From The RPS Archives
By John Walker on December 29th, 2011.
I love rules. Not following them, of course – that’s for other people. I love writing them. And since I’m the best qualified to decide how everyone else is allowed to behave, it’s only appropriate that I be in charge of everything. So it is that I have been making clear the Rules For Games, both for developers and for players, in an ongoing series that shall be added to forever. You can find the first four parts below.
Obey me
By John Walker on August 23rd, 2011.
It’s time for the return of my irregular series in which I tell games developers exactly what they must do and not do if they want to avoid being flayed and rolled in salt. You can see the rest of these rules here. It’s quite simple: obey my commands and everyone will be happy. No one needs to lose a life.
By John Walker on February 8th, 2011.
Six months ago I took over the world. My decrees for gaming are the result, and all developers and publishers are obliged to follow them. You can read previous entreaties here. Since they only began half a year ago we haven’t seen the results yet, but any day now. Here is a third instalment of that which must be obeyed.
DO: let me choose my game settings from outside the game. I want to play games in a window, at the resolution of my desktop. The reason I want to do this is because anything else would be mad like a crazy person. So defaulting to showing it to me at 640×400 in EGA at fullscreen is perhaps not the way I want to kick things off with your game. First impressions count. When those first impressions are of seeing the name of your game overlapping the edges of the screen, looking as though it’s made out of LEGO, while IM windows are flashing demanding to know information from me immediately that I can no longer click on, it makes me think you’re a bit of a dick. And you know how you then insist that I restart the game to apply those settings? DO YOU SEE?
By John Walker on July 9th, 2010.
I’m in charge. This is firmly established (citation needed). So it’s important I continue to decree my rulings. All must obey, for I am as bad as BP and I burn in hell. Fear me.
By John Walker on July 2nd, 2010.
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.
