Loading times
- The Amstrad CPC 464
- which used tape as the main media.
In the dark ages of home computing, there was a time, long forgotten, when games came on tapes - just like audio tapes. Games took so long to load that some developpers actually put music on the audio part of the tape to soothe players in the meantime.
Gamers, however, are not elevator travellers and over the following 20 years, tolerance for loading time has dropped to zero.
- SWIV, Atari ST, 1991
- One of the first games without loading breaks between levels
In the nineties, where players expected their floppy-disk or CD-Rom based games to take some time to load, games without loading time or level breaks came out as technical oddities, not as something that was desperately needed.
Today, that feature is more and more warmly appreciated.
- Galerians, Playstation, 1999
- You can’t cross that big room without letting the game load a couple of times.
Still, gamers accept short (5-10 seconds) loading times between two separate gameplay moments, for instance, at the beginning of a new "mission" or a new "level", or when changing game modes. Those loading times usually come under heavy disguise: for instance, when the player change rooms in Resident Evil, they’re shown a lengthy animation of a door opening on a black background. This makes the loading time more acceptable and contributes to the atmosphere. In Final Fantasy VII like in many RPGs, combat scenes are preceded by some special effects - the screen twists and swirls for a few seconds. This acts as a jingle of sorts and eases up the loading time. On the other hand, in the 1999 Playstation game Galerians, there were loading times within a room. These are bound to be noticed and resented.
Slow interaction
Loading times are not the only concern of the busy gamer. Other annoyances include:
unnecessary tasks that take time for no good reason. In my own game Inquisition, it was decided for the sake of realism that in order for the hero to change weapons, they must first put back the one he was holding (one animation that last a couple of seconds) and unsheath the new one (another animation). Meanwhile, the hero cannot move, so he’s basically a sitting duck for 4 seconds. That was a very dumb feature.
- SimCity 4, PC, 2003
- In SimCity, animated construction sites suggest that something is going on.
tasks that take time to accomplish, and do not give any feedback until they are completed. These are as fun as loading a heavy webpage with an ancient modem. In games, it is OK if all tasks are not completed instantly. In return, the game must show that something is going on. For instance, in the Sim City games, buildings do not appear magically instantly after clicking where we want them to be, but animated construction sites do.
- Xenogears, Playstation, 1998
- Many lengthy cutscenes hurt this game a lot.
long, passive tasks that cannot be interrupted (typically, cutscenes). The most infamous example of this has to be Xenogears. When the player has to change discs, they have to withstand a 45-minute long monologue during which they must press a button at the end of every sentence to read the next, while staring on one fixed image. There is no way to make the text appear faster, or to skip the whole thing altogether.
Don’t make me wait
All in all, it’s a poor idea to let players wait. Waiting is not fun, waiting is not what you want to do in games. But it goes beyond that. Waiting times give players the opportunity to get "off" the game and back into reality, possibly ruining the experience. Also, when something the player expects doesn’t happen soon, or looks like it is not happening, this sends the message that the player has done something wrong or that the game is broken, which is very negative.
Despite great improvements in computer power and in software techniques, small waiting times are still unavoidable now and again. The game makers are encouraged to use them as creatively as possible to make them a positive experience (or at least neutral) rather than yet another frustration.