bioware writer wants fast forward button for games

[Jools]

http://www.killerbetties.com/killer_women_jennifer_hepler?page=0%2C3

If you could tell developers of games to make sure to put one thing in games to appeal to a broader audience which includes women, what would that one thing be?

A fast-forward button. Games almost always include a way to "button through" dialogue without paying attention, because they understand that some players don't enjoy listening to dialogue and they don't want to stop their fun. Yet they persist in practically coming into your living room and forcing you to play through the combats even if you're a player who only enjoys the dialogue. In a game with sufficient story to be interesting without the fighting, there is no reason on earth that you can't have a little button at the corner of the screen that you can click to skip to the end of the fighting.

Companies have a lot of objections, such as how to calculate loot and experience points for a player who doesn't actually play the combats, but these could be easily addressed by simply figuring out an average or minimum amount of experience for every fight and awarding that.

The biggest objection is usually that skipping the fight scenes would make the game so much shorter, but to me, that's the biggest perk. If you're a woman, especially a mother, with dinner to prepare, kids' homework to help with, and a lot of other demands on your time, you don't need a game to be 100 hours long to hold your interest -- especially if those 100 hours are primarily doing things you don't enjoy. A fast forward button would give all players -- not just women -- the same options that we have with books or DVDs -- to skim past the parts we don't like and savor the ones we do. Over and over, women complain that they don't like violence, or they don't enjoy difficult and vertigo-inducing gameplay, yet this simple feature hasn't been tried on any game I know of.

Granted, many games would have very little left if you removed the combat, but for a game like Deus Ex or Bioware's RPGs, you could take out every shred of combat and still have an entertainment experience that rivals anything you'd see in the theater or on TV.

Don't give a shit if it's old, this sums up Bioware's design philosophy perfectly: WE NEED TO CATER TO EVERY RETARD ON THE PLANET.

How long until Bioware actually implements her suggestion?

Why don't they just go watch a fucking LP on youtube? Or watch a fucking movie instead, so you can have your fix of drama in average 100 minutes. Stupid cunts. That's why the Spartans threw retards and freaks off the cliff upon birth, to keep society free of their poisonous presence and therefore healthy.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

This is why women shouldn't be allowed to work on games.

 

[Gord]

With the advent of CD-ROMs in the mid 90s, a couple of studios developed a few interactive movies.
The genre never really took hold though.

Now one might ask whether this was because those games were boring, simply badly made or the audience (Farmville-playing, Twilight reading soccer moms?) wasn't around yet.

 

[Smiffy]

I doesn't seem such a terrible idea to me. Theoretically at least. There might come the time when huge game-corporations routinely feed the market games with mass-appeal, which in turn finance the more risky or sophisticated projects. Just like in the movie industry today.
We might just now witness the beginnings of a paradigm-shift of some sort. "Computer games killed the moviestar". Excellent, awkward and terrible ideas keep coming up alike. You just need to open your eyes and see. It's not end of line, it's start of new era, where we will all be happy gamers.

 

[Johannes]

Yes, Bioware should start making visual novels. They'd probably fail less than at making games.

 

[Kwota]

This is why women shouldn't be allowed to leave the kitchen.

fix'd that for you.

 

[IronicNeurotic]

A: Playing the games. This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but it has definitely been the single most difficult thing for me. I came into the job out of a love of writing, not a love of playing games... I'm really terrible at so many things which most games use incessantly -- I have awful hand-eye coordination, I don't like tactics, I don't like fighting, I don't like keeping track of inventory, and I can't read a game map to save my life.

Well, let me make a summary of what she wanted to bring across.

"I came into the games industry because no publisher would even want to publish half of the terrible bullshit I'm writing. Thanks to Bioware I'm now working with fellow talentless hacks.

Thanks Bioware!""

 

[J_J_M]

That's her.

 

[Roguey]

DA and DA2 do have a fast forward feature. Enable console, runscript killallhostiles. Then guesstimate the difference with runscript addxp.

 

[UserNamer]

so these are games made by ugly women who don't like games, for ugly women that don't like games

 

[easychord]

Why can't we have it so that people in the industry who think they have a right to a strong opinion on gameplay actually love playing games. People who know enough game mechanics to have an opinion other than making combat all about mashing a button to make enemies explode to keep boys entertained or skipping all that boring macho fighting business altogether. Do they have a hiring process where they only take people who know nothing and come up the the craziest, most extreme sounding ideas which inevitably turn into bland mush the moment they are implemented because they haven't got a fucking clue? Jesus Christ though, try to keep positive about the possibilities of the medium as a new dynamic medium for art going forward though you talentless bores.

 

[J_J_M]

so these are games made by ugly women who don't like games, for ugly women that don't like games

Well, it's obvious, just look at the Bioware forums. No ones there cares about actual gameplay mechanics in the games. The biggest and most active threads are about character personalities and interaction, and romances. There is another word for this, it's called "gossiping", and women tend to gossip.

