I wanna blame the writers more for this but honestly, I think a lot of Netflix writers know their audience is just on their phone. I have people in my life that just watch their phone, notice they missed something, then REWIND THE SCENE so I get to watch twice. It really is bad, it happens with people older and younger than me.
I love story based games, and the story is my favorite thing about a game, usually. Unfortunately, so many games try to tell you a story like a movie would or like a book would. They intersperse cutscenes between gameplay to tell you what you did or are doing. That’s… boring at best. Video games can tell stories in a unique way that other mediums can’t, because they’re interactive. DDLC is my favorite example, that game has a story that can only hit as hard as it does because you the player are an active participant in the story. Or Dark Souls, where the story exists for you to find, or not… everyone has a different understanding of what the story of that game is after their first playthrough, and the deeper you look the better your understanding is. Tell interesting stories in a way that uses the medium to the fullest and you’ll gain an audience. Recite a screenplay every 10 minutes between spurts of unrelated gameplay, and people won’t care about your story.
Freaking YES. Movies need to spoon-feed a bit and so does TV, but you have a whole medium that lets people be as confused or not and that’s a great thing. If a player doesn’t care, there are options to not dive deep, if they do they will. My first playthrough I was confused what the genophage was. I heard bits and pieces but was genuinely confused. You know what I did? I walked over to my crew mate who mentioned it and asked him! Why is that so hard, the unknowns al_are_ the suspense! It’s what keeps me playing.
Compare that to mass effect Andromeda where they introduce it by having two characters explain it at length in front of the player. This event that would be on par with WW2. So natural. “Hey friend, I was just thinking about WW2. You know, that war that involved the acid vs the allies fought between 1939 and 1945 in which we saw a fascist leader march across Europe?”. Jesus hell have some respect for your players, stop fucking spoon feeding us.
If you don’t understand an acronym the first time you see it, you should consider looking it up. I will save you the trouble though; I was referring to Doki Doki Literature Club, a popular indie game with a long title that is commonly abbreviated.
I’m sorry but I disagree. You’ve decided to use an acronym that most people wouldn’t know, so I’d like to think it’s basic politeness to write it entirely the first time to avoid any doubt.
Yeah I’m aware of the game, but there was no fucking way I’m going to get that. It’s just common courtesy to spell an acronym out in parentheses the first time you use it. Pay attention next time you read an article on a news site that includes acronyms.
Fair enough, I assumed the game was well known enough to not need that. I still stand by what I said though, If you don’t understand an acronym, you can Google it and save some time instead of passive aggressively chastising someone on the Internet
I didn’t think I was being passive aggressive, but I guess I was kind of annoyed so maybe it came through in the comment.
The thing about googling acronyms is that sometimes there are more than one. And yeah, I probably could have used context to figure out which one you meant, but I’m… just not going to do all that lol
I apologize, I’ve been responding more emotionally than I meant to. I read the initial response as rude, and that set me off a bit. Your feedback was good, I just got hung up on what I perceived as the tone.
“What you need to know about your audience here is that they will watch the show, perhaps on their mobile phone, or on a second or third screen while doing something else and talking to their friends, so you need to both show and tell, you need to say much more than you would normally say.”
This is so baffling to me. So you’ve discovered your audience has a limited attention span. I can see that. But for the love of all that is holy, if you know this, why even make a game with a story in the first place? The thing with videogames is that stories can be minimalistic as all hell, or even optional. Just let the gameplay speak for itself and have the story be “defeat the bad guy on the mountain” or something.
As a fan of story-driven games, I absolutely am NOT advocating for complete removal of stories in videogames. What I was trying to say is that if Bioware knows that their audience has an attention deficit and is developing the game around this fact, you’re going to get a crap story. And judging by the reviews for Veilguard, that seems to be the case.
If Bioware is dead set on developing games for a crowd that watches twenty-seven thing simultaneously, why develop the story at all?
I go back and forth on this a lot. I’ve been gaming since the Atari 2600 and I agree this happens in games, but personally disagree that Veilguard was a clear example. I really enjoyed that title and platnum’ed it. I think it’s more likely, that just like music, movies and tv, expensive studios tend to use the most profit / least risk model. So if a game is appealing for age 1 to age 80 it gives them the least risk and the widest demographic. To further minimize that risk, every game has to have the same stupid Hollywood pitch lines of “Oh this game is <insert popular title here as X> but with a different Y and a new Z” in order to get traction from investors. Boring and dull are side effects of it. The fact it started to spread in the RPG genre is just another level of degradation.
Maybe make dialogue between “Find the dwemer puzzle box, it’s… uhhh… somewhere” and “GO [fast travel] TO PLACE X, KILL Y IN ROOM NUMBER 6 AND DONT FORGET TO COME BACK WITH THE EVIL SWORD OF DARKNESS [automatically picked up by your character] [a yellow marker appears on your minimap and field of view, with a magic trail leading you to the quest location]”
I agree with the article. Why cater games towards a crowd that doesnt want the game. Just stop it. Fuck EA and fuck companies like Activision/blizzard for dumbing down RPGs so Normie’s might like them. You’re ruining the experience for people who want to an RPG and making it “tolerable” for people who dont. The end result will always be a mixed bag, a mixed bag of shit.
