Nitpicking makes the baby Vishnu fuss.
They do. It is called: “Being the programmer.”
In addition to the (very much valid) reasons that Pochacco mentioned (senior game designer at Sony, eh? Cool. I’m just a junior game designer - how 'bout a job? :)), there is a marketing aspect to it. If there’s a God mode in every game, then every game can be beaten extremely quickly. And if you can finish the game in 5 hours, why buy it? You can just as easily rent it, and see everything the game has to offer. And if fewer people are buying the game, well, then that’s less money for those of us who make these things. And personally, I’m rather attached to my job. 
I think that hidden cheats are fine for most games - they offer the opportunity to take the sissy - er, I mean easy - way out, but it’s not something staring you in the face. Trust me, if there’s a God mode there in the main options screen, the temptation to use it is awful, even if the game isn’t ludicrously difficult.
Also, multiple difficulty levels are a great idea for many games, so that the hardcore can challenge themselves, without unnecessarily frustrating the novice. And if you throw in a little extra bonus for beating the game on “hard” (note: unlocking “Really Freakin’ Hard” mode is a piss-poor bonus, in and of itself), then that makes the hardcore sect feel all the more special, while lending the game some replay value.
Non-long-winded summary: Blatant access to God-mode is bad.
Jeff
Shortly after Diablo II came out, my son was talking to a friend of his at karate class.
Friend: I just got this cheater program for D2. I can make any level character I want, with any magic items, all skills at max. It’s so cool!
Son: And what do you … do … with this character?
First sign of maturity from my preteen son. A memory I shall always treasure (just like, the first book he ever read for informational sake was a player’s guide to XCOM).
Just a thought, but I believe that things like God Mode in games are the reason that current games are nowhere near as story driven or as fun as the games I played when I was young. (Hey I turned 30 last wednesday, can I use that line legally now?) Ah the wonders of Zork and the original Ultima series. Gamers these days are in such a hurry to see what happens next they have to cheat. What ever happened to having an attention span?
Buliwyf
I agree completely with the OP.
Those who want a challenge, want to beat the game on their own etc can choose not to use the cheat mode. I never understand people who want to control how other people play their games. Why not give more choices so that everyone can choose their own preferred method?
Games are so much more exciting without God mode on. I’ve played with it and the main thrill is being able to kill creatures in a number of wildly adverterous ways.
Jump through a wall and knife the main boss to death? Let’s roll.
Want to bazooka the zombie from point blank range? Yippee ka yay mother fucker.
But come on. It makes for some wonderful giggles on the micro level, but taking the game as a whole I’d MUCH rather play without God mode. I’d much rather earn those levels. How exciting can it possibly be knowing you cannot possibly die? I get more fun out of the Smurf Adventures on my CalecoVision.
But autosaves are another issue entirely. I was playing Final Fantasy 9 and, at one point, the absolute minimum I could go between saves was 45 minutes. I timed it. Most of that time was spent watching videos that you cannot skip through.
45 minutes is too long.
Ah but if you make it too easy to save, you start using the save feature as a crutch.
A very valid concern. The player has much less to lose when going around that Sinister Blind Corner when he can just save right before it. Knowing that if he’s killed by a zombie, he may lose more than five minutes of gameplay adds some tension.
However, the sad reality of it is that a lot of us don’t always have several hours to devote to each play session. Some of us frequently only have about 20-30 minutes. And for us, having to turn the game off without saving because you really need to go pick up your wife, or because the kid needs his diaper changed, is infuriating. When those are your gameplaying patterns, frequent save points are your friend.
You know what I hate? The Resident Evil style of save points, where there is a maximum number of times that you can save, ever. Not only are you hesitant to save - not in and of itself a bad thing - you can end up in a situation where the game is unbeatable, because you’ve run out of Magic Save Ribbons. Grrr…
Jeff
I know it’s cliche, but no one forces you to save. If you quicksave too much, you have only yourself to blame.
If you want to bury an option somewhere on the options page that allows the player to select from no in-game saves, a limited number of saves or unliimited saves, and make the default setting no saves, fine. I don’t care if you want to bury the option deep in the settings panel. Hell, I don’t even care if you make the game call me a galactic pussy for choosing unlimited saves. But give me the option.
Because for all this talk of play-balancing, there’s no getting around the fact that users are all different. Different people have trouble with different areas.
I recall one part of Half-Life in particular: I had to jump through a narrow window into an elevator. Simple, right? Uh-uh. I couldn’t get it. I tried around twenty times without luck. Then I started looking for alternative solutions. Then I checked a a walkthrough to be sure I had to jump through this one particular window. So I went back to trying, over and over and over again, until I finally got it.
Note that I got through the Xen jumping stuff on the second try. I don’t totally suck. Just for whatever reason, this particular jump was not happening for me.
If I couldn’t save after I completed that jump, I’d have thrown my computer through the window. And I’d bet dollars to donuts that if Half-Life had limited save points, after that jump would not be where the designers would put a save point because none of the playtesters had serious problems with that jump.
I can understand if you want to liimit quicksaving; it’s may be too easy to tap that F12 key (or whatever). I don’t care if you make me exit to a menu. But for God’s sake, let me save.
