Less a manifesto, and more a notverymanlyfesto, as this is very much a tech-centric list. If you want thoughtful game theory, you’ve got the wrong nitpicker.
The PC is the best gaming platform in the world – but it could be better still. While it’s great that the PC doesn’t have to suffer quite the same degree of standardisation as its locked-down console brethren, we have nevertheless fallen into certain patterns of how we game. There are things we take for granted and thus expect, like WASD controls in FPSes and patches for bad bugs. There are others still we should be able to take for granted, but can’t because the same damn-fool oversights happen again and again. Even outside of the more obvious annoyances like referring to Xbox controls or including ridiculously draconian DRM (which are both more a question of money than of thoughtlessness), a ton of stuff that any gamer could have told the developer was a glaring screw-up keeps on turning up in otherwise great games. Here are just 10 of the worst offenders, 10 things that every single modern PC game should get right and has no excuse not to. Please do suggest others in comments below.
1. Alt-tab support.
Perhaps the single greatest, but so often neglected, Must-have there is. Just having rudimentary task-switching support in there isn’t enough (hello-o Valve games) – it needs to be fairly quickly and smooth, and included in the original release of the game, not in a patch down the line. This should be as big a priority as graphics or sound. Don’t care if it’s a massive pain to code in. Don’t care if you have to re-start the entire game from scratch to put it in. Alt-tab is absolutely integral to the way we all use our PCs. Half of us essentially live at our computers – we need to be able to task-switch to an IM window or an inbox or even another game in moments, not be locked into one program. Frankly – if your game doesn’t alt-tab, it’s not really a PC game.
Possibly deserving an entry of its own, but in the name of keeping this list to 10 I’ll include it here – all PC games should be able to play in a window. I’ve missed social events because someone’s instant messaged me about going to the pub, but not bothered to phone or text when I don’t get back to them right away because I’m off in a game. One day, the girl of my dreams will magically message me, and by the time I’ve exited the game she’ll have got bored of waiting and declared her love for my arch-nemesis (I don’t actually have an arch-nemesis, but I’m working on it). Then I will hunt down and kill the developer of whichever unwindowable game I was playing at the time. They will appreciate why. Window play is also necessary for 2D games whose resolutions can’t be changed – 800×600 pixels of pretty hand-drawn art look like roadkill in toontown when they’re stretched over a 1680×1050 panel.
2. Use standardised install and savegame folders
Everything goes in Program Files by default, please (and, just as importantly, there needs to be an option to install anywhere the player would rather). Don’t have your game install itself into the root of C:\ or an obscure sub-folder, and when you do put it in Program Files don’t stick it inside [Publisher name]\[Developer name] – just stick a folder directly in there under the game’s name. Gamers want to be able to find their game files easily, not have to Google for everyone involved in its creation just so they can work out what folder it’s in.
This is doubly true of savegames. We need to be able to back those suckers up in case of disaster or a Windows reinstall. Know where STALKER hides its savegames in Vista? C:\Users\all users\documents\stalker-shoc, that’s where. Here’s where games whose developers aren’t crazy stick their saves on my PC – C:\Users\Alec\Documents\My Games. In other words, the standard My Games folder inside (My) Documents, a two-click, standard process to reach. To find STALKER’s saves, I have to dig through five separate sub-folders, in something I’d never otherwise look at. Who are these mythical ‘All Users’? They’re not me, that’s who.
Even our beloved World of Goo fails at this. The game goes into Program Files\World of Goo. The savegame – and the savegame alone – goes into C:\ProgramData\2DBoy\WorldOfGoo. ProgramData? Worse, that’s actually a hidden folder by default. Gah!
3. Automatically set themselves to your desktop screen resolution
Don’t default to something horrid and archaic like 640×480. The vast majority of PC gamers use flatpanel monitors, and games running at anything other than their native resolution tend to look horrible. Save us the hassle of changing the setting ourselves, but most of all save the less tech-savvy from having to work out what a resolution even is in the first place, or just putting up with a blurry screen because they’ve no idea how to fix it. Clearly, still allow the resolution to be easily changed to whatever the gamer wants, however: the game needs to support every res the monitor does.
4. Support widescreen resolutions.
Widescreen isn’t the future – it’s the present. Just look at the consoles for proof of that, or at the top hits for ‘monitor’ on Amazon. And expecting us to edit an ini file or type in command lines doesn’t count as widescreen support.
