
Thoughts on Consoles and Certification Processes - Jonathan Blow - suraj
http://the-witness.net/news/2012/07/thoughts-on-consoles-and-certification-processes
======
CJefferson
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
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
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.

------
dazzawazza
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.

~~~
rictic
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.

~~~
CJefferson
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.

~~~
Arelius
But there is a difference between "quite hard" and uneffected by sudden losses
of power. It is easy to make it the later, and then suddenly the "extra
safety" is simply unfounded paranoia.

------
jiggy2011
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".

~~~
kule
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...

~~~
rictic
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.

------
malkia
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.

~~~
stripe
"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.

~~~
malkia
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).

------
rdw
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.

------
stripe
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_
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>

~~~
stripe
Great talk! Thank you for the link.

------
mariusmg
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.

~~~
Arelius
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.

