For about as long as I can remember, I’ve heard that save scumming is something only lesser gamers do. I’ve heard that it’s tantamount to cheating, and that those who do it are robbing themselves of a genuine experience within whatever game they’re playing. In other words, the sentiment seemed to be that you just weren’t a good (or even true) gamer if you included save scumming in your toolbox. Is that really true though? Because I’m not so sure that it is.

To kick things off, yes, I am a save scummer. I’ve done it in just about any game that would let me. I’ve done it in XCOM: Enemy Unknown; I’ve done it in Baldur’s Gate 3, and I’ve even done it in Balatro. I’ve done it to reverse garbage luck; I’ve done it to get the outcomes I wanted; I’ve done it to get through tough trophy requirements. (Completionist ++ is finally mine!)I’ve done it gladly, sometimes even defiantly, because, well, I’m a bit of a sore loser and I’ll do anything I can to make things go my way in the games I play.

While I definitely respect those who play completely pure and actually risk losing campaigns or getting story developments that they didn’t want, I just don’t have the patience for it. If I’m playing XCOM, I’m just plain not willing to have my playthrough ruined halfway through because a couple of enemies got a couple of lucky critical hits on my best soldiers (who were hunkered down behind FULL cover btw!). Nope. Uh-uh. Forget it.

I’m also not willing to spend upwards of 40 hours following a campaign path that I don’t want simply because I lost a single dice roll back in the game’s opening hours. Same with trophy hunting. I’m not letting RNG determine whether doing something will take 20 hours or 200. Maybe I am missing out on some of the thrill of these sorts of games by playing this way, but I don’t see it as being worth all of the extra time it would take to get to what I really want.

Also, how exactly does a dice roll determine how skilled I am at a game? Is it about having the ability to adapt? Because those adaptive measures are also subject to RNG in these sorts of games. Bad luck is bad luck is bad luck. When everything comes down to a roll of the dice, even best laid plans can be utterly upended. No, being lucky and sticking with the results no matter what doesn’t equate to having more skill. More patience, perhaps, but not more skill.

It may be that RNG games just aren’t for me, but I’m not so sure about that either. I enjoy Baldur’s Gate 3 and XCOM: Enemy Unknown; it’s just that I don’t want to lose everything to a dice roll when I play them. So, since they allow save scumming, I do it. In Balatro, I don’t think it’s fun to save scum in a normal run, so I don’t. When I was trying to get gold stickers on every joker, though, yeah, I did a lot of it. It still took a good long while because I needed to complete each and every run with all the jokers, and I hate to imagine how much more time it would have taken if I had allowed chance to determine everything . Again, no thanks.

The way I see it, if you wanna save scum in a game that allows it, then it’s your right to do it. If you don’t wanna do it, then, by all means, don’t. They’re your games; play them however you want and save the pointless criticism. To those who have the patience to let RNG determine how their campaigns go, I tip my hat to you. You can do something I cannot. To my fellow save scummers, though, carry on enjoying having things go the way you want them to.

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Are you a save scummer, or are you someone who’s able to roll with the RNG punches? What does a game have to do to get you to consider save scumming?

Image from the Baldurs Gate 3 Steam page