For The Love Of… Please Add A Pause Button
Ok, so this might not be a post that is popular with a lot of people but I am sure that there is a group of people out there who will hopefully appreciate where I am coming from on this topic. It’s a feature that will make a lot of people happy and that is, as the title says, adding a pause button to your game, or make it so when you go back to the menu it pauses. Thats it. Easy peasy. At least I hope. But please add it into your games, even for cut scenes.
Now I can already hear the crowds of people yelling at me, that I’m just another one of those people with kids or if I can’t set aside the time to game properly, then I shouldn’t game and so on.
But… and hear me out now before you raise the pitchforks again, why shouldn’t games have a built in pause button? What is wrong with having the ability to suspend your game if something comes up? What about if you just need a bathroom break? I mean there is even an app that tells you when is the best time to go for a bathroom break during a movie, so why shouldn’t a game have a pause button?
Another point I’d like to add here, is that this isn’t something just for parents or old people either (I use those terms loosely, as being “old” is a subjective thing (for teenagers, anyone over 25 is old, I know, I have three teenagers) but I would argue that even kids or younger gamers need it too.
Why?
Well imagine in the middle of your game or a big cut-scene reveal, thats when your parents call you to take out the rubbish or come down for lunch/dinner/meet the neighbours or maybe the package that you have been waiting for with your latest loot from Temu that you have just been dying to get your hands on arrives, what do you do? Even if you sprint to the door, you’re going to miss something. Imagine missing the “Luke, I am your father” reveal or whatever the modern-day equivalent is and hopefully you’ll get my point.
Perhaps I’ve also just battled through an endless wave of enemies and somehow, by the skin of my teeth made it and now I need a brief respite before taking on the end of level boss who only needs to look at me with a strong glare to take away the last sliver of health on my already depleted health bar.
Ok, I’m beating a dead horse now (or donkey) but as you can probably imagine, this is something that I feel quite passionate about and would save a lot of stress in families and relationships for sure and in some cases, avoid people having to pee in empty soda bottles.
Now while I am on a role of demanding things be included in games, that I am sure everything is paying attention to and rushing to implement before I even hit publish on this post, there are a couple of other things, that if they could be included in games going forward would be a much welcome feature. Admittedly not all games might need some of these features but I’d let the developers decide that.
The first one is a summary. I was playing your game, life (or a mega bathroom break after a 48 hour live stream and then a 12 hour crash) got in the one. I’ve come back to the game, only to have no idea what I was doing, who I am or why I’m standing in the corner of a room somewhere.
All it needs is a little pop-up somewhere, “Hi, you haven’t played in x hours. You’re Badd-a$$ Bob on a quest to get the mythical gem from a Dragon over in Scary-monster land. First you need a weapon to kill the Dragon”. Done, I’m on my way again (after a quick peek at the options to recognise the controls anyway).
Another one that I think is quite important is getting rid of the requirement for the internet on single-player games. By all means at the beginning while I am installing or once I start the game for the first time, I understand the need to check that I bought the game. It’s a nuisance but I get it. However afterwards, you’ve validated the game, now just let me play, there’s no need to check every single time you launch the game or get frustrated because the game is popular and you get stuck in a queue waiting to play and eating up precious time that you don’t have that much of anyway on some days. Or most days. Please just stop doing this.
I’m not sure I should go on with this article now because the next topic are the season passes and for money cosmetics. Why? Why does this exist? Please just make the game and then release the dlc and leave it at that. Ok, I’m going to stop here on this point, as I think this is a rant for another time.
To get back to my main point though after going on a hell of a tangent there for a bit, I really do believe that a pause button would be such a quality of life improvement for everyone, that surely it could only be a benefit. I really would like to experience your wonderful cut scene that you put a lot of thought and care into and not have to mash keys or buttons to skip it (and miss something important) because some urgent something is pulling my attention elsewhere and the only other choice I have is to skip the whole thing and then hope I don’t spawn in the middle of a bunch of mobs somewhere.
I’m sure that you all get the point now, so I’ll finish by asking you, what kind of similar features to this do you wish were included in games? For example what about downloading your cloud saves to back them up? What would you like to see?
