The Seven Deadly Sins Of Game Development

There are several problems with games that one might associate with glitches but are actually put into games by developers. These are age old and you would think that the development teams would have learned by now and pushed past last gen ideals.

 

First up is one we have all encountered and thought "WTH". It is the Invisible Wall. This comes in two versions 1 - You are being chased through the Forrest by wild dogs, with no ammo left your grateful to see a lake before you. Thinking that they will not follow, you prepare to jump from some rocks into the safety of the water below, instead you slam into an invisible barrier.

 

2 - the Impossible Jump. I am not talking about jumping off a tall building and not surviving. I am talking about seeing a tiny log, pressing jump and you can't get over it, even though you have just jumped over a canyon a few mins before.

 

Alas two of the mightiest games around this gen Fallout New Vegas & Oblivion are guilty of this gaming sin. Some developers have shrugged off this old world thinking such as GTA and Saints Row concurred this with endless oceans, Saboteur has you killed by Spitfires and Two Worlds Two has steep cliffs and yet these also suffer from version 2.

 

For Sin Two we have Drowning Characters

Altair can jump off buildings into tiny carts filled with hey, he can kill every historic figure in the Holy Land, he can use many different weapons and even see in Eagle Vision, but one touch of water and he dies? Naturally this was fixed in AC2 but are we not past this yet? It is kind of like a bad joke amongst devs.

 

 

Games guilty of this sin are Assassins Creed, GTA, 1, 2, 3 and Vice City, Red Dead Redemption, Mafia II, Army Of Two, The Witcher, Rainbow Six Vegas, The Godfather, Gun, all the Tony Hawk games, Mercenaries Play Ground Of Destruction, the Crash Bandicoot games, Star Wars KOTOR, MGS 2 Sons Of Liberty, Sonic Adventure, and more!

 

 

Sin Three "Oops We Ran Out of Time".

Games are unfinished before the deadline Fallout New Vegas is sadly one of these. Rocks half drawn, the floor missing in the subway, pausing that causes corrupted game files, ect.

It is criminal to sell a defaulted product on purpose, and yet, gamers get this all the time. Games guilty of this are many.

 

Sin Four False Advertising

It is illegal to do, and yet, people get away with it all the time. From beauty products, to games, the advertisements lie. Fable One for example promised us "the Golden Acorn". There was supposed to be a game engine, that Lionhead were using, to allow you to watch the world grow around you in real time. A generation has passed in gaming and yet we haven not seen it.

 

 

 

Sin Five is Inter Language Grammar Translation Mishaps or "Lost in Translation".

You might not think it, but other languages speak, and write differently beyond the language barrier. English in Australia is spelled differently in some cases.

Differences in spelling include:

USA: eons AUS: aeons

 

USA: agonize AUS: agonise

 

USA: armor AUS: armour

 

USA: Hi AUS: G'day

 

USA: bathing suit, swim suit AUS: bathers, cossie, swimmers, togs.

Also in the USA to say "I am rooting for you" means that the speaker is cheering for you. If you were using that line in Australia it would mean the **** word in relation to sex.

 

This could go on forever but let us move on.

 

There are also grammar differences as well. Example, in Great Britain, it is perfectly acceptable to use a collective noun (such as army) as a plural word {"the army are coming"}, whereas in America collective nouns are almost always singular {"the army is coming"}.

 

If you are not natural English speaking, and need a reference of English, you can read any thing on GS.

 

For the rest of us, here is an example; "I am Falcon084", in Japanese the grammar is different and I would have to write "I Falcon084 is". In the English version it goes Subject, Verb, Object. In Japanese it is subject, object, verb. Put this into a 30,000 word document and translation issues arise. There are words that do not exist in English that are in Japanese and vice-versa. Adding to cultural references and slang and you can have a Shakespearean epic that with bad translation sounds like trash. For a simple and fun version, compare how Yoda talks to us. This barely scratches the surface, but you get the idea.

 

Below Japanese Menu Translation gone wrong:

 

 

 

 

"All your base are belong to us" is a famous translation mishap from Zero Wing it was meant to say "With the help of the Federation Government forces, we have taken all of your bases". Hire professionals Devs!

I should also mention that a lot of writers use an Editor to fix bad grammar and spelling the devs guilty of this sin should try it.

Guilty are Final Fantasy II "You spoony bard". Metal Gear "The truck have started to move". Two Worlds (bad ye ol English). FFVII bad grammar. ect.

 

Sin Six Bad Voice Acting

Even if all the above has been done correctly voice acting can ruin a game. Some times it is so bad it is good and you'll laugh at a really serious plot the whole way through. Other times you would rather hear the noise of nails on a blackboard for an hour. I suppose this doesn't need much explanation. Guilty are Two Worlds One, one of the characters from Star Ocean The Last Hope, ect.

 

Sin Seven Bad Writing/Concept

With sports games this is irrelevant. But RPG/RPS, Adventure games and some platformers it is. The most important thing to have is imagination. Coming up with a title can be hard some times and can influence a story. "Smith and the Raiders Of The Lost Arch" would have put off a lot of fans off, and our opinion of the movie franchise would sour our thoughts over latter Indiana Jones movies. This is true, Indiana Jones was originally going to be called Smith. The name of the character can inspire or make us laugh.

 

SPOILERS:In Fallout 3, a game guilty of this the bad writing sin, you are attacked in a vault and set out to find your father. When you find him and he asks you why you followed him you would think that you could say "The Overseer tried to murder me!", but you can't. SPOILERS END.

 

Here are some of the worst game names:

Twin Eagle: Revenge Joe's Brother,

Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom,

Um Jammer Lammy,

Awesome Possum Kicks Dr. Machino's Butt! (you got to love Sega),

Touch Dic (I should mention that this is a dictionary game from Korea),

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army,

********!! Online (the censored word relates to a sword but...).

 

 

Borderlands was great in gameplay but the story suffered with one dimensional characters that did not bring about the emotion to care what happens to them.

 

There you have it. If you have any funny game names please post them too!