Opinion: Is Automatic Game Recording a Good Thing?
The Xbox One’s DVR capabilities have been big in the news lately. A few days ago, it was reported that the console would automatically record your game progress in tiny video clips whenever you unlock an achievement. These clips can then be distributed automatically to social networks like Facebook or Twitter, or even uploaded onto YouTube if you have a YouTube channel.
So then Microsoft decided to clarify. The Xbox One doesn’t automatically record video clips any time you earn an achievement. More specifically, developers have control over the Xbox One’s DVR functions while making their game. So the idea of recording you when you unlock an achievement was just a suggestion. Developers could actually program in any number of triggers to make a game record your gameplay and later post it on to social networks.
Let’s face it, video games are violent, and we haven’t grown up enough as a society to not panic any time we see violence in a professional setting. Besides, it’s important to keep business and pleasure separate in the first place. But some people do use their social networking accounts for business, and giving the Xbox One this ability seems kind of dangerous, especially if the developer is particularly mischievous.
Granted, you can always decide to not link your social accounts to your Xbox One account. But that opens up a couple other questions. Will this lock you out of special promotions? Will it lock you out of social leaderboards? Will you constantly get prompts that ask you, “do you want to upload this clip?” after the Xbox One gets done recording.
Perhaps the best way to handle this feature would be the way that Facebook apps handle automatic posts today. Before using an app, you get to choose whether or not that app posts on your behalf. If you have a little bit of technical knowledge, you can also decide exactly who sees what the app posts, allowing you to keep your business and personal lives separate. This would be a perfect model for the Xbox One, though it may mean your Facebook page will eventually become swarmed with posts that say, “your friend wants you to play them in Killer Instinct” or something along those lines.
1) It has to let you opt out if you like.
2) It can’t deny you gameplay or social featured by opting out.
3) It has to be easy to enable and disable without being intrusive to gameplay.
4) It has to be filterable for those who decide to opt in.
If Microsoft abides by these simple guidelines then we have a pretty nifty feature on our hands. If not, then someone out there is going to get fired because his “Boom Headshot” video was forwarded to his boss.
next opinion: are consoles obsolete?