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TwoPaintBubbles t1_j286n8i wrote

Game dev here. There are many reason why games don’t just shut down with a click of a button. The main thing preventing them from doing that is you the player. Games typically have either pre determined points at which they save, or a set of constraints that must be met to allow a save to happen. If game allows you to quit all at once you got two options.

  1. Discard any progress made after the last save and quit. This will leave some players mad and may even prevent them from picking up the game again.

  2. Save right then and there, then quit. Depending on the game, this might not even be possible. If it is, there exists situations in which the players save may have put them in a set of unwinable conditions, right before a loss. Also a big problem.

The solution is to warn the player. Because at the end of the day, it’s an extra 15 seconds to 1 minutes to avoid a lot of headaches.

There are also certification constraints set by the platforms. Some of these involve a mandatory warning to a player if an action could result in loss of progress.

So it’s not as simple as “dumb devs go make it better it’s easy”

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ReachForTheSkyline t1_j2aag8d wrote

That doesn’t explain why some games force you to quit out to the main menu first and then only from the main menu allows you to quit to desktop. This is what OP is mostly complaining about.

For example:

  1. Pause game
  2. From pause menu click “Quit”
  3. Game does whatever it needs to do. Either saving or prompting the user about losing progress etc.
  4. Game returns you to the main menu
  5. Finally from here you can “Exit to desktop”

OP (rightly) has a problem with games that make you do steps 4 & 5 instead of just closing out after step 3.

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TwoPaintBubbles t1_j2ac434 wrote

It’s a design decision. The player has to have some way to get back to the main menu. I personally like when a game has the option to quit to main and quit to desktop. However that’s not always possible. Sometime you run into UI constraints and don’t have space for both options.

Honestly a big part of it is scope though. It’s such a small non impactful feature, that most games put it in their backlog and never get around to it because more important stuff usually takes priority.

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TheBenevolence t1_j294zjo wrote

I was thinking of Alien Isolation when I read the title. Some games have specific save places as a point of purpose and risk, which can also help in those games avoid a potential soft-lock by saving right next to the big bad that kills one instantly.

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