Because the gaming industry has a long and disgusting history of abusing human beings to the point of actual physical and emotional harm just to shove a half-assed product out the door.
Your video game hot take(s) thread
- Thread starter Dany_the_penguin
- Start date
My dude, this is a terrible take for so many reasons lol.
The short answer is that with video games we're dealing with two things:
1- So many shit games. And shit in a way where it's full of bugs and half-baked ideas. And when we see games like No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk that actually do get better with time and work, it is logical to conclude that more time spent would have made a better initial release.
(While it is a logical conclusion, it's not a correct one, but that is another topic entirely. We're talking about public reaction here.)
2- Crunch. It has finally gotten the attention about it being unfair and cruel and dangerous, and part of the concern for devs is genuine human compassion and we should be celebrating that not criticizing it.
One way your premise is wrong though is that it seems to imply that this attitude is universal. It is not- sure it's coming from some games media and I wager part of that is guilt for having participated in crunch culture but also just it's good business to not be seen on the wrong side of socially conscious issues. And that is actually a good thing- we should be nice to each other not mean!
Now for the other industries:
Wait staff: if you think that understanding and compassion are universal for wait staff, the service and food industries, I'm sorry but I don't know what world you're living in. Yes, many are understanding, but many are not. I mean... remember what was exposed during Covid? Did you really not know anyone who was dealing with the public, before during or since? People are fucking terrible and will pour all their rage into wait staff.
Books: Usually written by one person, maybe two, and an editor or two, that's it. There is no analog of "crunch." And honestly the only author I can think that is commonly made fun of for not finishing his series is George RR Martin and honestly I don't see anything wrong with that lol
Movies: When bad movies come out they are criticized and mocked relentlessly, so I don't really understand your point here. Development hell is not something I've ever seen sympathy, it is regularly cited as the fault of executive, producers, and egotistical directors and occasionally high-profile celebrity actors, and our schizophrenic attitude towards them is a whole 'nother topic.
But still this is a hot take thread so I appreciate you.
The following opinion is gut reaction to my experience of first attempting to play an indy low-tech game called Eastward, then getting bored quickly, then later watching videos about the upcoming Armored Core 6:
In this the year of our lord 2023, I want:
- Dialogue presented with fully voiced actors, and
- Real time action for combat, not turn-based
Because technology has been here long enough where this should be expected.
Now... I am all for indy. If you got a couple dudes making a game they love out of their basement or whatever, yes of course do whatever to get a game out. And there is retro/nostalgia market for that and whatever.
But a big studio, with lots of money and hundreds of staff, and I gotta read scrolling text, or wait politely after I select menus and watch cartoon characters do cool shit while I watch? Why are we still doing this?
And I'm not picking on Eastward, it's a small indy I think, so fine, but I'm thinking of the recent Zelda games and the Street Fighter 6 world tour and these are huge games with pre-determined non-procedurally generated scripted dialogue, hire some freaking voice actors, are you kidding me?
Final Fantasy 16 is coming out and for the first time in like 20 years I'm interested in one. Why? Because the game's director (or whatever is the title of the dude in charge) has been very open about how they had to make a decision about whether to stick with their traditional turn-based combat or switch to action based. And that they went with the latter because it's more modern, appeals to a wider audience, even at the risk of alienating legacy fans.
And I'm sorry to any legacy fans who are disappointed, but he's damn right. I guess I am so the target audience for this decision: a western gamer who can't be bothered with boring turn-based combat. Let my button press swing the sword, that is video games in the 21st century ffs!
If the dialogue is fully voiced, it's a will-buy for me (and I don't care what language it's in, I do watch foreign films, I'm totally fine with Japanese spoken and English subtitles; after all Sekiro is an all-time favorite and that is the only way to play it IMO).
In conclusion: big expensive game with story? Talk it. Combat? Lemme fight it.
Indy? Like, really indy, solo or very small team? Sure, do whatever, cause that's all you can.
Turn-based and text dialogue are, to me, resource consolations, rather than artistic decisions I respect.
And yes I do generally fell that way about black and white movies or using ancient recording equipment for music- I love old movies and music, I watch B&W movies and listen to jazz from the 1920s and rock from the 1960s all the time, but I know that technology has improved and it's not cool to go "retro" and use old shit for new shit, you know?
In this the year of our lord 2023, I want:
- Dialogue presented with fully voiced actors, and
- Real time action for combat, not turn-based
Because technology has been here long enough where this should be expected.
Now... I am all for indy. If you got a couple dudes making a game they love out of their basement or whatever, yes of course do whatever to get a game out. And there is retro/nostalgia market for that and whatever.
But a big studio, with lots of money and hundreds of staff, and I gotta read scrolling text, or wait politely after I select menus and watch cartoon characters do cool shit while I watch? Why are we still doing this?
