:.:. Starfield .:.: - by Vae
Sulphur on 18/12/2023 at 16:53
I don't think Emil's even saying that they should be excluded. Just that it's hard to get people to acknowledge that a video game is a culmination of thousands of variables, factors, and decisions, and yes, that they are pretty hard to make. I think that's reasonable, and he even says that you can and should complain about things you don't like. Yes, it comes off a tad defensive, but it's not an unreasonable point.
The real issue here is that Bethesda's games have been mediocre to terrible since at least Morrowind, and probably before that too, and they haven't learned a lot of lessons because people kept giving the poor quality stuff a pass because graphics and zomgf there's 1235 towns over the horizon. Starfield is finally the point where they didn't.
vurt on 18/12/2023 at 16:58
So what, it's the same for everyone. It's not interesting to anyone and it's not harder for them than for anyone else. So yes, in a way he is saying they should be excluded or excused.
Every game developer, every movie creator or musician (or whatever field it is really!), in the world could say 100% the same - that the customers are often not aware of the creation process or how hard a certain job can be. They don't need to be, they need the product to deliver or they can go elsewhere.
It's not like we don't have stuff to compare to to know if something sucks or not.
Sulphur on 18/12/2023 at 17:12
Quote Posted by vurt
So what, it's the same for everyone. It's not interesting to anyone and it's not harder for them than for anyone else. So yes, in a way he is saying they should be excluded or excused.
Every game developer, every movie creator or musician (or whatever field it is really!), in the world could say 100% the same - that the customers are often not aware of the creation process or how hard a certain job can be. They don't need to be, they need the product to deliver or they can go elsewhere.
How do you get from 'it's hard for everyone' to 'it's not interesting to anyone'? The fact that it's hard means something. The fact that it's hard for
everyone also means something, and that isn't uninteresting.
And yes, it is harder to make some kinds of games than others - I don't think anyone's going to agree that the degree of difficulty in making something like Vampire Survivors is the same as a current-day AAA 3D open-world RPG. Does that mean we should give them a pass if it turns out that the game's kind of shit? No. It means a ton of work still went into the game, from hundreds of people, and you could acknowledge that too while chewing it out. And what do you lose by doing that? You can dislike something and still appreciate the good bits, if there happen to be some. The problem, as I see it, is being reductive to such an extent that a game's written off as shit without any redeeming qualities when that isn't actually true.
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It's not like we don't have stuff to compare to to know if something sucks or not.
Which is besides the point. I can hate a Hostess Twinkie, but I can also tell you why I hate it, and acknowledge why someone else wouldn't.
vurt on 18/12/2023 at 17:23
Yes it's uninteresting because it's 100% obvious to anyone. Emil sounds like the typical 18-30 year old entitled crybaby of today.
The gist of it is really - we don't need to care, we need it to deliver. If my food tastes like shit i don't need the cook to tell me "we tried our best here and this is really hard man, we only have this staff and those ingredients, maybe if you knew how much work was put into this you would like it quite a bit more and be a bit more appreciative!".
It's not how any of this works.
It's not beside the point at all. I can hate a Bethesda game and i can tell you why i hate it. That some people might like it is perfectly fine and beside the point because this wasn't about the people who enjoys the game, this is about the game's criticism and people who didn't like it.
RPG's are hard to do, that's beside the point as well, it's not harder for Bethesda than for anyone else making open world games, and there are plenty of them to choose from these days. NMS was made with a team of 4 people (in the start, later there were around 20 i believe). It's a far more competent game even if it doesn't share the RPG roots... not that its start was especially stellar though... if Bethesda makes a NMS out of this and delivers in 3-4 years, sure, but i really don't think they will, it would really surprise me.
I'd go as far as saying NMS is a better RPG (or perhaps i should phrase it "chose your own adventure"-type of game) than Starfield. It's the main reason why i have enjoyed Bethesda games in the past.
Sulphur on 18/12/2023 at 17:57
Quote Posted by vurt
Yes it's uninteresting because it's 100% obvious to anyone.
That's an odd point to make. 'Making games is difficult, this is easy for anyone to see, so no one's interested in the process.' Let's take the opposite stance here - if games were easy to make, would that make them interesting? I'd bet your answer would still be no. Which means that your actual point is that people actually aren't interested in whether games are easy or hard to make - and that's simply untrue. We praise music for its technical complexity, or the virtuosity of its performance, and we can only do that if we know how easy or not that was to do. We praise cinema for dealing with complex themes and we can acknowledge that that isn't easy to do only because we
know that it's difficult. Video games aren't somehow excluded from these aspects simply because they're games.
