Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Rules For Games: Do & Don’t #1

By John Walker on July 2nd, 2010 at 6:21 pm.

OBEY ME!

It’s about time everyone in the games industry did what I tell them.

So starting today, here’s the first of my Do And Don’t guides. Obey them, developers. Live longer.

Do: let me flush the toilets and turn on the taps. Scenery, in any game of any genre, shouldn’t be painted on the walls. And so many games before have put in a nice toilet flushing noise. Since all games do insist in including a toilet, as well they should, then all games should include the splishy sploshy noise of flushing it.

Don’t: tell me that you’re a game any more. You want to capture something of Brechtian estrangement, break down that fourth wall with mallets and wrecking balls, because you think it’s a fresh and original approach. It’s not. It’s been done a lot, and it’s probably a sign that you’re not confident enough in your own creation. If you feel the urge to winkingly acknowledge to the player that they’re playing a game, then you need to go back to work to create a more convincing world.

Do: feel free to let me quick save. I know, I know, you’re very proud of your checkpointing, but as it happens I don’t really want to repeat any fight in the game seventeen times because of your difficulty spike. And sure, you could consider it cheating, letting me blag my way through sections. But I sort of bought your game, and arrogantly feel like I should now be able to enjoy it as I wish. Perhaps that might be to opt out of quick save spamming. But perhaps it will improve the experience if only you’ll let me.

Don’t: show me an unskippable animation when I die. It doesn’t matter how elaborate you make this, the maximum number of times I’ll ever want to watch it is none. And if your load times are horrible, this becomes infinitely more awful. If you’re only ever playing your game with God Mode on to test it, switch it off occasionally to see how the rest of us will suffer when we play. YES! I KNOW! I DIED! SHUT UP AND RELOAD! JUST BLOODY RELOAD! That is how the rest of us suffer when we play.

Do: let me carry more than two guns. Just when did we all decide that we weren’t okay with that element of unrealism in gaming? Sure, it can be set in the retro-future on a spaceship made of time, but god forbid we holster an improbable number of weapons. Especially if you’ll then let me carry hundreds of bits of ammo for all the weapons anywhere. Where am I storing those? In my magic trousers? And if so, why can’t I stick a pistol and a rocket launcher in there too? I want to stick a rocket launcher in my magic trousers!

Don’t: leave diary entries by one person scattered over miles of corridors, buildings and countries. That’s not how a diary works. A diary tends to be all in one place. Most people, when journaling their lives, don’t tend to scribble it out on the nearest scrap of paper and then leave it wherever they wrote it. Because that would be utterly insane.

Do: feel free to hire a writer to work for your team from the start of development. Many really are amazingly talented, and their skill with coding is extraordinary, but this doesn’t always naturally lend itself toward crafting fine narrative. It does, however, mean that we end up with characters called Dirk Bluntly, who say things like, “This is the last time I’m going to take any more of this!” Which we don’t want as much as people apparently believe.

Don’t: do anything to us in a cutscene that we could easily prevent during the game proper. It’s extremely unlikely that the enemy is going to capture Tanker McTankerton by pointing a gun at him menacingly. Because that’s what everyone else did on the way there, and he blew them all up with his grenade launcher. Which he likely would do here as well, if only you’d flipping give us the controls back.

Do: however, let me do anything amazingly cool my character can do in a cutscene. If the best I can do is jump the height of a brick, then that’s what he’s limited to in the scenes too. If he can cartwheel up a wall, fire lasers out of his eyes, and turn into a spider, then I have to be able to do those things too. In the game. In real life would be good too.

Don’t: have flying baddies in your game. Sure, there may be examples of the odd few that have worked. The rest haven’t. It’s so, so unpleasant. Like a lovely walk in the woods ruined by the constant assault of gnats in your face. Fun, people. We want to have fun. Not be constantly irritated. Fun.

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383 Comments »

  1. 02/07/2010 at 18:26 bildo says:

    flushing toilets with a flushing sound must be present. Reference: Duke Nukem.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:44 Andy_Panthro says:

      and of course being able to smash the toilet, then drink from the water that gushes forth. This should heal me, but I don’t know why.

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:47 po says:

      And with the advances to physics engines, there should be floaters. That float.

    • 02/07/2010 at 22:57 Zogtee says:

      Back when we played Swat 3 (awesome game, btw), we were impressed by the fact that you could switch the lights on or off by, you know, flicking the light switches. I don’t remember if you could do it on all maps, but you could on some. It was a small thing, I suppose, but it added a lot to the sense of immersion. This was years and years ago, so you think it would be more common today, but it’s not. Lazy sods.

  2. 02/07/2010 at 18:26 Dan says:

    I agree with everything

    Not even everything in this article, just plain everything

  3. 02/07/2010 at 18:29 Phoshi says:

    Agree, but I would also add: Do: Keep things consistent. If I have legs like tree trunks, I should either be able to kick down every wooden door, or no wooden doors, not just the wooden doors that glow. This goes for everything else, too, if my bullets break glass they should also break a bottle. If my magical time glove works on a staircase, it should work on the rest of the metal floor. I don’t mind not being able to rocket launcher everything into submission, I do mind only being allowed to rocket launcher some things into submission, without having a decent reason.

    • 03/07/2010 at 07:42 nate says:

      This is what ruined half-life 2 for me– a game I know a lot of other people loved. That damned gravity gun….

    • 03/07/2010 at 07:56 Azhrarn says:

      @Nate: You should see the stuff Singularity pulls sometimes, your TMD (temporal manipulation device) is rather awesome, but quite limited in what it will affect. It also includes a gravity gun function.

      Age/Revert works on pretty much all enemies though, which is a plus. Now, whether you want to use it is a different matter (some enemies love to melee and become explosive with a time pulse).

      Deadlock is an exception as it works everywhere (and on everything) and can make some fights into “incredible machine” scenes just by stacking exploding barrels and bullets in the bubble before collapsing it and annihilating an entire room in a split second.

    • 03/07/2010 at 09:02 Grot Punter says:

      Now, I do believe Singularity tried to make consistency by stating the TMD only worked on things made with/that contained E99.

      Edit: I just remembered that a projector vid at the start stated that ALOT of things on Katorga-12 were made with E99, so yeah, your DO still stands.

  4. 02/07/2010 at 18:29 ChaosSmurf says:

    Taking bets what John’s been playing, guessing Singularity myself.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:20 N says:

      Thinkin’ the same thing lol.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:21 JKjoker says:

      then he forgot the “whenever you introduce a new game mechanic (like the weapon locker/upgrade thingy), do not rush me with story elements, im freaking reading over here!”

      i swear several scenes in that game feel like playing a multiplayer game for the first time with a friend that played it 50 times, you stop to check out new things while he is constantly agroing everything and preventing you from switching weapons/upgrading/reading

    • 05/07/2010 at 02:11 Will says:

      Ha, I was thinking the same thing. Still enjoying the game though – about time someone was inspired by the art direction from Metroid Prime et al. But I could live without the little logos on manipulable objects, and the writing, oh dear me no.

  5. 02/07/2010 at 18:31 Guestman says:

    Listen, dude. In my day we were swarmed by cliff racers every time we left town. And we dealt with it.

    Sure, they were annoying, but they gave us easy access to levitation mats.

  6. 02/07/2010 at 18:33 Jimbo says:

    Do: guilt trip or mock me when I try to exit the game. It makes me want to ruffle the game’s hair and call it a cheeky scamp.

    Don’t: make me restart the game in order to apply graphical changes. That isn’t endearing at all.

  7. 02/07/2010 at 18:34 Bas says:

    Agreed, entertained, more of these please!

  8. 02/07/2010 at 18:38 leo says:

    The coolest part of Prey was at the very start in the bathroom, you could touch and activate everything, even the soap dispenser. I wish more games did that.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:42 Fumarole says:

      That toilet would have come in handy when the character did his first inverted-drop-thingy and emptied the contents of his stomach. Which in fact was the second coolest part of the game.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:44 kafka7 says:

      If I’ve just killed a bunch of people in a toilet then a working soap dispenser is the first thing I look for.

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:13 Wilson says:

      @leo – The soap dispenser? Damn, now I feel like I missed out on something.

  9. 02/07/2010 at 18:38 Lack_26 says:

    An XP bonus is always nice when you flush a toilet in a game, public hygiene awareness bonuses are a good thing.

  10. 02/07/2010 at 18:40 Web Cole says:

    “This is the last time I’m going to take any more of this!”

    Yoink.

  11. 02/07/2010 at 18:40 Calneon says:

    4th one I feel is in direct relation to Resident Evil 5.

  12. 02/07/2010 at 18:44 terry says:

    I was impressed with the quality of Bioshock 2′s toilet water swirl but their apparent inability to show the bowl filling up lost points from me.

    Pre: edit. My captcha is 2PSS. Uncanny.

  13. 02/07/2010 at 18:44 Karthik says:

    Flying baddies reminds me of the manhacks from half-life, my favorite gnats in the face ever.
    Sadly, they didn’t get much screentime in the episodes.

    Worst flying baddie ever: The rakk from borderlands.

    • 02/07/2010 at 18:56 Fwiffo says:

      CLIFF RACERRRRRRRR!!!!!!

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:30 Grunt says:

      Cliff Racers win ANY contest about annoying flying baddies. I played Morrowind so heavily for a time I even started hearing the flying bastards in real life!

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:38 Psychopomp says:

      >Open up Morrowind in editor
      >Delete Cliff Racers

      Feels good, man.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:54 Vinraith says:

      I never found cliff racers all that annoying, but then of the thousands of hours I logged in Morrowind a miniscule fraction were un-modded. Passive cliff racers make great scenery, so I’d miss them if they were gone, and once you get used to one of the wildlife mods (which render non-diseased wildlife non-aggressive) it’s always a shock when a racer DOES attack you.

    • 03/07/2010 at 00:41 Collic says:

      hahaha i was about to post something about cliff racers as well. God they were annoying.

      They didnt often kill you, it was more the fact they chased you relentlessly and at low levels you could spend ages futily trying to bat them away with your sword, or shoot at them only to miss, again and again.

    • 03/07/2010 at 03:12 Kommissar Nicko says:

      Cliff racers were only aggravating if you made the mistake of playing an archer. I recall my master of the bow loosing hundreds of arrows trying to cleverly use unilateral preemptive strike diplomacy, only to have them drift meaninglessly through wing collision mapping. DAMN YOU ASYMMETRICAL WARFARE!

    • 03/07/2010 at 11:01 dadioflex says:

      Sure, you can delete the cliff racers but there’s a mod out there that lets you hunt them to extinction, in theory. I say in theory because I got a message saying there were going to be fewer cliff racers around, after killing dozens of them, but they’re still showing up. I’m hoping that that means they’re becoming rarer and if I kill a few dozen more they’ll die out completely.

      Or, yeah, just delete them. Hmmm.

  14. 02/07/2010 at 18:45 Hunam says:

    Don’t EVER have a character in the game hassling me about doing the objectives. It winds me up. SupCom is the worst for it.

    TAKE OUT THE BASE

    YOU SHOULD TAKE OUT THE BASE

    THE BASE IS STILL THERE!? DESTROY IT!

    WHY HAVEN’T YOU DESTROYED THE BASE YET

    DESTROY THE BASE

    DO IT

    GO ON

    DO IT

    etc.

    • 02/07/2010 at 18:45 Hunam says:

      Crap, broken tag fail.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:02 Sassenach says:

      SupCom’s constant reminders wouldn’t have been half as bad if the nagging wasn’t almost always strategically terrible advice.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:32 sinister agent says:

      Worse are games where other characters give you crap for doing things BETTER than they are. I think it was a flight sim where my squad leader bloke screamed in furious horror that I wasn’t following him the instant I turned 15 degrees to the right. No, boss, I’m not following you. I’m following the bloke who’s about to shoot you down, you tart.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:32 Grunt says:

      Transformers does this a lot.

      “HAVEN’T YOU PRESSED THE SWITCH YET??”

      NO! Feck off, Megatron, I’m having fun trying to spook this robotic arm.

    • 03/07/2010 at 01:28 Farewell says:

      The original Z ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(computer_game) ) actually had your units blaming you if the battle was going badly, and this was actually one of the many things that made the game very dear to me.

    • 03/07/2010 at 05:36 Rufust Firefly says:

      The constant nagging in SupCom made me miss the bombastic narrator at the beginning of Total Annihilation. At least you could turn him off.

  15. 02/07/2010 at 18:47 westyfield says:

    Do: let me see my character in a mirror in-game. Especially if it’s an FPS.

  16. 02/07/2010 at 18:48 Alexander Norris says:

    The “two guns only, plus maybe a side-arm and some grenades” thing is actually a good thing. It means devs can’t give you a gun that you’ll only want to use in 10% of the game. Giving you a gun that you only want to use in 10% of the game is dumb – it’s a waste of space when you could have included a gun I want to use 100% of the time instead.

    Doom-style weapon progression is dumb. I much prefer having games where all the guns are interesting and have a reason to exist.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:06 Crapknocker says:

      I have to disagree, pretty much every weapon in the Doom Guy’s arsenal had a purpose. Even the shotgun vs. super shotgun; one was better in some circumstances than the other. In this case, I’d almost call the ‘one rifle fits all’ approach a dumbing down.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:19 Jimbo says:

      I agree with Crapknocker (always wanted to sat that). Back when you could carry a whole bunch of guns, they could shake up the gameplay and you could decide which tool would be best for the situation in front of you. Now they just have to make everything beatable by anything, in case that’s what the player happens to be carrying. It’s not like there are ever *really* any consequences – should I carry this rocket launcher in case I come up against a helo or a tank? Well no, because there will be a stack of rocket launchers lying around anyway if that does happen.

      Two Guns has its place for sure, but I do miss those shooters that could be designed around a massive arsenal of weapons/tools.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:22 Urthman says:

      Restricting the weapons you carry almost always makes a game more boring. It’s like RPGs that encourage you to put all your points into a single skill or weapon and use nothing but that for the whole game.

      If rocket launchers, flamethrowers, pistols are only useful in a few rare circumstances, you end up carrying the middle-of-the-road, versatile-but-boring machine gun and shotgun and using nothing else for the whole game.

      Take Far Cry 2. The flamethrower is really cool, but so rarely useful I never carried it around. Total waste. (Although I have to say that overall Far Cry 2 is better than most games at using the carry limits to force you to plan and use strategy. And the ability to store weapons and swap before each mission makes a big difference too.)

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:28 Mman says:

      In theory it might be supposed to be like that, but in practice on weapon-limit SP games, at least the first time through, you just choose the dependable generic stuff and ignore the interesting stuff because the risk generally isn’t worth the reward. That mostly applies to non-weapon-limit games too, but at least in those you have the option to experiment while still having your reliable stuff if it turns out to be a bad idea.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:39 Jad says:

      That mostly applies to non-weapon-limit games too

      Which is a real problem too, which leads me to my “Don’t”:

      Don’t: Give me a really cool, fun superweapon half way through the game, give me almost no ammo for the gun, and then have some boss that will make me regret actually using it during course of the game. (even worse is when I save up all the ammo for the superweapon, and then the boss is actually killed in a cutscene)

    • 03/07/2010 at 01:56 godwin says:

      I think there are other factors at play here that determine how effective such systems can be: the variety of enemies, the availability of ammo, and balance between these elements. I think Crysis handled this really well, especially considering its weapon mods and nanosuit abilities.

  17. 02/07/2010 at 18:49 Perrin says:

    Mostly this is a fair enough list but the flying baddies thing made me realise we’ve reached a really sad state where people think of video games now as FPS or 3rd person action games. Because I’m pretty sure EVE online or Afterburner would both be ruined by an absence of flying baddies. ^_^

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:54 Zetetic says:

      Well, if you’re being irritating, the Don’t could be generalised to “Don’t use baddies that can move in more dimensions than I can.”. Which I’m not sure is good advice either. Flying enemies in FPSs can be fine, so long as the designers truly understand the extra degree of irritation that they introduce.

    • 02/07/2010 at 20:58 kenmcfa says:

      Zetetic’s “Don’t use baddies that can move in more dimensions than I can.” rule should *definitely* apply to the likes of Eve. Time-travelling cliff racers do *not* make for a good game.

  18. 02/07/2010 at 18:52 32lknssw says:

    I don’t agree with the 4th wall thing, but that might just be a reaction to the latest gaming story trend of taking itself waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously. I.E Call of Duty. I rather like games like Red Alert when they are quarky and self-aware, not serious at all. Sure, that atmosphere is great, but doesn’t apply to all games. Just I gag when games and movies take themselves over seriously.