5. Uninstall in seconds.
Don’t have it laboriously check every single damn file before it has the grace to remove ‘em – just wipe the folder, pull the main hooks out of the registry and be done with it. I uninstalled the FIFA 09 demo today, and it all but locked up my PC for ten minutes while it did its ridiculous, disc-churning thing. Then I uninstalled the King’s Bounty: The Legend demo, and it was gone in the blink of an eye. That’s the way to do it. When I want someone to leave my house, I just want them gone – I don’t want them hanging around on the doorstep making tedious chit-chat for half an hour. Tied into this is installing neatly in the first place to ensure removal is simple – the game should all end up in one place, not explode tiny bits of itself all over the hard drive.
6. Don’t require the CD/DVD in the drive to play.
Again, we’re talking about a PC, a device with hundreds of gigabytes of storage. A game needing to look at a plastic disc entirely external to the game install folder whenever it runs is openly ludicrous. I know it’s for copy protection’s sake (and even so is of debatable effectiveness in this day and age), but the annoyance to legit customers surely outweighs a few extra lost sales before the inevitable no CD crack turns up anyway. Requiring PC gamers to scrabble through a vast pile of discs just to play the game they’ve already installed is contrary to the nature of the platform, and lures people towards less than legal solutions that may ultimately push them further towards piracy. And you wouldn’t want that, would you publishers?
7. Keep the quicksave and quickload keys far apart.
Accidents happen, whether it’s sausage-fingered gamer stereotypes or just furious keyboard-slapping in rage at another defeat. Hitting quicksave when you’re reaching for quickload is the worst thing in the world, including being licked to death by a pack of hobos. If you set quicksave and quickload to F5 and F6, you are not fit to be developing PC games. F6 and F9 are fine – that’s enough space to blame quicksaving just as you get killed on the player being stupid, not on developer thoughtlessness.
8. Escape means menu/pause
The button’s actually called ‘Escape’, for heaven’s sake. Why on Earth would a game ever bind a request to leave or pause the action to anything else? This needs to be standardised. No-one wants to be miserably jabbing at random buttons one-by-one because the phone’s ringing but they’ve got no idea what brings up the pause menu.
And, because I want to keep this list PC-centric rather than generalist to all games, I’ll mention cutscenes here rather than as a separate point. Pressing Escape during a cinematic means I want to end that cinematic. Literally, I want to escape this movie you are making me watch. Please respect that button’s purpose. Please respect your players – and if you make any of your cutscenes unskippable, you don’t.
9. Auto-backup quicksaves
Again, accidents happen. Excited gamers hit quicksave when they think they’re out of danger but a giganto-beast is just about to feast on their ankles. Files get corrupted. And then you’re screwed, with no option than to rewind potentially hours of progress. So whenever the player hits quicksave, the game should keep a copy of the last one in case of disaster. The last two, ideally. It’s just common sense, and surely an incredibly simple process.
10. Patches should fix, not break
If your patch renders savegames from previous versions of the game inoperable, it’s just not ready for release. If people have to restart a game from the very beginning because of this, they will hate and distrust you for it. If there’s honestly no way around this, because the under-the-hood changes really are that absolute, then the patch needs to say as much in giant red letters when it’s run: “INSTALLING THIS WILL BREAK YOUR SAVES. OK?” A footnote in the readme file is not enough. Better yet, the lead designer should show up at the door of anyone installing the patch with a box of chocolates and an apologetic hug.
Stepping away from savegames, if your patch introduces new problems then it’s hardly a patch, is it? Test it to death before you let it into the wild – remember that Eve update which deleted critical Windows files? Such a thing cannot be allowed to ever happen again.
Related Stories:
This article is of extreme importance! I especially agree with the standardized folders thing, although i do like a C:\games\ folder rather than the “programs” one which through 3 months turns into a pile of mysterious crap.
@rocketman
There are at least two problems with changing the permissions on \program files\thisgame\savesfolder.
1. If you do that, you’re then limiting that game to one user per PC, unless you want the installer to grab your userID and set up a personal folder (like \thisgame\savesfolder\keith\). Incidentally, that’s also an argument in favour of putting the config files in a user-specific location — so different users can have different keybindings, graphics settings etc.
2. It adds further potential security problems. If the “set permissions” step goes wrong in some way, it could quite conceivably change permissions on a different folder, or a folder further up the hierarchy. That could leave you *very* exposed.
