Video game makers could probably at least double their sales if they would allow you to save you current progress at any point in the game, instead of only allowing specific “waypoints”. It would be fine to do this in Easy Mode only. This would make games more accessible to a huge number of potential customers who now give up on them quickly.

I love playing video games but I don’t do it obsessively. I’m also not a teenager and I don’t have lightning reflexes any more. I have no trouble solving complex puzzles, but when I’m playing a game involving fast fighting it will often take me quite a few tries to get through a tricky sequence. That’s fine, but there’s a major problem: Most games only let you save at specific “waypoints” that are often very far apart.

Again and again and again and again gets boring very fast…

If I tackle all the adversaries in one room I can’t save my progress in that room and continue from there if I fail (as I usually do) in the next room. If I fail in the next room I have to go back and do the previous room again – and not just that, often it’s the last ten rooms or even more. This can get very boring very quickly, and I frequently give up on a game when this happens. It just isn’t worth the effort, so I also don’t buy that many games. I have better things to do.

Which brings me to the point of this post: If all games had the ability to save your current progress at any point, then I would probably buy three times as many games and I would play them all to the end. A good case in point is Portal, which is rightly praised as one of the best games ever produced. It’s also one of the few games I’ve ever completed, and this was possible precisely because it allowed me to save my progress at any point. I only ever had to retry single tasks that I had failed at, I didn’t have to repeat twenty or thirty other difficult tasks just because I had failed at one. In addition to buying more games I’d probably get a lot better at them, because I’d have the motivation to go on playing.

Waypoint saves are probably hurting video game sales

I don’t believe this is an isolated problem – I’ve asked lots of friends, and when pressed many of them admitted to exactly the same thing: They almost never play games all the way through, they usually give up when they have to repeat the same long sequence over and over again just to get one step further. So it would seem that this is really hurting sales. The problem is, sales are good enough that the manufacturers probably aren’t even aware of it.

It would be fine to only allow this in Easy Mode, and you could also switch off bragging rights features like trophies and achievements. People who are just getting into video games don’t really care about that all that much, they just want to be able to play the game all the way through without having to give up.

That couldn’t possibly hurt sales, hard-core gamers could still play the old way in Hard Mode, and the games would become more accessible to lots and lots of new users.

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