    Everything else I agree with. I love flushing toilets.

    • 03/07/2010 at 00:17 jeremypeel says:

      I agree on the Red Alert front, but there’s a difference between self-aware and fourth-wall-demolishing. It still happens rarely enough in film that it can be genuinely shocking, but it’s been a feature of games since the beginning of time. Particularly Western RPGs, but they can get away with a few easily missed easter eggs (note: not an entire game of them a la Fallout 2).

    • 03/07/2010 at 02:05 jarvoll says:

      Red Alert, the original, was not self-aware and took itself entirely seriously. Sure, it was ridiculous, but it was *seriously* ridiculous. The self-aware look-how-camp-we-are crap only started after Westwood were bought by The MachEAne and made RA2. It shocks me how many people forget this, or never knew to begin with.

  19. 02/07/2010 at 18:54 Vinraith says:

    I actually enjoy having to make decisions about what weapons to keep, rather than being able to run around with the arsenal of a small country. It adds an additional level of choice and consequence, can improve replay value, and yes the sheer unreality of being able to carry 12 guns bothers me if the shooter itself is remotely realistic (obviously in something like Serious Sam it’s not a problem).

    Also, flying baddies can be great. Excluding all the non-FPS games that wouldn’t work without them, the most recent example I’ve (re)encountered is the swarms of angel-things in Serious Sam HD. Awe inspiring, really, and they make for a fun fight. I’m not saying this isn’t frequently done wrong, but let’s not dismiss the entire idea.

  20. 02/07/2010 at 18:56 Walsh says:

    My biggest beef is any cutscene where your character shoots someone (looking at you Red Dead Redemption), there is zero reason to have a cutscene replace something I’m perfectly capable of doing in game.

  21. 02/07/2010 at 18:57 KingCathcart says:

    There are some exception to the rules.

    For example RE: Point 4 – Batman: Arkham Asylum.

    Oh, and Shadow of the Beast 2

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:57 bakaohki says:

      Oh Batman Arkham Asylum and another thing: save points. Maybe it was me, but I wanted to fucking quicksave – I never knew where exactly was the last damn save point, so when I had to kill the same goonies for the third time I just removed the game for good.

  22. 02/07/2010 at 18:59 Flaringo says:

    Yes. YES! EXACTLY!

    Listen to this man. LISTEN, GOD DAMNIT!

    TOILET FLUSHING, CUT-SCENES, EVERYTHING, LISTEN!

  23. 02/07/2010 at 19:00 SirKicksalot says:

    I was always impressed by how Gears of War handles your death. It somehow feels a lot more brutal than expected.

  24. 02/07/2010 at 19:00 The Army of None says:

    “I want to stick a rocket launcher in my magic trousers!”

    Oh my.

  25. 02/07/2010 at 19:00 ellep says:

    Don’t: Make a single-player game that requires me to be online for any reason. I’m looking at you, Steam, Ubisoft, EA. If I’m doing something that’s taking up the entirety of my bandwidth in the background – or heavens forbid, my horrible cable Internet goes down – and I want to play a game in the meantime, and your ping to the server times out because I have a few thousand concurrent connections with a higher priority, just shut the hell up and start the game. Ping later if you think I’m a horrible thief who doesn’t deserve to play your game until I download an illicit patch that disables your bullshit reasons for requiring an always-available Internet connection.

    What I’m saying is if you goddamn kick me out of goddamned Assassin’s Creed one more goddamn time because my goddamned roommate nuked a goddamned Hot Pocket, I am going to rain hell, fire and goddamned hellfire directly on your goddamned France until it is as black as your goddamned souls.

  26. 02/07/2010 at 19:01 Bri says:

    ” I want to stick a rocket launcher in my magic trousers!”

    Best quote ever.

  27. 02/07/2010 at 19:02 dogsolitude_uk says:

    Completely agree with all those… And:

    Don’t tell me where I can and can’t jump. If Batman can perch on a Gargoyle, he should be able to perch on a similarly-sized ‘thing’ sticking out. If my Merc can jump on top of a barrel in the Zone, he should be able to deal with a low mesh fence.

    Don’t stick doors on walls unless they’re openable. I don’t know why that bugs me, but it does. Just put a poster up or hang a painting there or something else instead. Preferably a cupboard with something useful in it, like a couple of medkits, some ammo boxes and an upgrade for something.

    Do give me the option of playing in first person throughout the game with standard WASD+Mouse. I am not a camera hovering a few feet above my body, and so find that vantage point in games causes a weird feeling of detachment. Third person definitely has its place in RPGs where you have a little crew of folk to boss around, and also on consoles where you’re a long way from the screen, but on PC it just sucks.

    *ahem* I’ll shut up now and let you get on with it before I end up pre-empting everything you were going to say, and making a complete hash of it… But I had to get those of my chest. Had to.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:40 Walsh says:

      I can’t believe floating camera still exists, if I’m playing in the first person I better damn well be able to look down and see some fucking legs.

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:28 Heliosicle says:

      Crysis is the only game I can remember where your body was properly animated, swimming backwards looks so cool!

      Also L4D1 had legs which you could shoot, which was funny, dunno why they took them out for L4D2.

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:32 Nick says:

      Fear had it too, seeing your hands when climbing a ladder and stuff, I think it was one of the first games I played which did that. At the very least its thefirst I can remember. Oh, apart from Op Flashpoint.

    • 03/07/2010 at 01:24 Thants says:

      Mirror’s Edge too.

    • 03/07/2010 at 02:07 godwin says:

      In Op Flashpoint/Arma your character’s body and arms is actually part of the world though, you can turn/tilt your head and see your own shoulders. Interestingly it has a 3rd person camera too, no surprise given how much driving/flying there is in the game, but in infantry mode it is very useful in improving situational awareness. IIRC Battlefield 1942 also had 3rd person mode for infantry, good for checking one’s level of concealment in MP games.

    • 03/07/2010 at 16:57 Collic says:

      The riddick games had a rendered player body as well.

  28. 02/07/2010 at 19:02 Fwiffo says:

    Cutscene disparity has always bugged me. Particularly damage. Filling a boss with enough lead to plumb a Roman villa only for him to only be visibly harmed/killed by a single cutscene bullet always gripes me.

    Also bullet sponges. Bullet sponges that instakill you are worst. You listening Bethesda?

  29. 02/07/2010 at 19:05 mandrill says:

    Would this post be in any way related to the recent release of Singularity?

  30. 02/07/2010 at 19:07 VelvetFistIronGlove says:

    Don’t lead me through the game by some character (or worse, more than one) talking in my ear all the time. Especially don’t make them able to magically always know where I am or what I have to do next.

    Being led by the ears is painful.

    • 03/07/2010 at 17:41 Wisq says:

      @VFIG:

      System Shock, Bioshock, Deus Ex — all have made a good thing out of this, and have integrated it into the storyline as well, rather than having your guide magically know things.

      Mercenaries, the Hitman series — these tended to be less about guiding you, more about assisting you. I quite appreciated having an assistant in my ear in both cases.

      In fact, I can’t really think of an example where I haven’t appreciated having voice(s) in my head guiding/assisting me — sometimes even just because it gives me the feeling that I’m not alone, that there’s someone out there working with me rather than against me.

    • 27/10/2010 at 21:40 peachykeen says:

      Splinter Cell.

      “Don’t set off an alarm, Fisher.”
      “Don’t set off another alarm, Fisher.”
      “Dammit, you set off an alarm, Fisher.”
      “Fisher, didn’t I tell you not to set off an alarm.”
      “Be careful with the alarms, Fisher.”
      “Watch where you leave bodies, Fisher. Someone might set off an alarm.”

      That series almost single-handedly ruined in-ear assistance.

  31. 02/07/2010 at 19:08 Risingson says:

    DON’T: achievements. Mass Effect 2 convinced me to ask for it.

    - Achievement: erudite!
    - Achievement: very erudite!
    - Achievement VERY VERY erudite!

    In a row.
    No, please

    • 03/07/2010 at 03:52 Sonic Goo says:

      Achievements aren’t bad in themselves, it’s how they’re used.

      Do: have achievements that encourage people to do strange and unusual things in the game

      Don’t: have achievements that require you to do one simple boring thing a million times

    • 03/07/2010 at 07:23 grimskin says:

      Don’t: give me achievements for just playing the game (like “5 level completed”, “10 level completed”). It’s just make me feel like some retarded kid – ‘Oh, 10 minutes without shitting your pants, gooood boy’ !

    • 03/07/2010 at 11:15 Stu says:

      @Sonic Goo: YES. Every developer putting achievements in their game should look at how Crackdown did it, with its achievements for climbing to the top of the highest building in the game (and another for jumping off it), attaching five gang members to a single car with the harpoon gun, detonating 100 explosive objects in a minute, using explosives to keep a car airbourne for 7 seconds, etc. Basically, it uses achievements as a shiny, points-based carrot to encourage the player to mess about and have fun in the game’s sandbox environment.

    • 03/07/2010 at 17:49 Wisq says:

      Personally, I appreciate when achievements are for correctly executing a particularly useful tactic, and/or are something you would be likely to do anyway at some point once you become skilled enough. I like to be alerted to particularly useful tactics, and/or rewarded for correctly executing them.

      A lot of TF2 achievements end up being like this. If you play the game well enough, long enough, you can complete a lot of them without having to go out of your way.

      Giving me achievements for doing something completely ludicrous is funny enough, but I’m not terribly likely to do it unless I’m just farming it intentionally. And as soon as that’s done, I’ll go back to never doing it again.

    • 09/07/2010 at 09:00 Cunzy1 1 says:

      Don’t forget gnomes.

  32. 02/07/2010 at 19:11 TenjouUtena says:

    These are a little more RTS oriented:

    DON’T: Make me play through several levels of tutorial with all of the features turned off. I know you’re trying to baby everyone into the game; but seriously it’s annoying to know that the solution to my problem is just locked int his game. Also, in most RTSes, this teaches you the wrong way to play, and you have to unlearn all this restricted gameplay before you can play the game for real.

    DO: Make an interesting and more than 5 hour single player campaign. Especially if you’re only going to give me 2 missions with all the toys on, then I can either play against your retarded AI, or be thrown to the wolves online where I won’t stay alive long enough to learn anything.

    • 03/07/2010 at 17:54 Wisq says:

      I would extend your DON’T to say, if you’re going to have a tutorial / early levels with some things not available, don’t give me victory conditions that would be any easier were those things available.

      Tropico 3 is an example, where many of the early starter islands disable some of the extraneous things. You don’t need tourism on the first island since it’s all about production. You don’t need a power station on many of them, since it doesn’t help you achieve your goals. In both cases, they’re just things that could mislead a newbie (“I must have power stations because how can we do anything without electricity?!”) and/or overwhelm them with choice.

      But yes, if you do remove extraneous stuff during the tutorial, don’t cripple my goal-reaching ability by doing so.

  33. 02/07/2010 at 19:12 Archonsod says:

    Don’t Force me to spend the first thirty minutes of the game in a tutorial. It may be useful the first time around, but when I’m on my sixth playthrough I’d like to think I already know how to move the camera around.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:46 bwion says:

      This rule goes double, nay, triple, nay, more than that for RPGs, or anything RPGish enough to allow me some flexibility in options for my character. Because I can and will start those games 7.6 squazillion times and, basically, SHUT YOUR STUPID FACE, IRENICUS’S DUNGEON AND ALL ITS INHERITORS.

    • 03/07/2010 at 00:34 jeremypeel says:

      Ah no, see I reckon Irenicus’ dungeon is a great example of a forced tutorial done right, as it’s so full of intrigue and wonderful plotting. The alarmed room in which Irenicus attempts to set up the conditions of his lost love in an attempt to feel the same emotions he used to is… well, hugely sophisticated characterisation to say the least.

    • 03/07/2010 at 03:37 Mr Labbes says:

      I must agree that Irenicus’ dungeon absolutely rocks. It’s not so much a tutorial than a forced beginning, but a very good one. To be honest, I thought the second time I played BG2, I’d skip it.
      Played it three times now, and never did. It might be not as “free” as later parts of the game, but there’s so much love in there, I can’t help but play it every time.

  34. 02/07/2010 at 19:13 Urthman says:

    You’re absolutely right about everything but flying enemies. They’re are plenty of games with good flying enemies. Serious Sam. Any game with helicopters and a rocket launcher. Any game where you can throw cars at helicopters. Any game where you can shoot cannonballs at helicopters. The vulture dudes in Spider-Man: Web of Shadows.

  35. 02/07/2010 at 19:14 kitzkar says:

    Breaking down the fourth wall is very entertaining if done well. And it only works well in quests. See, for example, Simon the Sorcerer.

  36. 02/07/2010 at 19:15 altid says:

    Throwing out a Don’t: Put me in a fight that I have to lose to advance the narrative. It’s bloody annoying, particularly when I don’t get my stuff back.

    • 02/07/2010 at 20:15 TenjouUtena says:

      Very this. Especially in any game with a resource conservation aspect.

      Supposed-to-loose fights have so worn out their welcome.

    • 03/07/2010 at 17:56 Wisq says:

      I would also say, if you’re going to take away all my stuff (via some means other than a must-lose fight, please!), give me back MY STUFF later, not just a generic (re)starter pack of gear. I didn’t save all that crap just so you could reset me to what you think is a reasonable loadout later.

    • 09/07/2010 at 08:53 iainl says:

      This, very much so. Oblivion has been sat on my shelf for the last two years because I reached the point in the story where you have to give up all your possessions to infiltrate somewhere. I don’t _want_ to lose all the expensive goodies I’ve spent a long time accumulating, and there’s no way to tell the ‘permanent storage’ cupboards from the ‘things mysteriously vanish after a while’ ones.

  37. 02/07/2010 at 19:15 Unaco says:

    My experience of Morrowind as a game was in no way depreciated by the lack of Toilets and Sinks, Toilet and Sink noises, or, indeed, any form of bathroom/restroom activity or interactivity.

  38. 02/07/2010 at 19:17 Mman says:

    I agree with pretty much every one except the second, which is more of a game-by-game thing, the writers one (there are exceptions but some of the worst recent plots have been by “professionals”, so while it can be great it guarantees nothing) and the last (which is more because it seems a general comment on irritating “pest” enemies, which frequently don’t fly at all).

    Especially the two guns thing; if realism is a focus, or it’s multiplayer (where it actually can add strategy) I’m fine with it, but weapon limits mostly add nothing whatsoever to an SP game. It can also harm games as the only real way to not be full of trail and error (outside of providing usable weapons right before specific enemies, making the limit pointless) is to have a very limited selection of enemies, and this has contributed to a general big lack of enemy variety in recent FPS games, even in unrealistic ones where it would be justified.

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:33 Bhazor says:

      The two weapons maximum thing? Halo did it.

    • 03/07/2010 at 01:38 Mman says:

      Yes, Halo was the game that everyone ripped off when it came to weapon limits. Actually it’s probably a series that comes close to making the limit work for me; almost every weapon has some sort of use, and you generally are given freedom to choose what you want. There are sequences requiring substantially different tactics depending and what you have/haven’t took with you without falling into trial and error and still allowing for some degree of enemy variety, albeit not that much. Although the higher settings generally show that certain combinations are far more effective than others.

      One game almost getting it right doesn’t reflect to well on the usage of it in general though.

    • 03/07/2010 at 07:38 poop says:

      i like the idea of weapon limits but limiting it to two always leads to stupid situations where I carry the rocket launcher or whatever in favor of the assault rifle only to realise that at any possible point where I could need a rocket launcher there is already one sitting there waiting for me

    • 08/07/2010 at 12:47 blah says:

      I’m pretty sure Halo just about copied that (among practically everything else) from other games before it, like the Delta Force series for instance.

      Next you’ll be saying they invented sticky grenades…

  39. 02/07/2010 at 19:22 Mman says:

    Oh yeah, and a don’t; Invisible walls. Integrate limits naturally into the world; even a contrived blockage beats an invisible wall, at least the latter provides a obvious visual cue to not go some way, as opposed to trying something and being blocked for no reason (an instant immersion breaker).

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:55 Fumarole says:

      Invisible walls are the devil. I’m looking at you, Call of Duty.

    • 02/07/2010 at 22:15 DarkNoghri says:

      Agreed. I’m looking at you, L4D(2).

      Most places they didn’t even bother putting one of those “You can’t go here” textures, you just bounce off of empty air for no reason. It gimps the hunter so very much.

  40. 02/07/2010 at 19:25 The LxR says:

    My thoughts exactly – most of the bullet points describe Singularity perfectly.