–
Whilst I completely get your desire to keep all your games-related stuff on a separate partition/drive to the OS (I do the same), it does make backing up tricky. If all savegames, config files, keybindings, screenshots and whatnot are in a user-specific central location, then I can bung it on a DVD or backup drive in a matter of moments. I can copy the latest savegame for whatever I’m currently playing to my laptop if I’m heading out for a few days, without playing hunt-the-folder.
If you’re keen enough to put your games/apps on a separate partition so you don’t clog up your oft-nuked windows install then you’d probably want to redirect your profile folder to another drive too (tweakui).
You guys just don’t realize how restrictive Windows is when you don’t have admin access to your machine. You just can’t do all these things you are suggesting or you will be overwhelmed by support calls. You would be surprised how many people are playing on a computer, either at their office or set up by somebody who is smart enough not to let them have admin access.
You can go on all you want, but that is just the way it is. Now setting up the install where it lets advanced users do these types of things if they want to would be great. But it can’t be the default behavior.
11. Don’t default to WASD for movement keys. Default to ESDF instead.
Reasons:
- Many gamers are also touch-typists and have gotten used to resting their fingers on the home keys, with the index finger on the F key. Having ESDF movement keys is identical to that, while WASD is one column to the left of that, making it difficult to use for those who are touch-typists.
- Keyboards are designed with a tactile bump on the F key so that you can find your home keys without looking down. WASD removes this advantage.
- Having WASD as movement keys means that your pinky rests on the Caps Lock key, which is frequently not able to be used for video games. Having ESDF as your movement keys means that you have your pinky on the “A” key and can configure it for additional features like “alternate-fire” or “lean left”. Even if you can use the Caps Lock key for additional features, it often means you exit the game and ARE STUCK IN ALL CAPS MODE FOR THE FIRST THING that you type.
- ESDF results in a more comfortable hand position because it is what the hardware and environment (desk, chair, wrist rest, keyboard position, etc.) is designed to support.
@Caffeinated Sentry Gnome:
if your savegames are inside your game dir, you don’t care if your gamedir is in C:, E: or G:. They are in your_current_directory/savegames.
Also, you can have one hard drive and still have different partitions.
@Keith:
Everyone ends up running as admin anyway. Microsoft dropped the ball with W95 and Vista is just not going to fix that. Some engineer at Microsoft admitted that they put up all those “are you sure?” popups so everybody would shout to developers who, in turn, would feel obligated to develop their programs without using admin righs. Well, they didn’t.
Also, I could redirect the “My Documents” to a different drive (which indeed I do), but I would still have the registry problem.
About the potential security problem: I don’t really care about one more potential hole in windows. I have who knows how many thousand just in IE, and game developers end fucking up the same, admin rights or not. Was it “The Temple of Elemental Evil” the one that would delete all the adjacent directories when you uninstalled?. Just more reason to not let the installer touch ANYTHING outside the game directory.
@both:
and I’m not advocating having a e:/savegames/game/user. What I’d prefer is a e:/game/saves/profile
For example, starcraft keeps saves in starcraft_dir/saves and users in starcraft_profiles. I could reinstall and not lose them except for the fact that some things are kept in the registry, like the letter for the CD drive and the folder where the game is installed. Both useless. The first one is for the DRM (now removed). The second, I can get from the location of the .exe I run when I load the game.
Q3A did keep profiles, replays, configs, etc inside its dir, and only used the registry to save the game dir and version for future patches. I can reinstall and play the game without a problem without having to restore anything at all.
Nowadays, whenever I reinstall my OS, I end up having to reinstall 15-20 games (yeah, I know, I should finish some of them already!). And it’s not nice. The My Documents folder, I can put up with in the end. The registry?. Not so much. And now, they’re starting to add extra shit like the C++ runtimes, OpenAL, PhysX, the shitty .NET… I remember even a game that needed MySQL!!!
In any case, I don’t want to be a Taliban about this. I only wish game developers did like Total Commander and asked me if I want to have my settings saved in the standard folder (windir) or in the program folder. The method today: install custom or default. Default installs to program files, savegames to My games, etc. Custom?. Let me choose everything!. If I choose custom, I know enough to set my own permissions, thank you.
@ Tony Fabris
Your pinky is the same length as your ring finger?
