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PlayStation (Games) XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

Game Pacing Pitfalls Discussed 41

Posted by simoniker from the also-bad-paced-games-have-bad-pacing dept.
Thanks to GameSpot for their editorial discussing the problems in pacing a videogame correctly, as the author theorizes: "It's almost always the same sorts of things that make us get sick of them in a hurry", and goes on to pinpoint game facets that affect pacing adversely. He suggests: "Loading times are quite possibly the single worst thing about today's games", and also points out "...providing the player with easy access to often-used features" as a pacing-killer, referencing Vagrant Story's "unwieldy menu system." Finally, he argues that "the ideal game should never require pausing or fast-forwarding", mentioning that Star Wars: KOTOR had "...combat [that] was paced seemingly just right so that I'd be able to react to what was happening as it happened, not in between desperately toggling the pause button."
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Game Pacing Pitfalls Discussed More

Game Pacing Pitfalls Discussed

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  • Unskippable Cutsequences (Score:4, Funny)

    by jdonnis ( 115371 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:36AM (#6908275)
    How about cutsequences you cannot escape.

    It is easy to say a game has 40+ hours of gameplay when they KNOW that you have to watch all cutsequences at least twice and you cannot skip them.

    Latest example: The Jedi Academy demo - why some developers don't get that they will face eternal damnation for a thing like this is beyond me.
    • Well, it's a lot less bad to have massive cutscenes on the actual game, but like you said in the Jedi Academy Demo....well, that's just unacceptable. Why make us download EVEN MORE raw bits just to see some silly cutscenes.

      I downloaded the demo to play the damn damn, not watch it!
    • In Jedi Academy, you can hit your 'use' key to skip the in-game (non-movie) cutscenes. Very handy when I found that out, it made my life way easier. Well... made the game easier anyway.

      --Dan
      • Cutscenes aside, I'd have to say that Jedi Academy is a game I'm probably going to buy. and I didn't get the last Jedi Knight game based on the demo. The controls - and pacing - of the last one just didn't grab me. And it just didn't feel right. It also ran a lot slower, which is odd given that they're both based on the Quake 3 engine. It must be the level design on all counts.

        JA moves faster in combat, and has some tough opponents in it. Three cultists with lightsabers can be awfully entertaining.

        The fa

  • No pausing? (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:39AM (#6908285)
    ""the ideal game should never require pausing or fast-forwarding","

    You mean the game is so addictive that you never pause play until you are through? How long before the Sony "PotStation" toilet-equiped recliner is sold as a popular game accessory.
    • "PotStation"

      Reminds me of a coffee table of a friend of mine from college.

      You mean you don't have the Nintendo GameCatheter? It works with PlayStation and XBox too, you just need an adaptor.

    • The article does not imply to take out the "pause" feature of a game altogether. He is saying that games like Baldur's Gate, which you must pause the game in order to have any chance of giving out your commands in time, should be paced a little better so it's unnecessary. For those unfamiliar with Baldur's Gate when in battle you can pause the game and give your characters orders while the game is paused. They will execute them when you unpause.

  • And about loading times (Score:3, Informative)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @07:44AM (#6908291)
    "He suggests: "Loading times are quite possibly the single worst thing about today's games"

    Is this a result of everything using DVD or similar media? You do not have to go very far back in the generations of videogames to find fast-loading games: look at the N-64. It used cartridges.
    • Gamecube load times are comparatively negligable.
      • Gamecube load times are comparatively negligable.

        But still annoying--die in Mario Sunshine, and it takes 30 seconds of loading, stage-select, and re-loading to continue

        *sigh* Gamecube is plauged with what I like to call "crappy engineering."
        • Excuse me?

          Nintendo develops their games to try and hide the loading times as much as possible. They're still there, if you look well - the lifts in Metroid Prime, for example. But they for the most part are not that bad.

          It's a lot better than sitting and staring at "Loading..." like so many games have, because they couldn't be bothered to find ways to reduce them or blend them in.

          Or perhaps the long load times on the other consoles cause you to fall asleep so you don't notice the wait, but the Gamecube
          • Nintendo develops their games to try and hide the loading times as much as possible.

            Then they really, really messed up on a few.

            When entering a stage in SM. Sunshine, Soulcalibur 2 (probably not Nintendo's fault), or even Pikmin, there is a noticable load-time.

