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Unforgivable Game Design Sins

As
someone who most people would consider to
be pretty annoying, I’m in a good position to know what’s
bothersome and what isn’t. So I’ve decided to go through a few little
things in videogames which annoy me. This is stuff that developers
should easily be able to fix, but they’re either too stupid, or too
lazy to do it. They shouldn’t be able to get
away with all this crap. Someone has to call them out! Obviously I
can’t do it, because what pull do I have? All I do is run this piece of crap site.

The only thing I really can
do is write a half-assed article bitching about these things on this
website (which, again, nobody ever reads). Guess I’ll just do that
then. That’ll learn em.

As
someone who most people would consider to
be pretty annoying, I’m in a good position to know what’s
bothersome and what isn’t. So I’ve decided to go through a few little
things in videogames which annoy me. This is stuff that developers
should easily be able to fix, but they’re either too stupid, or too
lazy to do it. They shouldn’t be able to get
away with all this crap. Someone has to call them out! Obviously I
can’t do it, because what pull do I have? All I do is run this piece of crap site.

The only thing I really can
do is write a half-assed article bitching about these things on this
website (which, again, nobody ever reads). Guess I’ll just do that
then. That’ll learn em.

Unskippable Cutscenes

CutsceneI
don’t care how much time you spent making that CG orc look realistic. I
don’t care if you got Robert Deniro to do the voice of your mafia don.
I don’t care if you spent a thousand hours and the lives of a thousand
Mongolian refugee children ensuring the hem of the skirt on your elf
princess moved just so. I
don’t give a sweet, loving, leathery Lord Baby Jesus on high about how
much work, or time, or effort, or love you’ve put into the cutscenes in
your game:

You had better let me skip them.

By god you
had better let me skip those cutscenes or I swear to all that is good and
kind and pure and holy in this world I will hunt each and every one of
you people down and I will destroy you. I will destroy you utterly and
completely. I will flay the flesh from your muscles and tear the
muscles from your bones and pound your bones into meal and use this
meal to bake bread which I will then sell to unwed mothers at a
reasonable price.

I will sell the bonebread to these mothers
and their fatherless children. I will sell it and they will eat it-
they will eat you– and they will love me for it. And I may feel remorse
for what I have done. Yes, I may feel remorse and I may feel sadness,
but one thing I’ll never feel is regret, because you made me watch.

You made me watch, you dirty sons of. And I’ll never forgive you for it. As long as I live.

Save Points (A Haiku)

I save when I please.

Please, get rid of the savepoints.

(This means you, Japan).

Music During Installation

InstallerInstallers
do not need a soundtrack. Fucking period. Do you people have any idea
how annoying it is to us? When I open an installer for a game and music
begins to play, you know what I do? I don’t get frustrated. I don’t
yell. I don’t scream. I weep.

Yes, I weep because I
realize that sitting here and watching the progress bar of this game
fill up Ever. So. Slowly. Is the only thing I’m going to be able to to
do on my computer for the next thirty fucking minutes, because
the developer of Call of Brothers In Company of  Duty Arms in Medal of
Heroes has decided that it’s EVER SO IMPORTANT to the ambiance of their
installer that a BOM-FUCKING-BASTIC MILITARY MARCH blare at full volume
from my speakers until the installation of their forty eight gigabyte
game is complete.

“Shouldn’t we add a mute button or
something?” someone on the development team must have asked each time a new
iteration of the game was being developed. “Naw,” someone higher up the
chain-of-command would reply, “we paid a pretty penny for that
goddamned orchestra; let the poor bastards sit and listen to it.”

And
listen to it we shall. Because we certainly can’t do anything else with
all this racket going on. So we sit, mouths-agape with glassy eyed
stares on our dumb faces, moving files from one folder to another and
then back again and again and again as we go mad every so delightfully
mad while the trumpets blare and the snare drums roll and off somewhere
in the deepest reaches of our soul something is vicious is stirring and yet; and yet…

The music plays on.