Unless I’m mistaken.
Or do you reload?
For a long time, I reloaded.
I thought that was what I was supposed to do.
The games I grew up on, that’s what you did.
You quick-saved, you reloaded, you got your desired outcome.
That was how I always played.
If only life were that simple.
But would you do the same in life if you could?
So why is progress in games built around not making them?
- not all games are.
And it’s some of these games I want to talk about.
Because being forced to live with your mistakes in games: it transforms them.
You relive that little moment of dread you felt when you realised what was going on.
Maybe you tell people about it.
Maybe you associate the game with the memory forever more.
The point being: your experience of the game is now stronger than had everything gone your way.
Smooth-going isn’t as interesting as bumpy-going.
You see it more in tabletop role-playing games, I think.
Flaws are the imperfections designed to manufacture bumps or conflict or confrontation along the way.
And there’s no saving and reloading in live TTRPGs.
There, you live with your decisions, live with your mistakes.
And the most memorable moments of my adventures have depended on it.
There’s a video game built directly around this idea: Pentiment.
Pentiment forces you into making a mistake.
And, more importantly, it was exactly what Pentiment wanted from me.
It counted on it, because the game didn’t end there, really, it began there.
That is what Pentiment is about, and I haven’t seen a video game do that before.
Suffice to say, I shall remember it.
I think it’s a mistake that games don’t use mistakes more.
