At some point in this millenium, it became ubiquitous in games to ask for a button press before switching to the main menu and it has become a pet peeve off mine.

Why is that there? It’s your main menu so ugly that you have to shield players from it? Why can I not double click the game Icon, go to the kitchen to get coffee and return to the PC/console to find myself in the main menu ready to continue my game? Seriously, cui bono? Sometimes, they even show a different screen before that press, which some artist got paid for creating, so the developer is also losing (a tiny amount of) money here.

I honestly just don’t get the point of these screens.

Bonus negative points for games that only check DLC after that button press instead of any other point of the losing process. Calling a server could easily be threaded while the game assets are loaded since it takes very little hardware load to do so. But no, I get to wait an additional 10 seconds because the game devs want me to for no apparent reason.

On a related note: just allow players to auto skip intros, please. Just put an checkbox in the settings, so that everyone can see it once.

  • DaSawEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Neither of these things can be true, because they’ve been around since long before Microsoft got into the console game. I’m pretty sure Atari 2600 games had that prompt. I know NES games did.

    • lloram239@feddit.de
      6·
      1 year ago

      https://blog.csdn.net/baozi3026/article/details/4272761

      TCR # 003 BAS Initial Interactive State

      Requirement

      Games must enter an interactive state that accepts player input within 20 seconds after the initial start-up sequence. If an animation or cinematic shown during the start-up sequence runs longer than 20 seconds, it must be skippable using the START button.

      What earlier games were doing was very similar, but was done for different reasons. Arcade games had an attract mode that would show gameplay or intro cutscenes in a loop when the device wasn’t in active use and had an “Insert Coin” flashing to attract players. The normal game would only started once coin got inserted into the arcade machine. Early console games had that attract mode too, just “insert coin” replaced with a “press start”.

      What makes the modern start screen different is that there is often no cutscene to skip, no gameplay to watch, it’s just a pointless screen before you go to the main menu.

      • DaSawEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Wouldn’t just going straight to the main menu qualify as an “interactive state that accepts player input within 20 seconds”?

        • lloram239@feddit.de
          2·
          1 year ago

          Yes, but you’d have to get there in 20sec first, which in case of very elaborate main menus, might not always be the case. The start screen provides a safety buffer so that you never fail at this certification criteria, as all the loading time after the start screen doesn’t count.