  41. 02/07/2010 at 19:26 El Stevo says:

    Regarding the two weapons thing, I have and idea for a system where you can carry as many guns as you like as long as there is room to strap it to your body in the style of The Matrix. I have fantasies about a mission planning stage where you meticulously decide what weapons and tools to bring, and where they should be strapped to your body.

    • 03/07/2010 at 00:37 jeremypeel says:

      I have fantasies about not having to do this every time I enter a battle in X-Com. Or at least be able to do it accompanied by a ‘gearing up for a shoot-out’ soundtrack and Morpheus soundbites.

    • 03/07/2010 at 08:27 Lachlan says:

      I, too, thought of X-COM immediately on reading that. It suffered from a lack of any way of saving the loadouts. Later modders added it in, to general rejoicing.

      Preparation music is a very good idea, though. UFO had surprisingly tense music on the briefing screens, especially for Terror Sites and plot missions. Interceptor did briefing/prep screens nicely with suitable B-movie music and a Big Red Dramatic Button to launch the mission. These little touches added hugely to the atmosphere whilst being very simple pieces of staging.

  42. 02/07/2010 at 19:30 Hunam says:

    Tutorials should be banned.

    • 02/07/2010 at 20:37 Antithesis says:

      Indeed. We should have the knowledge of how to play beamed directly into our brains, or failing that, a big reminder to look at the instruction booklet.

    • 02/07/2010 at 20:54 Nick says:

      No, they should be optional.

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:33 Hunam says:

      I’m willing to allow pop ups that turn up the first time you need to use a skill and also I’ll allow those tips to be stored in the menu under a tutorials menu which will re-explain things to you, perhaps with little videos.

      I think one of the MGS games or something else had this. Basically, I don’t ever want to have the game take control away from me.

      Double death on them if they try to have an in game character push the tutorial off as some sort of fucking training.

    • 03/07/2010 at 00:41 jeremypeel says:

      “You should have no trouble with this assault course, what with you being our strongest recruit. Now, grab the rope and when I say go, press the space bar…”

      These kind of Truman Show-esque slips fit both the tutorial and fourth wall-breaking complaints.

    • 03/07/2010 at 10:08 Lukasz says:

      yeah. In AP it was quite jarring. To play veteran you had to finish recruit… so you done hacking, lockpicking, bypasses hundreds of times. Yet the game still tells you how to do it, when to do it in the beginning.

    • 03/07/2010 at 10:44 Forch says:

      I’d like a happy medium between absolutely nothing, a hand-holding tutorial, and a help screen that tells gamers who know how to using the fucking wasd keys what they want to know but confuses casual gamers.
      When you start the game, dialogue box with three options:
      I play a lot of games, show me what I need to know to play
      I don’t play a lot of games, show me the basics
      I’ve played before- skip to the beginning.

      Deus Ex handled this pretty well with offering an in-character tutorial or the option to get straight into the game, but the fact that I have to be told that YOUR APPOINTMENT TO FEMA SHOULD BE FINALIZED WITHIN THE WEEK every time I start the game, adding loading time, is a bit annoying.
      Where is the “2nd Playthrough – Skip all opening cutscenes” option?
      Speaking of which, how about making a game that automatically stops showing the logos for the developer, publisher and nvidia and all that shit when you beat it the first time?
      Just boop, straight to the main menu. You’ve seen all of that plenty of times having played through the game, just go.

      Oh, and:
      DON’T offer little more than resolution and particle effect quality in your game’s graphics menu. Seriously. How hard is it to offer simple things like fullscreen/windowed (Mirror’s Edge ‘DOES NOT SUPPORT WINDOWED’. Why? Because they said so.) or a wider field of view?
      DO offer impossibly high graphics settings, in case I want to play your game in 20 years on my insane super-rig that runs on stem cells without modding it, because graphics-improving mods are never as good as native support.

    • 10/08/2011 at 13:41 Belua says:

      Is it weird that the “YOUR APPOINTMENT TO FEMA[...]” line is so burned into my brain that I actually heard the voice from the game in my head saying it when I read that comment?

  43. 02/07/2010 at 19:30 Teris says:

    Reminds me of Ernest Adams’ “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!”, which was always a fun read. Looking forward to more!

  44. 02/07/2010 at 19:31 Radiant says:

    Diary entries made out of AUDIO LOGS.
    “Fuck my husband, I think he’s going slowly insane”
    “Sorry dear what was that?”
    “Nothing my love! Just going to leave this audio contraption here by the bins.”

    I disagree on the flying baddies.
    I imagine that would fuck up quite a few dog fight sims.

    Although worryingly not all of them.

  45. 02/07/2010 at 19:35 linfosoma says:

    I’ve been playing the Chronicles of Riddick lately (escape from Butcher’s bay, not the shitty sequel) and judging by these guidelines it’s the best game ever (and to be fair, it’s pretty damn good).

  46. 02/07/2010 at 19:36 Acid Rhaine says:

    I’d like to say that ‘unlocking’ cheats is just dumb. It’s a frickin cheat, so just do the right thing and give it to me from the beginning.

    If I’m the kind of guy who wants to do the whole game ‘legal’, I’d do that even if the cheats were avail from minute 1. If I’m the kind of guy who wants god mode and kgillion bullets in my 50th weapon in my super magic trousers I’m just gonna go all h@x0r and probably bork my ini.

    Like you said, I bought the game, let me play it how I want to.

    Sinks that turn on and keep running even if you leave the room.. Refrigerators that when you open them light up.

    (y)

  47. 02/07/2010 at 19:37 sinister agent says:

    Agree gently on most, but particularly the writer one, and the cut scene ones. “Look at all the fun you could be having!”

    And, for example, GTA San Andreas, where you’re basically blackmailed by a cop and have to humiliate yourself by doing his bidding, even though you meet him face to face many times, immediately before and after doing so, you have personally gunned down hundreds and hundreds of cops. Nnggh.

  48. 02/07/2010 at 19:39 Johann Tor says:

    It was a little suffocating to read through the article. I kept thinking ‘you’re talking about an FPS right? – or a third person shooter?’ Come on!

  49. 02/07/2010 at 19:41 rocketman71 says:

    DO: support LAN. If you take it out, you’re not avoiding piracy, you’re losing sales and making your fans angry.

    DON’T: put “press enter” after loading the game. It’s absolutely stupid. Get me to the main menu, idiot.

    DO: use dedicated servers in your game (if justified of course, like on MW2). And release them publicly.

    DON’T: make people pay for them. It only shows that you are a greedy bastard.

    DO: let me choose to not see the 985 logos at the beginning of the game. At least after the first time.

    and, for that matter,

    DO: let me uninstall the single player content separately of the multiplayer content. Having 9 GBs in my HD when I’m only using 1 is stupid.

    DON’t: use DRM. It’s useless. It’s expensive. And only buyers will suffer through it.

    DO: hate Ubi. And Kotick. And Activision. And EA. And.. uhh, almost all of them. The bastards.

    I have a lot more, but since publishers and devs are not going to listen (or read), I’ll stop here.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:52 El Stevo says:

      @ rocketman71

      “DO: let me uninstall the single player content separately of the multiplayer content. Having 9 GBs in my HD when I’m only using 1 is stupid.”

      Are there any games that currently allow this? I’ve not heard of it before and it’s not a bad idea.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:59 rocketman71 says:

      @El Stevo: Wolfenstein (the last one) has separated single and multi components. The game doesn’t say a thing, but you can delete the SP directory and keep playing multi. It’s a pity that the game is an offense to its predecessors.

      I’ve seen a friend that bought MW2 on Steam (yeah, he’s barely a friend anymore ;) ), and it looked like single player and multi were separate installations. At the very least, they were different links. Yet again, the game is another POS, so it seems we’re out of luck.

      First thing I do with many of those games is delete all the videos, or substitute them for empty biks (a bik with a single second of black screen). I can recover 2-3 GBs per game usually. But I shouldn’t have to do that. Publishers will tell you that hard disk space is cheap nowadays. Not true if you have a SSD (I wish) or a Raptor.

    • 02/07/2010 at 21:34 Hunam says:

      I believe Dark Messiah of Might and Magic allowed you to install the single and multi separately.

    • 03/07/2010 at 00:46 jeremypeel says:

      “I have a lot more, but since publishers and devs are not going to listen (or read), I’ll stop here.”

      I think you’d be surprised by the number of proper real life devs who frequent RPS.

    • 03/07/2010 at 16:54 Samuel Bass says:

      Unless you’re actually shouting this post very loudly, there isn’t much to listen to, but I am reading.

    • 03/07/2010 at 18:01 Wisq says:

      Re: “press enter to dismiss this useless title screen” … there are worse things. Like, on a PC title, saying “press start button to dismiss this useless title screen”. And even worse, like expecting a particular key to be pressed rather than any keyboard key for those of us who don’t actually have a controller (a condition the game should be able to detect anyway!).

  50. 02/07/2010 at 19:47 Tom Camfield says:

    flying enemies are the suck

  51. 02/07/2010 at 19:48 Requiem says:

    Agreed with everything except the two guns, I don’t mind limited weapons. What really gets me though is when you want to pick something else up and have to give up one of your guns to do it. If you have enough holster space to store all your guns when using ladders, vehicles or operating items why do you need to suddenly swap a weapon out to pick something up? Why can’t we just pickup an item or additional weapon and use it temporarily and then drop it if we want to equip a holstered weapon or climb a ladder etc?

    As to flying baddies, that should be extended to small tiny ground level baddies as well. Especially if you can’t even see your own feet.

  52. 02/07/2010 at 19:53 Xercies says:

    If you do have sinks and toilets put in a hidden water meter and bill and if you leave a tap on half way through it goes game over because the bill has gotten to large for you to actually manage. that will show everyone

  53. 02/07/2010 at 19:53 Wr3nch says:

    RE: Two weapon slots

    I think that Far Cry 2 is one game where a limited weapon load-out worked well (realism aside). Selecting your weapons was always an integral and fun part of the strategic planning before missions and dealing with your choices when things went wrong added a lot of intensity and randomness to the engagements.

    Admittedly not all games do that well, but some excel in this category.

    • 02/07/2010 at 19:58 Ian says:

      I’d agree with that actually even though I nodded my agreement to John’s point. Of course a third weapon might not have gone amiss, but it was a good part of the strategic planning of the game.

      …

      Not that I ever didn’t take the flare gun, you understand.

    • 03/07/2010 at 01:35 Thants says:

      There were actually three weapon slots (not counting machete and grenades).

  54. 02/07/2010 at 19:55 Batolemaeus says:

    Cutscenes in general should diaf.
    I hate them. Immensely. There are games that manage to do very good narrative entirely without taking control away from me.

    Also, DON’T do achievements that are tied to unlocks. I don’t care for your excuse for proper game design, and i shouldn’t have to collect 50 policeman hides to get the goddamn chainsaw.

    Also, DO make an Aquanox sequel. kthx.

  55. 02/07/2010 at 19:56 Ian says:

    Quicksave. Always, ALWAYS let me quicksave.

    I don’t want to hate you, devs.

  56. 02/07/2010 at 19:58 Ed says:

    I think the most important DOs are about consistency. Make sure the consequences of different actions make sense in relation to the art direction. For instance, if you have real looking people walking around a real looking world carrying real looking guns, make sure a bullet to an unprotected head is actually lethal. This goes for everything in a game. The player is going to base their idea of what they can and cannot achieve on how the game presents itself. It would be nice if an alert player could get it right the first time rather than discovering ridiculous game rules through failure.

    Oh, and..

    DON’T: even bother developing your game unless it is a ) UNIQUE, or b ) actually going to improve dramatically on the games you’re plagiarising.

    We can dream, right?

  57. 02/07/2010 at 20:04 RQH says:

    DON’T give me hints without my asking for them. I have all manner of distractions around me when I’m gaming. It’s possible that I haven’t moved my character around for a minute or so because I’m distracted, not because I’m stumped. It’s also possible that I’m not only slower than you expect me to be, but also more persistent. Either way, if I need someone to tell me to “use the rope to jump to the ledge” or whatever, I’ll say so.

  58. 02/07/2010 at 20:06 TheSombreroKid says:

    Usually I wouln’t agree with everything here but since it’s coming from john i agree wholeheartedly with everything.

  59. 02/07/2010 at 20:09 Skusey says:

    Don’t make cut-scene bullets extra-deadly. If I escort somebody to the start of a cut-scene, and they get shot 20 or so times along the way, they cannot be executed instantaneously just to try and instil some emotion in your stupid game. By letting them survive the first hundred bullets you are telling me that the rule is that this person is near invincible, no matter how implausible that is. Don’t break them for a cheap plot twist.

    Basically what John said about characters who can do backflips in cut-scenes but get stuck behind short walls the rest of the time.

  60. 02/07/2010 at 20:10 Freud says:

    The only flying enemies that are acceptable are ones that hover a feet over ground. So they are pretty much walking enemies with no legs.

    Flying enemies who attempt to deal death from above, like cliff racers and rakk, are tedious and bring zilch to the game.

    • 02/07/2010 at 20:14 Freud says:

      DON’T make me have to access more than one screen to equip, use, trade and sell items. Same with changing ammo. I have a keyboard. I won’t run out of keys. Honest.

      And, if you in an attack of trying to create immersion by having me start a conversation and then choose a “I want to trade with you” dialog option before allowing me to trade, you should be shot.

  61. 02/07/2010 at 20:15 Frankle says:

    If I’m sneaking around and I see a dude taking a whizz, let me shove his head down the toilet untill the bubbles go away. Not just a silly break of the neck etc. thats no fun.
    By the way Is it just me or when i see toilets in a game thats the first place i go to to see if I can do that?
    I hate it when you’ve died a few times and a little “Hint” pops up saying “Remember to save often”.
    I would if you had quick save!!!

  62. 02/07/2010 at 20:17 ChaosSmurf says:

    Re: quicksaving

    I stopped being able to do it so long ago in so many games I just rely on autosaves nowadays – and get fucking mad when a game doesn’t have them (oh god Deus Ex/Tiberian Sun) or has them poorly designed.

  63. 02/07/2010 at 20:21 LionsPhil says:

    Sure, it can be set in the retro-future on a spaceship made of time, but god forbid we holster an improbable number of weapons.

    You suddenly came over all David Mitchell there. And in other places.

  64. 02/07/2010 at 20:29 Alex Bakke says:

    Oh John, we all know you’ve got a rocket in your trousers already :)

    …

    I’ll get me’ coat.

  65. 02/07/2010 at 20:44 OctaneHugo says:

    I get pangs of Half-Life from this list, mainly the parts about flying enemies (feel free to fuck off Xen Masters, you cunts), quicksaving (I hate checkpoint systems with a passion, thank god for HL’s choice), death scenes (takes about 1.5 seconds to die and respawn in Half-Life) and cutscenes; the only times you lose control of Gordan Freeman in the ENTIRE SERIES are:
    -Lights in a huge room get shut off and you’re knocked out by ninjas, who throw you in a trash compactor with no weapons
    -Climbing into an alien pod in the second game to be transported to closer to your goal
    -Trapped once under rubble (briefly losing conciousness) and then pinned down by alien robots who ambushed you in the fourth)

    and those are all believable, because the things that trap you at the end are telepathic alien things that you’ve never actually fought before.

    • 02/07/2010 at 20:45 OctaneHugo says:

      Oh, AND the part about keeping tons of weapons in magical pants. Half-Life never tries to be believable in its gameplay in that regard, and that’s great.

    • 03/07/2010 at 00:55 jeremypeel says:

      I like that in Half Life, death can take as long or as short a time as you want. Sometimes it feels appropriate to take a poignant moment lying sideways in toxic sludge before pressing a key and getting back to the action.

    • 03/07/2010 at 04:35 OctaneHugo says:

      I thought I was the only one who did that. Cool.

    • 03/07/2010 at 10:54 Forch says:

      You never technically lose control of gordon in the prisoner pod.
      You can always press E to jump out at any time.
      You’ll die, of course, but you don’t lose control.
      The game doesn’t prevent you from making that choice.
      Essentially when you get in the pod, control isn’t being taken away.
      You’re relinquishing it to infiltrate the combine base.

    • 03/07/2010 at 11:49 Antlia says:

      Also the time when Gman comes to you when the vortigaunts are healing Alyx. Although it took the control entirely from you, I don’t mind because it fit to it’s place and was interesting.

  66. 02/07/2010 at 20:44 Out Reach says:

    It’s all true! The flying enemies have never once been fun! but then again, “random flying birds which are not enemies which you can still shoot down?” THOSE ARE FUN.

