Thoughts on Consoles and Certification Processes - Jonathan Blow

http://the-witness.net/news/2012/07/thoughts-on-consoles-and-certification-processes

by suraj • 14 years ago

43 26 14 years ago

rdw• 14 years ago

I worked on a game that had 2 months scheduled for "getting through cert", out of maybe 10 total. And this was for a title that was a sequel, on an engine that had gone through cert dozens of times.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

The icon for game save actually kinda makes sense in another way. I want to know when I can turn the console off and go to bed after I have completed a checkpoint. Even if you can avoid savegame corruption, I would be very annoyed to complete a difficult section and return to the game the next day to discover that I'm back to where I was before and have to do the difficult part all over again. Especially since modern console games seem to be designed with a difficulty curve where 99% of the game is very very easy and the other 1% is frustratingly difficult.

Do games consoles not implement some kind of transactional system for game saves anyway? It would seem very harsh to lose all progress in a game because of a power cut! Especially since modern games don't seem to have any way to allow the player to make multiple arbitrary save files as backups.

Makes me nostalgic for the days of "you will know that the game is saving because your PC will be completely unresponsive for 10 seconds".

kitsune_2• 14 years ago

Reminds me of my friend not shutting down his NES for over two weeks because his copy of Zelda II had a faulty battery. Even with a working battery the save system kinda sucked.

minikomi• 14 years ago

This was a pretty common screen for players of the first Dragon Quest series to see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlTiELHQK8I&feature=playe...

It basically says "Really sorry. The record of your adventure disappeared." ... Then you get to a fresh home screen as if your save game never existed..

kule• 14 years ago

Yeah I don't think he was complaining so much about the icon per say; more that every game developer has to make a save game system that handles corruption rather than calling a save api.

If it was done via an api then the xbox could automatically show the 'saving' icon, delay switch off until the save is complete, and handle corrupt save files with a lot less work per developer...

rictic2• 14 years ago

My understanding is that games on the current generation of consoles are assumed to corrupt your save if power is lost while saving. The response from the certification process of these consoles is to warn the user about this every time every game starts rather than to require a robust save system.

Arelius3• 14 years ago

> Do games consoles not implement some kind of transactional system for game saves anyway? It would seem very harsh to lose all progress in a game because of a power cut! Especially since modern games don't seem to have any way to allow the player to make multiple arbitrary save files as backups.

That is actually Jon's point. The API by default is not transactional, while it should be. That is left up to the developer to implement.

> The icon for game saves actually kinda makes sense in another way.

Sure, it may make sense, but that is not part of cert. The message is required to show at any point where any data is being saved, which could just in fact be useless stats. In which case its possible to see the icon finish, shut off the game, and then later be suprised when the game did not in fact save your progress.

stripe3• 14 years ago

At first I thought - Jonathan Blow, just another hipster indie game developer - but boy was I wrong. His 'rants' are pretty spot on. The whole market is moving too fast for those Dinosaurs to keep up with competitors. Where Apple and others improved the user experience I hope to see that the Ouya tackles TV based console gaming without the whole baggage of cert, closed platform and super strict rules that limit innovation business and gaming wise.

kitsune_2• 14 years ago

He is the exact opposite of a "hipster". He is a very smart (and in my opinion humble) guy.

I don't know where his portrayal as an arrogant guy comes from.

He held an amazing talk / presentation at Rice University called "Video Games and The Human Condition": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFu5O-oPmU

stripe3• 14 years ago

Great talk! Thank you for the link.

jyap• 14 years ago

Jonathan also made the game Braid and is in the Indie Game documentary that can now be purchased/viewed online: http://indiegamethemovie.com/

I thought this quote was great from the article which puts everything in perspective: [Next generation consoles] have to compete with the iPad 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

unimpressive• 14 years ago

>I thought this quote was great from the article which puts everything in perspective: [Next generation consoles] have to compete with the iPad 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9.

Not to mention whatever they have to compete with.