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The gist of it is really - we don't need to care, we need it to deliver. If my food tastes like shit i don't need the cook to tell me "we tried our best here and this is really hard man, we only have this staff and those ingredients, maybe if you knew how much work was put into this you would like it quite a bit more and be a bit more appreciative!".
Okay, two problems. One: a video game isn't comparable to 'stuff I put in my mouth', because for one thing, they don't usually come out your other end. This comparison would make sense if there was this one person who made it for you in an hour or two, and not hundreds of people over many years, with many different component parts, many of which are not experienced in the same way as masticating a rubbery omelette would. Starfield has many issues, but it being food isn't one of them. Two: while food usually has an instant yuck or yum, with games you're perfectly capable of enjoying something's graphics while disliking its janky systems, and these are not mutually exclusive qualities. You may not be happy with it overall, but you can certainly enjoy aspects of it. And, as a bonus, whether it's food or a game, you can point out what should change and what shouldn't
if you want things to get better.
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It's not besides to point at all. I can hate a Bethesda game and i can tell you why i hate it. That some people might like it is perfectly fine and beside the point because i wasn't really talking about the people who enjoys the game, i was talking about the game's criticism and people who didn't like it.
'Starfield sucks, No Man's Sky is a better game' is an opinion, not criticism. You're free to have that, but it's not a position that's contributes anything to a discussion, and certainly doesn't present anything like critique. Criticism is usually a form of feedback, and 'I think this sucks' is not only just unbalanced, it's unhelpful.
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RPG's are hard to do, that's beside the point as well, it's not harder for Bethesda than for anyone else making open world games, and there are plenty of them to choose from these days. NMS was made with a team of 4 people (in the start, later there were around 20 i believe), it's a far more competent game even if it doesn't share the RPG roots...
That's a pretty bad example. No Man's Sky was also a complete disaster at launch, with a ton of broken promises and took years upon years to partly redeem itself. The basic problem with the game - which is that procedurally generated universes that you just fuck around in without any real objective are eventually just fucking boring - has not been fixed, because it cannot be. You can only slap a bunch of band-aids on it, which they have done.
vurt on 18/12/2023 at 18:10
Reading about game creation is one thing. Hearing someone whine about how his food, or game, or whatever it might be, is bad but for "a good reason", is not something i will consider interesting, i will consider it whining. I also would consider reading "you are not aware of the creation process" as something which 100% obvious - we don't. He does not go into technical details at all, it's not that type of article at all, this isn't about game creation, it's about calling out "fans" for not liking the game. There's a big difference.
Product vs product. It needs to deliver because there are other products to purchase. He can whine all he wants, it doesn't change this very, very simple fact, we have other products to compare to, we can buy those and just move on. At their first "But! listen!" i have already moved on, not interested. It's like a door-to-door salesman putting his foot in the doorway, no. go away.
It's a perfect example of a great game that was made by a super small team (not ~500 people like with this game, which is insane). I don't agree one bit that its boring, it's a stellar make-your-own-adventure game (if you have the imagination for that) and it delivers exactly that. I'd love to hear about a better open world space game where you can go from the surface of one planet to another with no loading! The game's patches are better than any DLC's that Bethesda has put out, and often way more massive in scope and delivery. The game delivered many years ago, it's just expanding in scope still. Personal preference of course what someone thinks about the game and not really the topic to discuss that perhaps. and yes it's an opinion, so is "starfield sucks" or whatever. Should be pretty obvious to anyone, no?
Komag on 18/12/2023 at 19:56
I agree that "it's very hard to make a big complex game" is not a valid argument to convince me to like the game. But I also kinda feel for the guy. If I poured my life into a game for a few years and it didn't turn out all that great and people are dumping all over it, I might be tempted to whine too.
vurt on 18/12/2023 at 20:08
It's absolutely fine to whine about how hard something is, just don't make it sound like the issue is with the customers or how they need to be "educated". That will not do you any favors.
Starker on 18/12/2023 at 21:27
Yeah, some of the game criticisms I've read over the decades are absolutely pig-ignorant, though. I think that some game critics would definitely benefit from some knowledge of how the process works. Or else best just not talk about stuff they don't know anything about (e.g. the developers' motivations) and focus on things like their experience with the game. Have to say I agree with Emil here in general terms.
