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saved game

n. (context video games English) A block of saved data, representing the player's progress in a game, that can be restored at a later time for continued play.

Wikipedia
Saved game

A saved game (also sometimes called a game save, savegame, savefile, save point, or simply save) is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game.

From the earliest games in the 1970s onward, game platform hardware and memory improved, which led to bigger and more complex computer games, which, in turn, tended to take more and more time to play them from start to finish. This naturally led to the need to store in some way the progress, and how to handle the case where the player received a "game over". More modern games with a heavier emphasis on story telling are designed to allow the player many choices that impact the story in a profound way later on, and some game designers do not want to allow more than one save game so that the experience will always be 'fresh'.

Game designers approach the questions how to solve the 'save game' and if and how to 'integrate it in the game experience' in several creative ways. If the game's idea is to encourage the consumer to try things out in-game and experience the effects, perhaps 'regretting' some choices ('What if I just attack the guards?'). How would the consumer choose to return to which point in the story. Will the consumer bother the hassle managing 'save games'? Should this game attempt to simulate real life (for example Heavy Rain) or read more like a story, automatically saving while playing?

Game designers allow players to prevent the loss of progress in the game (as might happen after a game over. Games designed this way encourage players to 'try things out', and on regretting a choice, continue from an earlier point on.

Although the feature of save games might suggest you can retry after a game over, a notable exception is in games where save games are deleted when it is game over. Several names are used to describe this feature: 'permadeath', 'iron man', 'hardcore', and the feature has developed over the years from being the only kind of save system per game to the more modern 'suspend game' feature among regular save points. For online games the game's progress is maintained on the remote server. In some games, upon resuming the game from a save game, the software locks or marks the save game. Early examples like Moria (video game), Diablo II 'hardcore' mode where the character save game is managed by the battlenet server. Depending on the game the feature may be feasible or not, depending on how the game handles interrupting or ending a game session.

The use of saved games is very common in modern video games, particularly in role-playing video games, which are usually much too long to finish in a single session.

Usage examples of "saved game".

In Real Life(tm), without a 'reload saved game' function, you most regret the things you don't do, never more so than when the last chance has gone.