Nathan Alter lives in Albuquerque with his wife and kids. He currently develops in C#/.NET, but is learning all the time and has enjoyed computers since programming in Basic on an Atari 400 as a teenager. He started blogging in 1999.
Videogame annoyances
unskippable cut scenes/logos – PUBLISHER, WE DO NOT WANT TO WATCH YOUR LOGO VIDEO EVERY TIME WE PLAY THE GAME! WE DON’T CARE! YOU JUST MAKE US ANGRY! (yeah you, EA) It’s simple math, really. Number of hours to write/test code to listen for a keyboard event and skip the video: 4. Number of gamer angrily-mashing-spacebar hours avoided: 575,272,237.
internet-lookup-mania – No, I will not sit there for hours trying random combinations of 10,000 objects until I stumble upon a valid combination and have to write it down. Keep a list for me in the game. Never force the player to go look something up on the internet. Never say, “You need this item. It’s somewhere. Go search the entire world for it.” Zelda/Final Fantasy/Monster Hunter, I’m looking at you.
bad teammates – Not much the game developer can do about this, except build in extreme penalties for non-team play. That’d be fine with me.
building in impractical things that lag the game enough to make it unplayable. BF 2142 Titans, anyone?
in-game ads – I am as intent on blocking ads as a publisher is to get them into the game.