It would be nice if a game is a sequel to a game you have installed, that it set the default control keys to match the previous game’s configuration.
Wow, people’s comments seem to be swearing and using exclamation marks here more often these days.
yeah sorry about that
One thing that needs to be on the list:
No mouse lag! There are good, high-graphics games that have no mouse lag whatsoever (eg Far Cry). There shouldn’t be any more than 1 (maybe 2) frames between moving the mouse and having the game notice you’ve moved the mouse.
Biggest culprits here are games designed for consoles, then hastily (and lazily) ported to PC
@Tims:
Who the FUCK are you saying that to?!!!!!!!!!!
;)
“Perhaps we should have a similar idea to Games for Windows (wait! read the rest! don’t flame yet!). A sticker/logo that developers can put on their games when it complies with the above list of requirements, some sort of Campaign for Proper PC Games or some such (ideally with a witty/smutty acronym ).“
Complies with Universal Notice of Truth
I can see the sticker now…”This game’s got C**T”.
remap all the keys. I’m left handed and I use my mouse with the left hand. for god’s sake, let me use the numpad instead of wasd.
and don’t put sounds that you can’t turn off (for example menu or installer music that you can’t disable). I usually play with winamp running
@rocketman71
well how bout this then. a program like wine to install games in. so games can be installed in gamesdir but the games think they are installed in C:/whatever. that also keeps track of reg keys and anything else that it adds. kinda like a msi packager.
@Rei Onryou
how about: Standardized Helpful Interface Technology
These rules should be law and taught in game schools around the world.
To generally find the games folder I right click on the icon and choose ‘open file location’. I do dislike looking through hidden folders for files.
My Vista ‘gamesaves’ folder seems to be only for games that came with the computer, like Purble Palace and Chess Titans.
I say, nerf the windows button completly. I hate accidently pressing it with my palm when using WSAD
@Caffeinated Sentry Gnome: something like that would be great. I think programs like Thinstall do it, although I don’t know if that has any kind of performance hit.
To anyone who installs their games to a different drive/partition and then whines when save games are in your home folder – why the hell do you have your home folder on your C: drive anyway? The whole point of partitioning (besides keeping a better overview) is to have your C: drive for your OS install only and nothing else. This way you can wreck your OS and reinstall without having to worry about your data.
Move your bloody home folders, folks!
@JayKay
things were that simple till xp and its users and security came along
Wow.. A top ten list that isn’t 1 or 2 good points with 8 or 9 other “fillers” put in. Great list!
@Caffeinated Sentry Gnome
That has nothing to do with a particular OS. I have always kept my data on separate partitions (well, not on my C64 or Amiga and probably not in the DOS days, cos it was “different 5 1/4 discs” then ;-) ), so it’s just a matter of moving one system folder over on a fresh install nowadays. And there is nothing more convenient than having your data in one central location where it is easy to find.
Whenever I reinstall PCs of other people I ask them 10 times if we have everything backed up because I just know they will have their emails stored in some obscure location that I would never think of backing up.
So this has nothing to do with any OS or its security settings – it’s a simple yet effective way of protecting your data.
@JayKay: my home folder is in D. The problem is not everybody knows how to use TweakUI (for example) to change it. The big problem is the registry, that bloated POS that I wish developers never used for anything at all except adding an entry in the Uninstall programs list.
My big complaint is that if you want to play a multiplayer game at home, you often can’t with just one copy. My son and I love to play RTS games against each other and we can’t with most games without going through some sort of cracking process. I would like to see games have no DRM at all or at least something that allows you to play within your home network.
this was a pretty terrible article. you may think your points are valid, however you obviously do not represent mainstream gamers, case in point this article.
Oh, man. I’m using this as an example next time I need to explain “Circular Logic” to someone. Thanks, man!
@rocketman71
You don’t need any extra software, note even TweakUI. Just rightclick your “My Documents” folder and move it (in XP, I don’t have a copy here to verify the exact wording). In Vista, you can move single folders within the User-folder via Properties => Location.
Best article I’ve read in days, and thats saying something.
Please do a follow up, I’d make suggestions, but I think you’ve got things under control.
(Digital distribution needs a kick in the face.)
Another addendum to point 7: again all praise to Max Payne, this time for forcing TWO presses of quickload to actually load. What a piece of genius!