I think books should come with Cliff’s Notes, unlocking every theme and message of the story. It would also provide a plot summary, in case I get tripped up on some words or a paragraph and need to get through a difficult spot. If I pay money for a book, I shouldn’t be denied the full enjoyment of that book. People who want to read the book without the Notes can easily do so. I don’t understand why anyone would want to control how other people read their books.
Similarly, I think banks are too inconvienent. Going to them and pulling out money before I go to the store is a pain the the arse. I think they should have little bank cards that withdraw money directly out of my banking account. That way when I see something I want at a store, even if it isn’t important to me, I can buy it without any hassle. I think it should be the law to have one of these. I mean, if people don’t want to spend money on things they don’t need, they can just not use their little bank card. If you impulse buy often, you only have yourself to blame.
Actually there are several types of books, eg. Shakespeare plays, which come with detailed notes and long introductions which discuss the major themes of the books.
Furthermore with video-games it costs almost nothing to add options which for instance allow players to play any level without finishing earlier levels. And if the cheatcodes are hidden in the software anyway it doesn’t cost anything extra to just put them out into the open. And in general I don’t think anyone is claiming that adding cheat codes add substantially to the costs of the videogame; they seem to be objecting to them in principle.
Well, as I mentioned earlier, it costs the developers when nobody buys games anymore because they can just rent them and finish them in a night with God-mode turned on. Trust me, you really don’t want developers to stop making money, unless you want them to stop making games, as well.
Jeff
“Well, as I mentioned earlier, it costs the developers when nobody buys games anymore because they can just rent them and finish them in a night with God-mode turned on”
OTOH there might be casual gamers who are turned off by difficult games and don’t buy them at all. For instance Stinkpalm may have been turned off by Splinter Cell and may not buy Splinter Cell 2 if it ever comes. If it had a convenient cheat mode he might have enjoyed the game more and been more eager to buy sequels.
In any case I was referring to the direct of costs of making the game. What you are referring to is demand which is a separate matter and cuts both ways.
Moderator’s Note: Well, I’m going to use my cheat code to move this to IMHO.
I like the way Hitman 2 did it. You can save in-game, but your difficulty level determines how many times you can save in-game per mission. Lowest level, you can save something like 5 times on a single mission. Highest, no saves (Or maybe it was one, forget). Some of the longer missions award you “bonus saves” when you complete a certain portion of the mission.
For some reason, though, I’ve always liked games that didn’t have in-mission saves, because it’s more challenging, and gives a much better sense of risk and acomplishment.
And face it, Nethack just wouldn’t be the same with quicksave
The question should be, though: who should decide what “play experience” each individual player gets?
I totally agree with the OP. My feeling is that if I pay money for something, I should be able to decide how I use it. Who the hell are you, the game author, to decide for me how I want to play the game, or what will bring me the most enjoyment for my money?
An earlier poster made an analogy to other games, puzzles, and sports equipment. But the analogy was too narrow. Imagine, if you will, that a basketball is sold with the stipulation that it may only be used in a regulation, five-man basketball game, on a full court. Somehow, the makers have magically made it so that if you try to play a one-on-one game, the ball just won’t bounce. “Well,” argue the makers, “We believe that in order to get the full play experience, a basketball must be used in a full five-man, two-team game. Anything else just lessens the play experience.”
Pretty laughable, isn’t it? So what makes video games any different? Only that by their very nature, the makers are able to force their will on the buyer, to force the buyer to play the game only in the way that the maker deems “appropriate.”
You wanna talk about lost revenue? The lack of easy cheats is why I stopped buying games altogether. The last game I bought was the original Tomb Raider. I played for a while, and just lost patience; I’m not a hard-core gamer, I play to pass the time and to be amused. But I really did want to see what was in the rest of the game. So I looked around on the net and found the cheats to get all the guns. I then played the game through to the end. I enjoyed it, and felt that I got my money’s worth. But without the cheats, I never would have gotten very far, I would have put the game aside in disgust, and felt that I had been cheated by buying something that I only got a fraction of the total use out of.
The bottom line is that the person who pays for the game should be able to decide how he wants to use it and what will give him the most enjoyment for his money. You don’t want to cheat, you want the sense of accomplishment of beating the game straight? Great, more power to you. But why shouldn’t I have the option to play the game the way I want? You’d be livid if I forced you to use the cheats, why is it ok for you to force me not to? “Because that’s the way the game was meant to be played, doofus! If you don’t want to play it right, don’t buy it!” Yeah, re-read my basketball analogy above, then answer this question: Hypothetically, if the magic existed to make the basketball that only bounces in a full game, would that be ok? You wanna play one-on-one? Sorry, the basketballs just don’t work for that, so if you don’t want to play a full game, just don’t buy a basketball. It sounds so stupid to say that about a basketball, but not about a video game. Why?
Don’t like it, don’t buy it. They are not forcing you to buy or like the game.
I know. I own the Norton Shakespeare collection, for example. I’m not saying there shouldn’t ever be such things. I just think it’s silly to think that every book should have them. I leave the decision for that up to the writer, editor, and publisher. If I want complete control over a work, I will write it myself.