C’mon, it’s 2007
Why are game developers still limiting player names to three characters?! It was cool back in the 80s. It was acceptable in the 90s when arcade games were ported to consoles. N64 came along and they were still doing it. I just rented Rayman: Raving Rabbids for Wii, a game made for a brand new system (and, sure, ported to a few other platforms, none of which are the arcade), and you’re limited to 3 characters when naming your account. Seriously. Excite Truck does the same thing, and it’s a Wii exclusive!! Look, the Wii has half a gig of memory. I don’t think allowing 15 or 18 more characters would break the bank. Isn’t the Wii all about personalization? How can I make the account mine when I can only represent myself by THREE CHARACTERS?!
Ok, ok, I can hear you, game devs. “Our high score lists will be malformed if we allow huge names!” Bullshot. Scroll any names bigger than the field you’re allowing. It’s not hard. Yous guys are all about slick animation. Something like if(name.length > fieldsize){ animate } else { display }. If the animate() function is smart enough, you don’t even need to call a separate display function. It’s not that hard! Until a big game developer sits me down and explains to me why it’s so freakin difficult, I’ll continue to curse them every time I’m limited to 3 characters. It comes down to one thing: laziness. I can’t be the only one annoyed by this. If any of my 2 readers agree, comment on it.
In other news, Ross Lectric has branched out to installing shower doors. Sweet.
