[Rant] Why do games insist on putting stuff in the My Documents folder?

Maylander said:

One reason we'll see it in a lot of future games is that Vista can't store anything anywhere else on your harddrive through an application unless you specifically tell that application to be run as an admin application. Most games that do not save in the my documents folder will simply crash every time you try to save a game, or not even start at all. It's annoying, but not the game developers fault.

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Question, does this mean I'll have problems playing older games which don't save in the My Docs folder if I have Vista installed? NWN1, for example, doesn't save there!!

Well I'm saving in FO2 ok and it doesn't save in the my doc folder.

I haven't tried NWN as yet.

I have to chime in in my ignorant way and agree with the dislike of Windows terminology. I've been desensitized to it over the years, but I can remember sitting in my Windows 95 class ( as my employer had me dragged kicking and screaming into teh Information Age) and being disgusted at the triteness and silliness of the whole My everything package--back then it was mostly My Computer, I think.

I remember the instructor explaining that MS in its wisdom had picked this phrase to make people feel comfy with the cold hard machine reality of computers. Like naming it after something in a middle school kid's diary made it less intimidating...maybe so, though. It's hard to remember back to that time when computers were a totally foreign experience for 90 % of the population. They really were intimidating to most people.

I dont like this trend of dumping things in "My Docs" either. In my opinion, a game's files should be kept in the folder, period. I know, there's the multiple users quandary and all that, I dont care. It may be a reason, but it's no excuse. Keep your stuff in your folder in Program Files, that's what I say.

I do agree tho on the "My.." before everything, it's just annoying as hell. One of the first things I do is rename it "Documents", and take that glaring "My Computer" off any desktop I am in control of. We're not 6 years old, here!

As others have said, there isn't much choice at the moment. Even Jeff Vogel / Spiderweb has conformed to guarantee Vista compatibility.

I sort of like the 'my documents' thing. And yes, I do think that most people like it, especially perhaps people who haven't dealt with computers before. There's something re-assuring about something being called 'my docs' or 'my games'.

Here in Denmark, 10 years ago, computers were only still for a very select elite. It really only is during the last 4-5 years that plain folk have gotten access to computers, or that people have started to use them for everything...

For me personally the biggest advantage is that you can quickly find the save files. I have so many programs installed that it can sometimes get a little annoying to find stuff.
Sometimes the game folder in Program Files is named after the developer, sometimes after the publisher, sometimes after the game and sometimes after an acronym representing the game title.
That sucks. I don't want to have to scroll through my Program Files folder for minutes and track down the stupid correct folder for the game. So putting it in My Documents is cool with me. Easier to back up, too (via the Files and Settings transfer wizard for example).

@ Moriendor: That's why I put ALL games in a folder I've named "Games".

Übereil

I hate My Documents, I am always deleting the bastard but it keeps coming back

Corwin said:

Question, does this mean I'll have problems playing older games which don't save in the My Docs folder if I have Vista installed? NWN1, for example, doesn't save there!!

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The answer is yes. There's already a number of sites telling which games are Vista compatible or not.

My own company's software had to overhaul itself because it put at least a single .ini file in the Windows folder by default and everyone buying new computers suddenly found themselves looking for copies of XP on eBay until we could fix it.

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If another issue is the dearth of apps requiring Admin privileges to install or run properly then that makes sense. NT, 2000, XP, and Vista are meant to be "secure" operating systems and after problems with consumers getting confused by 2000, most apps and even XP itself default to the Admin user. This is simply not done on Unix machines starting with limiting the access to the root directory.

Again to mention my own company's software Windows security is a real pain. It can give access to one application the software uses, such as Telnet but block another such as FTP. Its far too complicated to figure out which it is (you'd need to look at the source code) and qw an manually adjust the security settings for every store that has a crackpot IT guy that thinks he's teh bomb. What kind of IT guy works for a hardware store anyway (maybe me when they ship my job to the Philippines next year )?

If MS is pushing to encourage less use of Admin as the default then its a good thing.

