Uncharted 2: Loading Times and the Gaming Experience
Mon, March 29, 2010 at 9:46 PM It’s amazing how distracting a simple loading screen can be. It’s a little thing, but that seemingly unimportant static screen can rip your immersed brain right out of an amazing experience and back into the real world. It may only be for a brief moment, but it can be more than enough to break the flow of the story, to pull you out of the game, or to stifle your sense of immersion.
I’ve always found it amazing that more developers don’t try to get rid of the annoying little things. I remember back to the days when I first played games on the original PlayStation. I was so amazed by the technology of the whole “games coming off of CDs” thing that I thought loading screens were cool. They were a sign of advanced technology. No more outdated cartridges for me!
Well, those days are long gone. Times have changed, and fast. Loading screens are no longer interesting artifacts of technological progress. They are now signs that a developer couldn’t find a way to overcome the technological challenge of getting rid of them.