Design Mistakes Made, Twinkies Denied

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Ernest Adams, game designer and in recent years more commonly game commentator and lecturer, has posted the seventh annual edition of his Designer's Notebook column Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! Each year, Adams highlights poor game design decisions or oversights sent in by gamers. This year's submissions include a lack of new game features introduced past the first few levels, invisible crosshairs, inability to change brightness in-game, unsaved game configurations, and more.
I already mentioned bad configuration mechanisms back in No Twinkie V, but I hadnÂ’t realized quite how many ways there were to screw up such an utterly trivial feature. Battlefield 2 doesnÂ’t save your control profile with your game profile, so when you sit down at a new computer, youÂ’ve suddenly got to reconfigure the keys againÂ… and in a game like Battlefield 2, there are a lot of keys. And when you set up a new game profile, Ben says, the new profile goes back to the default control configuration again. Furthermore, according to the GameSpot review, you have to sort through multiple pages to unbind a key before you can bind it to something else.

Multiple pages? What a nuisance! You would think the scrolling list box had never been invented. Put a list of all the current bindings, all the unbound keys, and all the unbound functions on one screen.

Any unfortunately common design faux pas that really grind your gears?

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    July 10, 2006 10:28 AM

    I'm surprised he mention didn't Eve Online having no brightness or gamma control at all. I tried the free trial and couldn't do anything with it, it's just too dark and fiddling with the full screen D3D profile doesn't change it. They don't don't even have a reg entry or .ini/.cfg setting you can change. 3 years after release and they still don't have one, it boggles the mind.

    • reply
      July 10, 2006 1:53 PM

      If that's true, then obviously you must be in a very small minority- people who like EVE online, who have trouble with brightness in the game.
      In case you were wondering why it isn't fixed.

      • reply
        July 10, 2006 7:55 PM

        What?

        I don't know if I like it, I tried to get through the newbie tutorial and couldn't due to the no adjustment issue. WTH are you saying/asking?

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