Just let them play call of duty or FIFA and let the people who enjoy RPGs play RPGs with good story and RPG elements. You’re not doing anyone a favor by making an unenjoyable mediocre bag of shit.
I mean, good creators don’t? There are still AA and indie devs pouring their heart into stories they want to tell?
This article is basically just bemoaning that AAA develops for the lowest common denominator, which I can understand as a gripe, but it’s a very old gripe. If you start really digging into AAA, you’ll get other similar ones like “Why are these gameplay loops made for people who don’t like gameplay” or “How come perfectly serviceable story focused games get mandatory crafting systems added onto them.” When you’re trying to make something to broadly appeal to as many people as possible, you stop making art, so I don’t know why people keep expecting AAA to produce artistic experiences.
I agree, AAA games are long dead. However there was a time where AAA games were amazing, maybe around the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox era. Back when devs were allowed creative freetom to make the games they actually wanted and try new things. I think a lot of people with these complaints miss that level of catered quality from back then
the industry has also be caught in the grips of budget gigantism by an influx of investor cash for the past decade.
Outside investors saw dollar signs with the rapid growth of the market, and also huge financial successes like fortnight. So they were willing to put up a lot of funding in hopes of outsized returns. Pressure from investors and management meant appealing to the largest audience possible, and also chasing the latest trends. Despite the huge budgets, the games were unfocused and bad, both from trying to appeal to too many audiences, and constantly changing direction during development to chase trends.
This article is basically just bemoaning that AAA develops for the lowest common denominator, which I can understand as a gripe, but it’s a very old gripe.
And an easy one to fix: Don’t fucking buy AAA games!
Hear hear! This is such a plague on games and media right now. I don’t blame developers that much, because lack of friction is super commonly taught in game design courses, and it’s not always bad. It can be done waaaay too much though.
there probably shouldn’t be a lot of friction for things the player isn’t supposed to be focused on, like say the interface should be unobtrusive and easy to navigate, a player probably shouldn’t have to use moon logic to figure out how to open a door. Things that aren’t the focus shouldn’t require the player’s focus.
but a story driven game should have the player focusing on the story, not actively encouraging them to ignore it!
Players who don’t care about the story would probably be better served by a different game altogether.
Yep, exactly. That’s the good use of lack of friction. The philosophy I have is just that it shouldn’t be seen as always good no matter what. It changes the experience to remove friction, so any decision to do so should be thoughtfully done with the experience in mind.
It comes from a good place. Make things have more quality of life. Makes things feel smooth and responsive. Don’t make things obtuse and confusing.
The problem is that while some friction kind of sucks (I don’t think many would want clunky movement or controls), lots of experiences get thrown out with the bathwater when this goes too far.
My philosophy is that friction needs to be seen as a tool. It does something to the experience, and it needs to be considered whether removing it will improve the experience, and if so, what is being lost in the process?
I feel like stories have never been my go to. I always find myself playing games with excellent gameplay, rather than story (Mindustry, Balatro, Galaga, etc). I love a good story don’t get me wrong, but gameplay is my main attraction to games, and I feel thats where games started. If you look at retro games like Dig Dug or Adventure, or even modern indie titles like Balatro the attraction is basically 90% gameplay
I think that’s kind of the kicker, a lot of studios and franchises got big based on the quality of their story telling, but did poorly with audiences that were just there for the gameplay. The gameplay in these games is there to serve the story, to support it and facilitate it, not to shine by it’s own merits. But if you’re just there for the gameplay and don’t care about the story, then the gameplay will be boring.
So they’ve sanded down the story to make it easier for people who don’t care about it to follow what’s going on, and thus make the gameplay work for them…
But now you have a story built to serve gameplay, and gameplay built to serve the story. Nether is good on its own merits, so no one really likes it.
To me it feels like there is a fundamental dissonance in the video game industry. Where major publishers and studios can’t seem to internalize that there are two things that people might come to a game for; Video games as experiences, narratives, things to be explored; and video games as … well games, a set of mechanics to be interacted with, to be challenged by. This isn’t to say a game can’t be good at both, but many games are weighted one way or another.
Factorio is a truly absorbing gameplay experience, but it doesn’t really have a story beyond what is needed to frame and flavor the gameplay.
“Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines” is a classic of atmosphere, character interaction and role play, but just about everyone who played it will tell you the combat is serviceable at best, and there is one level in particular that most people just remove with a mod because it’s just combat, with no dialog or interactions with other characters.
So many major studios and publishers seem to routinely focus on the wrong elements of previously successful games. Taking the wrong lessons and misunderstanding what made previous title’s a huge success.
People are not coming to your story based RPG to play it mindlessly while listening to a podcast or audio book. If people are doing that, then clearly they’re not coming to it for the story, and the solution to that issue is to write a better story or refocus around what ever they are coming for.
This concept of a second screen show is so unbelievably fucking moronic… It’s your own damn fault if you’re not paying attention!
I have a second monitor that I play things on, and it’s either a stream of someone playing something similar or the same game, or it’s a show I’ve already watched and know the story of.
If I’m watching something new, then I’m watching it. To have stories dumbed down, or just butchered to suit tictok brainrotted people completely devoid of attention spans is so freaking depressing and only exacerbates the issue. But in the end I guess I get it, you’re out for a profit and it hurts to have a plethora of idiots rate you poorly because they weren’t paying attention and didn’t understand the story… Ughh…
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Aktywne