Q

robotslenderman asked:

So hey, about ten years ago there was basically a phase in video game development where manual saves were disabled in place of (often far apart) automatic saves. It (mostly) passed in its own time, but... what was up with that?

A

image

The big problem with manual saves is that players can potentially save in a situation where the game is in an unwinnable state (e.g. save before the player is about to die). For players who like to overwrite their own saves instead of rotating save files, this can result in a really bad feeling and hours of lost progress. One major guiding principle in game design is “make it easy to do things right and hard to do things wrong”. It’s a lot easier to ensure the saved game is in a good state under controlled situations, such as with established save points and automatic saves. Since then, we’ve reallowed manual saves with attached conditions so that players have a harder time saving in a broken state, but the reasons for the progression should be fairly clear.

[Join us on Discord] and/or [Support us on Patreon]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Feb. 26 2024
#game feature breakdown #critical analysis #how things work #game design theory
36 notes

Notes

  1. flamagenitus reblogged this from bioluminescently-unfolding
  2. luccianobs reblogged this from askagamedev
  3. sobredunia reblogged this from askagamedev
  4. thatsabigtunafish reblogged this from kinosworld
  5. kinosworld reblogged this from askagamedev
  6. supercomputer276 reblogged this from askagamedev
  7. robotslenderman said: That makes SO much sense. Now that you mention it, I realise now that autosaves separate to manual saves came like, straight afterwards.
  8. homoclothes reblogged this from askagamedev
  9. bioluminescently-unfolding reblogged this from askagamedev
  10. askagamedev posted this
    So hey, about ten years ago there was basically a phase in video game development where manual saves were disabled in...