Save me!
Category: Industry, Posted: 02/15/2008 at 07:55AM CST by Eddie Inzauto, Senior EditorI came into this week thinking that by today (or maybe Saturday), I would have written a column about love in videogames. It's a topic I've been meaning to address for some time now, and this seemed as good a time as any to finally get the show on the road.
Then I realized that yesterday was Valentine's Day, and although I'm all for love and romance, I am not into being told when to publish articles pertaining to a particular topic. Holidays tend to do that to people, as one can quickly surmise after noting the multiple "videogame romance" features that have undoubtedly found their way onto the internet this week.
No, I actually HATE being told what to do, and I hate being told WHEN to do it. That's why after sitting down to play Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles this afternoon, there was little question as to what today's column would bemoan. Capcom's latest "ZOMBIES-COMIN'-UP-THE-HELL-RIGHT-NOW!" -fest reminded me of a gameplay element that is simply not my style. That is, designated "save points."
If you've ever played a survival horror game, an RPG, or any of a number of other games, then you know the drill:
1. Developer designates a specific area where saving one's progess may take place, leaving the rest of the virtual world devoid of any game-saving apparati.
2. Gamer plays the game, and eventually has a desire to preserve his/her progress.
3. Player wastes time and energy wandering around in search of developer's saving doohickey, just to feel secure about moving forward.
That's the basic jist of the system, which is occasionally jazzed up to seem more functional, or cleverly masked to be discretely hidden from the spotlight. In either case, it is still an outdated and non-optimal way to record game data.
The Resident Evil franchise is notorious for using a rather draconian version of this lovely type of saving system, where players are required not only to be in the right place, but to carry the proper item used for saving. The Silent Hill series adopted a similar, though less cruel method, and many JRPGs now feature some sort of glowy crystal or futuristic DDR pad that must be activated in order to get anything written to your console's hard drive (or memory card).
The term "save points," to clarify, doesn't necessarily mean physical locations within a game world, so long as they are readily accessible. The major problem arises when a player is only allowed to save at a specific point in time. Often, the two go hand-in-hand, however, because that span of time happens to coincide directly with the trek required to reach the location of the next save point. In a linear sort of game (which comes rife with plenty of other criticisms, of course), the problem is exacerbated. Strung along from one save point to the next, players can be left feeling utterly helpless and completely in the dark. That's the way the content is supposed to make us feel, not the shoddy game design!
The point is, you can't save the game when you want to save the game, and that's a problem. People (no matter how much we may want to) do not live inside of our videogame worlds. There are other obligations we all have, and plenty of time constraints on most of our lives. Should something urgent ever arise during a game session, the answer is not as simple as, "ok, just let me find a save point before I quit." Sometimes the game loses that coin toss, the console gets turned off, and there goes an hour of your life. Of course the machine could be left on, but power surges, outages, and other interruptions are not exactly a gamer's best friend. Besides, why does the player need to create solutions for a problem that the developer should have remedied in the first place?
Further, and more importantly, the "save point" system has profound effects on the concepts of failure and consequences in videogames. When a player is doomed to repeat great spans of success before getting the opportunity to correct the singular failure that initiated that deja vu-like cycle, the seamless videogame experience that gamers live for is destroyed. Re-trial of the task is spaced so far apart from the original failure that improvement in that area can only be minimal, in many cases. These situations promote reoccurring failure, rather than growth and progess. This can even drive players away from a game completely. Frequent saves (at the player's will), on the other hand, allow for the more frequent repetition of ONLY the failed challenge. Rehearsal such as this lends itself to greater chances for success, and curb the player's likelihood to feel discouraged and give up.
Some might argue that designated save points are important for certain genres, such as survival horror. In these games, they serve to increase the suspense and tension the player feels while exploring the game world. Clearly, that's a bulls*** defense of the gameplay mechanic, because the sort of fear alluded to in an argument such as that is a direct result of the way the game has been built, not the material from which it has been crafted. Like I said before, it is the game's content that should torment us, not its poor design.
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I remember playing Doom many years ago. I'd be up by myself in the middle of the night and the growls up unseen imps would make me jump every time. Guess what I'd end up doing? Quicksave before every room, and if anything didn't go perfectly in the upcoming fight I'd reload and try again. It definitely relieved a lot of tension. From a designer's perspective, I can see how allowing a completely open save system could change the overall game experience. From a gamer's perspective, especially these days when gaming opportunity and time are short, I want to be able to save and quit at any point, and not held hostage by a game until I reach that next save spot.
That's why I <3 save states in emulation.
