I love Gooseman’s work, especially Tactical Intervention. Talk about “ahead of it’s time,” there isn’t a game today that can match the vehicle “optional” extraction maps in that game. Stupid fun community too.
Hmm… title is a little bit clickbaity—author seems to be mainly going after live service games, not necessarily every video game.
Also, novels and movies don't always end 😂 Not sure why they threw that into the title. Freaking Fast and Furious will surely outlast planet Earth at this point 😂 What about Star Wars? It'll never end.
I agree with the general sentiment though: I think players are flexible and will be inclined to give your new IP a shot, but capitalism is risk averse, and will obviously disagree.
Nah, Fast and Furious’ days are numbered. They already broke the glass on the storyboard card that says, “Go to space”, and the only one left to break is, “Time Machine”.
Oh, fair enough. But it’s still only going to have so much gas in the tank, and a cliff-hanger or sequel potential is very different than some continual expectation, either by consumers or the developers that the game can or should be updated forever.
Yes, but it's also devoid of creativity and takes up space that could be occupied by more creative endeavors, so it's a similar path at the end of the day.
My point is pointing a finger at Fortnite and Epic Games is fair, but same finger should also be pointed at Universal, Disney, NBC… etc.
And the biggest finger should be pointed at capitalism itself.
I enjoy the Fast & Furious movies. The advantage to them releasing one movie at a time, or in games, one game at a time, is you can more accurately gauge the appetite for the next one, and they don’t have ongoing costs to keep the last one going. The ten F&F movies out there now are not in danger of disappearing if F&F11 bombs. The people who worked on those movies don’t have an expectation for or reliance on employment any longer than the time it takes to make one movie. And outside of Fast X, despite being pulpy and constantly recontextualizing and retconning old events, they all have their own endings with closure. Fast X does have a cliffhanger, and that is a bet that they made with their audience that they’ll be back, but the most likely scenario is that the next one offers closure. In some ways, cliffhangers can be closure themselves, too; I think more highly of Arcane season 1’s ending as closure for the series than I do of season 2, for instance. Meanwhile, the most likely scenario for a live service game is that it doesn’t have an ending or even exist anymore, only a few years in the future.
And all that said, it also doesn’t mean that I don’t understand your perspective, but I do see eye to eye with the author.
Hmm… but isn't it an "ongoing series"? Like, you can have short or long arcs, but if the continuity is the same, the story technically hasn't ended.
I agree gaming takes it a step further, but this is like comparing a worse example to a bad one… yeah, one is worse, but they both suck at the end of the day.
I'm glad you like Fast and Furious, but it's only one example of many. It's not the only movie franchise being milked to death, and won't be the last.
It can be an ongoing series, but you can get a sense of closure each time. Star Wars had closure in 1983 and 2005 and 2019 as they kept adding on to it, each time seeming like it was done; and each spin-off had closure by the time credits rolled.
Hmm… I suppose I can just put this down to my disagreeing with the article's headline: I say a lot of movies and novels don't offer enough closure and are bad examples to follow—games can and should do better, IMO.
I'd rather get Project G.G. or Scalebound than the 15th Assassin's Creed game in as many years or even Bayonetta 3, TBH.
I only watched the first 2 movies back in the day. They were OK, but I never felt the need to watch them again (or the desire to watch the later ones).
They briefly got a Fierro into space so they could mess with a satellite. Somewhere around the fifth movie, they became very tongue in cheek action movies, with one character whose entire job is to break the fourth wall.
Video games do, which is why I buy so many story heavy games. If the industry moves more toward live service games, that’s fine, I’m just not going to buy them. There are plenty of non-live service games to choose from that I’m absolutely spoiled with choice to the extent that I’ll never play all the games I own, not to mention games I want to buy.
Yeah, live service games suck, so play games that don’t suck.
I deeply hate articles like this. They are just exploiting the hellish state of the industry to argue for why the games they don’t like shouldn’t exist.
First and foremost: Clearly the author (and anyone agreeing with the thesis) doesn’t read or watch movies. Publishers and schools basically constantly encourage leaving a hook for a sequel because it is a lot easier to get a follow up in the same universe published. And that has always been true. Same with movies where the vast majority of major studio films are remakes or franchises now. Hell… television is a thing.
