I really don’t want to use this comment to shame people for getting their start in game design.
But it’s really weird to me to see a semi-major internet publication like this highlight comments from a guy with a youtube channel that has 508 subscribers and who has only been a professional game designer for 2 years as head of an indie studio, according to his LinkedIn. Sure, anybody can teach game design and even teach it well. You don’t have to be the next John Carmack to do it properly, but it’s weird that this guy was highlighted for an article in this way.
Also his first game with the indie studio is some sort of indie MMORPG that’s a parody of RuneScape.
Not gonna lie, this was exactly the first thing I looked up, though I changed my mind in posting because it seemed to be a bad faith article in general. But yes, if you’re going to have a person stand by their professionalism and experience, especially when making such harsh criticism over a highly rated game while demanding more media literacy, I think have someone that actual has relevant professional experience would make it far less eye-rolling to read.
Outlets these days are more than happy to signal boost random controversial statements for clicks. Every time I see something that says “receiving hundreds of likes on Twitter”… that’s nothing. That’s practically nothing.
Take it from Cory Rodis, a professional game developer, designer, and educator with over a decade of experience in the field.
Clearly from Linkedin and Moby Games, this person does not have over a decade of experience in the field. If you count teaching as “in the field” (which to me, in the field means not teaching but actually doing.) then they have 6 years of experience. Not counting that, they have 2 years.
Also, and maybe I am out of the loop but this doesn’t seem to be a semi-major internet publication to me. This is my first time hearing of it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Abrams#The_Mary_Sue this is the only information I really found on it’s popularity and it seems kind of weak. Am I missing something, is it a really popular site for something like anime or comics?
I see the site posted a lot so I assumed it’s semi-major but I dunno it’s just an internet news site.
Anyway I agree the “in the field” part is weird. Also the fact that the author knew the “expert” that was cited and the info came from a discord post makes it seem like a bit of a puff piece.
Yeah, that was the first red flag for me too. Even if it’s true, that would mean his experience in game dev is not that much longer than the time it took to make BG3.
But even if we assume years in the industry is not a useful metric, the article makes a bunch of other assumptions. Like saying the player is “punished” by the existence of so many dead end dialogue options. I don’t consider it a punishment to not see every single dialogue option a game has. I intend to make the choices in the game that I think are my best option, and if that means I miss out on some content, so be it, that’s the experience I got.
But to flat out call the game “not good” us laughable. Particularly from someone so green in the industry.
Its a great game, if it was released in 2013. Now its just average. They have doubled and tripled down on the formula, chucked a coat of paint on the engine and called it a day. Whats astonishing is that they spent so long doing it. I've done the MSQ, one faction questline and half of another and I'd say thats at least 1/3, probably closer to 1/2 of the curated storyline content of the game. All of it was ok I guess, but nothing in it jumped out as particularly well written, let along consequential and meaningful. I'm struggling to see how it ate so many dev hours.
I think these days we have a much more mature gamer audience, and Starfield seems squarely targeted at teens. There just isn't the depth of more modern game storytelling. Some I blame on the engine (well alot tbh) but some is squarely on Bethesda for playing it so safe. Does not bode well for ESVI.
I’m struggling to see how it ate so many dev hours.
Lots of stuff got added: space combat, ship building, the new research system, the rank challenges stuff, new lockpicking, and I bet loads of stuff besides that I forgot. Adding all of that stuff to a new game from scratch would take a good chunk of time, but I can imagine patching it all in to an ancient game engine that’s probably barely hanging together honestly it’s surprising they got some of it working at all
an ancient game engine that’s probably barely hanging together
I think Bethesda is a company full of people at the terminus of their careers - they don't know how to make any other kind of game than "Bethesda RPG," they don't know how to use any other game engine, and they are unable to learn either of those skills. Many other game studios have learned to evolve and shift their resources and assets - Naughty Dog doesn't still use the Jak and Daxter engine, From Software went from making mecha games like Armored Core to defining an entire genre with Dark Souls. It seems like Bethesda doesn't have the capacity to change like other companies.
That’s actually a bad comparison. Elden Ring and AC6 use the same engine, which is at least a heavily modified Demon Souls engine. FromSoftware is much closer to Bethesda in how they reuse tech than you realize
I was referring to the Armored Core games that From developed starting with the original PlayStation in 1997. But to your point, it speaks to their flexibility in using the same engine to make games of two fairly different genres.
This is an interesting piece. It reminds me of the quote “The reason reality is often stranger than fiction is that fiction has to make sense or it wouldn’t be considered realistic.”
The designer’s concern that the game doesn’t consistently give you all the information to inform consistent expectations from the game world is more of a stylistic decision than an objective flaw I think. One of the core appeals of dnd is that it’s impossible to always know what to expect even down to random dice rolls. The game part is very important in dnd, but the roleplaying and emergent narrative are also very important.
If the player is taking it seriously and not save scumming, they are probably not going to have a perfect run and that’s by design. What they will have is a relatively unique game experience with its own mix of successes, failures, and discoveries. If they want to be a murderhobo or munchkin they can and since it’s one-player no one is going to mind. The game can flex into a tactical rpg or a relatively pure story experience as dnd can, but is not going to be the same experience as a chess game or a novel.
I honestly don’t know which is stupider, console wars or iPhone vs Android. Like. Use whatever you like to get your dopamine rush.
