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[crackajack]

No idea why anything has to be faked in this area. A game knows what it is loading when it's loading, so it knows pretty well, how many MB of assets are still not in memory, at least how many packages out of x packages are still to be done, and if there needs to be some decoding decompression or whatever and especially on console with one set of hw the expected time should be possible to be given quite accurately. Maybe adjusting it a bit, if an upgrade drive is faster than the original one.

But it's not important anyway. Especially today when there is no necessity at all anymore.

Can be fun though when they write some shit like hiding bugs, creating filler content, tune instruments for next track. Or actually interesting and helpful when it tells a few bits of lore and hints.

 

[Mr Reasonable]

this story actually reminds me ATMs are perfectly capable of counting and giving you the money instantly, but the engineers purposefully make you wait because costumers would otherwise tend to be suspicious the machine "counted" wrong

Seems strange to tailor (!) Your machine's workings to one fairly niche profession. I wonder how they made the decision? Were the first ATMs in theatre districts or something like that? I suppose theatre work was probably paid in cash coming from ticket sales which meant employees were used to counting their pay and checking for errors and that culture continued.

Interesting what you can find out though, thanks for sharing!

 

[Xcell Miguel]

Some games do not need loading screens, some needs it (unless you want to spawn in the void and see the world loading around you).
Not all are fakes.

Halo Infinite did not have one during the beta, on Series X it was loading so fast that the black screen was visible for less than a second, sometimes it loaded instantly.
But for users with HDDs on Xbox One and some PCs, that black screen could be long.
So they added a fake loading screen and making it last a minimum amount of seconds, even on Series X and fast PCs...

Sometimes you could see the endgame screen showing right after the game ended as it loads very fast, but that fake loading screen comes on top of that for a few seconds for nothing.
Still happens sometimes, that's really dumb.
I'd prefer a flickering load screen than a fake longer one.

Same thing in Diablo 4, you get a 2-3s loading screen when teleporting to some areas, but going back to where you were after that is instant.

Some games do it well like Forza Horizon 5, when teleporting around the map or changing car the load screen is shown only for the time needed, if needed.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

So let me guess, Sony payed From Software to add fake loading times to the Xbox version of Elden Ring, right?

 

[nemiroff]

Nah, depends on intention and definition.

Loading feedback is an UX mechanic and doesn't need stick up the ass precision. I think most people already suspected approximation and staccato checkpoints.

The use of the word "fake" here is kinda stupid and obvious clickbait.

 

[Markio128]

Do you remember those pens with a picture of a scantily clad woman, when if turned upside down, their clothes would slowly disappear?

That should be the loading bar.

 

[Razvedka]

Artificial wait times has to be the shittest UX choice I’ve ever heard of

I think it's a case of giving people what they want (based on research) vs what they claim they want.

Relatedly, it's been my experience that people don't *actually* want the truth. They just don't want to find out they were lied too.

 

[Physiognomonics]

Artificially adding load times up to 5 seconds.

Fucking no !

But it's more cinematic

 

[stickkidsam]

Halo 3 loading screens kicked ass.

 

[Quasicat]

This reminds me of when my school moved us into a brand new building. I was wondering why there was a thermostat in my room with buttons indicating someone is in the room and nobody is in the room when I could ask maintenance to change the temperature. I took the cover off of the thermostat and found it to be an empty plastic box. When I asked the custodian he told me that they found that people would complain less about the temperature if they believed they had control over it.

 

[Hendrick's]

I always just assumed they were all bullshit because you can't know something is loaded until it is and can only predict how long it will take.

 

[Dis]

But it's more cinematic

Its a creative choice

 

[Verchod]

How about they display it like the old days, a prompt screen with loads of text whizzing past as it runs

 

[Fafalada]

No idea why anything has to be faked in this area. A game knows what it is loading when it's loading, so it knows pretty well, how many MB of assets are still not in memory, at least how many packages out of x packages are still to be done, and if there needs to be some decoding decompression or whatever and especially on console with one set of hw the expected time should be possible to be given quite accurately. Maybe adjusting it a bit, if an upgrade drive is faster than the original one.