But second? It fundamentally ignores what is ACTUALLY facing the video games industry. Making a successful live service game is the holy grail because it is job security… until it isn’t. But it isn’t like releasing a critically acclaimed single player game will protect you from layoffs because your parent company wanted to juice the Q2 numbers. And just listen to developers like Xalavier Nelson Jr about how hard it is to even get funding for a game these days.
Shit like this is disgusting. It is “I don’t like X. I am going to say that X shouldn’t exist because I totally care about the industry that I can’t even be bothered to pay attention to”
There are so many games being made nowadays that it’s not even hard to avoid the shitty “service” games. It’s just that the mainstream gamer/society doesn’t bother looking but there are plenty of games with closure.
Wanting closure is a preference and does not apply to all games. Counter Strike 2 doesn’t have a story and there is zero closure for example.
The industry trying to force games into a live service model when they shouldn’t be is a problem, sure. There are a few games where the model actually is a benefit though, like Helldivers 2. Other than wrapping up things somehow while winding down the game there isn’t an opportunity for closure while an endless war is going on. The setting itself is why closure isn’t on the table.
So I agree with the overall idea as it applies to games in general, but it isn’t some universal truth.
The closure the article speaks to is also just not turning the game into a perpetual expectation that more is coming. Multiplayer games have always been built around being “endless”, but there was never the expectation that this Halo would be the last Halo and just keep getting updates when you bought it 20 years ago. That expectation has led to sustainability problems we’ve all seen and that the article calls out.
Dokładnie. Chodzi o to, że chcą cofnąć i tak bardzo miękki zakaz, który miał być wprowadzany przez następnych 10 lat. Zupełnie bez związku, do agencji środowiskowej (EPA) dołączył między innymi człowiek, który dopiero co był lobbystą związku organizacji chemicznych walczących na rzecz azbestu na rynku. Inny zabawny fakt, to że to nawet nie jest amerykańska produkcja, tylko w większości import… z Rosji.
I’ve seen video essays about metroidvanias that talk about “getting lost”. The real point is to follow clues, feel immersed in a world, learn to find your way, and make interesting decisions.
In Hollow Knight, it’s no problem to use the compass if you find that aspect too burdensome. I really enjoyed my time with Axiom Verge, and I seem to recall it came with a compass as standard? Perhaps that’s wrong, it’s been a few years since I picked that one up.
More to the point, which metroidvanias did you like and what did they do differently?
Axiom Verge had a lot of hidden passages through walls and otherwise same-y environments that just made getting back to where I wanted to go a chore. I don’t remember a compass, but if it had one, it didn’t help.
With Hollow Knight and Symphony of the Night, the maps are so large and contiguous, and they give you so little information as to why you didn’t fully explore a corner of the map, that you end up either easily missing a thing that you needed in order to progress or you get there and say to yourself, “oh, that’s right, that’s why I was stuck”, wasting a lot of time traveling there to come to that realization. In most Metroid games, the map is broken up into chunks with lots of entrances and exits connecting to the other chunks, which can keep the map screen small and easier to read. Plus, if there’s an ability that the game wants to make sure you get before you leave, they make sure you’re trapped in there with no option except to find it and make sure you know how it works first.
EDIT: Some of my favorites in the genre would be Batman: Arkham Asylum, most of the Metroid series, Ori and the Blind Forest, and the roguelike A Robot Named Fight.
I’ve never heard of B: AA described as a metroidvania… How do you figure that one?
It is a metroidvania. It fits the definition exactly. You backtrack over a space as you get more and more upgrades to unlock parts of it that were gated. The sequels weren’t really that so much, because they were open world games that gave you access to the entire map, give or take a few interior areas.
A Robot Named Fight is a fairly obscure indie game, but if you wish you could get that experience of playing Super Metroid for the first time over and over again, this is as close as you’ll get.
Will of the Wisps fell through the cracks for me. It came out at a time after I had switched to Linux and before Proton was a thing. I ought to make time to get around to it someday.
I just got pop_os up and running to replace windows 11 on my alienware aurora. Still working on a sound issue in Helldivers 2 but overall has been a smooth transition.
Metroid and Castlevania are two of my favorite series, and I adore the genre. That being said… I just can’t seem to get into Hollow Knight no matter how much I want to. Maybe I’m not putting enough time into it but I just keep getting bored quickly every time I pick it up. I think it’s partly the environment, every room looks very same-y so far. I want to like it but I’m clearly missing something
nytimes.com
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