Saving games is really important. Being able to save and continue not only allows you to fit gameplay into your own personal schedule, it also allows game developers to create experiences that span more than one game session. Saving may be one of the core technologies of video gaming, but the ways we save haven’t changed drastically in the last decade. I’m sure there has been at least one time in your life where you felt like a victim, your hard work or hopes plundered by a game’s save system. Maybe you ran out of save slots to use, or you overwrote a save with 40 hours of progress, or you can’t copy your save game data to another memory card. If this sounds like you, then read on. In this article I will explain your plight to the masses and then propose the next generation of save game systems.
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When playing video games, we tend to be more adventurous than we are in real life. Most people wouldn’t even jiggle the handle on a mysterious door in the subway. Joe Bronx, on the other hand, well he’s been a mob hitman for 20 years and he’s not afraid of what’s behind that door. Joe reaches for the handle and… what?! It’s like this door isn’t even here! Did someone paint a door here?
Valve’s Portal has been reviewed to death. It’s time to stop talking about the past and looking to the future. Is Portal a seminal game in our field? If so, how can we apply its ideas going forward?
Step one is to stop thinking that portals (the warpy things themselves) are things that can be used only in Portal (proper, the game). In the same way that ketchup can make a burger, or fries, or scrambled eggs taste better, portals can increase the delectability of our current genres. Portal showed us how the gun can be used in a puzzle or action genre, but there are many genres that make up our industry.
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