This actually describes why the bars are mostly inaccurate. Packages to load is going to give you the skipping bars with some single steps taking 90% of the time - ie. it gives no indication to the user on 'how much is left to load'. Getting precise size measurement significantly increases complexity of the process (most games/engines in fact have no idea/don't track at all how much is there left to load in actual 'bytes'), and it still won't be really accurate (some things still load faster / with less backend processing than others). Time based is theoretically most accurate but it's by far the most complexity to prepare (As you have to save off benchmarks of all your load times into your release packages) and will be wildly in-accurate for PCs with countless different specced hardware/software configurations that can completely change the time-to load.

Now - you could maybe train a model that accounts for all manner of heuristics that predict the load-times on any given system, but the complexity of it all, potential of it still failing some cases badly, and the return on investment being 'accurate loading bar that majority of people will never notice' is well - not a great pitch to even attempt.

 

[DeepEnigma]

If you still have loading bars with these consoles in current year. You're either cross-gen and not optimizing or doing it wrong.

 

[adamsapple]

I swear if one of you fucks tells me that the pedestrian crossing button also doesn't work, I'm gonna flip a table or two.

 

[DeepEnigma]

I swear if one of you fucks tells me that the pedestrian crossing button also doesn't work, I'm gonna flip a table or two.

 

[Dust-by-Monday]

all that is needed is an animation like uncharted or the last of us to let us know the game hasn’t frozen.

 

[cash_longfellow]

With this gen consoles SSD, i dont even remember the last game i saw with a loading bar.

Right, even next gen patches where a loading screen has tips and tricks, it loads too fast to even read them most times.

 

[Clear]

Accurate readout would require recording the load-times of everything in advance - it wouldn't really slow anything down at runtime, but generating that data would be cumbersome and error-prone to maintain, and as you say - there's no good reason to spend so much time engineering such a solution since 'standard' everyone's gotten used to is either a spin-wheel animation or an inaccurate progress bar - it doesn't matter if it's in a game, business application, kitchen appliance, phone, car or anything else.

True accuracy would be more that just pre-timing, because it would need precise real-time monitoring so storage medium transfer rate and any other system variance would always be factored in.

About slow-down I was thinking about a hypothetical case which I guess is analogous with using a -verbose option in a compilation pass where every process is logged for debugging purposes. And even then its it'd be dependent on threading and overall occupancy.

 

[Hudo]

If I ever open a bar, I'd call it "Loading Bar".

 

[DemonGamerTTT]

This resumes the game industry pretty well.

Reading this you may think that those developers are all retards, but what they are doing is something that add some value for the "mainstream" gamers.

If you really look at all the bullshit developers nowadays get away with you will fast realize who the real retards are.

 

[CuteFaceJay]

I can just remember when this guy actually fixed the GTA Online loading speeds by a substantial amount R* acknowledged his fixed and then implemented it. R* gave him a chunk of money for it and the community ended up donating a load of cash to the guy as a thank you.

We need more people like him rather than the guys posting about adding extra 5 seconds.

 

[K.N.W.]

I think artificially extended loading times are also useful to cool down the cpu after those hard decompressing tasks that happen during loading.

 

[asdasdasdbb]

Now that you mentioned it... I suspect Demons Souls Remake is guilty of having a minimum "fog time".

As to why, maybe consistency of the loading time?

 

[Apocryphon]

In the European version! Was it the same in the US?

This was one of my most played PS1 games. I don’t remember it having ads but there it is! I don’t even hate it

 

[Apocryphon]

Almost always fake based on a couple of tweets from 2 developers?

Almost always fake based on just how difficult it would be to calculate them accurately?

 

[Roman Empire]

Best loading screen.

Loading screens are definitely not fake during the ps1 era lol

Best ones were from Leisure Suit Larry and Earthworm Jim. I don't think I can post the Leisure Suit Larry's here though since are all women in lingerie.

 

[RoadHazard]

Just have it be a black screen so players don't know if the game is loading or crashed, make them suffer.

...this story actually reminds me ATMs are perfectly capable of counting and giving you the money instantly, but the engineers purposefully make you wait because costumers would otherwise tend to be suspicious the machine "counted" wrong.