  67. 02/07/2010 at 20:48 Navagon says:

    “Don’t: do anything to us in a cutscene that we could easily prevent during the game proper.”

    I knew I wasn’t alone in being annoyed by this. Brothers in Arms only ever seemed to use cutscenes in the middle of a mission when it wanted to screw you over. Like what it did to my beautiful tank. *sniff*

  68. 02/07/2010 at 20:53 NekroJakub says:

    Do you really want to impose rules on the developers? Some of the most fun games are ones that break the essential rules of gaming.

  69. 02/07/2010 at 20:57 kenmcfa says:

    Zetetic’s “Don’t use baddies that can move in more dimensions than I can.” rule should *definitely* apply to the likes of Eve. Time-travelling cliff racers do *not* make for a good game.

  70. 02/07/2010 at 21:00 Nick says:

    Don’t make the gun models in your FPS stupidly huge and positioned at EAR LEVEL. For fucks sake. Especially if your previous game had them normal and decent (I’m looking at you left for dead 2, seriously, you looked bloody awful. And you lost your legs too.)

    • 02/07/2010 at 22:15 Oak says:

      I always thought the gun models/hands in the original Left 4 Dead looked really awkward, actually.

    • 02/07/2010 at 22:16 Oak says:

      So maybe Valve is just staying consistent.

    • 02/07/2010 at 22:30 DarkNoghri says:

      They kinda sorta fixed this by unlocking a viewmodel field of view cvar the other week. I say kinda sorta in that most weapons need different settings to look right, and the cvar affects infected arm views.

    • 03/07/2010 at 13:38 Nick says:

      Slightly awkward perhaps, but not painfully stupid, like barely seeing anything but the barrel of your submachine gun, or having a pistol appear to be held from behind your head at ear height. Shockingly bad. There are other games that have done it, its supposed to be related to consoles and how hey appear on TVs or something, but that didn’t stop CoD4 from doing them properly.

  71. 02/07/2010 at 21:03 alice says:

    A diary tends to be all in one place. Most people, when journaling their lives, don’t tend to scribble it out on the nearest scrap of paper and then leave it wherever the wrote it.

    I am totally going to start doing this.

  72. 02/07/2010 at 21:07 Sigma Draconis says:

    Don’t: Shoehorn stealth sections into games with mechanics that aren’t suitable for stealth gameplay or don’t have a major focus on stealth. In particular, stealth sections that lead to an instant Game Over/Mission Failed just because your high-powered character got glanced at by some low-level mook are especially atrocious.

    These areas offer a change in pace that could be refreshing, except that the majority of these aren’t well designed and end up as more frustrating than fun. See: the Cairn Docking mission in Jedi Outcast.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:17 Axess Denyd says:

      That Jedi Outcast mission is EXACTLY what I always think of when I think of stealth gameplay.

      It may be why I never play stealth games.

  73. 02/07/2010 at 21:09 Anthony Damiani says:

    “Don’t: tell me that you’re a game any more.”

    I don’t understand this point of view at all.
    I’m not denying that there’s a time and a place for games to be rich and immersive genre experiences, but I equally feel there are times when admitting that the game is a game and explicitly following game logic is preferable– Mario gaining an extra life for every hundred gold coins scattered randomly throughout the world is ludicrous, but works because it admits itself as a game conceit.

    • 03/07/2010 at 09:55 Out Reach says:

      Just Cause 2

      When you have spent 15 minutes hunting an elusive supply crate in some large base just so you can get 100% and hit the next one, then Rico pipes up with “THAT WAS FUN!” >< SILENCE! I will decide what is fun, you don't get to tell me what is fun. Stop breaking the 4th wall.

  74. 02/07/2010 at 21:11 Ravenger says:

    DO let me rebind all the keys on the keyboard. Some people might not want to use WASD for movement. (Dead Space)
    DON’T make me jump through hoops to quit the game. Add a quit to desktop option in the main and pause menus. (Assassin’s Creed)
    DO let me use the mouse in all in-game menus.
    DON’T prevent me from using non-Xbox controllers.
    DO redesign menus and interfaces for PCs. We sit right in front of our monitors we don’t need HUGE FONTS IN CAPITAL LETTERS and user interfaces designed for gamepads.
    DON’T prevent me from editing the config files by encrypting or compiling them.
    DO let me transfer save games from one install to another.

    • 03/07/2010 at 17:06 drygear says:

      I went for years without using WASD and finally broke down and switched to it about a year ago because it was starting to become too much hassle and I sometimes couldn’t change it. I’m glad I made the change but I do wish games gave you the choice. And sometimes they would allow you to rebind things but not to keys like control.
      Here’s the keybindings I used to use, and you can see why I had a problem with not being able to bind certain keys:

      Movement: Shift, Alt, Z, X
      Jump: Mouse2
      Crouch: C
      Reload: Ctrl
      Use: Space
      Alt-fire/Run/Some other important function: A
      Switch firing mode/ ammo type/ some other important function: D
      If I used all those I would start using F, V, R and S. Usually that was enough.

  76. 02/07/2010 at 21:35 Flakfizer says:

    DON’T have bullet sponge Boss fights that make no sense. (Killed about a thousand guys and a hundred helicopters to get here, Far Cry, and now one guy in a helicopter takes all my ammo to kill?)

    DO try to make games that arent WW2 or Afghanistan shooters.

    DONT Have an interesting, story driven, play your way(tm) game that ends with a damn boss fight (Shame on you Bioshock)

    DO Make up your own names for games, rather than ‘reinvent’ a revered classic.

  77. 02/07/2010 at 21:44 Ridye says:

    You tell them, John!

    I would add some more technical rules…
    Do:
    -Include Subtitles. Always. SPECIALLY on Cutscenes.
    -Make sure the GUI and fonts are suitable in different resolutions and are customizable.
    -Take the time to add hidden places/elements to discover. And make the “loot” as
    worthwhile as the effort to reach it. Specially on RPGs.
    -Differentiate “classes” enough. And do it based on the gameplay that each provides.
    (An agile assassin should require a vastly different approach than a showy mage)
    -Consider including a Co-Operative mode when possible. (specially screen/LAN)
    -Customization, customization, customization!!
    -Proper ports.

    Do NOT:
    -Hand-hold me for 50% of the game. Teach me with a small separated tutorial instead.
    -Include mages that only shoot “lasers” and spam showers. Be CREATIVE.
    (what about physic-based powers? Bending stuff, manipulating streams of water, etc..)
    -Put conversations while I’m in the middle of a mini-game/intensive action.
    -Force me to take anticipated gameplay decisions/commitments without ANY hints or way to “test waters” first.
    -Take interesting portions&features out of the main game to create DLCs.
    -Allow yourself (as developers) into keep spamming Pre/Sequels just for the sake of creating “Franchises”. Or at least try to keep a healthy ratio between “safe” and “bold/experimental” titles.

    I do love flying enemies (as long as they are fair in number and difficulty).
    But what about allowing ME to fly? How come there aren’t more Drakkan-like open worlds?

    ._

  78. 02/07/2010 at 21:45 Eight Rooks says:

    (Clicked through ‘log in’ three times, still showing a captcha, showing a ‘reply to’ in the url but I don’t trust it, so)

    “And, for example, GTA San Andreas, where you’re basically blackmailed by a cop and have to humiliate yourself by doing his bidding, even though you meet him face to face many times, immediately before and after doing so, you have personally gunned down hundreds and hundreds of cops. Nnggh.”

    This is basically more of a problem through players’ stubborn adherence to a general attitude of no-one tells me what to do, no matter what the bad guy has hanging over their character’s head. If I ever managed to design a game, I swear I’d basically set up a situation like that and make the guy vulnerable, then include enough of an ending so that when players invariably shot him, they’d get to see their family/loved one/puppy/whoever murdered in some terrifyingly horrible way, then a lovely extended homily on what a thoughtless, foolhardy scrote they’d just been. On balance I’ll take a little design dissonance over freedom to be an angry teenager, thanks.

    • 03/07/2010 at 04:12 Neut says:

      See this is entirely dependant on the quality of your writing, in that the player will only care if the writing is good enough to make the player care, otherwise you can kill all the puppies in the world but the player is still gonna shoot the guy just to shut him up.

  79. 02/07/2010 at 21:51 Joshau says:

    “Don’t have flying baddies in your game”

    So I geuss that is why combat flight sims / space sims aren’t popular anymore :(.

  80. 02/07/2010 at 21:52 Dirk Bluntly says:

    WHAT.

    You got a problem wit my name? Some kind of issue? ‘Cause I got dis rocket launcher in my trousers, says this is the last time I’m going to take any more of this! MY MOTHER GAVE ME THIS NAME.

  81. 02/07/2010 at 21:53 Alex says:

    DO allow me to turn off *all* the startup logos, intros, animations and anything else that occurs before the main menu is displayed. When I’m loading a game, I really don’t care who the publishers, distributors, engine makers or anyone else is. That goes in the Credits.

    DO have a “Resume” option on the main menu, which loads the most recent save – it shows you care.

    DON’T require the CD to be in the drive. After the install process completes, it’s not going to be. Ever. I don’t care if you think that makes me a pirate, it’s still not going in the drive.

    DON’T do *anything else* that isn’t necessary at startup. This includes, but is not limited to, forcing a network connection, downloading updates, or advertising new dlc. All these can be done on-demand, or in the background. I don’t want to wait for your servers to play my game.

  82. 02/07/2010 at 22:03 ken says:

    You do realize that if you can kill any unprotected skull with a single bullet, the same can happen to you and you would most likely die more often?

    • 02/07/2010 at 22:05 ken says:

      In response to Ed talking about consistency.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:11 Ed says:

      I do indeed realise that. If you want the player to be able to take hundreds of bullets, yet you want your “realistic” game world to be taken seriously, you need only come up with a reason that makes sense. For instance, in Half-Life, you’re wearing a protective suit. Of course, it all depends on the game setting and design. All I ask is that there is a consistent internal logic to how the game world works. This is more or less the same point people have made about characters dying from one bullet in cut-scenes yet having clips emptied into them in-game.

      I’m even cool with realistic games letting you take a lot of bullets if you’re playing on an easy difficulty setting. It really bugs me though when hard\expert modes make your weapons less effective against enemies. Instead, your weapons should be just as lethal, but the player should simply become more realistically vulnerable, thus upping the tension and demanding care and skill to survive.

    • 03/07/2010 at 18:04 ken says:

      But even in Half Life, his head is exposed. One or two shots realistically should result in death….

      Anyway, there is a game that does exactly what you are talking about. It’s called Splinter Cell. I found it a chore to play because I want to actually traverse a level, see the scenery and destroy things instead of taking cover every few feet and living in constant fear that someone’s going to kill me with a couple of shots. I have no problem with difficulty and tension in moderation, but what you are talking about sounds like Splinter Cell, and as I stated, I didn’t enjoy the experience because the game seemed more like work than anything to me.

    • 03/07/2010 at 18:26 Wisq says:

      @Ken: Do they ever actually make it clear that you’re not wearing the HEV helmet? I mean, as far as I remember, you never go third-person in the HL series.

      The only hints I see that you’re helmetless are a) the lack of any visual distortion or FOV limits from wearing it, and b) the lack of a helmet on most game art.

      In favour of wearing a helmet, there’s the HUD, which only comes up when you get the HEV suit as I recall. Sure, it could be neurally integrated, but a helmet is a simpler explanation.

    • 03/07/2010 at 20:53 ken says:

      Huh. I looked it up and apparently there’s a debate as to whether Gordon wears one or not. News to me. I guess I’ve always assumed he didn’t wear a helmet as I’ve never seen an image of him donning one (like you said, he’s always depicted helmetless on the box art). Meh.

  83. 02/07/2010 at 22:13 Dude says:

    DO make your cutscenes pausable. I’m looking at you, Mass Effect and Mass Effect (With Tats).

  84. 02/07/2010 at 22:17 Birky says:

    John, how long before your Botherer.org self takes action against your RPS self for plagiarism, like some kind of editorial Tyler Durdon?

    • 03/07/2010 at 02:45 John Walker says:

      That did occur to me. But then I realised I’m the same person, so would probably get away with it.

      By the end of my life I hope to have written rules for absolutely everything.

  85. 02/07/2010 at 22:20 Glitch32 says:

    And for that matter, if you put a mens bathroom in a convenience store, don’t make it clean. It should include one or more of the following:

    There should be pee already in the toilet (and possibly on the seat and floor), the floor should look like it hasn’t been swept in 4 years, the discarded paper towels should be on the floor around the trashcan (maybe a few could have made it in there), the walls should have words of wisdom like COCK BAG carved into them, the sink should be missing one of the handles, the mirror should be broken and/or extremely dirty, and if there’s one of those electric hand dryers, the button should click if pressed but it shouldn’t turn on

    It’s not that I want to see that when I go into a bathroom, but that’s the unfortunate reality of most of them. :-P

  86. 02/07/2010 at 22:21 Bascule42 says:

    Do: Wash your hand/s after going to the toilet.

    Dont: Blame piracy for flagging sales when you know in your heart that you have released a mediocre piece o craap and was hoping to get by on hype.

    Do: Look both way before crossing the road – (frogger).

    Dont: Make another Modern Warfare game…ever.

    Do: Remeber to compliment your loved ones occasionally.

    Dont: Port games from Xmox or PSbee to the PC and expect PC gamers to be happy with a carbon copy of the console version. We don’t spend all this money on hardware to be playing a game that would run on our systems from 3 or 4 years ago.

    Do: Eat a healthy blenced diet, and take at least 20 minutes of light excerside a day.

    Dont: Make me come over there. You here?

    • 02/07/2010 at 22:26 Bascule42 says:

      Oh yes…and for the love of Sir Clive, when I select Quit, I very very very rarely change my ‘kin mind. STOP ASKING ME IF I’M BLOODY SURE.

  87. 02/07/2010 at 22:52 jalf says:

    Don’t, please don’t require me to sign up for your secret club.

    First, I’m already a member of 30 of these things, from EA, Ubisoft, Gamespy, Steam, Bioware and dozens and dozens others, and second, you’re game developers, not security experts. I don’t want you to hold my password. I don’t see why you need account details.

    If you absolutely really need me to log in to anything, use something *common* that we can use outside of your game, like a Steam account, or better still, an OpenID. The latter would even mean that my login information stays where it belongs, with me and with a company dedicated to offering secure authentication. You, as game developers, are expected to do nothing more than give me access to your service if I’m me. But let someone competent do the verifying that I’m me.

    You dodge all the headaches of “what happens if our servers get hacked”, because you’re no longer storing any sensitive information on your users, and I get to use a single log in which I can *remember*, which is chosen by me, and which can be reused elsewhere, to log in to other unrelated services.

  88. 02/07/2010 at 23:06 Zogtee says:

    Don’t…

    …make me watch a ton of logos for companies before the game starts. By all means, show them, but let me skip them. I’m not always interested in knowing whoever were responsible for making tea during the development period.

    Do…

    …treat me, the person who paid money for your game, with a modicum of respect and not like a twat with a criminal record, when all I did was buy your game. Yes, I’m looking at you here, Ubisoft.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:15 Zogtee says:

      Don’t…

      …save my game in obscure places on my system. Either let me choose where I want to put the saves or keep them in a savefolder in the game directory. Playing “Locate the saves” when I migrate from one machine to another, is a pain in the arse.

    • 02/07/2010 at 23:27 Zogtee says:

      Don’t…

      …tell your entire story through audio logs or diary entries. What was once intended to bring atmosphere and immersion to a game is now being used as a lazy way to toss a story at me. Also, people do NOT record diary entries when they’re about to or are being killed, ie “OMG, this monster is killing me! Agrh, there goes the leg! Oof, it tore my throat out! How painful, I’m not… sure I can… keep writing… these things…”

    • 03/07/2010 at 18:31 Wisq says:

      … unless it’s an audio log they were already in the process of making, and the attack is unexpected. And even then, it’s best to just cut the log off at the point where they’re probably doomed, rather than doing yet another clichéd audio death scene.

  89. 02/07/2010 at 23:10 Axess Denyd says:

    Do: Try to have a neat menu system that immerses me. X-Wing Alliance was the best. Also, support the f’ing mouse.

    Don’t: Have incredibly awkward and drawn out menu systems that get in the way of doing anything. Dirt 2, that is almost enough to make me stop playing you (but I do love driving cars sideways on dirt). Also, Travis Pastrana’s voice should never, ever be used. For anything. He is free to keep driving fast, though.

    I have heard that AssCreed has a horrible menu system, but it did not interest me so I never played it.