I’m not so sure about putting saved games in the Documents folder. It’s a terrible idea to put user data there… we have appdata for a reason. But saved games might be acceptable.
1. My opinion: Every game needs multiple quicksave slots.
Example:
I hit quicksave (this causes game to be saved in ‘quicksave’. The previous ‘quicksave’ is renamed ‘previous_quicksave_1′, and the even earlier ‘previous_quicksave_1′ is deleted.)
I hit quickload (this loads quicksave)
I can manually load the older quicksave.
This stops you from getting a bad quicksave if quicksaves are the only way you’re saving your game. Saving before you die not so much of a problem with a backup, but too many backups clutter load dialogs.
2. Linux support (and even better… additional alternative simple command line linux support)
My system dual-boots. And windows hogs resources like crazy. A game made to run under linux will generally run better there than in windows, and I want my game to run to the max. And if i can run from command line and not even have to boot up the full operating system, I can zoom by on a weaker machine while someone else lags on something beefier.
Strongest points for me are #1 (Alt-tab support), #3 (Auto-set resolution), #6 (No disc requirements after install) and #8 (Escape key primacy).
In particular #8 because I’ve been playing a bunch of Battlefield games lately that don’t allow skipping of the EA/DICE logos. A good compromise here would be to keep a log of game startups and disable such rubbish after, say, the first 50.
Gee I hope someone reads this.
8. Escape means menu/pause
Blizzard has had this bound to F10 since the beginning of time. Supcomm copied this. I am comfortable with either ESC or F10.
“6. Don’t require the CD/DVD in the drive to play.”
securom provides that…. securom however is far less preferable. (main reason of the spore lawsuit)
I would only legally buy something that requires the cd or dvdrom to be present, if the only other option was securom.
Saved games these days *do* frequently take up a lot of space. I’d filled multiple gigs with Neverwinter Nights saves, for example, before I realized this and did some pruning. And the problem with having the saves in a centralized location is that even if you can plop it somewhere other than the OS drive/partition (and you apparently can), that still forces all those large files to fill up space on the same drive. It’s like the problem with Steam putting all of its content in the same directory – yes, you can pick which drive that directory’s on, but maybe you don’t want all 30 gigs of that content on the same drive. I sure don’t.
Oh yes!
As I have no PC at the moment, I am not all that familiar with these bugs. However, on my Mac, I notice that quite a few of these problems are non-existent.
1. I have yet to see a game I cannot Command-Tab out of,
2. Save games are typically in the program folder (with a few exceptions where it is in a folder under the user who saved it)
3-4. Like PCs, it depends on the game.
5. Uninstall process on a Mac is no harder than dragging the files to the trash folder and deleting. There are no external uninstall programs that need to be run, as everything is in a centralized location. However, if you want to purge of ALL the files for the game, you may have to look in the preferences folder to rid yourself of the preferences file. Also, as plug-ins are typically in the same folder as the game, they do along with the game without any added hassle.
6-10. Like PCs, it depends on the game.
In no way am I saying Macs are perfect. They still have their little problems. And the fact that for many games we have to wait until a 3rd party ports it over, Mac users usually have to wait for some time. However, there are still plenty of games for the Mac, both native and ported (Bungie originally made games solely for the Mac. The Marathon trilogy, Myth, Oni. Halo was originally designed for the Mac, until Microsoft bought them out. Blizzard is also known for developing all their games simultaneously for both Mac and PC)
I largely agree that the design in Macs is generally better than Windows. Users complaining that Macs are for people who can’t use real computers should grow longer beards and learn some UNIX.
Then again, Macs are also hideously overpriced and the iMac is a horrible machine. So hey.
I gotta say extremely yes to everything. I cannot remember agreeing more wholeheartedly with anything in my life than this list.
Wow.. A top ten list that isn’t 1 or 2 good points with 8 or 9 other “fillers” put in. Great list!
sucks to be you huh ? because you opened this,
you will get kissed on friday
by the person you love (or like)
& tomorrow will be the best day of your life, so
dont break the chain cause if you do
you’ll have problems with relationships for 10 years :(
repost this as: “my firstt kiss sucked!!”