CJefferson2• 14 years ago

As a still regular game player, I have basically abandoned the android and iTunes stores, when it comes to finding games.

The problem is most games on these systems are terrible, and often either don't have a demo, and want to ckle and dime me to be able to make progress through the game.

On the other hand, while I might not like all the games on the Xbox online store, I find them to be of reasonable quality, have demos, and never require me to pay to make progress through the standard game.

I have found several friends have had a similar experience. Perhaps we are just dinosaurs, but I wonder if games on mobile are going to crash (or have already crashed, how many are selling any kinds of numbers? obviously some do well).

dsirijus• 14 years ago

Within 2 to 3 months on either Google Play or iTunes, I grew completely bored by the offer. And I've purchased every hit from the beggining of mobile gaming era.

Every once in a while there is a game worth playing, but vast majority are suffering from lack of combinatory input space of touch.

There's only so many quality game mechanics which can be devised from having your fat finger on extremely small screen. Those that suffer less from that are puzzle games which don't really appeal to casual audience which dominates mobile & social games market.

Zimahl• 14 years ago

Agree 100%. I don't understand why there isn't (at a minimum) a clip-on thumb-pad and 2-button controller for the iPhone. We don't need it built in like the Xperia Play but I need something to get my giant thumbs out of the field of view.

5hoom• 14 years ago

The games that do float to the top tend to be reasonably solid (or at the very least they do what they say on the tin) but even then a lot of them just aren't that great.

It just seems like a lot of mobile game developers have resigned themselves to shallow one trick games, riddled with poor value paid DLC and without even attempting to capture any of the charm or depth of their console (or PC) contemporaries.

It would be great for there to be that sense of buzz and excitement about the latest 'cool' games like there is on other platforms. I'd really like to be amazed every now and then.

dazzawazza• 14 years ago

While I respect what's being said here I don't agree.

I've taken many games through MS, Nintendo and Sony certification and while the rules seems bizarre and arbitrary they are not that hard to take in to account when you start designing a game. Once the console hits the street they rarely change.

I've failed many times in technicalities that were annoying but at the same time they've found real issues with the titles that made it a better game.

Although it does 'waste' developer time it smooths the user experience in to a sort of homogenised consistent experience so users of ALL ages know what to expect on a platform saving them time.

For example implementing a clever save game system sounds like it makes sense but most users will not understand why when they save and turned off the console their save game was lost. If they are consistently told DONT TURN THE THING OFF WHEN SAVING they get a consistent experience that THEY control. It's not the best technical solution but it's the best real world solution. Remember a LOT of people turn of their console at the mains! There is no distinction between shutdown and turn off in their mind. These are mass consumer devices and need to act like toasters and high end PCs at the same time.

The QA people in S,N and MS really do user test this stuff. Most console players are so technically illiterate it's shocking they are allowed to drive a car.

I'm now an indie dev and if I'd only been an indie dev I would probably feel like the author (I'm not sure of their history). Having been at the 'pro' or 'mass market' end of the industry I have a lot of sympathy and respect for the manufacturers TRCs.

rictic2• 14 years ago

With a reasonable save system, the system behaves exactly the same as it does now, only save games aren't corrupted if power is lost in the middle of saving. It makes the device work more like a reliable appliance, not less.

There would still be an indicator whenever the game is saving, the game just wouldn't throw away potentially hundreds of hours of investment if power is unexpectedly lost in the middle of a routine (and frequent) save.

Hell, I'd be happy if it was just an option, so that clever devs whose saves don't take up much space can implement journaling and don't have to display the warning, but those that will lose their shit when power is lost do. It sounds like the existing console certification processes won't even allow that.

CJefferson2• 14 years ago

In practice, it is quite hard to lose saves on xboxes (one example I am familiar developing for). The warnings are, I think, just for extra safety, as it is REALLY annoying to lose a save go with 50+ hours.

