Yeah, it looks pretty bad from that list. It may not be quite as bad in practice - some of them may have their name attached because, for instance, they co-own a production company where only person is involved but all three co-owners get their names on the credits. And some of them may be involved on the technical side, some for the story side, some just for financing, etc.
But even so, that looks like far too many names to have any kind of coherent vision.
Huh, the games did phenomenally well in America. Weird. /s
We're in an age of knee-jerk finger pointing, with the problem getting worse the higher you get in society. It's just one giant game of blame hot-potato.
Here's the thing: The producers don't owe the fans shit. They don't owe the fans an explanation even. They owe the investors an explanation. The fans are just there, that's the reality of being a fan of something. We don't get a say, we just can choose to watch or not, and then decide to trash it or praise it online if we want to.
So while there's a problem going up the ladder of the blame game, there's another one coming back down the ladder, and it's entitlement. For some odd reason there's an air of "we deserve this content, exactly to our specifications" and it permeates games, movies, music, all of the entertainment content we have been inundated with as a society. And I think the culture generally leans towards encouraging it because it keeps the culture thriving. But it also keeps us in the exact status quo we're in as a society, beholden to these billionaire publishers we all rail on daily.
Because let's face it: We as a society spend an enormous amount of energy and as such, destroy a lot of the planet, on all this entertainment. If we can't accept that as a fact then we're fucking doomed.
Fans are very important. I think you may be on to something that we as a society are starting to feel entitled when it comes to media, but downplaying the importance of the fans and saying they don’t matter is a bit too much.
In recent memory I can think of a few examples where fans had a major effect on the entertainment content we received.
The response to the first Sonic trailer was abysmal and much of the internet called them out for Sonic’s design. The studio listened… the artist who designed Sonic’s look even went to Twitter to thank people for all of the feedback. Then they went back, redesigned his look throughout the film and we got a pretty solid film out of that.
The entirety of #ReleaseTheSnyderCut managed to convince WB to bring Snyder back and let him finish his vision.
I mean even in comics, the fans mattered. How many times have comics held contests or write-ins to vote on decisions for certain characters or directions to take the story. The big one that comes to mind is the death of Jason Todd. People hated his Robin and voted to kill him off. Eventually he was brought back as Red Hood, but none of this would have occurred without the fans.
Oh and who could possibly forget Morbius getting rereleased because Sony mistakenly thought people loved it since there was so much online discussion and memes regarding the movie. For better or worse, fans (consumers) did that.
There's a difference between choosing and listening to fans (critics) to improve and being made to feel obligated to do so. This society literally harasses people over being upset at fictional portrayals of cartoons. Sometimes harassed right out of their chosen career. Game devs know this very well.
Content creators have no obligations to the consumers of the content, period. No more than Picasso had an obligation to paint landscapes. He didn't care to so he didn't.
Content creators, publishers, etc: they're free to make schlock we don't like, and we're free to express our disdain for it, and I'm free to point out that the folks wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy. And cringey to boot. There's a line crossed when you start insisting and making personal commentary at all. A publisher's interests and the fan's interests are not always aligned. That's fine. You can deal with it, I promise. You bring up the snyder cut: Know who probably drove that whole push? The studio. Yeah, every one of those "fans" got played. This kind of shit is unacceptable. Period.
we're free to express our disdain for it, and I'm free to point out that the folks wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy complaining are indeed, wasting their energy. And cringey to boot.
Oh, so you're free to complain, but when others do it it's cringey? Got it.
Declaring "I shall not be purchasing [thing] because [reason]" in public is yes, very cringey. You just, don't buy the thing. That's all. No look-at-me-i'm-important declaration necessary.
My complaint isn't the same as that bullshit. Try again.
So... the supply side matters but the demand side does not? Pfft.
If you make a thing that has an established fan base, and the fans are not happy, you screwed up. This isn't a problem with fans, it's a you problem. So how do you NOT screw up? You listen to the fans. Ideally, you hire people who are fans themselves.
