during agdq this year, they were lucky enough to get an art director on the couch, commentating on a game they worked on
and i quote: "you're skipping so much, you aren't seeing any of our work!"
this isn't the first time i've seen this sentiment. tim schaefer yelled out something similar during a speedrun of psychonauts, albeit after several beers.
"next time i'll make the dialogue unskippable. that'll show you"
now, i know these comments are a little tongue in cheek, but i do feel it's worth pointing out one tiny point.
my dude, you wrote a video game.
yes, people do not play games exhaustively, there's always going to be things that get skipped or missed, but that's not the issue at hand here. you wrote a video game: your art, your music, your plot, your writing, everything beyond the tutorial is usually hidden behind skill checks.
you hid the content, you buried the art, you locked up the writing, and demanded players learn a skill. you don't get to be mad that people learned skills you never intended. if you really wanted the players to do a thing, you would have put more invisible walls in.
aside: if anything, things like speedrunning are one of the moments in video games where players genuinely have agency: they decide on the categories, they decide on the rules, they decide which parts of the game get included.
don't get me wrong, i know the art director just wanted to point to cool shit in the game, and if they genuinely disliked speedrunning, they wouldn't be on AGDQ. it's just that video games really need to get over "this is how things are played".
maybe then we'll have a chance to collectively get over the "insert coin to continue" school of fun.