            It's only annoying when you're moving back and forth from the same stage for some odd reason--like you do whenever you die on SM.Sunshine oustide of the "secret" levels.

            • Yes, Soul Calibur 2, being not a Nintendo game, falls outside of that range. THPS4 has noticeable load times, because they make a point of specifying "Loading".

              I played a bit of Pikmin, and don't remember having an issue with load times there, but then again, I didn't play a whole it.

              And SM Sunshine, well, no idea about that one.
      • Part of the reason for this is what I believe is the size of the disk, which results in both faster spin up/spin down times, faster seeks, and faster reads. I worked on a game that was both PS2 and GameCube, and although the data that was loaded was the same size on both discs, the GameCube loaded in about 1/10th the time of the PS2.
        • I am probably offbase on this, but I thought larger discs actually led to faster read-times. For example, Dreamcast games put the most important data near the outside of the disc, because it could spin faster. Was pretty sure GC and Xbox did this, as well.

          Faster seeks would obviously be true for smaller discs, though I would think most well-programmed games would avoid too much seek time.
    • The N64 was the first thing I thought about when I read the load time complaint. I loved and still love my N64, I remember either going to a friends house to play some new PS or PS2 game or borrowing their systems for the weekend. The thing that always annoyed me the most was the load times, I think that was the best feature of my N64. I could pop in a cartridge and play the game without watching the stupid loading screen.

      I expect when I play games on a gaming console to not have to wait, it is a ded
    • Yeah, I miss the load times old days of gaming on an Atari 800.

      GROOOOOOOOOOONK! Grink-gronk! Grink-gronk! Grink-gronk! GROOOOOONK! Grink-gronk! ... 5 minutes pass... Grink-gronk! Grink-gronk! GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK! Grink-gronk! ...

    • It's not about the media, it's about how much time gets spent on optimizing the loading. Halo PC has under 3 second level loading times because the levels are optimized to read directly from the disc into memory in bulk, and already be properly structured. Contrast with most games that first load the level, then parse it, then build it, then come up with a texture list, load all the textures... And all of these come from different files, on a CD (or hard drive) that is optimized on directory structure no
      • It's about the media. If you have a cartridge directly connected in by a nice wide bus, you don't have to worry much about optimizing the loading.
        • Yeah, but what Vaevictis666 wrote is certainly true, too. There are some very good, clever ways to optimize loading, and even disc-based games can use them. The better developers do this.

          And cartidges may help things, but not always - I remember the Conker N64 game had some slight loading delays here and there (like when it first booted up).

  • What the author forgets... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KDan ( 90353 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @08:28AM (#6908444) Homepage
    is that different people like the game to be paced differently. I have friends who like to play Starcraft on infinite resource maps where clicking speed is a major factor in who wins the battle. Others like to take their time. Different people not only have different abilities in terms of what pace they can keep up with, but also different preferences.

    Pacing may be an issue, sure - but it's not an issue that can be fixed in any way, because whatever you do, you'll still only hit just right one small portion of the gaming audience.

    Daniel
    • And Starcraft, like a few other games, realizes this and allows you to change the speed of the game from agonizingly slow to a nice fast clip, not to mention the variety in maps you mentioned. And, unlike some of the complaints mentioned in the article, you can skip almost all of the cinematics in Starcraft if you so desire.

      I think you can, in fact, fix pacing; it just takes a bit more effort to make varying game speeds. (For example, FF6 allowed you to vary the pace of the battles.) That, and the abil
      • The only complaint I usually have about pacing is when a game hits a sudden wall. I don't mind if games are hard, and don't complain about games being too easy, but if things are going along for a good amount of time at a certain level (gradually increasing in difficulty), and then all of a sudden I hit something that seems almost impossibly difficult or requires an extraordinary number of retries, I often put the game away for a very long time. I love a challenge, but a sudden change in difficulty is often
  • "The functions you use the most should be the easiest to reach."

    I'm not sure I've ever seen it emphasized by the comp.human-factors [google.com] crew, though.

    It applies to every sort of design including webpages, so you'd expect the design process to start with the task of listing the main functions in order of expected frequency...

  • Loading times can often be abysmally long, and so frequent as to seriously reduce game enjoyment.