I especially can’t wrap my brain around being so loyal to your console that you’d try to get someone fired for playing a game on the other console. If you are at that point, you need to go outside for serious. Go for a nice hike in the woods or something.
In this case I can understand some frustration if you have a PlayStation and can’t play Starfield but would like to. But not to this degree. Just, like… post your disdain for the exclusivity online.
On Steam I have 150+ hours and in my achievements I see that only 0.7% of players have touched 100 planets.
So I don’t think that people are being honest and/or don’t really understand how big the game is.
This game is huge. I spent apx 40 hours just surveying systems. And I can for sure say that the prog gen is very well done. Very well especially when comparing to other space games and when specifically talking about POI integration. Every POI looks like it was built there, with minor glitches and imperfections people with less hours would not even notice. The POIs feel balanced especially when the environment is taken into account.
At 100 planets you really begin to understand the breadth of it. The planets I have been on have anywhere from 3-10+ POIs and you can “push” the invisible wall to prog gen more POIs which I understand breaks some immersion but I am fine with it. Some moons are devoid of anything, some have life, some have POIs, and some don’t. The planets typically have at least 3-5 resources and 3-5 flora and fauna. 6+ is common enough as well. While patterns may emerge between systems, it still feels pretty random and balanced.
And again, this game is massive. I haven’t even seen nearly all of the systems which I imagine will hold some easter eggs.
Lastly, this game is meant to be played slow. It’s an explorer game. You can’t rush or speed run this one. Sure some of the stories suck, yet plenty are good. Just like real life.
I can’t wait to see if someone does an “all systems surveyed” video. Because even if you have your surveyed maxxed you have to scan at the surface too. Unless it’s a gas/ice giant.
I have about 120 hours and I also haven’t touched 100 planets. I don’t see the point in it, when they are mostly empty with randomly generated content that by now I’ve seen every possible thing that can exist, I’d just be seeing more of the same; exploring the same handful of possible base configurations across hundreds of planets isn’t really exploring. None of that stuff is interesting, and the stories and dialogue aren’t very interesting either. It’s exactly what I expected, and I guess I just don’t want that anymore. I want them to actually improve the formula and gameplay, and stop making the same exact game with a different coat of paint.
My experience is kinda the exact opposite, I hate how repetitive the planets are and stopped exploring them besides setting up resource collectors.
What I love about the game is the questing and ship building aspects, there is so much depth to what you can do with your ship that it’s kind of ridiculous that it’s such a small part of the game otherwise.
Hmm… I think we’re dogging on the author a bit much here. Don’t get me wrong, they’re clearly swimming in philosophical water that’s a bit too deep for themselves, but sometimes you’ve gotta be clumsy in order to explore topics at the edge of theory.
Let’s dial things up a notch and bring Undertale (the Dark Souls of – nevermind) into the discussion. What does it have to say about branching pathways, tonal consistency, and savescum? It says: I was made for you, please enjoy me.
The game adapts to the audience – you, that is. You are weird and hard to please, so the game needs to be flexible without feeling compromised. If you want to leave hidden depths unexplored, the game abides. If you want to vivisect every last detail, the game changes to fit your desire.
It’s alchemy, of course; both magical and unobtainable, so the author isn’t strictly wrong to accuse Baldur’s Gate of falling short. It’s true: sometimes a gap in the curtains opens up and the illusion is spoilt. With that being said, I think what’s missing is the logical conclusion to the criticism: universality – despite being unobtainable – is still worth striving for. To be universal is to distill humanity itself, as great and terrible and impossible as that may be (and here you thought I was joking with that Dark Souls jab!).
I feel that the problem right now is that Starfield can be both considered a Game of the Year contender as well as an absolute waste of money and time for different people, and they can both be completely correct based on their personal preferences.
Personally, I’ve already played all the Starfield (~45h) I’m likely to play for a long while. It turns out that the majority of the gameplay - random exploration, radiant questing, etc - are things that absolutely bore me, and the crafting/construction/research systems are far too rudimentary, pointless / siloed from the rest of the game, and clunky to keep me particularly interested either. So for me it’s a very mid game, something I’d at best recommend picking up at a significantly discounted sale a few years from now - when there’s enough mods to actually make it interesting.
On the other hand, some people I’ve spoken to turn out to absolutely love the radiant questing and proc-gen worlds, a few of them now having more than twice as much time as me in the game - and still loving every second they can spend in it.
I read this as someone being real mad that the game is chaotic, and it’s like, that’s the best part about the game to me? There’s no ACTUAL DM, so the next best thing is what in my mind I’m calling the “death loop” system, just being able to go back and load a different save. At a game table the DM would, within reason, find a way to work with PCs being ridiculous; since it’s not possible to truly replicate that, the game just embeds chaos in the decision trees instead. That’s literally what makes it so fun. Most of the time the game is telegraphing what the real dumbass choices are, but I like how it’s not always immediately obvious. It keeps me on my toes. And sometimes I just save before choosing the stupidest option simply because I want to watch that shit play out.
I just feel like they’ve fundamentally misunderstood the point here.
Some people truly have nothing going on in their lives. I’d feel bad for them if they weren’t destructive. Alanah is awesome. The line about them being jealous of her successes is accurate here.
themarysue.com
Aktywne