Let's analogize: say carrots are in high demand - people can't get enough of them. And you tell everyone you have a big shipment of carrots coming in. And you set up a store called "Jim-Bob's Carrot Emporium", and people are lined up around the block... but it turns out the only thing you sell are potatoes... yeah, people are going to be pissed, and they will be justified, because you sold them a lie.
How? Aren't they the ones in charge? American audiences have as much influence on the product they chose to deliver as Americans did for Dark. Great show by the way.
Finally! I haven't played an Assassin's Creed game for Years because they were too long, repetitive, and filled with boring timesinks. And I used to be a huge AC fanboy back in the day. Starting from 1, I played each release every year until Revelations + 3 burned me out. Took me years to recover enough to play AC 4 and Rogue. Never even touched Unity, barely tried Syndicate (and only because I got it for free), and all the new ultra-long ones starting with Origins I didn't even bother starting, except for Valhalla during a free play weekend on Steam. Valhalla annoyed me enough over that weekend that I just didn't bother buying.
I've been waiting for a "back to basics" game like Mirage for a while now, and the fact that it has callbacks to the gameplay and setting of AC 1 is a big plus for me. I'll wait for reviews, but it's the most interested I've been in an AC game for a long time.
During what I still consider the golden age of gaming, which is 1997-2004, most single player games were aiming for 30-35 hours. That has been my sweet spot ever since but it doesn't mean a game can't be satisfying with less than that.
I personally don't find anything shorter than 10 hours enough of an experience. 25-30 sounds very reasonable.
I have a simple solution to all of this. Just simply don’t read video game news articles. You’re welcome. But seriously, all of these “game journalism” sites are just AI garbage at this point. Just go on discord and talk to real people about games, or watch a digital foundry video. Like i have literally never heard of this “controversy” until reading this post. It’s just simply not on my radar. Idk why people even engage with this nonsense. I don’t watch influencers. I don’t have social media. I NEVER have to see this dogshit unless it comes up here on Lemmy lol.
Edit: downvoted for not wanting to pay attention to stupid controversy about video games? Weird…
I forgot that they were making this. I just checked the trailer, and it surprisingly doesn't look terrible. As far as video game adaptations go these days, this actually seems pretty true to the source material.
I imagine it'll be one of those movies that's terrible for general audiences, but will probably be well-received among its niche. As a huge fan of the first two Borderlands games, it looks solid and I actually want to watch this.
As far as video game adaptations go these days, this actually seems pretty true to the source material.
Uh… What? Look at the casting- Roland should be a straight-man (in comedy terms) but they’ve cast Kevin Hart to tell his typically unfunny cracks. And while I love Kate Blanchett she is not a good fit to play Lilith
Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about some of the casting as I'm kinda tired of seeing Kevin Hart and Jack Black in everything lately (I'm surprised I didn't see The Rock in the trailer somewhere, to be honest), but the overall feel of the trailer seems to match the energy that the games had. I'm not saying it's 1:1 accurate by any means, but the trailer definitely manages to feel like Borderlands. I imagine the writers for the movie didn't want anybody from the main group to feel like a "downer" character, so Roland's probably being reworked a bit.
I'm okay with it so far, at least. It's generally pretty hard to make the "strong, quiet type" very interesting, especially for a movie format where you have limited screen time that has to be shared among a lot of characters. You can make that sort of character interesting, like in No Country For Old Men, but you have to dedicate a lot of time to it, and that's not easily done with a story that has so many characters with their own stories to tell.
I dunno, I'm just remaining optimistic. I want to like this movie.
Twitch hasn’t been about community in a long time, ever since they removed the friends feature and started gatekeeping most communication behind handing over a phone number.
Never forget this, they can’t be both, they try so hard to pretend that they are but they’re a business first and foremost, not a place to find actual community, if they were they wouldn’t also have any adverts or ask you for money to have all the features real communities let you have for free.
I remember a few games which didn’t require such sacrifices from developers.
Some even commercial. Like NWN, with people making their own campaigns without, you know, any effort spent by the developers of the game itself.
Of course when the business model is milking players and making it problematic (either technically or by paradigm) to satisfy interest with community-made modifications, then all the load is on the devs or else the game becomes irrelevant. Well, guess whose fault that is.
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