To Cut or Not to Cut?

Cut-scenes have long been the bane of many gamers’ existence. Sure, gamers love story, but cut-scenes often interrupt gameplay, and thus many gamers skip them to get back to the interactive portions that make a game a game.

In the end, cut-scene development money is wasted, and gamers end up bumbling through games confused and unsatisfied. So is there a solution?

In a recent Gamasutra article, Andrew Vanden Bossche set two fundamental guidelines for including cut-scenes in games:

1. Words must never interrupt the game.
2. Words must never be skippable.

Intrigued? Take a look at Bossche’s article, “Analysis: Skippable Cut-Scenes and How They Work in Games.”