The Doomed Memory of Tou Tou - Part 3

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

There are a few approaches one can take to game development. Business, art, creation, monetary gain, entertainment, experience, any of these and more can make up a large portion of how we view games. In truth, the most successful of us probably have an equal part of them all.

For me, it has always been creation at the top of my list. It's about the end product and what new worlds it brings. I want to get lost in another place and I want others to come with me. Call it escapism, call it phenomenological, call it what you will.

I don't think I'm alone in my point of view. The true goal is to create a world with the right kind of immersion. That comes from not just a graphical standpoint, but sound, music, story background and most of all, flow.

We want our players to visit our worlds and we want them to have shareable memories.

So I ask, why do we do so little to help them remember? It's akin to sending them on an African safari without a camera.

It's past time we make an effort to provide the tools required. MMOs and some other PC games have had a screenshot button for awhile now. Unfortunately, for most, saving them to a hard drive is a death sentence. Most will not survive the inevitable crash and new PC purchase cycle.

Luckily, the dawn of cloud computing is here. It's time to start incorporating our games into the cloud.

We've already started to do it with Achievements. Players on Xbox Live can browse their friend's profiles and see what they've been doing. Why not take that a step further? Make the Achievements visual. Attach a screenshot to each, or at least the important ones. Give players a chance to show off what they've done; and, more importantly, give them a record of their accomplishments.

Furthermore, while a screenshot feature should always be offered to players (especially in MMOs), it's time we start looking for ways to do the work for them. There are certain highs and lows we want the player to remember. However, it's rare for a player to be experiencing such an event and take a screenshot. In fact, pressing the screenshot button is a major break in immersion. The best moments happen when we're not fully conscious of ourselves, when we're deep in flow.

I've been working on a proposal that includes specific solutions, but there are far more innovative people out there.

We need smarter and better tools. We need ways of knowing when a player is experiencing something memory-worthy. We need to catalog such events for them. And we need to present those memories in visually appealing, easy to use ways.

These are the challenges that must be met. Not just for the sake of nostalgia, but for the supreme belief that great things should be remembered.