QTEs, you stand accused of being a Crime Against Gamers! You will be tried by a jury of your peers, and if you are found guilty you will be condemned for all eternity!
The case by the prosecution and the defence can be found here on the ihobo site. The trial has begun - vote "Guilty!" or "Not Guilty!" in the comments of this post to determine the fate of this game mechanic. Feel free to submit additional evidence in your comment.
Players may vote only once. If there are more "Guilty!" votes than "Not Guilty!" votes, QTEs will be declared a Crime Against Gamers and condemned to the Game Design Dungeon. In the event of a tie, QTEs will be acquitted. Voting ends after one week (when the timestamp becomes Wednesday 21st January).
Vote now!
Guilty as charged, m'lud!
I can enjoy them in some instances, but they should be dropped for casual difficulty settings in games, and only used sparingly in the right sort of game (e.g. a hardcore targeted game only).
All in all they are used incorrectly and, more tellingly, add very little to the games they appear in - when else can we go to the loo or do any of the other things we do in between action sequences (when the cut scene is on)?
If a QTE comes on, usually the controller has been put down and it leads to all sorts of fumbling and swearing :-)
Posted by: Neil | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 12:28 PM
Not guilty!
Posted by: Mory Buckman | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 01:22 PM
Has potential, but Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!! Proof in 3 words: the latest PoP.
Posted by: O.S | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 01:39 PM
Guilty. I will not play a game that has these in as a core mechanic, and will avoid parts of games where they are present - principally because I don't stand a cat's chance in Hades of getting past them, so they've locked me out from the rest of the game.
A personal rather than community-wide view, I accept.
Posted by: Peter Crowther | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 05:35 PM
Guilty!
I call for hard labour followed by the death penalty.
Posted by: Matt Mower | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 05:52 PM
We the jury find QTEs Guilty As Charged, your honor.
I find that QTE's actually serve to break my sense of attachment to the character. Rather than basing my input on watching the character in the environment, I'm suddenly watching the UI.
Bad form.
Posted by: Corvus | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 06:54 PM
Guilty of replacing interactivity and immersion with Simon Says.
Posted by: Duncan | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 08:58 PM
Not guilty! If a mechanic is by-and-large badly implemented, this does not mean it is a bad mechanic! I would prefer to have some interaction in my cutscenes thanks, if I wanted a movie I'd have bought that instead. My full thoughts on the matter can be read in the mechanic thread http://blog.ihobo.com/2009/01/for-or-against-qtes.html?cid=145100378#comments
Posted by: Katherine | Wednesday, 14 January 2009 at 11:39 PM
Guilty.
Posted by: Patrick | Thursday, 15 January 2009 at 03:07 AM
Not guilty. Ditto what Katherine said.
Posted by: Not Guilty | Thursday, 15 January 2009 at 05:41 PM
Not guilty!!!
I don't think I've played very many plot-based games that utilize this mechanic -- the only one I can think of is one of those interactive-movie style games popular in the early to mid 90's.. (The game was called "Terror Trax" for the record). I thought it was fun/interesting at the time.
More importantly though, one of my favourite genres of games are rhythm games -- particularly Dance Dance Revolution and similar titles. These, in essence, are purely QTE oriented. There would be no game without it. With the many thousands of hours I've put into DDR, I couldn't possibly condemn this game mechanic.
Power to the QTE people!
Posted by: organic io | Thursday, 15 January 2009 at 07:33 PM
So far it's 7 votes to 4 in favour of Guilty.
organic i/o: I fixed your SNAFU for you.
I was hoping to keep the discussion over at ihobo, but inevitably it was going to be difficult to achieve that. :)
Anyway, I have responded to your point about DDR over on ihobo if you want to discuss it further.
Let the trial continue!
Posted by: Chris | Friday, 16 January 2009 at 08:32 AM
Guilty as charged. Interruptions of cutscenes, or gameplay. I've never played one with these that I've liked playing.
As long as you don't count rhythm games as quicktime events, which they aren't of course (since they are in time with something, you don't instantly lose by missing one, and have difficulty levels in the most basic ways).
Posted by: Andrew | Monday, 19 January 2009 at 03:02 PM
Guilty! Death Penalty!
-- although one game I've played had a "Get everything perfect and get a bonus treasure" mechanic that would have worked nicely if it hadn't had a "Get anything wrong and you LOSE and must start over" mechanic.
DOWN WITH INSTA-DEATH TRAPS!
Posted by: Anon | Monday, 19 January 2009 at 04:07 PM