Stanza said:

More generically, it is a requirement for the Window's logo, for any program. And we've had to deal with this innanity since Windows ME (I think that was the one), so it's been a headache for better part of a decade now.

Dungeon Siege was the first one I saw it with, back when MS started enforcing this with their own titles. Now it's pretty standard for any game, since you can't write save games or config info into Program Files.

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I see it the same way. The "my documents" thingy was invented via Win95, I believe, but I can only tell that from Win98SE, which actually has it.

Dungeon Siege even has an empty "savegames" or "saves" folder under its game directory which contains nothing but a small text file called "where are my savegames" or so which explains in small words that the games are now under "my documents" folder (if I remember that correctly). (The "my files" folder is called "eigene Dateien" I think in the German-language version of MS Windows 98 SE.)

So, I think it was only a matter of time until MS developed a directive to put ALL user's stuff into the "my documents" thing. Similar to the "user space" of unix & linux systems.

The "my" thing was hyped long ago, even producing things like "MySAP" (I have a demo CD from a CeBit several years ago). One version of later WordPerfect (I think it was 7 or 8) has problems with a folder called "my files" missing or misspelled. The usual workaround is to make folders called "My Files" and "MyFiles" just to make sure.

I think, the underlying philosophy is to divide "user space" aka the user's stuff from everything that's OS-related.

The implementation of that isn't optimal in all cases, though.


Edit : And, by the way, I often encountzer programs that insist to install them selves into the folder called "Program Files" instead of "Programme", which is the official translation used by MS for Windows98SE.

They didn't translate *everything* properly.

So, I have to force programs to use a different path or I'll have to look in both folders.

And some don't even use the "Eigene Dateien" folder, which is MS official German translation of "My Files", I think.

Ubereil said:

@ Moriendor: That's why I put ALL games in a folder I've named "Games".

Übereil

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Well, I am too fucking lazy to change the folder every time I install a game. I just want to click on the 'next' button .

I look upon myself as lazy, but sometimes I wonder... :lol:

Übereil

Lucky Day is correct, most older games will have problems trying to save games on Vista, unless they are run as administrator. I am playing Baldur's Gate 2 right now on my laptop (w/Vista), and I have to right click on the BG2 shortcut-> "run as administrator" to get the game to work. Otherwise it refuses to save any games.

Most games I've tried on Vista act like this, so I'm glad the modern games are adapting, but I also agree that placing it on C:/ without being able to change it is annoying; my C drives (on various computers) are all fairly large, but they still fill up fast when I have enough games/software installed that use the MyDocuments folder.

Isn't it just the savegames that places themselves in My Documents? Savegames aren't that big...

Übereil

Ubereil said:

Savegames aren't that big...

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Sometimes they are. My Dark Messiah (finished the game) and Star Wars: Empire at War (finished, too) folders are approximately 300MB each and Prey (finished once again) even weighs in at nearly 700MB. That's 1.3GB of save games from just three games right there. Granted, all other save game folders that I have are much smaller at about 20MB to 50MB but it adds up quickly. The entire folder where I'm backing up just about all of my save games is ~2.8GB and I only started backing up saves after my last reinstall a few months ago so it's growing and growing...

Sounds like I made the right choice of NOT getting vista with my new rig.

Has anyone done an upgrade with it and lost games or game saves?

Often savegames are simply images of the games themselves with the changed data so they can be quite large depending.

However, it's not just saved games that go here. Take a look at NWN2. I had made changes to the ini file in the Program Files directory only to find out they were being ignored. There's a whole slew of user specific files in My Documents folder of the game that are simply copies of the Program Files version. On a computer with multiple users I can really see that adding up.

I sometimes wonder why

a) developers aren't able to just compress their savegames (ever took a look at the usual vs. compressed size of Divinity savegames ?)

b) what stuff there is saved altogether. I mean, how can a savegame become *that* big ??? I just can't understand it. Or maybe I'm just looking too much from an adventurer's point of view, where Indy 4 has just these small savegames, and I expect savegames to basically consist of few more that coordinates and similar stuff.

Some have to save the entire world with all its characters etc, which can be a tremendous amount of information.