The problem? There were no options to invert the camera.
When playing console games, I always play with inverted camera controls so to say that I had a bit of trouble playing the game would be an understatement. At first I thought I was missing something, but after some online investigating, I found that the game designers had indeed not programmed in that set of camera controls. To make matters worse, the game had an option for inverted controls, but they were only used when you were aiming a gun.
So my options were as follows: either relearn camera controls, or play the entire game in gun aiming mode.
How could the designers at Double Helix decide that this was a good idea? According to this article at Ugo.com, this is what lead designer Jason Allen had to say of the issue:
"We made a decision during development to support invert aim and not invert camera. Unfortunately none of the team nor any of our test group actually had a preference for playing with an inverted camera, so the issue of its omission never came up."
This is a terrible reason to not include inverted camera, and it shows that Double Helix need to learn a thing or two about game design and playtesting. Afterall, programming inverted camera controls is not that difficult. And when was the last time you saw a game without this option? If your team and your test groups don't use the option, that doesn't mean the option is unnecessary! It means, you need a larger testing pool to collect more data. Sadly, it seems Konami and Double Helix have stated that they will not fix this problem through a downloadable patch, so the game will forever be handicapped.
Despite all this ranting, I'm still playing game. It's awkard as hell to manipulate the camera, but I'm a Silent Hill fanboy, and can't resist the urge to play a game in the series. I'll finish it then probably sell it back.
But let this be a lesson to any game designers, amateur or professional: it's those small, simple details that have to potential to completely ruin a player's experience with the game.
Despite all this ranting, I'm still playing game. It's awkard as hell to manipulate the camera, but I'm a Silent Hill fanboy, and can't resist the urge to play a game in the series. I'll finish it then probably sell it back.
But let this be a lesson to any game designers, amateur or professional: it's those small, simple details that have to potential to completely ruin a player's experience with the game.
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9 comments:
And even if the controls are fundamentally broken, fanboys will still purchase and play the game. By blindly throwing money at their favorite company or series, they help continue the cycle of poor games. See 'The Problem with Fanboys' post and comments.
Or it could be a good game with crappy controls, that may justify a play though . But even so, I would not give a company my money if they design a game with a poor interface, such as a lack of customizable controls and no windowed mode.
Also, last in your last sentence, I don't think you need to capitalize the 'It's' after a colon.
Ygg, your problem is you don't actually pay money for anything if you can find it free on the internet.
Also, I bought the game used, which if I recall Gamestop's policy on used games, all proceedings from used games go directly to the store and not the company who made the game. Therefore, I never actually gave my money to Konami.
Overall, the game falls under the second category you mentioned. I knew what the general consensus was about the game, but I still decided to play it for myself to see how I personally felt about it. Despite the control issues, it's still a decent Silent Hill game. Not as good as 2 or 3 (which I'm currently playing alongside Homecomming), but I'm still enjoying it. Because of that, I'm going to continue playing it.
Sparky I deleted your comment since I fixed the problem.
I have to second Yggdrasil in saying that the company has no economic incentive to reopen the code and past an inverted camera option in if they have already sold enough copies of the game. Alternatively, if they have not sold enough copies of the game, they might find that the minority population of people who play inverted controls, have not bought the game, but would buy it if the camera were inverted would be too small to make up for the time spent patching a game. The real problem here is a balance between Pride and Money.
I do spend money on games if they are worth it. For me, that means:
1) No or very limited DRM (I would prefer no DRM, but since that is near impossible I often have to settle for limited, such as Steam)
2) Ability to play in windowed mode. My laptop drivers are weird and force my laptop monitor to be the main monitor. So if I can't move the game to my 28in monitor, not going to spend my money on it. Customizable controls also apply to this category, but just about all *PC* games have this.
3) Replay-ability, I don't want to spend a lot of money on a game I will only place once. If a game is truly great or is cheap (such as $20 for the Penny Arcade games) then I will make an exception.