I lost such a save on Final Fantasy VII about 15 years ago, and it still annoys me to this day.

malkia2• 14 years ago

Don't agree at all. I've been in this business since 2000 - in teams that shipped for PSX, DC, PS2, XBOX, GC, 360, PS3, WII - The rules are there for many other reasons:

- Backward compatibility. For example it was not allowed on PSX to use certain tricks to draw the triangles faster, as future emulators would've had problems with that.

- Save systems. Made for not yet smart kids, not so smart parents. The save system has to be robust, so much that it has to write exactly how many blocks it's gonna write - you are buying a memory card, you need to know how much is going in there.

- DVD/CD-ROM/BluRay speeds. You can't just stream tons of things and expect to work. You also need to consider where/how your data is, and how you react to I/O errors - it's different per consoles. Also how you handle multiple disk games.

- No frame rate hitching (yes, more allowable nowadays), but in the past - severe frame hitches would've made your certification not possible. After all, on all consoles ever released the code is running in ring 0 - the game code runs along with whatever is there that serves as a kernel. And there is reason for that - maximum hardware explotation (which also takes years to learn)

- Security - just think about this - how easy is to steal non-console game data. It's much harder on the consoles. Yes people eventually break them. But nothing is easier than unzipping .IPA iphone file.

- Size of the games. Really - As much as I love my new Nexus 7, my dear iPad, by humble TouchPad, and my fancy PlayBook - there has been none AAA games shipped there. Infinity Blade is very close, but not AAA (too short).

- The biggest game for mobiles have not yet reached 1GB, while console games have been shipping sometimes 10GB of data, for older consoles.

- Why this is important? - You can QA an indie game much faster, and easier (check progression breaks), than AAA title.

- Multiplayer, scoreboards, etc. - This is where the life of the new console experience is. Cheating here is the plague, and makes players go away. Certification is there to help, but not isolate problems.

- And most of all - no audio hitching (yes, unlike many modern PC games).

- Let's not forget - localization, safety zones (no swastika in German), etc. French correctly hyphenated, etc.

There are many fine details, that would bring an indie title into AAA. Most obvious is content, but overall stability, much less perceived bugs (It's possible that AAA game ships with much more bugs than indie, but then again it's played by much more people/hours).

TRC's are good. They save in long term both the publisher, and the console manifacturer.

stripe3• 14 years ago

"TRC's are good. They save in long term both the publisher, and the console manifacturer." This is exactly one reason why developers are looking for greener grasses. Jonathan already said it but developers and console manufactures could economically save a lot if those TRC's/TCR's/Lotchecks would be handled more intelligently. Looking at that "save" message, why isn't there a standard message implemented by the manufacturer developers could use? Then you could just make a checkmark in the TRC docs saying "using default save msg" and everyone would save a little time. If I was a manufacturer I would take care that developing for my platform was economically for developers and me alike. And I fail to see some of your arguments for TRC's. What does size (hours, gb, dead animals?) have to do with a game being AAA? Some iOS games deliver a greater quality in terms of customer enjoyment than traditional console 'AAA' games. Furthermore Jonathan was not totally against TRC's but just used examples that make totally sense from a developer perspective.

malkia2• 14 years ago

About standard save - well it might be possible - but it's not clear how it should be done.

In certain games, the saving is done asynchronously. This means you have to collect (serialize) all the save game data in very short amount of time in a buffer - a millisecond might be a hitch for an 60fps shooter. Then write the data asynchronously.

So there is not much an API could help - either write the data in second thread, or use async function to write it. (open/close the file is also good to be async, or on a second thread if possible).

mariusmg• 14 years ago

If the user shuts done the machine while the OS is writing a file, that file is corrupted/incomplete. That notification is way better than ending up with a broken save.

Arelius3• 14 years ago

The point, is there are better technical ways of achieving the same goal. That is basically the second thing Jon says in the linked post.

Thoughts on Consoles and Certification Processes - Jonathan Blow

Related Stories