I like the saving method in GRAW2 where you can save at any time except when there are enemies around. Its the best of both worlds.
Agreed, Alex6969.
One game i nearly skipped because of this problem is New Super Mario Brothers. You don't always have time to get all the way to the next castle and beat it to save the game. When I first picked it up I ended up doing a few levels over about ten times before I finally had time to get far enough that I could save - and I got really tired of them. The stupid thing is that as soon as you finish the game you can save whenever you want as you play through the worlds that you may have skipped past. Why couldn't they have just made that feature available from the start?
Save when you like takes away from certain games, it doesn't matter how good you need to be as you can literally save every step of the way.
But the system in res evil is good, it makes you scared to die ect ect point of the game ect ect
I remember back when I first played half life, I saved every time before a gunfight, and then kept reloading until I was satisfied that the amount of ammo used was as small as possible.
See ima say i agree and disagree eddie.
On Agreeing:
I say that Its good in games like half life you can save when ever you want, alot too. I know in games using the source engine i utilize this to the max (Dark messiah). It also makes the game easier, not always, but can make the megaman theory alot easier on the user.
On Disagreeing:
This also makes the suspense drive down, HARDCORE. Play a resident evil, or any horror game, and notice that theres a typewriter here and there, and i am glad in RE4 they got rid of the ribbons, that was retarted, but anyway, when i see a typewriter i think"this is here for a reason, the dev's think i might die after this, ALOT, Whats passed here?" and bam, EPIC FIGHT. Its like that as well in RE4 but with the merchant, hes the last chance to go balls out in RE4. In RPg's as well, it wouldnt make the on-the-tip-of-your-toes strategy as much fun. You could go into a fight, and then find otu the things weakness, halfway through, and then start over, or during even. Thats lame, Try to figure it out as your in there, that makes it fun imo.
Overall, you do bring up one REALLY good point. its is outdated and in FPS's it should be completely eliminated, as well any kind of intense hardcore action game. I remember not knowing when red stell was saving, lol.
the game i would have to say has some of the worst saving is dead rising
Oh, but I love Dead Rising. Granted, the save system suffers from the save-point ills, but my greatest frustration (by far) with this game is the double-tap to roll forward. I activated that accidentally about a thousand times, rolling into death or serious hurt more than a few of those times. I could not stop cursing about it at one point. I don't think I've ever wanted to kill a game designer before, or since.
Nintendo had a save system with some of the Zelda games, if memory serves. You had your traditional save points, which could be loaded as many times as you want later, and you also had an interrupt-save system. What that allows is saving the game at any time and then quitting. When you come back into the game, the interrupt-save file gets loaded, and then deleted. That way, the game can be challenging in between save points, and you can go take care of whatever real-world interruptions pop up. That's probably the best of both worlds, in a game where the designer feels that the player should progress from one point to another without the safety of a save he can reload indefinitely.
I just finished a horror game, Penumbra: Black Plague. It made use of these designated save points. However, it did something else, too. It silently auto-saved in the background every so often. I could have quit and powered down my PC at any time without fear of losing progress.
Did that make the game any less frightening? No, not at all. But it did make it a better-designed piece of software than if it had forsaken that auto-save feature and left me only with the scattered save points to work with.
There was a time when designated save-points were an absolute requirement to save in many console games, as the memory needed for a save anywhere system was prohibitive up until this generation of games.
Even with all the memory available now, game designers realize that save points are an easy out to arbitrarily enhance length and difficulty, much to the chagrin of pretty much all of us. In some games, it works. In others, it's a right pain in the ass. Like a lot of things in this new generation, practically anything is becoming possible, but many game designers feel trapped by expected conventions within certain genres. Until some designer somewhere stands up and takes a risk changing the system, we'll have to put up with these ancient conventions.
Just to mention- Zelda's save system, as far back as I can remember, would allow you save at any time and progress through whatever would be preserved, but the game would restart you at the nearest checkpoint upon relaunch, which was usually a town or back at the beginning of the current dungeon. Not certain if this changed since Majora's Mask, however.
Addendum- Lost Odyssey also has a mix of designated save points for hard saving and soft checkpoints in case a random monster suddenly pwns you. You may have to trek a minute to save and be done for good for the night, but at least that cheap monster that owned your entire party won't set you back three hours.
P&M.
But anyway, i think the best save system i have experienced in a while was Metal Gear solids. "YO BITCH!! LET ME SAVE!! I DONT CARE BOUT NO GODDAMN CHINESE PROVERB B*******, JUST LET ME SAVE!!!"