I disagree. Ml, I think you overemphasize economic incentive in this situation. Tweaking the code to have inverted options requires little time or effort on behalf of the development team. Case in point: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/57880
I would also like to point out the work Blizzard Entertainment did for its RTS games like Warcraft III and Starcraft. Those games allowed users to play online on servers hosted by Blizzard for no extra charge. Essentially, most of the profit was coming from people buying the games and buying Blizzard merchandise as a result of buying those games. On top of that, Blizzard released numerous patches that tweaked and balanced gameplay issues, again for free to owners of the game.
If economic incentive really was a big deal, why did Blizzard give players free access to these patches and online community? After all, It costs a lot to host servers that millions of players access on a daily basis. Why didn't they ameliorate some of those costs by charging people to play online (keep in mind I'm talking about pre-WoW Blizzard)?
The point is the people at Blizzard were passionate about their work, and knew when to accept responsibility for gameplay issues. They wanted to keep their fanbase happy and produce the best quality games they could. Doing that insured those fans would be more open to playing future Blizzard games. And passion is what Konami and Double Helix have failed to show through their lack of patch support.
Inverted camera controls have existed since the beginning of the 3D gaming, which is why not programming them in is such an alien concept. Even if patching Silent Hill cost time and money, Konami has the money to do something so simple. It's not like we're talking about some indie game company that consists of two programmers and a graphic artist.
Ygg, your second reason for buying games isn't so much a software problem as a hardware problem. So then why did you give your money to the company who made your computer with faulty driver architecture? After all, you mentioned that your drivers were "weird." And how is buying a faulty computer any different from buying a faulty game?
Also, let me reiterate that I bought the game used from Gamestop, meaning all the money I spent on Silent Hill went to the store. And while I can blame Gamestop for a lot of things, I can't blame them for not implementing inverted camera controls. Is this a cheap attempt at justifying my argument by saying I didn't actually support the company whose game I bought? Absolutely. :p
In response to all your comments about patching games after they are released, allow me to point you to this great comment from an industry insider. It explains why Silent Hill will probably never be patched, no matter how simple it the patch would be (the main article is also a good read). You don't seem to fully understand the importance of money in game design is, while the devs are often passionate about the game and want to keep supporting it, management wants to make the most amount of money possible, and management is the one in charge. Anyways, here is the link:
http://tinyurl.com/q2ey6v
As for my 2nd point, you are right that it is a hardware problem (well, technically still a software problem, us hardware people always make things that work ;)). I didn't realize that when I bought my laptop that the nvidia drivers were done though the laptop company (Asus), rather than the video card company (nvidia). So while nvidia has nice and updated drivers, Asus has mostly old drivers. I now know these hidden drawbacks to gaming laptops, and I do not currently plan on purchasing gaming laptops any more.
But either way, I still insist that the game supports windowed mode so that if I switch to a chat program or something on my other monitor, the game doesn't try to minimize, causing me to have to wait a few minutes for it to restore itself so I can continue to play
Quick quibble Satchamobob, but as you yourself have pointed out numerous times, you were never really big on PC games for much of your life so this may not be common knowledge to you.
Games with free online play and (especially within the last ~10 years) integrated or at least affiliated matchmaking services have pretty much been the standard rather than the exception. I'm actually hard-pressed to name a non-MMO title that has actually charged for multiplayer. Only the Kali IPX-emulator/game browser really comes to mind and it's largely defunct. Likewise for patches: it'd cause quite the uproar if a company decided to charge for them. Blizzard is by no means a remarkable exception, even when they launched battle.net as a free service back in 1997.
Actually that's not entirely true: actively providing support and patches for Starcraft for over 10 years after its release is pretty exceptional, best-selling RTS of all time or not.
Ygg: you make an interesting point with that comment. I understand that a game's first week of sales is truly make or break, but I just feel like that is a model that's slowly becoming obsolete. Now with console games providing their clients with the same online services many PC gamers have had for years, maybe it's time to develop their game strategies based on the PC model.
Also, now that I think about it, there is a PC version of Silent Hill that came out after the console versions. I'd be interested to see if they added customizable controls there either in the product itself or through an online update via Steam or Games for Windows Live.
Zizhou: wouldn't you also say though that different options for camera control have also been the standard? It still boggles my mind why people would omit it and then refuse to fix it.
Thanks Yggdrasil for that article link. It was very interesting. They sound like hardcore PC gamers. Meeeemorieees.
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