You're talking about the thing where the ATM "counts out" one bill at a time? I've seen that in movies and such, but I'm pretty sure that's never been a thing here in Sweden. I haven't withdrawn cash in many years, but as far as I remember it would simply spit out the whole stack of bills at once.

 

[Guilty_AI]

You're talking about the thing where the ATM "counts out" one bill at a time? I've seen that in movies and such, but I'm pretty sure that's never been a thing here in Sweden. I haven't withdrawn cash in many years, but as far as I remember it would simply spit out the whole stack of bills at once.

More regarding the delay between finishing the transaction and spitting the money, if i'm not mistaken, a lot of the noise the machine makes is faked too.

 

[BootsLoader]

 

[cinnamonandgravy]

something's probably wrong with me... i kinda like loading bars.

 

[Danknugz]

guilty of adding small delays here and there on progress bars i've made for random office apps so they look cooler and don't just fill up all fast in the blink of an eye.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

In the European version! Was it the same in the US?

This was one of my most played PS1 games. I don’t remember it having ads but there it is! I don’t even hate it

I thought all versions had the red bull adverts in it.

 

[Team Andromeda]

Almost always fake based on just how difficult it would be to calculate them accurately?

I'm not the one saying they're almost aways fake. I would say in 99% of cases loading screens are necessary or were the loading screen in Neo Geo CD's games just put in, to piss people off?

 

[Elysium44]

Artificially adding load times up to 5 seconds.

Fucking no !

Forza Horizon 4+5 do this with fast travel. Loading takes one second, the slow transition of the camera around your car before you're allowed to drive it takes five. Funnily enough Forza Horizon 3 didn't have this 'feature' and just let you drive immediately.

 

[Elysium44]

This reminds me of when my school moved us into a brand new building. I was wondering why there was a thermostat in my room with buttons indicating someone is in the room and nobody is in the room when I could ask maintenance to change the temperature. I took the cover off of the thermostat and found it to be an empty plastic box. When I asked the custodian he told me that they found that people would complain less about the temperature if they believed they had control over it.

This reminds me of Forza Horizon as well. For years the game had a built-in reporting system to report leaderboard cheaters etc. But then one day the devs fessed up that this never actually worked or did anything. It was just to pacify people.

 

[Dr.brain64]

Imagine if loading the load screen takes more time...

 

[The Infectious Paradox]

With this gen consoles SSD, i dont even remember the last game i saw with a loading bar.

Yeah, just thousands of "Crawl through this narrow cave" animations

 

[Guilty_AI]

Imagine if loading the load screen takes more time...

Just make a loading screen for the loading screen then

 

[Fredrik]

Just have a continuous "walk through gap" animation.

Brilliant. Make it a tunnel that twist and turns and is procedurally generated.

 

[Myths]

An immeasurable or unquantifiable loading bar, I’m ok with especially when paired with a Splash screen. That splash screen can be either current story scenario or random pro-tips. Loved XIII’s for that matter.

 

[deriks]

With this gen consoles SSD, i dont even remember the last game i saw with a loading bar.

Did you not play past gen games?

 

[SilverLeaf]

I didn't realize deliberately adding a 5 second loading bar qualified as an artistic decision. Next you're going to tell me Skyrim deliberately added 5 minute loading screens just to let me admire their model renders.

 

[Ainem Enamas]

If it's art then it's okay.

 

[Insane Metal]

Dear developers who did this,




FUCK YOU ALL IN THE ARSE.

 

[GustavoLT]

I survived this, I can survive anything!!!

 

[Raploz]

UX designers have to take human psychology into consideration when designing, that's why artificial delays or fake buttons exist.

The concept of "Labor Illusion" is a well understood psychological phenomenon in UX:

Labor Illusion — UX Psychology

People value things more when they see the work behind them

bootcamp.uxdesign.cc

Why Some Apps Use Fake Progress Bars

Designers use “benevolent deception” to trick users into trusting the system.

www.theatlantic.com

Research paper:

The Labor Illusion: How Operational Transparency Increases Perceived Value - Article - Faculty & Research - Harvard Business School

www.hbs.edu