The Daily Grind: What inspires you to take screenshots?

Is the screenshot that has accompanied this article a commentary on how the Mako was one of the worst handling and downright awful vehicles to drive around and how the best decision Bioware made in Mass Effect 2 was to get rid of it? :D

The only time I ever take pictures is when something actually makes me say "wow" and I that kind of feeling where you either weren't expecting something or it really blew you off your feet.


However, in Mass Effect 2 most things that actually made me say wow are hard to get on screenshot and mean something.

For me, it depends on the situation. I remember my screenshot of our first Kimigola kill in SWG where we posed side by side in front of its open mouth. Other times its just something that strikes me, flying my dune ships in front of a planet, the scene of a chaotic hours long battle in Planetside or just my character standing somewhere that makes me think "I've got to get a picture of this". I still have them, safely tucked away in my hard drive.

That said though, I hardly seem to use it anymore. The places I run across just don't inspire me to stop and take a shot to remember it by. Maybe it was because I was younger and MMO's where relatively new to me so I wanted to capture those moments in time. Now, in many of the games I'm in, it seems all to familiar whether its my first time logging in or my 100th.

only times i make screenshots is when i'm sending in a bug ticket.
other then that only for contests :P

I take one whenever I notice a vista of striking beauty. I don't think I've ever taken a combat shot, because I get too involved with the fighting.

I have over 2000 screencaps of LotRO, but I've only found about 150 good enough to share on my GamerDNA page. Back when I was in high school, someone told me that a National Geographic photographer considers themself lucky if they find one shot on a roll that's good enough to submit, let alone use. I filter based on that principle.

I like to have a little album of cool moments from MMOs and single player games. Picasa then draws from the screencap folder for my screen saver, which is pretty cute. Better than flying toaster or whatever, at any rate. I don't usually bother with hiding my UI, and I tend to let FRAPS take the screencaps every third second until I turn it off. Then I occasionally drill into that folder and get rid of the less interesting stuff and keep the funny or cool ones.

I have a large collection of screenshots taken in Guild Wars, but I find myself constantly using [Prt Sc] in EVE Online. EVE has the advantage of not requiring constant player input (Right Click > Orbit 2500m, then activate all your modules), meaning you have some time to find a nice camera angle to take a screenshot of your [insert ship name here] pounding on [insert pirate faction here].

Some of the mission deadspace pockets have beautiful scenery. Especially memorable are the massive space structures rogue drones have commonly constructed in their stretches of deadspace, though scenic (non-interactive) stargates are quite common, too.

I take screenshots for varied reasons. In FFXI I took them if i got some epic piece of armor/set of armor or did something that I thought was worthy. Like defeating an insanely hard boss/area/mission. I also would take some screen shots of scenery and my evolution through the game. I like to look back years later (was still playing) and go "Man, i remember how I thought that gear was the best thing ever" and it be some lowbie crap.

In other MMO's where the difficulty is completely toned down i like scenic screenshots or ones where there is a lot of action going on like large scale battles. I'm playing WAR right now and love when there are about 8 warbands all going at each other and it's just a huge crowd of swinging and magic going off. It, also like in FFXI, will be great to look back and go "Wow, that's the armor i used to be so proud of".

When I quit World of Warcraft and deleted all my characters at the end of December I took a bunch of shots of all the ones i was particularly attached to. I have some particularly nice shots of a druid i played for almost four years at his retirement home in the hills between Mulgore and Badlands.

I'm a complete shutterbug, I take shots of everything. Maybe it's because I don't trust my memory, so screenshotting allows me to preserve everything for posterity. I usually screenshot for several reasons:

1) Records of advancement: watching my characters grow in power, memorable moments, good teams/groups

2) Beauty shots: this includes shots of terrain as well as combat, these are the best-foot-forward shots that I send friends to show off the games; things that make you go 'whoa'

3) Graphic design reference: shots of characters, places for reference or backgrounds in case I decide to create layouts or web pages dedicated to them or their guilds

I tend to have my graphics up as high as possible (even sacrificing framerate), but when you get a couple of amazing shots, it's all worth it. Yah, I'm a graphics ho.

And yes, I miss the Mako as well. My finger holding down the right mouse button constantly to scan in ME2 misses it too.

I play Eve Online and am always wanting to take a screenshot or even a video. I wish they implemented a recording replay system similar to Halo 3. That would be so much fun and much easier to create great battle footage videos and screenshots!

I swear, I took the same exact screenshot on that asteroid, with my mako looking over on that planet. I thought it was pretty awesome, and so did the poster. Great game. Loving the sequel as well.