11. (or whatever we’re at by now)
When I install a game that is playable on the internet I want the install to automatically add the game to the windows firewall exceptions list. I hate launching a game then trying to play online only to not be able to connect with the firewall popup comes behind the game; this is more annoying when I can’t ALT-TAB out to allow
Good list, but be careful what you wish for with the super-fast uninstall. And with the save games, I agree they should be standardized but it makes sense that some games (especially online multiplayer games) want the save files to be hidden to help prevent hacking the save file, although they’re naive to think that we can’t find the files if we really want to.
if ya wanna task switch CTRL-ALT-DEL usually does the trick.
GENIUS!
15.
BE ABLE TO NAME YOUR SAVE GAMES, how shit is it when you have 14,000 “Medical Pavilon” savegames on BioShock!!!
Am I the only person that this drives insane?
YES MAKE CUTSCENES PAUSABLE/UNLOCKABLE for later replay
and make games like GTA able to save anywhere for people who have to leave in a hurry without driving for half an hour to your safehouse, make this an option please for the more dedicated gamers but otherwise keep people with a life/job/female commitment able to save their game before scurrying off into the great outdoors.
ALSO
cdless games are kinda asking for piracy but I somehow am not complaining…
the crack will come out anyway and the games usually run faster off your harddrive then off your slow ass $10 second-hand dual-layer dvd-burner.
as for developers and savegames
WHAT THE F**K is wrong with putting “C/Program Files/Company Game/SAVEGAMES” as the save game destination
“Goddamn, EA you motherfuckers, listen to this. I’m sick of finding my Crysis and Spore saves in stupid folders.” well said random flamer
ALT-TAB SUPPORT F**K YEAH
why does css have to crash everytime I alt-tab!?!?! that is ridiculous.
ALSO
16.
GAMES LIKE COD4 CAN YOU NOT TAKE THE CHEAP ROAD TO GETTING G.O.T.Y. BY PUTTING IN SIMPLE MULTIPLAYER AND CAN YOU MAKE A SOURCE SDK LIKE MAP MAKER AND BE SLIGHTLY MORE USER FRIENDLY, IE. CAN YOU MAKE A STEAM LIKE FRIEND SYSTEM WHERE YOU CAN SEE WHICH F**KING SERVER YOUR FRIEND IS ON!!!
Also
give admins proper powers, how many times have I seen a vote passed on COD4 only to have the hacker not actually camped after an obviously winning vote to kick that souless piece of s**t.
thankyou all for listening to my rant.
<3 PC gamers, ur all good, except most COD4 players, learn how to play on css b4 u call urself good.
Dear “someone,”
Can I have your supplier’s number? Clearly you are intoxicated in a way that I dearly wish to be.
A majority of PC games support some of these requirements, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find even one game that supports all of them. For instance: I can’t think of a single game that backs up quicksaves. I have never, but never, hit “load game” and seen a list like “Autosave, Quicksave1, Quicksave2,” and then my manual saves.
If it is your contention that “almost all” PC games meet this standard, please name one game which meets every requirement on this list.
well i never have a problem with most of the things your talking about in that blog because i use an Ideazon Merc Zboard and on the gamers point of view i believe no serious gamer should be caught dead without a Merc Zbored or Merc Fang to many games today have weird controls and my keybored is the answer :) onto another issue if you will right click any shortcut on your desktop and click properties it will tell you exactly where the game files are which usually includes the savefile i agree with the CD/DVD rom thing but its easyer just to no CD crack it and its not illegal if you own the actual disk (Megagames.com for all you who need one) and i completely agree with the alt+tab thing and if anyone could find an addon for wow that allows me to alt+tab quickly please send it to my email at evilspawn4@gmail.com :) and ill be happy to send you back a list of addons that A)give comments on quest from wowhead in game(this contains coords usually that tell you exactly where to go to finish the quest with a simple click) B)help you buy low and sell high in the AH C)give you levels of quest D)tell you coords for where to turn in the quest E)organize your minimap buttons somewhere other then your minimap to avoid clutter and much much more
Don’t require the CD/DVD in the drive to play.
Oh dear good yes.
I nearly ALLWAYS break or loose my cds/dvds for my games, han then i have to download a .iso image of the game to play it, even dough i payed for it.. øv øv
Can we send this artikle to the mayor game producers??
I disagree with your point over windowplay (Part 2 of Point 2). Some games especially fps’s, play best when you’re totally immersed in them, not when there’s a glowing blue bar at the bottom of the screen reminding that you’re not really as cool as Dr. Gordon Freeman. Maybe an option to play either windowed or full screen would be the best solution.