Playing Games Of Patience

This week I’ve been playing through free downloadable demos and trial games, trying to figure out a common factor that makes nearly all of them distinctly average and dull game experiences rather than evoking a “wow, what fun, I must buy this” feeling. After a while, I came up with the theory that very few games made these days take into account that the “average” patience possesed by the “average” gamer seems to have halved in the last couple of years.

Lets take 3 factors into account here :
(1) CHOICE
The “average” gamer now has more gaming choices and options available than everbefore. Gone are the days of putting one game into the console : we now play increasingly online, download demos and trial games, we play free PC games and we buy with credit…Some of the lucky gamers out there can play all 3 consoles and a pc on the same tv.. (though not simultaneously … yet!)
(2) MORE FREETIME OPTIONS
The gamer has more entertainment options than ever before … from internet,mobiles, ipods, cable tv and dvds.
(3) MORE STRESS
Everyday life has become more global but , as a result, more stressful : longer and more demanding working hours , more complex family lives etc. With mobiles commonplace , we are constantly available at all times of the day…

Add these 3 factors together and you get, in my opinion, diminished gamer patience and that means you, as a developer or publisher , have roughly 1 minute to impress the gamer before your product is deleted , traded in or just plain forgotten about . And this is not just my theory : Shigeru Miyamoto said of Zelda Twiilight Princess : “ there are fewer and fewer people who are interested in playing a big role-playing game like Zelda” . How true : despite being a true Zelda fan myself I found that i could no longer stomach the endless monotonous chain of events I had seen so many times before ….talk to x , find object , go to dungeon, get stuck, kill boss, find next object… I screamed for something new to happen but got given another dungeon to contemplate instead. What was once accepted is no longer tolerated...

And so back to the free downloadable demos and trial games I tried out : they all contain one or more of the following errors that infuriate the gamer incessantly - not a good start for your very expensive investment :
Dont force your story on the gamer
- Let the player press a button to skip the movie/sequence. If they want to watch it , they will !
Loading times !
- Loading times are a design issue..not a technical issue! Sort this out early in the design cycle :
no gamer wants to sit and watch a loading screen for too long!Especially nowadays...
Save points and checkpoints
- We now have technology that enables the developer to insert as many save points as they
want… don’t make the gamer start again… and again.. especially from a place they last saw an
hour ago..
Customise, Customise and Customise
- Let the gamer decide how the game will be played : the more game options available, the more
likely they are able to change the game to suit their individual style and abilty = more
enjoyment!!!

All this writing has got me very frustrated and annoyed : so I going off to take it out on the poor inhabitants of Liberty City!