Game Designer Explains: Reasons why Games DON'T let you Skip Cutscenes

GENSHIN COULD NEVER -------- I'm half-expecting to receive angry comments because some people feel so strongly about cutscene skips and any attempt to justify or explain why they're there will just be met with vitriol... Though I suppose reading angry gamer comments is part and parcel of a game developers job. Or at least, it is for whoever got tasked with community management... To a degree, it's understandable. There's a VERY thin line between "reason" and "excuse", and what exactly tips something over onto either end is somewhat subjective and dependent on a person. Even if a game does have a justifiable reason (e.g. programming), some people will always view it as an excuse. Yes I do play Genshin and Star Rail, and yes Genshin's lack of skipping also annoys me sometimes. Ironic, considering one of my previous jobs involved developing mobile gacha games (and we did run into this problem, as our internal user data tracking showed people would skip story and complain they don't understand what's happening)

If I ever end up making my own JRPG, I want to have an easter egg related to skipping cutscenes. If you skip a lot of cutscenes during your playthrough, the in-battle dialog with the final boss would change to the hero responding to him "I don't even know who you are!".

Genshin dosent give you cut scenes they give you lectures.

I like story, and I will watch them. But not giving the option to skip the cutscenes destroys replayability.

You know, I did not know that some of the cutscenes were just loading time covers... that is super interesting...

I think it's also important to remember that in the past, having cutscenes at all was kind of a novelty, so skipping them might not have crossed the minds of most people. Older Dragon Quest games used to advertise how much new text the newer entries had

I personally don't mind cutscenes, but what I will say is it can really feel tedious when I'm not allowed to skip things that do not feel as important. Like, for example, a lot of Genshin side quests can drag on the dialogue with banter-- banter that can at times be humorous and charming but when you factor in how many quests have a lot of the same running gag and you're just trying to keep things moving along, it can make otherwise fun quests feel like a chore. I also have a friend who has chronic wrist/hand pain, and for him having to repeatedly tap through long dialogue makes the experience worse for him; I feel really bad that with that in mind, cutscenes in extremely slow and dialogue-heavy moments in Genshin that aren't as important (especially when the game incentivizes you to do the sidequests for primogems and other awards) don't have a skip. It's made me appreciate games that do allow for a skip, but provide ways of recapping/summarizing the information should players need to access it later, as well as games that can expedite the text progression process by selecting a "I understand/I have no questions" option to keep things moving faster, or games that have dialogue as you're actively doing stuff rather than sitting around. As I said, I myself don't mind cutscenes, but I definitely appreciate games that go the extra mile to have a better flow, allow player choice, or have taken the time to decide what cutscenes are or are not important. Great video by the way!

Its also worth noting, hoyo games are fairly likely because they want to punish having alternate accounts and make it more tedious Same reason they have the occulous

traveler slowly getting electrocuted to death mid-cutscene and being able to do nothing about it is hilarious

My problem with not being able to skip things is that I read fast. By the time they're halfway through the sentence, I already got the gist of it and want to move on. For this reason, Genshin's dialogue is so frustrating... Because they let you skip to the next sentence, sometimes. But EVERY TIME one of the characters or npcs moves it will NOT. LET. YOU. SKIP until after they finish the animation. Its maddening. Breath of the Wild's dialogue system is leagues better, because you can just spam the B button to skip anything you don't care the hear/read. I can actually speed-read what they say without needing to sit through a long drawn-out animation of them standing and talking. I'm also incredibly grateful for the Pokemon games, which often have settings to effect text speed and turn off battle animations.

I am really torn of this. Especially as a Genshin Player. In equal parts do I support and hate the lack of a skip-feature. I hate it, because in some parts, I'd really just love to get to whatever's behind the cutscene. But then again, there are many Stories in the game that I probably would've skipped, but in the end I found myself admitting that I found myself happy that I couldn't skip it and actually immersed myself in it.

skipping should always be available when possible but it should be hard to accidentally skip. Just very convenient for if say im redoing something because i lost my save or am on a different platform or what have you

I remember hearing about a theory that cutscenes and stories are unskippable because they also add to the overall playtime for the game, which is a good statistic for the market since players are spending more time on the game as a result.

I am honestly suprised that there are people who skip cutscenes and dialogues for games that they haven't played before. It just never crossed my mind. I only know if a game has skippable cutscenes or not, when I have played them more than twice. In my opinion games with a lot of replay value should have skippable cutscenes but I wouldn't be that upset if they didn't. Other than that it is a great video and I hope you keep it up.

Every time the topic of loading in cutscenes is brought up, I'm reminded of the legendary "ladder sequence" in MGS 3, it was practically an interactive cutscene (the player needed to climb the stairs) that served the purpose of hiding a gigantic loading, and seize the opportunity to create anticipation in the player by playing "Snake Eater" and making him think "Damn, whatever it's waiting beyond this ladder is going to be the biggest challenge yet". I'm more of a story-driven player, so I rarely find it annoying when the game doesn't add a skip cutscene option, when I play games with a heavy focus on the story I'm playing for the story. When I only want action I play a beat'em up or an action shooter (big fan of those genres too).

Solution: when skipping a cutscene a short summary of what happened gets displayed on the confirmation prompt, so you know what they’re talking about. And have an option to see the full cutscenes later, when you are in the mood

There's two kind of cutscenes I don't like: 1. The 15-minute cinematic. I'm sorry the director didn't make it in Hollywood, but this is a video game, not a film. 2. The intro to a very hard boss battle. I don't want to watch that 10 times in a row. Can I please just get to the part where I die again?

The thing about Pokemon is that it's an over all very replayable game.... but the cutscenes are often so simple you don't really need to watch them again.... That's why Pokemon should just have a replay mode where you can just state you already played the game to skip a lot of the useless stuff....

Player choice is the single most important thing and artificially imposed limitations are always harmful to enjoyment. The player does not, and will never, share the creator's vision. The author is dead as soon as I boot into the game, so if I'm only playing videogames to kill stuff then let me kill stuff. Stuck up devs ranting about immeasurable things like narrative have, ironically, totally lost the plot. I am here to be entertained and if I am not I will skip the parts of the game which are not entertaining. I want the highs and lows, I want my MGS3 ladder scene, I want the story, so trust the player to be mature enough to only skip cutscenes in such a way as to maximise their own enjoyment.

I think older people want to skip cutscenes more often... cause you know, it's really enough to have your kids/colleagues chew your ear off, you just want to do things, not watch and listen😅