The Flow of Consciousness

Dear Game Developers,

I applaud the developers who have so mindfully moved screenshot directories and other per-user game data to a more easily accessible place, My Documents. My Documents, what should be the center of all a Windows user’s document storage, is a wonderful place to put this information. Instead of having to dig through C:\Program Files and find your publisher’s directory, or the game name, or your company’s named directory to backup saved game, configurations, and screenshots, those precious things are saved in a location that is easily backed-up and requires little effort to do so.

However, what disgusts me about this practice is that the directories run rampant. I have a lot of games, and so do many, many other gamers. In my My Documents directory, I have folders for the following games:

• Battlefield 2
• Battlefield 2142
• Bioshock
• GTA: San Andreas
• id Software\Enemy Territory – QUAKE Wars Demo
• MrRobot
• Neverwinter Nights 2
• SpellForce 2 Demo
• Starscape
• Lord of the Rings Online

Interestingly enough, I have yet one more directory related to games: My Games. Nota bene that I did not create this folder: Halo did. THQ put the data for Company of Heroes in there, too.

What a fantastic idea! Put game information in one industry-wide-standardized location to keep sane the gamers who properly use their My Documents folder.

Better yet, allow the user to choose where the save/screenshot/cache data should be saved. Is it not an unwritten usability rule to allow a user to choose where their data goes?

Honestly, I’d almost rather have to dig through Program Files to find this data rather than having it cluttering up My Documents.

So, developers, agree upon one standard location, allow me to choose where I want the data to go, or stay out of My Documents.

With much respect and sincerely,

Colin “Rhettigan” Dean