    Do: Make some good driving and flight sims? I recently discovered MotorM4x (the worst name EVER), but it has never even been on sale in the US. Or the UK. And that makes us sad. And I still miss flight combat games that tried to be realistic.

    Don’t: EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER use MS Live. It gets in the way, it is useless, and it requires 360 gamepad support which pretty much rules out advanced controls being required.

  90. 02/07/2010 at 23:18 Sir Derpicus says:

    DO remind your platforming-level designers that their products are to be played by someone else. This means that levels should aim to be playable even without a “contextual” camera (ideally, levels should be playable from a first person perspective). This isn’t to say that “contextual” cameras are bad, but don’t rely on it.
    DON’T provide non-rewarding red herrings for linear courses. Yes, I’d rather have the environment look bland and boring than mistaking a piece of scenery for a platform, only to find that it’s not, then backtrack for a minute.
    DO reward players with useful common objects or other things that can be gotten from defeating enemies (considerable sums of money would be the best) for taking the wrong path if it’s unavoidable to have multiple paths.
    DON’T hide extremely large sections of the story in easter eggs/other non-essential segments of the game unless it’s really easy to find.
    DO replenish the player completely DURING THE VERY BEGINNING (this is key) each major fight on lower difficulties.
    DON’T make MMORPGs.
    DO make as many difficulties as you feel like (anything below 10 is acceptable)
    DON’T release bad/short games as full titles. Release them as downloadable games instead.
    DO make fun games.

  91. 02/07/2010 at 23:52 CommanderZx2 says:

    The worst game I can think of that does this is the latest Aliens vs Predator… that girl just won’t stop whinging at you to complete objectives.

    I reply to hear shut the *** up I’m trying to find the damn collectables, but of course she keeps repeating them.

  92. 02/07/2010 at 23:54 mrh1967 says:

    ‘Loading…’ is never the correct response to ‘Exit’. Ever.

  93. 03/07/2010 at 00:03 bwion says:

    DO make all cutscenes, that’s each and every one of them in the entire game whether they are three seconds or three minutes:
    - Skippable, whether you’ve seen them before or not
    - Pausable, whether you’ve seen them before or not
    - Replayable at your leisure after you’ve seen them once
    - With subtitles available

    DO, if you must place a cutscene just before a difficult fight or puzzle that you anticipate the player having to perform repeatedy, allow us to save between the cutscene and said fight/puzzle.

    DO give us reasons to play your game more than once. Multiple character types, gameplay options, different paths through the game, etc. A game that is the same 99% of the way through but gives you two or three distinct endings based solely on a choice you made in the first five minutes DOES NOT COUNT. (I loved you, Bioshock, but I have no need to play you twice just to see what happens if I decide to become a child-murderer.)

    DO give us a complete game experience if we only ever play once. Maybe not *the* complete experience, but don’t keep your game’s best stuff in reserve for people who have already played it through five times in a row. Some of us have jobs, you know.

    • 03/07/2010 at 18:35 Wisq says:

      Re: skippable cutscenes, I would add:

      DON’T make a single press of any key / mouse button skip a cutscene. The escape button is okay and expected, but I don’t want to sneeze or have my cat land on the keyboard and find myself wondering how I got here and what I’m supposed to be doing now. (And in the game.)

  94. 03/07/2010 at 00:03 Mungrul says:

    DON’T: believe that just because Modern Warfare’s multiplayer ranking system is popular it means that your game should have one.
    Sometimes health, armour, guns and ammo are all a good deathmatch needs.
    Seriously, this one really bugs me. What happened to everyone having the same set of tools and so it being more about skill than gear? I think the most offensive aspect of this mentality is the Killstreak thing. So a player’s doing really well, and you give him some ultra-powerful weapon as a reward, allowing him to be even BETTER off? Feck off.

    DO: allow rocket-jumping and other physics tricks. This focus on realistic movement in recent years is depressing. We need more things such as DeFrag.

    • 05/07/2010 at 01:04 Rane2k says:

      This.

      I do actually think that some customisation in your characters skills and equipment in FPS are rather nice, but not if it must be unlocked first.

    • 06/07/2010 at 10:17 James T says:

      It’s amazing that Valve still tie themselves in knots trying to find a less irritating way to implement this in TF2 when they could simply not implement it at all.

    • 07/12/2010 at 21:41 Criptych says:

      If by “rocket jumping” you mean “accelerating in midair because you were hit by (or fired) a rocket” – that is (semi-)realistic movement. Granted, not dying messily from the resulting explosion… isn’t so realistic.

  95. 03/07/2010 at 00:08 curtmack says:

    Flying baddies are great, IF the quantity and quality (power) are in balance. Meta Ridley from Metroid Prime was cool, because there was only one of him, so you could focus on just him. But if there’s going to be more than one in a typical encounter, you shouldn’t have to focus on one of them to kill it (while the others peck out your eyeballs, of course).

    Borderlands did this right with the Rakks – while they could be annoying if there were enough of them, they always swarmed at you in a straight line, so you didn’t have to carefully aim and pick off each one individually. A good shotgun murders Rakks.

  96. 03/07/2010 at 00:08 Calneon says:

    “Don’t: leave diary entries by one person scattered over miles of corridors, buildings and countries. That’s not how a diary works. A diary tends to be all in one place. Most people, when journaling their lives, don’t tend to scribble it out on the nearest scrap of paper and then leave it wherever the wrote it. Because that would be utterly insane.”

    That’s given me an AWESOME idea, next time I go through town I will drop pages of fake diary entries detailing my endeavors to reanimate the dead…

    • 10/08/2011 at 14:36 Belua says:

      This should be a group effort. Everyone in these comments should pick the same name and put journal entries around the world. It would be like geocaching, only weirder!

  97. 03/07/2010 at 00:09 WTF says:

    @John Walker
    Word, brother!

  98. 03/07/2010 at 00:23 Dhatz says:

    Quicksaves aren’t enough, sometimes it’s better to have 2(max payne 2), or we could just have controls for two separate quickslots, is best.

  99. 03/07/2010 at 00:24 Jason Moyer says:

    No death animations? Wasn’t that basically the only good part of Dead Space?

  100. 03/07/2010 at 00:25 Rath says:

    DO: Give sports games a decent PC version rather than the kind of shoddy, lazy atrocity that was the PC port of NHL 09.

    DON’T: Make crates and boxes more complicated than they need to be. I’m looking at you, Raven. Even if half your games are set in sci-fi universes, every given cargo container in a room doesn’t need to look like it’s got more flashy technology used in its’ construction than the average cryo-stasis chamber.

    DO: Provide modding tools, on day of release if possible. Maybe I want to re-texture the giant hulking space marines to have ridiculous logos over their armour in order to add a little brevity to what would otherwise be an entirely dirt coloured world, but I can’t, because you haven’t provided me with the facility or have closed off your game in such a way that it’s impossible.

    DON’T: Make me use GFWL. Ever.

    DO: Have characters react appropriately to change. For instance, if you chose to give Shepard a custom face in ME1, but decided on porting your save to ME2 that you’d rather play through it with the default appearance, have character who should be familiar with the first appearance mention just once that something has changed.

    Garrus: “There’s something different about you Shepard, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. Did you lose weight?”
    Shepard: “Well yes, when I died and then came back from the dead with an entirely restructured face I did lose a couple of stone in the process, cheers for noticing.”

  101. 03/07/2010 at 00:39 mbp says:

    DON’T EVER EVER put the quick save key right beside the quick load key, better still DO have more than one quick save slot.

    Bio-shock 2 I am looking at you.

  102. 03/07/2010 at 00:40 Ape says:

    In fact I want to be able to pick those floaters up and throw them at people, or at least write my name with them on a wall.

    Let’s face it, we’ve all done it.

    While I’m here, did you ever think it strange that whenever you sneeze, you fart….or is that just me………?

  103. 03/07/2010 at 00:51 Ape says:

    Don’t give me a fuck off boat with guns and then in 10 seconds block the river so I have to get out without doing anything (BFBC2). It’s very dissapointing.

    Don’t do what I was going to do in a cut scene.

    Do make me think before posting so my reply goes with the right post and doesn’t sit there on it’s own, making me look stupid.

    Don’t make my post get wiped when I forget to enter the ‘CAPTCHA’.

  104. 03/07/2010 at 00:57 Matzerath says:

    I want to play a game that distracts you with flying enemies while demon midgets unleash devastating elbow-strikes into your crotch.

  105. 03/07/2010 at 01:10 Zogtee says:

    Do…

    …give weapons reasonable effects. Being able to shoot someone in the face 3-4 times and still not killing them is just stupid. In fact, shooting someone at all should have a noticable effect other than them flinching and then walking on like nothing happened.

    Also, explosives. Tossing a grenade at a flimsy door would turn that door into splinters. Shooting a rocket at pretty much any door will open it! No need for a key!

    • 04/07/2010 at 06:05 jaheira says:

      Lot’s of stuff in games isn’t realistic.
      Realism does not equal fun.

    • 07/07/2010 at 18:09 ffordesoon says:

      But both of those things would only ADD to the fun. If I happen to have a rocket launcher, I don’t want to have to search every nook and cranny of a stage when I know for a fact that I could just blow the door the hell away in real life. That’s not fun or immersive, it’s a level designer going “LOOK AT THIS THING WHAT I MADE ISN’T IT AWESOME!?!?!?” No, it isn’t, Hypothetical Level Designer. You know what IS awesome? Me not having to maintain a certain level of cognitive dissonance to enjoy your stupid game. If I think your level’s amazing, I don’t NEED to be forced to look at it. If I don’t care about your level, I will only care LESS if you force me to look at it.

      Same thing with shooting dudes in the head. Yes, I KNOW you worked on that model for a long time, Artist. If I think it’s that cool, I will stare at it AFTER I’ve murdered the hell out of it and it can’t murder the hell out of me. As a human being who possesses an average understanding of physics and ballistics, I know for a fact that if I shoot another human being in the brain at point-blank range, I will (barring a medical miracle) kill that human being. So if the model I am about to turn into a ragdoll is clearly a human who is not under the influence of Supernatural Forces or Scientific Bastardry or whatever, and he or she is not wearing a helmet or similar protection, I shouldn’t have to shoot him or her in the head multiple times. I just shouldn’t. I don’t care how cool the dude looks; the way he looks WILL NOT make me feel as awesome as successfully sneaking up to him and attacking him. Period.

  106. 03/07/2010 at 01:13 Rath says:

    If it is true that Microsoft is bringing Kinect to PC, then…

    DO: Implement it wisely.

    DO: Use it for this; http://pickandpop.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/nhl10_fighting_eagerfight01.jpg

  107. 03/07/2010 at 01:49 Thants says:

    Don’t: Have the HUD in an FPS fade out after a few seconds. Looking in the corners to see my stats is natural and effortless. Having to switch weapons back and forth or reload so I can see how injured I am isn’t more immersive, it’s annoying.

    • 03/07/2010 at 07:49 poop says:

      Don’t: make the screen a dark shade of red, muffle the audio and have bleeding SFX every time I get shot at while I wait for my health to regenerate, especially if your game is pseudorealistic and has guns that do lots of damage and a cover system so I mentally associate your game with HUFF HUFF HUFF HIDE IN COVER HUFF HUFF HUFF

    • 07/07/2010 at 18:19 ffordesoon says:

      I was just thinking about that a couple of days ago. It really isn’t any more immersive, is it? It looks more like a movie, is why devs think it’s more immersive. But all it really does is make me MORE aware of the HUD, because it’s not constantly there for me to tune out.

      Here’s a corollary DO, however: If you’ve committed to having no HUD in SOME parts of the game, DO go ahead and eliminate it from EVERY part of the game. Give my character noticeable animations or handicaps so I know I’m dying or something; some sort of visual cue is all I need. Switching weapons to find out how much life I have left just sucks.

  108. 03/07/2010 at 01:57 starclaws says:

    Its all about them voice recording diaries now… It seems sometimes that there are more of these than other objects… And they are all the same brand / size / style and other things…

    What did they do find a crate of them?

    • 03/07/2010 at 08:31 Zogtee says:

      Yes, and why do all the entries relate to the scenario the player is currently involved in? That is not how diaries work. The player is not the centre of the universe.

  109. 03/07/2010 at 02:26 Miko says:

    I’m pretty firmly in the “DON’T allow me to save as much as I want whenever I want” camp. Sure, a ‘resume’ save is a good thing to have, but I prefer it to be deleted when I load it. If I can just save whenever, you might as well set God Mode to be on by default.

    • 03/07/2010 at 04:57 JKjoker says:

      you know, its fine you want to play like that but i dont see why you have to force it on everyone else, both could be easily implemented into the game at the same time

    • 03/07/2010 at 08:35 Zogtee says:

      The difference is that (a) you are in a very small minority and (b) you can choose to play it that way, if you want to, ie delete your own saves, while the rest of us can’t choose to save where we want, if we want to.

      I would rather we get tools and options, instead of arbitrary (and often pointless) restrictions.

    • 04/07/2010 at 06:02 jaheira says:

      @ Zogtee How do you know he’s in a “very small minority”. I agree with Miko, so I make that two all so far.
      If you put quicksaves in, the temptation is too great for my puny brain. I prefer a game where they’re not there.

  110. 03/07/2010 at 02:36 Doug F says:

    I’ll take the inconvenience of needing to click “yes” to quit over the inconvenience of accidentally clicking Quit Game and suddenly staring at my desktop and needing to reload the game (and replay everything since my last save).

  111. 03/07/2010 at 02:38 Doug F says:

    DON’T

    Have a reply system that puts a comment at the bottom of the list even though the commenter clearly clicked on the “Reply” button for a post.

  112. 03/07/2010 at 03:03 AWOL says:

    regarding the two gun limit thing:

    I’ve always liked how Deus Ex handled this: You got a grid of a certain physical size for ALL your stuff (guns, ammo, orange sodas), and you had to allocate it accordingly.

    Not only was it it a fun minigame in a way (every once in a while you could “reclaim” inventory space by clever, tetris like, packing), it made a weird kind of sense: no you can’t carry fifteen missiles one you because they’re HUGE.

    Also, as to the flying enemies thing, my addendum would be “no flying enemies…if some characters only fight with melee weapons.”

    Because (as I think has been noted) that gunship sequence in half life 2 is awesome.

  113. 03/07/2010 at 03:40 Bart Stewart says:

    Was John playing Dead Space before writing this?

    Because nearly all of the fail-states described here were committed by that game, which is why it is the only game whose disc I have ever ripped out of the drive in order to launch it across the room. All that, AND inescapable third-person perspective.

    So maybe there’s one for Dos and Don’ts #2.

  114. 03/07/2010 at 03:55 Elos says:

    DO NOT make unskippable cutscenes/intro videos. There’s absolutely no reason for these to exist.

    If you feel that the player will miss something by skipping you can make me hit the esc key twice or something, it’s not that hard to come up with a solution. Yes you did make a very nice cinematic opening to your game and got Jack Wall to make an awesome theme for it but this is the fifth time I’m starting a new character, I don’t need to see this!

    • 05/07/2010 at 10:47 jeremypeel says:

      On the opposite side of the coin, DON’T cause a cutscene to skip because I tried to turn the sodding volume up.

      D’oh.

  115. 03/07/2010 at 04:42 Tacroy says:

    Oh my god that’s the one thing I hate the most about Burnout Paradise. Look, I just want to do doughnuts in this intersection because it’s fun; I don’t need you telling me that I’ve already finished this challenge in great big bright letters scrolling across the bottom of my screen, I can fucking see that on the map. I just want to drive fast down this street, I don’t want a great big fucking “YOU FAILED LOSER” sign popping up if I don’t drive down the street quite as fast as the previous meth addict. I just want to blow some stuff up in Showtime, I don’t want a great big “DIE IN A FIRE YOU FAILURE” sign popping up if I don’t blow up as much stuff as the previous guy.

    Seriously, it’s almost like that game gets off on being denying. “You’re having fun just driving around for no real reason? Well I’m gonna throw shit all over your screen until you stop! Hah! You should be doing missions, loser!”

  116. 03/07/2010 at 04:44 TwistyMcNoggins says:

    DO: Make savegame files from the demo carry on in the finished product.

    If a demo makes me want to purchase a game, my first experience of the paid game shouldn’t be something I all ready got bored of for free.

    • 07/07/2010 at 18:23 ffordesoon says:

      Truth.

      (I just got an RPS account, is why I’m being annoying and posting everywhere. Sorry if that’s aggravating.)

  117. 03/07/2010 at 05:25 NinjaCat says:

    THOSE GODDAMN BATS are annoying.

