Jonathan Blow: Thoughts on Consoles and Certification Processes

[JEMC]

Hum...

I can agree with this guy with the issue with screen restrictions, but I don't see how it can be that hard (or expensive) to implement as he pretends.

The "DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR CONSOLE" is not a waste of time and I completetly disagree with him. There are many players that once they no longer want/can to keep playing, turn off their console. It's only because of that message and the icon that appears on screen that they force themselves to wait those necessary seconds. Removing that message and changing the save method to the one he says won't prevent data from being lost as the console still need time to create the new file and copy the info, enough time for many people to have already turned off their console.

And if he doesn't want to put that message then it's very simple: do not use autosaving. See? Simple as that, you reach a zone when you can save (or go to the menu and pick up the save option) and save while on screen is displayed a note saying that "your progress is being saved". Like in the old times.

And for God's sake, how can you need 3 days to put that message on screen and test it? That's not problem of console makers, it's your problem because either you are incompetent or you don't want a simple warning message and want to make it "special".

Certificacion/Patches: simply put, patches shouldn't exist. Their mere existence is the prove that the developer or the publisher has been lazy, incompetent, greedy ot all of those things. And part of the certification is looking for bugs and forcing them to be rectified (and even with that, there are buggy games that get launched). And of course patching a console game takes longer, there have been cases of patches that have bricked consoles or that have corrupted the savegames. If devs did a better job, maybe all this processes could be shorter and faster, but since some of them aren't up to the task, certifications are a necessary evil.

Comparing iOS/Android games and console games is a poor excuse as users don't expect the same thing from them, and given the price diference, a buggy iOS game is understandable, but not a console game even if it's a downloaded, Live/PSN/WiiWare game.

But then, all this complains come from a man who used paying users as beta testers while developing the game, something that he won't be able to do on consoles. Woops! I confused him with Notch. Forget this bit.

 

(sorry for this wall of text)