10 Things Developers Wrongly Think About Gamers

1. We Love Cut Scenes

The longer the better. And they think we love them so much that we want to watch them over and over again if we happen to fail in our attempt to reach the next level. I blame Wing Commander 2. With its little bit of FMV, back in those days we€™d never seen the like and we all said how cool it was. The games industry heard this bit of praise, figured they were onto a good thing, and never looked back. Twenty years later and you (literally) can't move for cut-scenes. It's hard to think of a game that doesn't use them somehow, but the chief offender is MGS4, which had one scene that went on for a record breaking 27 minutes in one hit. 27 minutes! I€™ve had relationships that haven€™t lasted that long. Even worse are the games where you can€™t even skip these pointless dramatics, Borderlands 2, Crysis, Skyward Sword, and Max Payne 3 are all amongst the guilty. You can almost see the game designer reclining on his velvet throne. €œWhat? An option to ignore my handcrafted opus of storytelling? My dear boy, who in their right mind could possibly wish to do that?€ (And no, I€™m not sure why he sounds like Noel Coward before you ask) Seriously, I€™ve gone through three controllers simply by battering the buttons in a desperate attempt to end the drivel I€™m being forced to watch and play the sodding game. Simply put, if we wanted to watch terrible acting with an overblown script, we€™d watch an HBO historical epic. No other art form forces this sort of thing on its audience. You don€™t go to the theatre and half way through the second act of King Lear the actors leave the stage until you€™ve read up to €œBlow, winds, and crack your cheeks€. You don€™t walk around the Louvre and suddenly hear opera singing, and during Game of Thrones you€™re not able to shake your Wiimote to make Robb Stark ninja-kick Balon Greyjoy. Though, thinking about it, that's a bit of a shame really€
 
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Richard has been playing video games since the days of the BBC Micro, (and incidentally when is Chuckie Egg going to get a reboot?) He is currently available for the post of Head of Marketing at Nintendo, seeing as no-one else seems to be doing the job. He's also a major fan of fantasy/sf books and is just waiting for his novel about an assassin who doesn't wear a hood to get picked up.