  118. 03/07/2010 at 06:03 BubbaBrown says:

    Do: understand that people have multiple monitors. Really, they do. You don’t have to use both of them, but make sure your game is AWARE that they exist. Any game that requires the disabling of a monitor to play is a game I don’t play. Learn how to develop.

    • 03/07/2010 at 11:45 Stu says:

      In addition to that, I would say DON’T: Code a game engine that grinds along at 2 FPS if a second monitor is enabled — or if you must, then DO: Warn the player that your crappy game engine is going to degrade their 7900GT card to TNT2 levels of performance. YES ID TECH 4 I’M LOOKING AT YOU

    • 04/07/2010 at 06:48 Matt says:

      On the flipside, Microsoft finally got the clue that people might want to quickly enable/disable monitors with Windows 7, which allows you to change dual-monitor settings with Win+P.

  119. 03/07/2010 at 06:14 Wendy says:

    OH EM GEE true dat. Bad enough that it’s play in slo-mo. Yes, thank you game developers for pointing out that my character died due to my lack of skills and hand-eye co-ordination.

    It’s bad enough I sucked at sport in high school.

  120. 03/07/2010 at 06:22 Neil says:

    I want to stick a rocket launcher in your magic trousers, too!

    This list seems to be FPS-oriented.

    Forget the one-console future, how about the one-genre future!

  121. 03/07/2010 at 07:07 v.dog says:

    It’s not flying enemies that get me, it’s the small, hard to hit (and harder to see) ones that really annoy me- especially when they’re the type of creature that should flee from me.

    A prime example was SiN- I’m in a warehouse taking cover near a squad of bad guys, and suddenly I’m dieing- but I’m not getting shot at, the guards don’t even know I’m there. What the-? I look down and rats are gnawing on my toes.

    WTF?! Rats are eating me?! Why are rats eating me? I’m a a fit, strong man, not some sort of garbage.

    It makes no sense to be attacked by rats. Even worse, they were brown, just like the floor, so I never saw them coming. By the time I cottoned on anf killed them I was half dead, and had to reload.

    Hitting small, floor-camouflaged creatures racing suicidally at me (gunfire didn’t scare them), while trying to avoid drawng the attention of large, non-camouflaged creatures who’d shoot suicidally at me is not fun.

    • 03/07/2010 at 22:39 Jake says:

      ‘Why are rats eating me! I’m a fit strong man, not some sort of garbage!’ he exclaimed, but the rats kept on gnawing.

  122. 03/07/2010 at 07:19 Scandalon says:

    Of course, the majority of the listed “Don’t” have notable exceptions. Most of these can be reduced to “Don’t do X unless you’re going to do it well.” I’ll note that many of the issues are with things just not being internally consistent, and/or with things that don’t match up with the real world, but appear that they should in-game.

    Don’t – Run the DirectX installer, the Java Installer and the VisuallC++ installer that installs the 5th instance of it on first launch…isn’t there a way to programatically check versions beforehand? If you then see that $InstalledVersion < $RequiredVersion then ask/warn of dire consequences, etc.

    Don't – Include the full versions of said installers with your downloadable game. (If you must include a copy of that and Acrobat Reader isntaller on your DVD, go for it.)

    Don't – make your downloadable patch/installer a .zip, that contains an .EXE, that extracts an .MSI…

    Do – Make Mac and (hopefully) linux versions of your games. Make the savegames compatible. Give me all versions or, if you must use a porting company, an 80% off voucher and a freebie of an older game or something.

    Do – Let me buy only the single-player or multi-player version of your game. I would happily pay, say, $10 to play your BioShocks or ModernWarfare's through once or twice. After that I will probably never touch it again in my life. If it's a game I end up playing twice a week, join a clan, want to start modding, then sure, give me the option to upgrade (for a reasonable price) to the full, deluxe version.

    Don't – Keep using crappy animation systems that make characters do a dramatic takedown/dance/acrobatic routine, then rotate in place and shuffle their awkwardly. I recently saw an NBA game on the 360…detailed textures, pores and sweat drops on their brow, and they moved like, well, nothing that exists naturally, that's for sure. (I swear it was like Jordan vs. Bird with 30% more frames.) Similarly, you must have two characters facing each other fighting, can they please not just stand there statically, swinging their weapon at one wilst something else is repeatedly shooting them? Unless they are specifically designated as ultra-obsessive mind-slaves or something, let's see them duck, dodge, (parry and thrust ;), reel back if a something hits them in the face, or if a giant ogre smashes them with a club twice their own weight, can they, I don't know, not just flinch?

    Don't – Keep building new engines, content, etc. that is 90% the same as 3 other titles released in the last 3 years. Mod an existing game, use UED, Unity, Bltiz3d if you have to. Unless you're going to make an engine/game that is going to do something new, or something old but 100 times better, why are you wasting your and our time and money? Do you really think you need a custom-built engine to show teams of, say, 16 soldiers (in the future!) fighting each other?

  123. 03/07/2010 at 08:15 nadnerb811 says:

    Batman: Arkham Asylum autosaves after every fucking door you walk through. When I played, I would be like, “That’s a good place to stop; I think I’ll stop playing for today.” Then I’d just walk through the closest door and watch the autosave thing in the bottom right corner of the screen until it finished.

    Also, does anybody know if Rocksteady patched the fucked up GFWL glitch with the Steam version, where the game would freeze at the first fucking cutscene? (the one where you meet up with Gordon. I think it’s dubbed the “Gordon crash”). I own the game for PC, but have only beaten it on the 360. The funny thing is, I’ve logged an hour into my steam version of replaying that 3 minute part before the game crashes.

  124. 03/07/2010 at 08:30 minipixel says:

    I propose to add the “Do&Dont got wrong” in game reviews, the wot I think thing.

  125. 03/07/2010 at 08:46 BrokenSymmetry says:

    DO: Ignore all the things everyone tells you not to do. It’s your game.
    DON’T: Make every game the same.

  126. 03/07/2010 at 09:00 Nimloth says:

    Cannot say I agree 100% with this post. No, I’d say that at most I am 86% in agreement with this most – but no more than that.

    -Nim

  127. 03/07/2010 at 09:21 Zogtee says:

    Don’t…

    …pile DRM on top of DRM on top of DRM. 99% of my games come from Steam these days. Steam is itself a type of DRM, which is fine with me. There’s no need to add GFWL to that, and then a serial with online activation and requiring me to sign up (and sign in) with your bullshit secret club and then requiring me to be online every second that I play, or you will boot me out. Keep in mind that I play games to have fun. I can easily stop buying your games when they become not fun, like I have with Ubisoft’s (/spit) latest offerings. Then you can run home and cry about how the PC platform is filled with pirates wall to wall and that it’s a dying platform anyway.

    Don’t…

    …swindle me out of money, because you’re too lazy to do math. A game that costs 20$ in the US should *not* cost 20£ in Europe-land.

    Don’t…

    …force me to sign up with your so called online “service” just to play the game I just bought. I don’t really *need* that service and you certainly don’t need my email or personal details, unless you’re going to scam and spam me.

    Don’t…

    …lie and say that the PC is your valued platform that you’ve been neglecting for years and that is all about to change now, and you’re going to focus on it again. Then you punish us by spitting out GFWL and go back to ignoring us.

    Don’t…

    …come back years later and say that the PC is your valued platform that you’ve been neglecting for years, blah, blah, *using the exact same lines as the last time* and then go back to ignoring us again.

    Do…

    …understand that I don’t want to subscribe to multiple digital delivery services. I am only willing to use one or two at the most. Do understand that the existing services are just fine and don’t waste resources trying to ram your own fledgling service down my throat, especially when it’s laboring under a ton of Flash, pretty and pointless animations, and convoluted manu systems. Make use of existing services. Use Steam.

    Don’t…

    …hold on to the rights to your ancient games like a fat kid holds on to his last burger. Talk to GOG and let those old games live again.

    Don’t…

    …burn most of your budget on celebrity voice actors to do 1-2 characters, and then hire 2-3 unknown voice actors to do the remaining 25 characters. Use the budget to hire only unknown voice actors, so there will be some welcome variety among the voices. If you have to get some celebrities, then get Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton, because we love them.

    Don’t…

    …boast about your revolutionary new AI, when in reality it amounts to little more than…

    - Any news from the other provinces?
    - Nothing I care to talk about.

    …being repeated over and over.

    Don’t….

    …ship your games broken and unfinished, unless you’re seriously prepared to support them and fix them with patches.

    • 04/07/2010 at 07:01 Matt says:

      The only celebrity we need is Keith Davis.

    • 07/07/2010 at 18:29 ffordesoon says:

      I predict that there will be a game one day where every single character – both male and female – will be played by Keith David.

      I will purchase that game.

      (This is also true of Nolan North.)

  128. 03/07/2010 at 09:25 Harlander says:

    DO: make your game deal gracefully with ALT-TAB and other ways of losing application focus. And have it auto-quit when I jam ALT-F4, no questions asked.

    Also DO: make your game take fullscreen exclusive mode properly, so I don’t get the bottom status bar of my Litestep shell flickering grotesquely over the top of the game.

  129. 03/07/2010 at 09:47 Thants says:

    Don’t do what Donny Don’t does.

  130. 03/07/2010 at 10:12 nintendo 3ds says:

    what a funny article. good, i think.

  131. 03/07/2010 at 11:29 CloakRaider says:

    The cutscene one is the most annoying.
    Reminds me of Crysis, where it shows Nomad jumping off cliffs and going into a sort of huddle position and landing in a cool manner, but when you try it in game, he goes “URHGH” and takes damage or dies.

    Or perhaps the intro videos, where it shows nomad leaping over cars, speeding towards Koreans and taking them out with well placed punches or I think in one, even punching a car.

    Trying any of that in Crysis gets you killed. Bah.

  132. 03/07/2010 at 12:04 Ragabhava says:

    Don’t : ever deny me the rights to configure my key assignments the way I see fit.

    Company Of Heroes / Dawn of War were produced with all the posh and pomp yet they lacked the funds draw a “control options” screen ? Or was it just plain wickedness ?

  133. 03/07/2010 at 12:07 Mr Ak says:

    Just a short one:

    Do trust us.

    We’re clever.

    • 05/07/2010 at 12:29 jeremypeel says:

      Yes, yes and yes. Also, I don’t mind learning how to do things if it’s apparent they’re interesting from the beginning. Games would be no fun if I understood how they all worked before I started.

  134. 03/07/2010 at 12:25 Ade says:

    Don’t:

    Escort missions.

    If you must, then don’t have the flimsy NPC run off ahead and attack tank-level opponents with his bare hands.

    • 07/07/2010 at 18:38 ffordesoon says:

      Unless he himself is “tank-level.”

      To be honest, I’ve always liked the way Bethesda does it, as silly and imperfect as it is. If a plot-critical dude wants to fight alongside me, fine. As long as I don’t have to babysit him and he’s not actually gonna die on me, I don’t mind him being “knocked out” for a little while. If the guy isn’t plot-critical, I DO NOT care what happens to him, and if he dies, it’s his own fault. If I like him, I will try to save him and mourn him if he dies. THAT IS ACCEPTABLE.

  135. 03/07/2010 at 12:27 Tei says:

    Rules exists to be broken.

  136. 03/07/2010 at 12:52 RightOn says:

    John Walker has inadvertently and rightfully pointed out all the things that make Singularity a huge pile of poop that sucks.

    I agree with all the original points of the article 100% and would hope that someone tells these console-game logic people with severe gamer-spirit-retardation to read and try to understand all of this very carefully.

    Right on RPS.

    • 03/07/2010 at 18:46 Wisq says:

      If all these things do indeed apply to Singularity, a very recently released major title, then I find it pretty odd to think that there was anything “inadvertent” about that …

  137. 03/07/2010 at 13:13 Zogtee says:

    Don’t…

    …use quicktime-events. They were initially a vaguely interesting game mechanic that added something different to games. But, much like Guitar Hero and The Sims, this mechanic has since been beaten deep into the ground, gotten pulled up to it’s knees, and then beaten down again. If you’re even thinking about including QTE’s in your upcoming game, then you are automatically disqualified as a games designer. Hand your badge over and get out.

    Do…

    …make good, fun games. It’s your job and it is why we pay you.

  138. 03/07/2010 at 13:19 kwyjibo says:

    Don’t do a crap version of a funny Vice magazine feature.

  139. 03/07/2010 at 13:26 Mr_Day says:

    Ok, I kind of feel bad for pointing this out, but if you don’t want the game to keep reminding you that you are playing a game, you have answered a question you ponder later – why can’t I pick up more than 2 guns? Because in real life, you can’t, and probably shouldn’t.

    Keeping with the spirit:

    DO: Allow me to skip parts of the story or briefing if I am uninterested – for example, if I am replaying the game Half Life 2, I would rather not sit through the big Black Mesa love in, when you get to Eli Vance, AGAIN.

    DON’T: Allow my character or friendly npcs to do anything in a cutscene that they are then incapable of performing in game. Kasumi jumping onto that gunship looked fantastic, but since she does it once, and then fails to do a silent take down on a baddie because of some pathing issue, I call bullshit on it. Also, she can take down shields on a gunship by using her techtool, but on anything else she has to use a pistol.

    • 03/07/2010 at 13:28 Mr_Day says:

      DO: Spice up the game with segments of an alternative playstyle to keep me from feeling like I am on converyor belt.

      DON’T: Make them mandatory, or make them for a game whose controls clearly do not work properly with the change of pace you had in mind. The commando missions in C&C, for example – I am pretty sure the only reason he can one shot people is that without that ability he is a dead man, as trying to get him to move precisely is a chore.

    • 03/07/2010 at 13:34 Mr_Day says:

      DO: Include tropes that will make the player feel comfortable or quickly allow the player to read a situation without needing an explanation – an enemy npc telegraphing a new, powerful attack for example.

      DON’T: Assume this extends to clichés. If I ever make a first person shooter, and you see a mounted sentry gun, it would be in your best interests to leave it alone because it will not work the way you think it will.

  140. 03/07/2010 at 14:11 Sonic Goo says:

    Do: support your game for years to come. Having one person spend a few hours on a small balance/bug patch every year (or making it run on more recent systems) will be remembered when you release the inevitable prequel/remake/reboot of the franchise.

  141. 03/07/2010 at 14:24 Langman says:

    Why complain about the silliness of having diaries everywhere and demand the silliness of being able to carry loads of guns?

  142. 03/07/2010 at 14:40 Hoshi says:

    +1 for flushing toilets. I’m so glad someone mentioned this! I remeber the day I flushed my first toilet in Duke Nukem 3D. “AArgggghhh that’s better!” A milestone in my personal game-experience .-)

    • 03/07/2010 at 15:48 Zogtee says:

      My personal highlight from Duke was finding an alien sitting on the toilet and then shooting him in the face. I actually enjoy sneaking up on enemies and shooting them in the back and/or when they least expect it. I’m not entirely sure what that says about me as a person…

  143. 03/07/2010 at 15:07 Tiger Walts says:

    Do: Have the pause menu appear as soon as Esc/Start is pressed. I don’t care if you’ve made a nice animation to make it appear, it’s a waste of my time.

    Don’t: Show me a menu but not allow me to navigate or choose any of the options. I’d rather you break the above rule and not show it at all until the the game will accept an input. Games are a marriage of hand-eye co-ordination with cause and effect systems, the simplest example of this being a menu. So really, you shouldn’t be fucking this up.

    Do: Let me bring up the pause menu at any time. Even during a cutscene. If I need to do something in the real world urgently I shouldn’t have to miss a thing.

    Don’t: Ask me for confirmation when I do anything in the menu. If you’ve followed the above rules I shouldn’t be making any menu navigation mistakes. Acceptable confirmation gates are ones which prevent loss of progression. Also, make the affirmative choice the default option, it’s the most frequently chosen so don’t make me do the extra work.

  144. 03/07/2010 at 15:34 bill says:

    DO: Give us fast-forwardable cutscenes like sands of time.
    DO: Give us the ability to rewind time in all games ever, then we wouldn’t need all the checkpoints and quicksaves.

  145. 03/07/2010 at 15:44 el Chi says:

    DONT: Alert me to the fact that I’m dying by filling the screen with red mist and jam.
    I’m trying to find cover and I can’t see a fucking thing.

  146. 03/07/2010 at 16:43 Craig Charles says:

    The two guns thing is generally a hangover from console convertions.

    Silly gamepads still don’t have enough buttons :(

  147. 03/07/2010 at 16:56 Samuel Bass says:

    Good points, some easier to do than others, but all valid for discussion.

