{"id":4268,"date":"2009-08-12T23:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T21:39:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T22:00:00","slug":"opinion-5-things-game-developers-should-stop-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/business\/4268-opinion-5-things-game-developers-should-stop-doing","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: 5 things game developers should stop doing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disclaimer: This article does not reflect any stance or opinion held by MyGaming.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the beginning, it was mazes. Their consummate failure to add anything of significant or otherwise enduring intrinsic worth to the game experience outside of making people break stuff in real life notwithstanding, every game released before 1994 included a maze sequence. Then someone clever pointed out that mazes consistently failed to add anything of significant or otherwise enduring intrinsic worth to the game experience outside of making people break stuff in real life, and they were swapped out with this stuff instead.

Quick-time events
<\/strong>
Quickly, press A, B, X, Y, A, B, B, B, A, X. Congratulations, hero – you dodged a flying pebble.  Quick-time events hark back to those halcyon days when knowing all the fatality combos in Mortal Kombat meant you were a person other people wanted to sleep with. Now they’re just an anachronous, irrelevant, and artistically untenable substitute for actual gameplay. Ninja Blade, die in a fire.

Escort missions<\/strong><\/p>\n

This includes chucking any excessively dependent (and improbably fragile) character into the game, and expecting the player to actually do anything useful with them tagging along. But apparently nannying = gameplay these days. Ashley Graham in Resident Evil 4 is an especially egregious example – a vapid, pointless brat who couldn’t negotiate a 20cm step without bawling for assistance. And if the feckless runt so much as chipped a nail while under your supervision, it was game over. What a nuisance then, that she had such a thing for rushing headlong into mobs of murderers. She didn’t even have the good grace to die in the end. I didn’t want to rescue her – I wanted to drown her in the lake. Then reload the game and do it again. Then reload the game and do it again.<\/p>\n

If gamers wanted to look after useless people, they wouldn’t be playing games, would they? No, they’d be teaching in a government high school.

Not enough ammo<\/strong><\/p>\n

I get it. It’s supposed to heighten tension. It heightens tempers instead. And just to be doubly obnoxious about it, you can usually buy ammo to supplement to the barely-there drops, only at such extortionate prices you’ll never ever been able to afford the level 6 military suit, much less the power nodes you’ll need to make that plasma cutter even halfway viable. Yes, it’s a self-perpetuating cycle of fail.

Fed-Ex missions
<\/strong>
Take [x] to [y]. That’s it, really. Of course, sly writers might try and disguise it with some sort of prevaricating narrative context:<\/p>\n

The people of Lower Upper Groshkkkunkkklothlol are plagued by a strange and terrible blight. Their wells run dry and children weep in the lanes, rotted lesions suppurating their flesh. Grim spectres prowl the dark corners, their shadows suffocating the walls as their howled outrage rends a brooding sky. Take this herb to a guy called Bob. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the worst thing about Fed-Ex missions is that, after crossing half a continent punching anthromorphic goats and skeletons and other regular between-here-and-there filler, delivering the herb, and coming back across half a continent magically repopulated with anthropomorphic goats and skeletons during your four second absence, all you’ll get in reward is a healing potion. One of the crappy ones that refills only half your health meter. <\/p>\n

JRPGs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Final Fantasy is rubbish. So are all those games with misplaced allusions to Norse mythology in their titles. What the f*** is an Odin Sphere, anyway? It’s something I’d like to set on fire and stuff up a Valkyrie Profile, and destroy this heap of bloated, self-important nonsense forever. I realise that, strictly speaking, JRPGs have nothing whatsoever to do with anything else in this article, but since I’m slagging stuff off, I might as well slag off JRPGs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Azimuth lists her 5 \u2018favorite\u2019 problems with game design<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}