And quicksaving/saving makes many games too easy regardless. It doesn't make a game poorly designed because they impose a limit - a limit often adds extra tension where quicksaving removes any.

with quicksaving you definte the difficulty, your fault if you do it every 5 seconds