Video game developer Joshua E. Sawyer was a designer on some of the big role-playing games of the 2000s and 2010s. He was at the helm of Fallout: New Vegas, which many consider a milestone in the role-playing genre. But now he says manual save games were a mistake, they were like poison.
What great roleplaying games has Josh Savoyer made? The 48-year-old has had an impressive career in the gaming industry, especially in role-playing games:
The Pillars of Eternity series is a homage to the classics:
Pillars of Eternity: The trailer for the RPG
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“Manual saves were a mistake”
He is critical of this feature: In a tweet from September 18, Sawyer now explains:
“Manual saves were a mistake. They’re like the Chicken McNuggets of gaming: they bring you convenience, but they’re bad for you and poison your gaming spirit.”
How is this discussed? Some players reject the idea. They say:
“I like to save at any time. Then I can go and do things – and don’t have to play the whole chapter again.”
“I’m going to cheat on every boss’s saves and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
YouTuber FranklyGaming agrees with Sawyer, saying that Honor Mode in Baldur’s Gate 3 showed him what games without manual saves are like: every single decision is so much more important. Manual saving and “cheating saves” ruin decisions in games.
“Some people just can’t do without manual save games”
What do other game developers say? The boss of Dishonored says:
I don’t disagree, but let players decide how they want to play. Some just can’t play without manual save games.
Freedom and frustration vs. every decision counts
This is what’s behind it: This is such an ongoing debate.
If you can save freely, it takes the risk out of role-playing and strategy games. Because you can “take risky paths” and if it goes wrong, you just reload and try until it works. It is then often justified: “Even Jesus saved”, as an allusion to the fact that he rose from the dead.
There is also “save scumming”. This is a way to cheat a game mechanic by doing something that has a very low chance of success, but you load the save game over and over until it finally works. You roll the dice until you get the result you want. That’s basically cheating.
This actually takes the risk out of the decisions and the fun out of the game – but it also protects players from a frustration that many cannot handle. Many players want to play a game “perfectly” and get the best possible outcome. If they feel like they have missed a situation or messed it up, it is hard for them to cope. These players are referred to as “completionists”.
This is the alternative: The alternative to “manual saving” is automatic saving. If there is only one saved game and it is constantly being overwritten, this is also known as “Ironmade” mode. This is an option that you can choose in many games today.
From the perspective of a game designer who wants players to immerse themselves deeply in a game and take every decision seriously, Sawyer’s perspective is certainly understandable.
We have described an example of a particularly bad case of save scumming on MeinMMO in an article about Civilization 6, for which I would like to apologize in all sincerity: Steam: I am obsessed with the perfect start in Civilization 6 and have been loading the same save game for 2 years