The delay between power on and play ”is getting longer” and we get annoyed. Those issues ”can be designed around” claims Jaffe - losing out to portable.
Videogames developer David Jaffe is one to speak his mind. Currently his Eat, Sleep, Play studio is developing Twisted Metal for PlayStation 3. ”Portable game time is going way up, but why? Those of us in the console space are actually making choices that push our customers away,” Jaffe told an audience at GDC 2011 this week.
”The time it takes to power on your console and be in the game playing takes too damn long. The gap of time from pressing ‘on’ to actually beginning to play is getting longer and it’s annoying customers,” he continued.
”Cut scenes, installs, updates, load times, system boot-up times - a lot of the stuff can be designed around. For me there are times I’ve wanted to play a new console game but I just don’t because I don’t want to deal with all the ramp-up time. Maybe that makes me lazy but look at all the other stuff that’s competing right now for my leisure time.”
”The one thing that they all have in common, the best thing, is that all of these pretty much have instant payoff. Literally seconds after thinking about doing these activities I can be doing this activities. Why would I put up with 3-15 minute wait times when I can be entertained otherwise, instantly?” he asked.
All those inconveniences were tolerated before because console gaming was King but now the rise of portable platforms and Internet browser games are offering a real alternative argues Jaffe, and it’s a serious threat unless things change.
”If we’re talking sheer fun factor, for the first time handheld, mobile phones, internet games, they’re just as good, in some cases better - and in all cases cheaper - than the console options,” he said.
”If I’ve got 5-30 minutes to kill and I want to do something it makes total sense that I’m going to reach for instant gratification. The gameplay on my DS, PSP and iPad is just as good as it is on my console.” Simple design choices can help overcome a lot of these obstacles.
”Can anything be done? What about if you have a disc in the system and there’s a save file on the hard-drive for that disc, the instant I power up it shows me a prompt and says ‘do I want to go to my latest save?’ If I say ‘yes’ it bypasses everything - hardware logo, dashboard, XMB, game logos - all of it, and I’m in the game much faster.”
He also criticised the heavy flow of title updates which seems to have caused a atmosphere where it’s ‘acceptable’ to just patch out a ton of bugs post-launch.
”Hardware manufacturers, I feel, should only allow 1-4 updates to the software per game every year. And none of them should come in the first one or two months of the game shipping. When I first started in the business the games we shipped was our last chance off the bat.” Many complain of studios ‘completing QA testing’ with gamers.
”If game developers could make it work then, we can at least make sure games don’t have to be updated the same f**king week they hit shelves, thus causing more wait times for the consumer.” His GDC talk got an applause or two.
Lead us to the promised land Jaffe!
Do all these logos, installs, updates, and signups tick you off, videogamer?
