News debate and opinion Ticket: “To continue a game after a long break? The stations of the cross (direction)”
The Accessibility Strategy is developed in the first few hours of using our video games by bringing together the gameplay memorization, the understanding of the user interface and the players’ learning of the rules. Indeed, what we more often call “the tutorial“Gently teach the basics and then the advanced techniques of software, step by step. If the old arcade games didn’t need these sequences to understand how they work, the observation is different from today’s works. Equipped with complex mechanics that can be carried out using joysticks with 16 buttons, video game productions can be learned. And forget about yourself after a certain moment of non-use. A problem that some industry giants rightly take seriously.
Oblivion is a gigantic pixelated ocean
When an adventure is set aside and resumed a few weeks / months later, it can be difficult to navigate at times. We may have forgotten both elements of the script and some of the gears that determine the universe of the title. Who has never circled and approached all of the NPCs to remember their destination? Who has never experienced a climax in trouble that resulted from simply neglecting a feature previously taught in adventure? When a game is on stand byThe lines that make it up disappear from our memories. Although development studios take great care in the first few hours of their creations by teaching them the correct step-by-step strategies, they have a harder time figuring out a way to help the player if the player forgets things because of their guilt Has. ‘a long break. And that is quite normal, as it is difficult for the machine to understand why an adventurer is walking around in circles. Is he exploring? Is he looking for a solution with all the elements available to him? Has he forgotten that throwing a bomb on a cracked rock will let him pass? In a time when brochures are no longer in the boxes, refreshing your memory is not that easy.
Take a title like Okami, whose 2017 HD remaster hit Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. If you started it a few years ago and want to continue your storage backwards compatible, you may come across the quest log. The observation is the same as with the remake of Resident Evil, which was released on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One in 2015: it is complicated for the player who put the adventure aside to get to the places and the current ones Goals to remember. Many genres may be affected by this problem, such as: B. RPGs, Metroidvania (Hollow Knight), JCC (Magic: The Gathering Arena, HearthStone), puzzle games with advanced mechanics (Portal 2, The Talos Principle) or again Point’n Click (Ace Attorney). Recently, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim perfectly illustrated the complexities of resuming certain 100% solo tracks after a break due to their scenario based on 13 stories that overlap in different timelines.
Although the situation has changed today, this must be recognized The richer the universe and the more actions, the more deadly a long pause can prove our ability to continue an epic. Those who have tried to record The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and Red Dead Redemption II after a few months without touching them know what we are talking about: the challenge is quickly overwhelming. The balance remains difficult for developers to find. For example, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and its help screens, which were visible until the last hour of the journey, quickly annoyed some adventurers who felt too trapped in their hands. Nowadays, many western RPGs offer codices as well as fairly accurate markers to get information about progress. However, reading informational pages on your screen, even to refresh your memory, is not fun. If the apps have encountered various problems over the years, such as: A quick fix has not yet been found, for example, quick summaries and useful reminders of gameplay when loading screens. Behind the scenes, some giants seem to be looking for it, despite the complexity of the task.
Zapping generation
When we feel lost after restarting a game that has been paused for a long time, satisfactory solutions are rare. It’s always possible to start over, of course, but at a time when the backlog is lengthening, starting over may not be a wise answer. There is then the opportunity to go in circles and hope that the mechanics will return to us. According to an article published on the American website Vice from November 30, 2020, Sony would be interested in issues that would prevent users from returning to a single player game. According to the website, which cites an internal document from the Japanese company, a survey highlighted the fact that players who did not restart certain titles simply forgot what they were doing because of it. You had to point your fingers “”the difficulty of getting back inside”. The group to which we owe The Last of Us funding would also have come to the conclusion that the games would be held in small sessions in everyday life because of the work, the children. “or all of these things at once
Most importantly, more than the way we manage our adult lives, our video game consumption habits have changed in just a few years.. At a time when Steam is collecting the humble package that Epic Games offers games and where Game Pass like PlayStation Now gives access to hundreds of titles for a monthly subscription, it has never been more common to move from one adventure to another switch. The range is plentiful, the software of yesterday and today is on the lookout. It is common to start an epic, move on to another adventure the next day, and return to your first love a few months later. It therefore becomes necessary to find a solution for those who start and then continue / end a trip after a long break. Of course, video games are not the only media facing this strange phenomenon.. It is similar with television series and books. With the only exception that a program on Netflix or a literary work accessible through Kobo Plus only prompts you to remember the story in which the video game contains additional layers (rules, gameplay, user interface). A simple summary of what happened is welcome, but not enough.
If we are to believe the indiscretions that would emanate from our giants, one of the challenges of tomorrow could be getting a user back into a solo adventure that they haven’t started in several weeks. With the emerging opportunities to consume video game epics, it is important to improve the retention rate of more or less narrative titles. In 2021, the big brands may need to come up with the idea of a strategy. “Re-accessibility“In order not to lose the many goalscorers permanently.
By Carnbee, Journalist igamesnews.com
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