In defence of QTEs: Why gaming’s most derided mechanic is good, actually Leave a comment
I’m sure a fair-few people have read this title and rolled their eyes. Really, I can’t blame you; there’s a reason QTEs are hated. However, I’m here to convince you that when used correctly, every game developer’s little guilty pleasure can actually be fantastic.
QTEs (or their Sunday name, ‘Quick Time Events’) revolve around bombarding the player with split-second button prompts. Their first well-known usages are commonly traced back to classic laserdisc games like Dragon’s Lair and Road Blaster. Said laserdisc games were more reminiscent of movies with button prompts than a games, mind you. It would be another 10-or-so years until QTEs would fully cross-over to more traditional games like Sega’s Die Hard Arcade or Shenmue (with Shenmue’s director Yu Suzuki being credited with coining the actual term “Quick Time Event”).
So why are these little events so unpopular? To really understand what makes a good QTE, we’re going to have to give some examples of terrible ones, first.
