When it comes to save scumming, few games are as controversial as XCOM. This style of play was considered so antithetical to the idea of role-playing that the developers of The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall included a whole section in their game manual imploring players to roll with their mistakes. The ability to save anytime, anywhere, meant that players could simply retcon anything bad that happened to their character. This consequence-avoiding exploit came about because developers were focused on providing convenience first and foremost. In some cases, like in Resident Evil and Dead Rising, the developer made the act of saving a part of the narrative, forcing players to find typewriters and toilets to save their game.Įventually, the freedom to save created a new “problem”: save scumming.

Checkpoints, autosaving, quick saving: There are many ways a developer can choose to save their game. Pretty soon, saving became a standard feature. Eventually, developers engineered ways for players to save their progress, including sticking batteries inside game cartridges in order to power solid-state memory chips. That wasn’t a problem, though, since arcade games had a way to continue your game: Just insert another quarter! Once games became home entertainment, the need for convenience became paramount.

In the early arcade years of video games, the technology to save games was costly, not to mention gigantic. They put a ton of thought into how their games save, because it can affect everything from the difficulty to the narrative to even the gameplay itself. For game developers, that’s not at all the case. Saving your game is such a mundane part of video games that we don’t think too much about it.

Xcom 2 quick save