    Going to send this out to my team next week.

  148. 03/07/2010 at 17:02 Vikram says:

    Really loved this article. In a very good mood as my team just kicked argentinian butt and this article really rocked as well. So many of these props turn up in each game that we no longer even get properly immersed. Hunting for coins, collectibles in the weirdest places, having to travel billions of miles off course to get a special gun which doesnt do 2 per cent more damage than the normal guns.

  150. 03/07/2010 at 17:57 Andrew Farrell says:

    These are quite funny – I particularly like the way most of them contradict the one before (that’s intentional, right?)

  151. 03/07/2010 at 18:13 jabbrwokk says:

    Do: come up with something at least halfways believeable to explain the loads of guns and crap you can carry around, e.g. “Star Trek Voyager Elite Force” showed your characters taking guns out of a portable transporter buffer, which was actually pretty cool. In Deus Ex you’re a mech, so you can carry heavy things but you don’t have too many pockets in your trenchcoat. In “STALKER” you have a limited amount of weight you can carry, so you have to plan your expeditions accordingly. Of course if you want to mod your player to be able to carry 300 kg you can.

    Don’t: pretend random encounters are random if they’re not. XCom: Apocalypse pissed me off when I got to a tower terror mission that was unbeatable for my pea-shooter equipped agents. I reloaded several turns earlier to avoid the mission — only to find it gave me the same mission, same scenario, same unbeatable aliens every time.

    • 03/07/2010 at 18:53 Wisq says:

      Speaking of Deus Ex, here’s something they actually did wrong, IMO:

      Don’t let me run around at full speed while carrying all my usual crap including Big Weapon X, but then drop my speed to a crawl if I actually try to pull said weapon out and use it.

      If you want to demonstrate my lack of skill in using Big Weapons, by all means, reduce my accuracy, or even have the kickback throw me around some. But don’t just drop my speed because I moved an object from my pocket to my hands / shoulder. You’re only reinforcing the magic (weightless) trousers notion here.

  152. 03/07/2010 at 18:50 empty_other says:

    Dont: make hitpoints be the only thing increasing when increasing difficulty in your game. I would rather have more baddies than longer lasting baddies. More hitpoints doesnt increase the difficulty, it only makes the fight last longer.

    Do: let us know who killed us, and how.

    Dont: make the baddies have faster reactions than the player. Modern Warfare 2 singleplayer did that, and the only way to advance was for me to look around the corner, take a lot of damage, hide and heal, then turn around the corner, shooting blindly in the direction i saw them previously, hide and heal, and repeat until everyone was dead.

    Dont: put the player up against situations where we have to retry. Give us a warning, even when there is traps.

    Please do: make more games with combat where i can choose a non-combat way (not only non-lethal weapons, but actually non-combat). Gimme another Deus Ex!

    • 07/07/2010 at 18:51 ffordesoon says:

      Re: that last one:

      YES. Also, make it consistent: DO NOT give me the ability to talk my way out of everything EXCEPT BOSS FIGHTS. Particularly when those boss fights are some of the most miserable experiences in gaming.

      *glares at Alpha Protocol*

    • 07/12/2010 at 22:22 Criptych says:

      It’s no Deus Ex, but if you haven’t you should try out the excellent (and free!) game Iji. That’s a major premise of the game: you get to decide how to deal with the baddies – kill them yourself, get them to kill each other, or ignore them completely – and parts of the story even change to accommodate. You can even get a particular enemy to “turn traitor” and destroy one of the bosses for you (essential to getting the “zero kills” ending :).

  153. 03/07/2010 at 19:20 Carrera says:

    God, I hope no developer is dumb enough to listen to this crap. I know you write this shit to get hits on the website but this sort of exploitative journalism makes me sick. You’re as bad as BP and I hope you rot in hell.

    • 03/07/2010 at 23:48 DrazharLn says:

      Welcome to Britain.

      Here we have sophisticated humour, silly articles and satirical journalists.

      This article, for example, is not what it first appears. Oh no! This is an article crafted with humour to point out some of the flaws in Singularity.

      Now, stop jerking that knee before you put someone’s eye out.

    • 04/07/2010 at 03:53 Mr_Day says:

      Are you suggesting BP caused an oil slick to get hits on their website? Seems a tad extreme.

    • 04/07/2010 at 09:43 Riaktion says:

      He sounds like he need some sleep. People get grumpy when they are tired.

  154. 03/07/2010 at 19:34 thinsoldier says:

    These should be numbered and anchored to make it easier to refer to specific ones when we send our hate-mail to developers.

    The games that inspired each do/don’t should be mentioned so developers can go re-experience what you’re talking about.

    Should also list games that are exceptions.

    Each one should have a forum topic started so the RPS community can further elaborate on it.

    After a time, a massive poll should be created and word of it spread to every gaming community in the world. Then we can give developers some truly useful feedback.

    My do/don’t list:

    DO acknowledge that most homes have multiple gamers but only 1 PC or Console.
    Therefore, you should allow people to keep their save states and settings in separate “accounts”.

    See the early battlefield series, Unreal Tournament 3, and Mass Effect 2.

    I have at least 4 RPGs on my system that I haven’t started playing because my brother got the them first and used up half the save slots. When I do play them I’ll probably use even more save slots because I like to go back and replay the most fun 10 minute long parts games over and over (ie: HL2 Hovercraft boss fight, Crysis alien spaceship, etc).

    But for use to try to play a game at the same time is a clusterfuck because we can’t remember which save belongs to who.

    DO incorporate a toned-down version of Brink’s S.M.A.R.T. system in all future games. I’m so tired of watching thousands of zombies scale 30ft walls, fences, and buildings while my LFD2 characters can barely climb hop onto the roof of a car. I don’t expect Coach to be a gymnast! But I do expect him to climb over a chainlink fence if his life depended on it.

    DON’T let me kill an enemy by shooting him 4 times in his big toe or pinky finger (HL2)

    DO offer optional tutorials to teach us exactly when and how to perform the cool stuff we see in a cutscene. (ie: crysis warhead’s super-speed-jump onto a moving vehicle.)

    DO give me the ability to climb trees if there are lot of trees in your game (crysis)

    DO let me use an X-box controller (or other). ESPECIALLY IF it’s a console port!

    DO let me use a controller and keyboard at the same time.
    I like the analog stick for fighting games but a game like Killer Instinct (snes emulator – yes I own the cartridge) is best with 2 rows of 3 buttons. Having to work with 4 buttons and 2 triggers feels awkward. Analog stick + keyboard keys is great.

    For less strange example: Wings of prey with an xbox controller is hard. So many attributes need to be controlled. If I could assign some of them to the keyboard (left ctrl, space bar, arrow keys, numpad enter) I’d be able to do most of the work on the controller and do the rest with my feet on the keyboard on the ground.
    Possibly a keyboard & trackball on the ground with controller in hand. Don’t judge me.

    DO have 2 sets of menus if your game is a console port. For up close pc on desk players have a pc-centric menu. For people with their PC in their entertainment room or bedroom with wireless controls you should include the console menu since we’re probably sitting on a a couch or bed.

    FLASH GAME DEVELOPERS!
    DO allow me to customize my controls. My 5 and 8 year old neices played dozens of single player pc games for years with WASD(left hand direction) YUIHJK(right hand action) before their mom let them go online unsupervised.

    They hate arrow keys (RIGHT hand DIRECTION) spacebar/ZXC (LEFT hand ACTION) as much as any hard core pc gamer.

    DO offer 2 player split screen play on PC. The average gamer PC destroys the hardware in a xbox yet console ports never retain their splitscreen co-op/multiplayer. (exception: split/second)

    DO give playback controls to cutscenes (pause, play, rewind, fastforward, restart, stop)

    DON’T use windows live for anything other than allowing the player to show up as being online to their friends. In Dirt2 they use a part of the LIVE interface to let you save car balance setups. The length of the filename is severly limited and you can’t use spaces!!! WTF! Sucks. That’s something that should have been a part of the native game interface!

    DO remake quake 3 with higher polygon counts, higher texture resolutions, a better menu, ragdoll physics, same lighting, same color scheme, same characters, same sound effects, double tap dodge, not double jump, and flesh out the back story I read in a text file somewhere.

    500% more people need to write Game Reviews FOR GAME DEVELOPERS.

    • 03/07/2010 at 23:24 Wisq says:

      I have at least 4 RPGs on my system that I haven’t started playing because my brother got the them first and used up half the save slots.

      Err, I think you’re missing the main problem here…

      Don’t: have limited save slots. We’re PCs, not consoles, and even consoles have massive hard drive space now and don’t need you nannying us to make sure we don’t fill up our memory cards.

  155. 03/07/2010 at 19:50 Kradziej says:

    DO: Give me some knowledge about a mission I’m getting myself involved in. It’s especially irritating in sandbox games. Travelling half of the world to do some fighting and then being massacred just because I wasn’t prepared FOR THIS PARTICULAR BATTLE is IRRITATING. Throw in some smart NPC that will give me a hint. A simple “you know, there are lots of mages in that cave!” would be really great.
    DON’T: Have subtitles turned off as a default setting. I’m not a native English speaker, so sometimes it happens that I don’t understand what somebody is saying in the very first cutscene. I mean, a couple of letters don’t ruin the experience for you Englishmen, right? But not getting the basic ida of the plot sure is troubling for me. Worst-case scenario: no subtitles at all. Anyone ever played God of War II? I couldn’t understand A THING they were sating in that game because of those stupid modulated voices.

  156. 03/07/2010 at 20:05 goosetickler says:

    I personally don’t mind the two gun limit. I prefer that than fumbling through 10 different weapons in the heat of combat to try and find the one I am looking for. It also forces me to think tactically about the weapon pickups I find in the environment.

    • 06/07/2010 at 09:28 Depression says:

      Seems weird that what worked for literally a decade for everyone playing PC shooters now seems too intellectually challenging for the average wannabe.

      I think I still remember 80% of the DOOM weapon layout from (pistol, shotgun, chain gun, rocket launcher, plasma, bfg) by heart.

      Seriously, if the reason for 2 guns is “I’m too stupid to remember more” then I think we should just stop, because humanity is lost right there.

      Call of Duty has been mentioned. What a great example of literally showering the player with crudloads of some of the most awesome and realistic guns and sounds, AND THEN GOING: NO WAI, YOU CAN ONLY HAS 2!
      FFS!!!!

      If I can regenerate head wounds by waiting 5 seconds, then I expect to be allowed to play with all the vastness of guns provided, too.
      I don’t want to be faced with annoyance, scarcity and the emotionally negative impact of too much choice(watch the google tech talks guy on more choice = more misery kthx) in something I PAID FOR TO GIVE ME ENJOYMENT.

      Srsly.

  157. 03/07/2010 at 22:29 TOWDrac says:

    It seems much of this has to do with something I very much LOATHE: the developers want to tell their story and they want to do it in their way and “SCREW YOU player for trying to do things your way, now get back in line and do things exactly as I imagined it.”

    In old adventure games it used to be because the developers didn’t think of something, and they admitted that (see: “Oops! You did something we weren’t expecting” error), but now it’s ALL ABOUT the developers. They want you to play THEIR masterpiece and they want you to do things THEIR way.

    It’s all so developer-centric when it should be player-centric.

    …and some wonder why people love Deus Ex so much. Yeah, the combat was crap, and the AI sucked, but it had two (arguably simple!) things:
    1. A living world that isn’t just an excuse for the gameplay.
    2. PLAYER-CENTRIC
    That’s it.

    I don’t think many want to make a game anymore…I think they want to make THEIR product that you consume.

    • 05/07/2010 at 13:29 Risingson says:

      I don’t agree. Adventure games are just about that: knowing what the developer was thinking, and that, exactly that, is what is great about those Infocom or Legend games. It isn’t a design fault, because it is coherent. Or it should be, it should have a context and so on.

  158. 03/07/2010 at 22:35 Jake says:

    Along with hiring actual writers, I would like to see hiring of actual actors to do voices. So many games are ruined when they have a decent plot, but it’s poorly scripted and terribly acted, like these things don’t matter and as long as the overall concept is in place who cares about the details.

    Level designers should always look at what actual buildings look like and not make mazes of corridors that would make no sense if viewed externally or would just lead to crushing deaths during fire drills. Or have structures that are implausible and couldn’t be constructed or machines that serve no purpose like conveyor belts that channel endless crates into a fire for no conceivable purpose.

    Don’t make it so you go down winding corridors and end up in a dead end room with a lever, and you know you have to pull the lever ‘cos there is no-where else to go, but you have no idea what the lever does and your character surely won’t know so what the hell are you doing just going round pulling levers instead or trying to force a door or something.

    Games designers should not be allowed to decide what is cool without asking some other sensible people first. A lot of games designers seem to love words like cool and awesome but seem to base their definition of it on late 90s WWF wrestling or the fucking X-Games. I am sure there are lots of people who like the Gears of War story and characters in an unironic way, but Gordon Freeman is an icon and Marcus Fenix isn’t.

    Finally, do keep making survival horror games, this genre shouldn’t die out. Action games with gross things in are not horror, horror means scary. These games are just full of gross things rather than scary things. Resident Evil 5 or Dead Space are Action Gross games, not Survival Horror, good as they are there is still room for horror games.

    This ranting is quite therapeutic.

    • 04/07/2010 at 08:38 Psychopomp says:

      Also, do keep making real stealth games.

      It saddens me when the people who made games like Chaos Theory action their games up because “market research” showed that most people think “stealth is hard.”

  159. 03/07/2010 at 23:05 neems says:

    My own personal bugbear – well two of them, but related. They’re minor, but they just annoy me so much.

    1) Do not automatically assume that I wish to group games by their publisher / developer on my start menu. In fact, I frequently pay no attention whatsoever to who has published a game. There was a time some years ago when I had a considerable number of Ubisoft games installed, and these were placed under 3 or 4 slightly different variations of their name in the start menu (UBIsoft, UBISOFT, Ubisoft etc). Any time I wanted to play a game that I didn’t use much I had to go trawling to find it.

    2) Do not regard changing the installation folder as ‘advanced’, simply have it as a basic option when installing a game.

  160. 04/07/2010 at 01:25 Bob says:

    Don’t: show me an unskippable animation when I die. *applause* :p

  161. 04/07/2010 at 02:24 rob75383 says:

    Don’t: Do not assume that your default keymap is the best. Do not assume that I have a mousewheel (I use a PS/2 touchpad). Do not release a game with a menu option to change the keymap that is disabled in the final release, with no plans to ever fix it. (IE Scarface- helooo Atari)
    Do: Please DO allow me the ability to map ANY function to ANY key or keys(barring the ESC and Tilde keys).

  162. 04/07/2010 at 02:37 pipman300 says:

    i’m left handed and if the game assumes i’m right handed and won’t let ma make it more left hand comfortable i’ll send the dev an agry letter and maybe a dead animal

  163. 04/07/2010 at 02:49 David, that'll do says:

    To be quite honest, I’m so astonishin gly drunk I didn’t quite get this. Biut, you know, HURRAH FOR RPS. And in th egame, or something

    I hate, in games, and in real life, when you can’t carry loads of stuff, or rotate what you’re carrying to fit in a grid like in Deus Ex. I’m such a hoadre

    Godm trickiest csaptcha ever

  164. 04/07/2010 at 05:17 Casimir's Blake says:

    My Cacodemon disagrees with you, sir.

  165. 04/07/2010 at 09:03 Hillbert says:

    Please, please allow me to pause the game at any time, including cut scenes. I’ve got two young kids and I quite often have to go up and chase monsters/find teddies at a moments notice.

    I don’t like coming back down to find the cut scene has ended, I’ve missed important plot information, and I’m being attacked by enemies in my absence.

  166. 04/07/2010 at 09:35 Dev Anon says:

    Just so you know, developers are obligated by licenses and contracts to put those annoying intro splash screen logos into your games. Even indie devs like us are forced to do this from time to time, depending on the engines we use. Sorry. Best I can promise is that every game I make will have the option to fast forward past these logos with the press of any key. But honestly? Deal with it.

  167. 04/07/2010 at 10:57 Ed says:

    DO: Work on Half-Life 2 Episode 3
    DON’T: Work on Left 4 Dead 3

    That is all.

  168. 04/07/2010 at 14:37 Biggles says:

    Damn, I think I disagree with almost all of these… except the one about bringing in writers right at the start and some of the cutscene complaints.

    Who seriously gives a shit if you can flush the toilets or not?