Since Baldur's Gate 2, Bioware experimented with romances, an ever increasing amount of female players tagged along. Bioware knows full well who is paying their bills. Nowadays their products seem to be targeted towards this estrogen-filled audience.

I really have no problem with them fucking up their RPGs (I don't play Bioware games anymore), but what bothers me is that people have the audacity to imply Bioware is some kind of leading RPG developers of the world. Bioware is only a prime example of how to make interactive movie relationship simulators for neckbearded faggots and hambeasts.

 

[zeitgeist]

so these are games made by ugly women who don't like games, for ugly women that don't like games

Well, it's obvious, just look at the Bioware forums.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... /6607168/1

 

[Jaesun]

This is why women shouldn't be allowed to leave the kitchen.

fix'd that for you.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I don't really care either way - optional feature, use it if you want it. Except for one thing...

The biggest objection is usually that skipping the fight scenes would make the game so much shorter, but to me, that's the biggest perk. If you're a woman, especially a mother, with dinner to prepare, kids' homework to help with, and a lot of other demands on your time, you don't need a game to be 100 hours long to hold your interest -- especially if those 100 hours are primarily doing things you don't enjoy. A fast forward button would give all players -- not just women -- the same options that we have with books or DVDs -- to skim past the parts we don't like and savor the ones we do.

Derp. Game is too long, how do I saved game so I continue later? Whatever, I don't care, just make the game shorter, that'll fix the problem

 

[jiujitsu]

May I ask a question?

Why the fuck do they care what some simple minded mother would want to play?

Bioware is seriously fucking up. They want to sell their games to EVERYONE. It's like some deranged form of Manifest Destiny.

Hey, retards, not everyone is going to like your games. In fact most humans on the planet won't like your games. Maybe you should stick to your fucking fan base and stop fucking them over by trying to appeal to people who don't like RPGs. You CANNOT change what an RPG is just to try and sell it to some idiots with no intellectual capacity, that also happened to crap out a couple of kids.

You are dweebs your fans are dweebs you will not cross out of the realm of Dweebdom. Make proper fucking games for dweebs or fuck off.

Seriously, all mention of these asshats should be eradicated from this website. We are not their target consumer anymore. They fucking ditched us to make more money.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Why are people still so angry about Bioware? I thought the Codex actually moved on... :D

 

[Hobo Elf]

You are dweebs your fans are dweebs you will not cross out of the realm of Dweebdom. Make proper fucking games for dweebs or fuck off.

Location: New Jersey

Why are people still so angry about Bioware? I thought the Codex actually moved on... :D

If the Codex moved on then none of us would be here.

 

[Jaesun]

Why are people still so angry about Bioware? I thought the Codex actually moved on... :D

The hate of the codex burns eternal.

 

[easychord]

You don't need to actually play games to get angry these days, just the commentary from the sycophants is enough. Although, I am pretty slow to anger so being pissed off by a five year old interview is about right for me.

 

[treave]

so these are games made by ugly women who don't like games, for ugly women that don't like games

Well, it's obvious, just look at the Bioware forums.

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic ... /6607168/1

Rpgs are so much more than combat. In fact Combat should be a junior partner in rpgs.

See Planescape:Torment!

Well, they pulled out the Planescape: Torment defense. That's it for us guys. Bioware Social have evolved into intelligence. In a year or two they'll be just like the Codex. And we them.

Choosing the tone of my reply in dialogues that all lead to the same outcome anyway is not gameplay.

If that's how you feel, then maybe RPGs aren't the genre for you?

Or maybe not.

 

[easychord]

Planescape: Torment is like the Godwin's law of RPG discussions. It coming up as the example of absolute RPGness should be an indication that nothing of value can being said afterwards. Reductio ad Avellonum.

 

[GarfunkeL]

I can understand the mindset that after maybe a few playthroughs someone just wants to check out what's different if they side with the Templars. Why should they have to clear the Circle Tower again just to see what changes in the story based on their choices in the story? If you can't answer this question, then you don't really have an argument - and this thread is yet another strawman against mythical "casual gamers."

See? This guys is a perfect example of their target audience. Let's not make the combat into something that would be fun and interesting to play again and again, let's just ditch it completely! And justify it by saying that you can skip parts of the banal shit boring dialogue.

 

[kris]

Exploration rewards are poor.

Personally I don't call walking two meters to the side and clicking on a highlighted resource for "exploring". Can't really say there is any exploring in DA2 as regions open up only when you get a quest about it and near 100% of encounters on those maps are quest specific. (exception is the ambushes in the city)

you can't open doors anywhere, because that is only possible with quests. alternative paths in dungeons? Nope.

Cool a person who has admitted they don't even like games commenting on games, how very useful.

Makes sense, she don't like playing games and think you should remove gameplay. That in a quest to make people that don't like games start playing. The moron is strong in this one.

 

[Mastermind]

Why are people still so angry about Bioware? I thought the Codex actually moved on... :D

It's the only thing that really brings the codex together. Except volly, he just sits in a corner and cries.