“You have to listen to the users” is the mantra we constantly hear and preach. But what if the users don’t know what they really want? Apart from the usual examples in workplaces, I recently came upon the case of “quicksaves”. Users demand a quicksave feature, but are not above abusing it, as this post shows:
Being one of those who falls into the trap of quicksaving—using them sparingly at first to prevent constant replaying of the same area, but soon, out of habit or a lazy reluctance to have to replay the same area even once, constantly abusing the function from beginning to end
Just like a quicksave can destroy the atmosphere and urgancy of a game like Hitman. Hitman was criticized by users for not offering unlimited quicksaves, but became a classic, because of the atmosphere it created which was helped by the absense of unlimited quicksaves. Pure First Person Shooters (e.g. Far Cry) are not hurt by the inclusion of quicksaves and are actually built around it. On the other hand any kind of stealth missions seem to be pointless when it is implemented: just get around that guy…quicksave-BINGO! - no need to try anything else…
If asked, any gamer would respond that he’d like a game to have unlimited quicksaves but the core of the problem is that gamers/users/customers are not good at articulating what they really want, but many designers have not realised that and the result seems to be a positive feedback loop where games become super-hard just to overcome the gamer’s secret weapon: Quicksaving!
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