    Maybe I’m a minimalist, but I’d rather there not be toilets at all than for a coder, sound guy and artist spend a week each making a fully functional set of lavatories and not something more relevant to the story or gameplay…

  169. 04/07/2010 at 15:19 Thiefsie says:

    Do include colour-blind options for the challenged people out there such as myself. God bfbc2 was a nightmare until they patched this in…

  170. 04/07/2010 at 15:35 Ben says:

    I like to be able to shoot lights out and generally have an impact on the level. This was done well in F.E.A.R I thought, with flickering lights when shot or knocked by grenades. I seem to vaugely recall a James Bond game where the lights could be shot out, too

    • 04/07/2010 at 16:24 Wisq says:

      Yeah, I seem to recall light-shooting was in the Splinter Cell series and the Hitman series, though I could be wrong. I know it was in “No One Lives Forever”, which was spy-themed but not a Bond game.

      My favourite NOLF2 moment was when I was in a little cabin in the mountains. They had me go outside and get the generator going, and I suddenly come back to a well-lit cabin. And of course, my first instinct is to go around unscrewing all the lightbulbs, since light is my enemy and darkness my friend. Sure enough, we’re eventually invaded by thugs, but now I can just casually wait in the shadows and easily deal with them all.

  171. 04/07/2010 at 17:51 Kefren says:

    Great stuff, loads of good ideas in this post and the comments.

    “Don’t: show me an unskippable animation when I die. It doesn’t matter how elaborate you make this, the maximum number of times I’ll ever want to watch it is none.”

    Death animations shouldn’t be UNskippable, but saying you would NEVER want to watch one is probably untrue. Deus Ex, fall back, camera rises from body to sombre music, death animation reinforcing theme – I would never skip such a thing.

    “Do: let me carry more than two guns. Just when did we all decide that we weren’t okay with that element of unrealism in gaming?”

    Unless the game is outright madness like Serious Sam, there should be limits. The Deus Ex / System Shock 2 approach is best – carry ten guns if you want but you won’t be able to carry all the other useful stuff. That caters for everyone. I prefer fewer guns but for them all to be interesting, and to be able to replay the game with different options. One game of SS2 as a scientist with stasis generator and crystal shard; next game with laser pistols and grenade launcher; next game with assault rifle and laser rapier. It makes every game completely different. Of course the game itself has to be great like SS2 to support that.

    A few people have mentioned WASD. The only DO here is that controls should be configurable. I consider myself a serious games, but only use arrows and the blocks of keys around them – that way I can find the correct key by touch without looking. WASD doesn’t even seem to make as much sense as RDFG, which at least has a raised bit on the F. But as long as controls can be reconfigured (the first thing I do in any game in order to learn what controls are available) everyone is happy.

  172. 04/07/2010 at 19:09 d00d says:

    Where to begin?

    DO: Let me tweak my graphics options as I see fit. A master Low-Mid-High selector makes it impossible to optimize graphics.

    DON’T: Limit the PC version of a game because it’s ported from a console. If the graphics can be made better, make them better. If new controls and actions are possible, put them in. Until PC games can communicate with Consoles for multiplayer, there is no reason to hold back the guy with more buttons and a more flexible system.

    DO: Implement multiplayer servers that allow PC users and console users to play multiplayer together. I don’t want to have to choose which friends of mine I’m more loyal to when buying a game.

    DON’T: Put the player viewpoint in a place other than the character model’s eyes. MW1 and 2 and SWAT 4 were terrible about this. In these games – if I can see over a wall, I could shoot over the wall… but the player looking at me can only see the top of my head.

    DON’T: Put the bullet exit point anywhere else than the barrel tip on the character model.

    DO: Make not only realistic AI, but have a variety of personalities for NPCs. Some should be more fearful of me, some less. Some should make good decisions, some bad.

    DON’T: Make AI unflinching (in realistic games). If I shoot him in the knee, I want his knee blown out and the NPC hobbling. If I shoot his body armor, I want him to panic, hit the ground in shock, scurry away to recover from his near death experience, and proceed from there based on his personality. If you’re trying to make a super realistic game, make that happen to me too (OFP was decent about this)

    DO: Make realistic body armor (for realistic games). One or two shots compromises the armor. That’s it.

    DON’T: Pretend that different weapons of the same ammunition type have drastically different killing capabilities. A 5.56 bullet fired out of a 16″ barrel will have more or less the same kinetic energy as the same bullet fired out a different gun’s 16″ barrel.

    DO: Make enemies respond appropriately to my actions. A loud gunfight in one room should at least make the NPCs within earshot uneasy.

    DO: Let the NPCs make mistakes. The occasional trip and fall over rough terrain is not only realistic but funny. Almost every auto race event will have one severe human error, sometimes resulting in a crash… why not have my fellow racecar drivers accidentally and catastrophically bump into each other from time to time?

    DO: Make vehicle controls reasonable. Just Cause 2 had the least responsive and slowest aircraft I’ve ever flown in a game. I’ve done more exciting things in training aircraft than I could ever do in that game. Ground vehicles are another thing. I don’t know about you guys, but driving cars in Forza3 is a lot easier than driving anything in sandbox genre games.

    DO: Let me connect multiple controllers to a game. If I’m on foot, mouse+keyboard. In a plane, joystick. In a car, steering wheel.

    DON’T: Give me a magic button to do actions. In Splinter Cell Conviction, you press B to take a guy down. Sam Fisher is a martial arts expert, let me fight the damn enemies, even if I have to button mash.

    DON’T: Use quicktime events (EVER)… but especially in routine gameplay. JC2, had them every time you hijack a vehicle. Howabout you let me actually fight my way in?

    DO: Use physics. Objects have momentum, people have momentum. JC2 was awful about this. I could exit a plane at 200 KTAS and be going straight down within a second of my exit. I really wanted to fling myself over walls with the grappling hook, it never happened.

    DO: Use parachutes in sandbox games. BASE jumping and stunting in general adds replay value to those games.

    DO: Make falling and freefall realistic. There are so many cool things you can do in the air, and many fun ways to jump off of shit. Let the character do a headfirst dive into water. Let the motorcycles do backflips. Let the BASE jumper jump off in any way he wants off a building. Let the skydiver track, sitfly, and do all the other things he can in the air.

    DO: Scare me shitless without cutscenes.

    DO: Make a Rainbow Six (original) style game that lets me plan my way through a mission. Let me change it on the fly, give me multiple entrance and exit options.

    DON’T: Make multiplayer games a clusterfuck. CoD’s spawning system is terrible. No front lines, no order to anything. Basically people running around randomly until they find an enemy to shoot.

    DO: Give me an incentive to keep my head low in a firefight, especially in multiplayer. I’m tired of games that try to be realistic which allow people to run and gun across a wide open space.

    DO: Make character models explode into little giblets. :)

  173. 04/07/2010 at 21:22 doctorfrog says:

    How about: Don’t give me a gun, then make all light bulbs bulletproof.

  174. 04/07/2010 at 22:30 phlebas says:

    Achievements are point 2, surely?

  175. 05/07/2010 at 00:46 GigerPunk says:

    Do: Make NPCs pay attention to what’s in their inventory if you’ve decided to allow me to give them things (i.e. use them as a pack-mule)
    Yes, Jericho in Fallout 3, this means YOU.
    In particular, I don’t appreciate you constantly harping on about how “Goddamn cigarettes are gettin’ harder to find” When I’ve loaded you up with more cartons of the bloody things than gets snuck through customs at Dover on a special Sun newspaper “Go to France for only a pound” day. Just don’t say that line. Please?
    And stop going to attack wildlife when I’ve got the wildlife friend perk, you’re only gong to get yourself killed and then I’ll have to lug all the stuff you’re carrying back to town myself. Provided I survive the attack myself, that is.

    And whie I’m thinking of Fallout 3 and idiotic companions…If there’s a bloody great radioactive area that’ll kill anyone who goes there and it’s a choice of you dieing, someone else dieing, everyone dieing, or special radioactive character wanderng in and saving the day so no-one has to die, then surely the latter option is the one anyone in their right mind would choose? Don’t witter on about my ‘destiny’.
    NO-ONE HAS TO DIE TODAY FAWKES YOU BLOODY GREAT GREEN LUMBERING SPACKER! JUST BLOODY GET IN THERE!
    Ahem.
    Bizarrely, what a great game.

  176. 05/07/2010 at 00:56 MacD says:

    @Walsh:

    I hear you. That really soured Mass Effect 2 for me. ‘Decanting’ that guy as a cutscene? WTF? You have useless fucking trashcompacters in your DLC, but you can’t let ME have a single buttonpress which is actually the ONE single meaningfull press of a button in the entire game?

    And the Witcher did this: a cutscene to a dramatic rooftop chase…why the hell am I not ‘DOING’ that chase myself!?!? It’s a GAME! An INTERACTIVE experience…let ME do that cool shit! We have the technology now!

    PS: every person who does ANYTHING which remotely touches gameplay: read Gamasutra’s series of “Bad designer! No twinky for you!”; the amount of frustration that would have avoided could have powered a large city for YEARS.

  177. 05/07/2010 at 00:59 GigerPunk says:

    Hell yes. This.
    Certain characters are going to be getting rather smelly by now I’d have thought.
    Stop pi$$ing about with things that aren’t half life 2 episode 3 and concentrate on things that ARE half life 2 episode 3.
    Portal 2 looks very nice, yes. Now put it to one side for a minute and get on with half life 2 episode 3.

  179. 05/07/2010 at 04:55 V says:

    I love you.

  180. 05/07/2010 at 07:48 Outcast Orange says:

    Just remember, we had to deal with this:

    http://www.imperial-library.info/bestiaries/morrowind_large_cliffracer-1.jpg

    On the first few hours of game play, they were frightening.
    If you heard the sound of one, you would stop dead,
    turn all around, and feel your blood freeze over.

  181. 05/07/2010 at 12:56 Sonic Goo says:

    And while you’re hiring those writers mentioned above, DO hire some animators as well. How often do we see beautiful lifelike worlds, only to be abruptly pulled out of the fantasy by characters acting like marionettes?

  182. 05/07/2010 at 15:37 Kangarootoo says:

    “do anything to us in a cutscene that we could easily prevent during the game proper”

    GTAIV, mission called “go kill some dude over there” (or some such).

    I approach said dude, who is standing on a railway platform. I imagine he might like to run away, or shoot back at me, so I plan to put one between the eyes before he gets the chance to duck behind a conveniently placed crate and shout rude words at me.

    However, as I reach the top of the steps a cutscene begins, in which my character informs said dude how he is in the most serious of trouble, and how his demise at my hand is almost certainly on the cards, because he has been naughty and needs schooling and so on.

    Said dude tells me that contrary to my view, I am not in fact, all that. Upon which he hops onto the train that pulled gently into the station whilst we were killing seconds instead of bad guys by flapping our jaws so effectively.

    A chase scene then follows, with me all the way swearing under my breath about how Nico Bellic is the very worst hitman I have ever seen, and how I wouldn’t be trying to steer this underweighted 4×4 with all the handling of a bouncy castle, if only he would let me do business like a grown up instead of a mouthy showoff.

  183. 05/07/2010 at 15:58 Grot_Punter says:

    This was something I found very interesting in Metro 2033. Any baddie with a helmet was infuriatingly difficult to headshot, since the helmets ACTUALLY protected their heads! I had to pull off some crazy neck shots or shoot straight through the visors sometimes.

    It was annoying beyond all conceivability, but satisfyingly refreshing.

    • 05/07/2010 at 16:00 Grot_Punter says:

      Reply fail!

      This was in response to something about consistency in a game tied to art style. Helmets should make a difference! Unprotected heads should pop!

  184. 06/07/2010 at 16:18 James T says:

    Be very careful with your fucking contextual controls. I’ve been giving Splinter Cell Conviction a go, and I’ve never seen more hamfisted context mismanagement. If a lightswitch is positioned by a window, it’s fifty-fifty whether you’ll trip the switch, silently concealing yourself in darkness, or hurl yourself noisily through the windowpane, alerting all the world to your presence. Is there a pipe running above a door? Budget your time wisely, because the majority of your attempts to open said door will instead be spent leaping to grasp the pipe, over and over again. Just opened a set of double-doors and want to kill the man standing in front of you? Then prepare to die, because your melee kill button will, without exception, ALWAYS cause your character to instead turn around 180 degrees and smash open the unopened side of the double-door with a kick, alerting your foe and giving him ample time to shoot you to death. The direction your character or camera is facing is scarcely relevant, nor is there any priority system which might place, say, killing an opponent above causing an unnecessary ruckus; until you’ve oriented your mouse juuuust over the little context triangle, your guy will do whatever’s fucking dumbest.

    (…And throwing bodies automatically counts as a non-stealth kill even in total solitude, an obvious bug… and your character occasionally doesn’t have his gun drawn, leading him to pat his pockets down, get his bearings, find his weapon, draw his weapon, squint in confusion at the targeted area, and finally fire at the space two metres behind the patrolling sentry whose head you had targeted perfectly a second and a half ago… And occasionally your under-cover character will just fucking MOVE upon pressing ‘fire’, turning a perfect headshot into a shot to a pillar three feet away from your target which helpfully telegraphs your presence. But I’m just in ‘Don’t buy SC5′ territory here, so…)

    Oh, here’s something; don’t be afraid to have a fucking GUI. As someone else was saying, having the GUI fade in when it’s supposedly needed (I know Far Cry 2 did this) is much more of a hassle than just having the stuff up there on the screen all the time. ‘Immersion’ my arse — gaming lasted 30 years without this bullshit fad of burying information, and no-one complained, because it isn’t a problem. Games don’t become more immersive by having less information onscreen, they become more immersive by being fucking good. Ubisoft keep trying to ‘fix’ Splinter Cell by (among other clownish methods) chucking out UI elements, and they just make it worse each time; in Chaos Theory, onscreen meters indicated the background noise level and how lit-up you were, and from there, you knew what you could get away with. And it was a fucking excellent game. I don’t remember exactly how Double Agent’s “red-yellow-green” light-system worked, only that it was worse — as was the game itself — and Conviction has chucked out the noise mechanic entirely and just gone for a “black-and-white-when-you’re-hidden” angle — which means you play almost the whole game in monochrome if you’re any good at it, and the monochrome view actually makes it difficult to spot which other areas of shadow are truly dark enough to travel to next, or whether your prey is actually in a concealed-enough place to cop a headshot (the increased emphasis on combat and regenerating health have also made them sloppy with the level design and, ironically, made true stealth strategies far more laborious and time-consuming than they were in prior SC games, but yes, straying off-topic again there…)

    • 07/07/2010 at 11:02 Truth says:

      This is 100% the fault of the restrictions of a console gamepad oriented game and illustrates really well just how far the “level of dumb” has gone.

      Contextual action has now become a “Press A once to make a 50 point chain combo against the nearest guard” misdemeanor. In short, 90% of the gameplay is being taken away from you.

      Evasion has become a button-mashing quicktime event, combat an auto-combo, etc pp.

      Consoles must die and gaming has to be wrested from the programming-for-console-target zombies back into the hands of diehard-PC-fans, if the latter should still exist, hidden in some dank caves somewhere(..led by Carmack perhaps?).

    • 08/07/2010 at 21:55 ffordesoon says:

      I play both console and PC games, but I would consider myself a “console gamer.” And I am here to say: DO NOT BLAME US.

      I hate pretty much everything that’s been mentioned with a passion, and I know plenty of “console gamers” who also do. I DON’T like having less options, I DON’T like needless cutscenes, I DON’T like long and unskippable tutorials, and I SURE AS HELL DON’T like shittily designed contextual “press A to win” systems. I do not enjoy playing a “dumbed down” version of a game, because it is DUMBED DOWN. Now, I like it when systems are streamlined and unjankified, but that’s because elegant design is, for me, better than inelegant design. Contextual button systems are usually inelegant and make the game harder. The only reason it works in Zelda is because no options have ever been taken away from the player or otherwise gimped in between games. Link can do MORE now than he could in previous titles, and that’s entirely due to contextual control. Because Miyamoto (or whoever) designs the game first, and THEN asks what control system would work best FOR THAT PARTICULAR GAME.

      So don’t blame console gamers. Blame console developers and publishers.

  185. 08/07/2010 at 14:44 seventh says:

    Doors that you can’t destroy or open even though you’re a black-ops mutant lizard ninja demigod with lasers.

    But then can open once you’ve solved some sort of gay little puzzle.

  186. 31/07/2010 at 20:36 JustBoo says:

    @jeremy: Everything you said and all the “don’ts” in this article are done in the PC version of Assassin’s Creed. Just exiting the game was an exercise in frustration.

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