EVERY SINGLE FUCKING GAME I’ve played in the last year or so has a pop up when you start it. If I’ve bought Max Payne, installed Max Payne, double clicked on the icon to START Max Payne, why does there need to be a picture on the screen for 20 seconds before the game loads telling me that, in fact, I am about to PLAY Max Payne?!?
It happens with EVERY GAME NOW. Medieval, GTA3, Undying, Mafia, blah blah blah.
I know that I’m starting up your game. I know the name of the company who made it. I’m the one that shelled out 80 bucks for the game. Why do you think I need to be reminded of the title everytime I play it???
uh… ok… calm down… step away from the monitor… deep breaths…ok… calmer now?
the screens are usually displaying while something is being loaded into memory (or some other configuration is occurring) - they’re not just put there to annoy you, honest. If you want to test it, buy a computer with faster hard drive/RAM, and you will notice a measurable increase in load times.
Most games allow for disabling of splash screens. But despite that splashing takes longer than not splashing, it is well documented that the perception from the user is that not splashing takes longer.
Yep. Libertarian’s right, you can often disable splash screens for all kinds of software either through config files (such as with Opera) or through editing the properties for the shortcut or file (such as with ZoneAlarm). I don’t know what the Mac equivalent of editing properties would be, sorry.
I think what Silentgoldfish is referring to are the developer and publisher logos that you can usually press escape or spacebar to bypass, not the splash screens used during the loading of the game. I’m annoyed by them too, especially the fact that they show up every single time I start the game.
While a game is loading, it has all the effective functunality of an expensive brick and load times are usually fast enough that people are unlikely to stop looking at the screen for any part of the load time. What better chance is there for advertising?
Yep its just loading times. Convention now says use a logo scene during these. In game load screens are the same way. There are intro’s as well, but as mentioned those can be skipped.
So, as to the topic-- Meh.
Now “Damn excessive load times on some of the new games (cough, cough-- Battlefield 1942)” now that’s a rant worth letting loose.
It’s the splash screens that Lib’s talking about. I wish I knew where it was documented to get rid of them cause the only one that I’ve been able to get rid of is Undying. I found out about that through an interview with one of the developers.
I’m also aware that it’s probably only like 10 seconds (usually it’s long enough for me to start up Outlook and check my mail while I wait). But I’m also aware that nothing is being loaded at this time which makes it doubly annoying. The one for Medieval definatly cause the demo didn’t have one.
I just opened up Medieval to make sure, but the opening splash screen (first thing to pop up after opening the program) stays for two seconds at the most. After that fades away, a screen that says “Activision” pops up. Click the mouse and it’ll go away faster than you can read it. Same deal with the next screen, which has all kinds of copyright info, disclaimers, and such on it. Then you’re at the main menu.
That’s it. No big deal. Surely not enough time to check email.
Not all such splash screens are there to occupy you during loading that takes place in the background. I can think of several that I view as advertising for the developer, or worse yet, an entire movie. Especially in the latter case, you will see improvement by nixing it. Normally there are work-arounds such as editing a configuration file, or simply finding and deleting the offending graphic.
Agreeing with most of the above, but Silentgoldfish is griping about a real issue – that game manufacturers have decided that if DVDs can start with a couple minutes of self-advertising, so can computer games.
There are plenty of games where hitting ESCAPE immediately takes you to the screen to load saved games. Even the ones where there is an appreciable load time (the recent “Morrowind” comes to mind) the introductory titles can be reduced – by pressing ESCAPE three different times!
An art critic noted some years ago that having a thousand combinations of 3D letters zooming around TV titles was really pretty banal “art”. I.e., it’s something that someone with no other artistic skills can manage (particularly with modern software).
To my mind the cutesy movie and game openings where mysterious shapes zoom through space, resolving to really trivial logos is just somebody going overboard with a fashionable toy. Artsy dilletantes – proud of the whole month it took to master Adobe Photoshop – “strut their stuff”. Whoopie.
Bah. That’s nothing. The thing that drives me absolutely nuts?
I’m playing my game. It’s time to leave. I point and click to bring up the menu. I point and click on Save. I point and click on Yes, I want to save now. I point and click on the game I want to save over the top of. I point and click on the Save button. I point and click to confirm that, YES, I want to save over the top of that game.
I’m okay with all of that.
However, when I return to the game, and IMMEDIATELY point and click to bring up the menu and then click on QUIT, the game says, “Whoa, hey, two whole freaking SECONDS have passed since the last time you saved. Are you SURE you want to exit without saving?”
Give me Diablo, any day of the week. Escape, quit, you’re gone.
Maybe it’s different in the Asia-Pacific version. Just started it up and I get a screen that lasts 32 seconds (I timed it this time) before the movie pops up saying Total War.
Often times, it’s to run a useless and annoying copy-protection scheme that does nothing to stop pirates and only harms the people that actually bought the game. I read in a PC game magazine once (I forget which one) that one company’s tech support actually told someone to download the crack for a game since the copy-protection kept freezing up his system.
As of a couple months ago, Bioware tech support was recommending downloading no-CD cracks for folks who played Neverwinter Nights but had a faulty CD that developed flaws in it; finally they removed the “CD required” copy protection with a recent patch. Can’t find a direct cite but mention of it was in their website forums, plus a good friend had them tell him to do that.
