• Wildf1re@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Not heard this term before, but presume it’s to do with people saving often? So this must refer to single player games, no? Who cares enough about how people play their games on their own to comment on it, let alone coin a term for it? Seems a bit sad to me.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyzOP
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      1 year ago

      I mean, I use the term to describe the action to others when I do it. I don’t actually hold some elitist view that it’s wrong, rather, I’m being ironic to make fun of those who do. It’s a useful term in an of itself, without having to be exclusively for elitist use. It’s convenient short-hand for something like “I save-scummed my way past that boss”, or “I save-scummed every time I failed stealth” when simply describing how you played something to someone else.

      And save scumming is absolutely and an intended mechanic in games like BG3, preventing it would be the easiest thing ever, but lots of games even go out of their way to make managing multiple saves convenient. Immersims go even further, in Deus Ex there are hotkeys to let you instantly set a save point at any time so you can load back to it when things don’t go your way, or you want to try multiple approaches before committing to one.

      It’s even taken into consideration as a max difficulty option in some games, were the game will prevent you from backing up your save, and delete it upon getting a game-over.