Sparsely Placed Save Points Are the Death of Modern Games

by Josh Pankratz on December 10, 2007 at 5:15 am

Three hours of work, and it didn’t save my game!

Save points are truly a spear in the side of any modern gamer. It’s 2007, we have the latest in bump mapping, anisotropic filtering, and the best of mipmaps. We’ve got the graphics, so now it’s time to look beyond superficial beauty. We need to fix problems that have plagued our media for far too long, namely, sparsely placed save points.

How has something this high profile gone unnoticed? Furthermore, how many games have you stopped playing solely because you didn’t want to invest another hour into something you just did? We fixed this problem, didn’t we? Look at Metal Gear Solid, a game that saves damn near every time you enter a room.

I suppose they aren’t true save points, more like continue points. Still, when you died in MGS all you had to do was retry the area you failed. This game was released in 1998, almost 10 years ago. Why hasn’t the developer community adopted this base mechanic?

The answer can be found by looking at what a game is on a rudimentary level. Or specifically, what a game is to you. Do you play games for the challenge? Or are you more interested in the story, and the experience as a whole? This fundamental choice draws a line in the sand between the two audiences.
I feel that the level of tenacity required to develop a game in the 21st century may be a telling sign that the development community is made up of largely “challenge gamers”. That’s what they enjoy in games, so the only logical summation for them to make would be to assume that everyone wants a challenge.

The easiest way to accomplish this is to instill a sense of fear for the player dying. Namely, should a player die, they will have to redo the entire level as punishment for their mistake. At least that’s how it’s worked all the way back since Mario Brothers. The problem is, that’s how it’s worked since fucking Mario Brothers. The idea is as dated as the title itself.

Games need to evolve beyond their challenge – that’s not to say they should be effortless, but the fabric of these games needs to be woven with today’s gamer in mind. Let the golden age of difficult games die with the arcades that bore them.

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