    The most recent example I can think of is Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex vs. Jax and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy on the Playstation2. CB is essentially unplayable, with loading times >30 seconds for each different area you go into -- something which happens fairly frequently. The loading screen is even abysmal, with lame "stars" falling upward and one of the characters in the middle, plus big letters lett
  • I'd take his point a bit more to heart if he hadn't listed Max Payne as an example of perfect pacing. The ridiculous dream sequences coupled with getting all the weapons in the game, not once, not twice, but thrice, were pacing killers at their worst.

    Much like all other entertainment media, gaming is a subjective art.

    All that said, I'd love some of the convenience features that came built in with Disgaea in every game. The New Game+ mode, the dialogue skipping, and the ability to return to old levels on
  • except for the interface issues mentioned.

    The item forging system forced you to repeatedly save and load inventories from treasure chests in the forge shops in order to process the huge amounts of loot you'd acquire.

    Basic VS protocol was to carry 3 main weapons at all times, each developing strengths against 2 classes of enemy creatures. It was not convenient to swap weapons via the menu system to play to their strengths and maximize their advancement every time you fought a different kind of enemy.

    Fixi
    • I agree wholeheartedly with you on that. VS is one of my all time favorite games. Great Story, unique game play, tough as nails and some great surprises.

      But as you said, the menu system could be a pain. Typically I kept a weapon for each type of monster race, and when there were 3 or 4 different types in the room with me, it meant that I might have to change weapons a dozen times before the fight was over. A quick swap button would have made a world of difference.

      Still, VS was squares best PSX offeri
    • I had no problem with the interface at all; the shoulder buttons gave me a quick and painless way to any of the menus. The weapons customization was another very innovative feature - I was able to make one kick-ass sword that I used throughout the entire game and still use in the subsequent play-throughs (where I get to keep all my stuff, too!).
      If you stay with one weapon and upgrade it intelligently, you will have no problems with switching, and the various Affinity spells give you even more power if you
  • While I play PC Games most...and loading times can get long sometimes, I also play my Gamecube a lot. From the offerings I've seen from Nintendo, loading times in games are just sloppy programming. Most of the games made by Nintendo have almost zero loading time. Metroid Prime, Zelda and F-Zero are great examples of this. The longest load time, which the player is not active, is probably about 3 seconds.
  • What about when it's possible to beat a game in under seven hours of play? Take The Matrix reloaded, for example. I was impressed by the engine and gameplay, but the simple fact that I was able to beat it with both characters in under 7 hours of total play really speaks to the time investment game programmers are making these days. Stop worrying about whether a game looks good or not, and focus on making the plot and length better.

    The new Neverwinter Nights expansion is another good example. I beat that in

  • And don't change the pace... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sentry21 ( 8183 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2003 @01:36PM (#6912201) Journal
    I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker for a while. What a great game, it kept going, it was fun, innovative, imaginative, and, well, more fun. The wandering around in the ocean thing got old fast, but then I got the Melody of Control or whatever, and that solved that.

    And then that goddamn Triforce quest.

    The whole game proceeds with action until this quest, when it suddenly turns into Errands Online. You have to find eight Triforce Charts that are scattered around the world. Then you have to get them decoded, which means getting a crapload of money. Then you have to go actually GET the triforce shards. Ugh.

    Yes, I could have done it. I could have finished it in a day. But god, what a fucking boring way to spend a day off. No thanks. I traded it in and got Skies of Arcadia instead. Way to drop the fucking ball, Nintendo.

    Metroid was the same way. For the first half of the game, you're getting powerups left and right. Morph ball, bombs, varia suit, everything. Then it just fucking stops. You have to wander around and get a bunch of artifacts. It's easy enough to do, except you have to cross the fucking planet like four times. Ugh. No thanks. The map system didn't make life much easier either. Boooring.

    Both of these games were paced very well until those spots, at which point the developers dropped tbe ball and fucked it up. If you're going to develop a game (or a movie or TV show), then there's one thing people have to do, and that's pick a pace and stick with it. SWAT did this well, Jedi Academy did this well too (er, not that I'd know of course, wink wink nudge nudge), but very few other games do.

    Of course, there are notable exceptions (Final Fantasy 6 had a nice blend of action, relaxation, panic, and butterflies-in-the-breeze), but that's hard to do right.

    --Dan
    • I agree about The Wind Waker. It is such a fantastic game with some really good pacing until the Triforce quest.

      The should have just made a dungeon to go through to get the triforce. I would have prefered that over the fetch quests. They only did that so they could boast that the game has more hours of play.

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