Alternatives to Constant Restarting

The longer the player plays without a break, the more we build up his sense of the reality of the world. Any time he dies or has to restart from a saved game, the spell is broken.

Alternate paths, recoverable errors, multiple solutions to the same problem, missed opportunities that can be made up later, are all good.

Jordon Mechner

Next Generation Magazine, January 1997

I offer the following design criterion for your consideration: Any game that requires reloading as a normal part of the player's progress through the system is fundamentally flawed. On the very first playing, even a below-average player should be able to successfully traverse the game sequence. As the player grows more skilled, he may become faster or experience other challenges, but he should never have to start over after dying.

Indeed, this raises a new question: should we banish death from our games? Why must we kill the player when we all know perfectly well that he will merely reload game? Why should we force the tedious process of reloading on him? And why should we require the even more tedious task of frequent saves? Why not use the computer to handle the tedious tasks? If the player makes a mistake, then we automatically take him back to the most recent convenient starting point and let him try again. The result in terms of game play is exactly the same, except that the player no longer has to deal with the petty issues of file management. Isn't that what computers were made for?

Chris Crawford from an Erasmatazz article

Consider, for example, the case of a room full of poison gas. The way to get through the room is to give the command HOLD BREATH before entering. If the character has no reason for holding his breath except that he choked to death in that room the last time he played, his actions become illogical.

However, things can be kept reasonable if the description of the previous room states that wisps of green mist are coming from under the door. Giving the command SMELL MIST might elicit a stronger warning, and then it would make sense that the character should take precautions. The point isn't that a really good player should be able to get through the adventure on the first try, but that the character should stay within the bounds of the game's reality.

Gary McGath

From COMPUTE!'s Guide to Adventure Games

You're not making a quarter gobbling arcade game so why be lazy and use the same old frustrating "Die and Remember" style of game making? I talked to one D & R game designer about a game he made that had no save or password feature and he said that he likes that kind of game because it's challenging and makes him feel good when he beats the game like someone would when they climb a mountain. He must not understand that when people climb a mountain and slip a few inches, they don't have to go back down to the bottom of the mountain and start all over again. They just keep climbing.

Even having a save feature can be worthless if you make it part of the game. Making people get to a save point or any other lame thing is just stupid. People have lives and should be able to save their game at any time. It's a courtesy. It shows you have respect for the lives of your players.

Sometimes people have to stop playing your Earth shattering game to do something in the real world. It's not fun to almost make it through a difficult level and die right before you can save your place.

Most players don't yell, "Oh boy! I get to do that all over again! What a great challenging game! I could go out to dinner or see a movie with my family tonight, but I get to stay home instead and play this level over and over again until I can save it! If I lose all my lives before I can save my game I'll have to finish this level plus the three others before it, this is great fun! The game designer has turned me into his trained monkey, whee! Thank you, oh god of programming! Please punish me some more! Maybe next time instead of making a game, you could just beat me with a porcupine!"

Duane Alan Hahn

You may be proficient at the first ten levels of a game, but if you have to keep playing through them just to get to the eleventh, it gets discouraging. Discouragement has no place in gaming, in my book.

Andy Eddy (adapted)

An important feature that I look for is a computer game should not be written such that Real Life takes a back seat.

When playing a game it is important it allow some way to pause/save to handle a Real Life interruption. Or write the game so that simply walking away from it is not devastating to your accomplishments to date. I.e. I don't want to have to worry about dying because I had to answer the phone.

A game that is not written this way will make me rude and hard to live with. Not a good thing in my mind at all. I have learned to avoid these types of games with a passion.

Scott Adams