Josh Sawyer Q&A Thread

[Gargaune]

Whenever the thread gets bumped, I think to myself "Oh, no, what did he do now..."

 

[Roguey]

I think in an RPG there's a lot of monotonous crap you potentially have to redo if you're forced to rely on autosaving/savepoints.

I dunno, how about making games that don't have a lot of monotonous crap? Just a thought?

Not going to happen in games with dialogue trees, inventory, and character management.

 

[Artyoan]

I've been saying this for a while. Good on Sawyer for it.

 

[rojay]

I think in an RPG there's a lot of monotonous crap you potentially have to redo if you're forced to rely on autosaving/savepoints.

I dunno, how about making games that don't have a lot of monotonous crap? Just a thought?

It's only monotonous when you have to do it multiple times because you keep losing a fight. I mean, that's the idea, anyway. If it's monotonous the first time you experience it, the game sucks.

 

[Cohesion]

Unfathomably based

Based only in roguelikes with permadeath like, duh, Rogue or Tome, ADOM, Diablo hardcore, etc.

 

[ropetight]

Unfathomably based

Based only in roguelikes with permadeath like, duh, Rogue or Tome, ADOM, Diablo hardcore, etc.

Games that use just checkpoints are more player focused than average storyfag cRPG's.
Josh has to ask himself how many players would play his games without manual saves.
Long dialogues and lore diarrhea you save after to not have to look at them again...
Imagine watching them again and again if the combat is poorly "balanced"[sic].

 

[Infinitron]

Pentiment doesn't have manual saves FYI.

 

[ropetight]

Why would interactive picture book need manual saves?

 

[Baron Dupek]

You don't insert bookmark after reading every page?

 

[ropetight]

In picture books - no.

 

[Roguey]

Why would interactive picture book need manual saves?

Sounds like it makes "I want to test out all these options and see which ones I want to go with" a pain.

I suppose the benefit is that it better hides that nothing in Pentiment matters.

 

[Morgoth]

He is correct, as usual. Saving should only be allowed upon exiting the game.

 

[Bulo]

I like to create game saves (with chapter-like names) after finishing any sort of complex or time-consuming situation, especially if I don't want to do it again. If, when I die, you force me to repeat something gruelling, you're punishing me by wasting my time. It doesn't increase the stakes or somehow help the structure of the game, it just stresses the player, and stretches his patience. It's not unlike FromSoft boss run-backs, that is to say, bad game design. You could eliminate this issue by creating regular auto-saves, but then you aren't doing much to prevent save-scumming — so why bother? Instead, accept that some people are going to play your game the ‘wrong’ way, and MAKE A BLOODY GAME JOSH

 

[damager]

I think it's the manual reloading that causes save scumming right?

If you can only reload on death you would really have to go through hoops to save scum. You could do it, but you could also save scum with shutdown saves.

 

[mediocrepoet]

He is correct, as usual. Saving should only be allowed upon exiting the game.

Choices should actually matter. If you die, the game should format your hard drive.

 

[Berengar]

He is correct, as usual. Saving should only be allowed upon exiting the game.

Choices should actually matter. If you die, the game should format your hard drive.

Hideo Kojima had this idea at least as early as 2004

 

[MerchantKing]

In picture books - no.

Manual saves are good for picture books like the kinds of games Sawyer makes. A VN fag can save themselves a lot of time by just reloading saves to get all the scenes.

 

[Morality Games]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance tried to negotiate this point by turning manual saves into a finite resource.

 

[AwesomeButton]

He is correct, as usual. Saving should only be allowed upon exiting the game.

Choices should actually matter. If you die, the game should format your hard drive.

Hideo Kojima had this idea at least as early as 2004

Josh is in a fundamental self-contradiction. Remember the savescumming vs restspamming debates around PoE? Apparently he's forgotten them or is in favor of showering the player with rest-spamming opportunities.

A game design has to be perfect, or the game has to be non-interactive, i.e. not really a game, in order to not need functionality for manually restoring earlier states.

But I'm sure Josh is completely ready and in shape to design perfect games.

P.S.: oh, you wanted to try the same combat encounter with a different tactic? Sorry, no chicken nuggies for you. Josh Sawyer is here to police your fun.

 

[gurugeorge]

I like to create game saves (with chapter-like names) after finishing any sort of complex or time-consuming situation, especially if I don't want to do it again. If, when I die, you force me to repeat something gruelling, you're punishing me by wasting my time. It doesn't increase the stakes or somehow help the structure of the game, it just stresses the player, and stretches his patience. It's not unlike FromSoft boss run-backs, that is to say, bad game design. You could eliminate this issue by creating regular auto-saves, but then you aren't doing much to prevent save-scumming — so why bother? Instead, accept that some people are going to play your game the ‘wrong’ way, and MAKE A BLOODY GAME JOSH

Very much this. The issue of saving is a meta issue that's neither here nor there in terms of the game. The other attitude - that saving should be an interior part of the game, or not there at all - is just a hangover from the older technological limitation of when games had limited capacity to save.

Now granted, a neat truth left over from those old days of gaming is that yes, it's true that a single save system increases immersion, but whether or not the player wants to have that risk/irl inconvenience should be, again, a meta decision that's up to the player, it should form no part of the developer's decision-making.

IOW the developer's business is simply to offer all the meta options possible (rolling quicksaves/autosaves, manual saves and a single save system), no single type of save system should be baked into the design of the game. The design of the game should be dictated solely by the virtual world and the rules it sets up.

 

[Orud]

After his rant on how BG3 was successful because of the 'jumping' and now this blanket 'saving is universally bad' statement, I'll give it 10 more years before he'll conclude that player interaction 'was a mistake' and he ends up writing a book. Following this he'll write 50 pages, published exclusively on twitter, on how books are actually video games.

How he can call himself still a game designer and not recognize that 'saving' is a tool to be used, or not used, depending on the situation is just another example of his sad, never-ending, downwards spiral.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'll give it 10 more years before he'll conclude that player interaction 'was a mistake' and he ends up writing a book

No need to wait, Pentiment is free to play with a Gamepass subscription, I wager.

How he can call himself still a game designer and not recognize that 'saving' is a tool to be used

I think he was just having a frustrating day, and had to vent on social media