And I'm not picking on Eastward, it's a small indy I think, so fine, but I'm thinking of the recent Zelda games and the Street Fighter 6 world tour and these are huge games with pre-determined non-procedurally generated scripted dialogue, hire some freaking voice actors, are you kidding me?
Final Fantasy 16 is coming out and for the first time in like 20 years I'm interested in one. Why? Because the game's director (or whatever is the title of the dude in charge) has been very open about how they had to make a decision about whether to stick with their traditional turn-based combat or switch to action based. And that they went with the latter because it's more modern, appeals to a wider audience, even at the risk of alienating legacy fans.
And I'm sorry to any legacy fans who are disappointed, but he's damn right. I guess I am so the target audience for this decision: a western gamer who can't be bothered with boring turn-based combat. Let my button press swing the sword, that is video games in the 21st century ffs!
If the dialogue is fully voiced, it's a will-buy for me (and I don't care what language it's in, I do watch foreign films, I'm totally fine with Japanese spoken and English subtitles; after all Sekiro is an all-time favorite and that is the only way to play it IMO).
In conclusion: big expensive game with story? Talk it. Combat? Lemme fight it.
Indy? Like, really indy, solo or very small team? Sure, do whatever, cause that's all you can.
Turn-based and text dialogue are, to me, resource consolations, rather than artistic decisions I respect.
And yes I do generally fell that way about black and white movies or using ancient recording equipment for music- I love old movies and music, I watch B&W movies and listen to jazz from the 1920s and rock from the 1960s all the time, but I know that technology has improved and it's not cool to go "retro" and use old shit for new shit, you know?
On average, the quality level of videogames across the board is better than ever before; especially when considering the exponential increase in development complexities over the past couple decades or so. Sorry Hollywood, but making games is more magical than movies. Gamers are just more vocal about any problems because too many are spoiled brats and the internet enables the worst of human discourse.*
*Not so hot take caveat: there are exceptions; especially with a few AAA titles recently where complaining as loudly as possible is completely warranted, but it’s almost always towards the soulless suits/upper management in charge and their shareholder masters.
*Not so hot take caveat: there are exceptions; especially with a few AAA titles recently where complaining as loudly as possible is completely warranted, but it’s almost always towards the soulless suits/upper management in charge and their shareholder masters.
I think there's just more moving parts that can go wrong with a game rather than a movie. I can't remember the video, but someone talked about this sort of thing, how "so bad it's good" games are much rarer because, unlike movies where all the movie asks of you is to have it play and you can give it any amount of attention you want, a game requires you to give it most of your attention and the kinds of things that can go wrong with a game can be much more debilitating than a movie.
That's really not much of a hot take, unless you're one of the really super hardcore old-school FF nuts. Most people don't have a problem with the change up, Most FFVII fans didn't with VII_Remake. There were a few, but they are in the very small minority, and a majority of them got over it any way, or moved on to something else to whine about.
RE4R spoiled RE8 for me, so I am more than likely never picking the latter up at all.
Imperfect analogies aside I want to clarify the following: I was thinking, though I didn't specify it in my post, of indie development. Crowdfunded shit with 8 to 10 years in the oven and nothing to show for it but a logo and maybe one announcement or two per year, maybe even a long-forgotten demo that made it look like they were nearly done. Hex Heroes. Paradox Soul. Paradise Lost: First Contact. Silksong, which is "only" 4 years in development but so far has made zero announcements and just missed their one release window (without explaining why or offering another). There's some serious sunk cost fallacy going on with the people who treat every delay, every mismanagement, every failure to communicate and deliver as some token of just how much more awesome the game will result for it. We're at the point with Silksong where the news that there's nothing to report is received with acclaim because people are so starved for communication.
Please don't harass the devs for it, but also please don't mistake criticism for harassment.
The Silksong whining has certainly gotten out of hand for sure. Granted it's easy for me to say that because I don't care about it (I just couldn't deal with Hollow Knight). But it's hype is so big now it's either going to be Elden Tears of the Ring big to forced-joy universal praise or be a massive disappointment, even if it's a good but not great game.
So on the one hand I wanna say, hey, it's just enthusiasm. People love Hollow Knight!
But also aren't we trained as consumers to ceaselessly demand more. "When's the next one coming out?" Remakes and sequels and prequels, in every medium but even worse with video games when sports franchises release another one of the same thing every year and franchises just... don't... f'n... die... ever.
This is why I never got on the Kickstarter hype train. I've seen so many projects go no where, get canceled, or turned out just to be a get rich quick scheme and will quickly abandon the game as soon as they got the consumer's money and ran away. I know not every case is or was like this, but there's a reason why I never gave out money to Kickstarter projects or Patreon. I remember back around 2012 or 2013 there were these people trying to bring back Bad Dudes, and the guys cancel it, because there wasn't enough funding.
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Aha, I remembered where that comment about "so bad it's good" games came from. MandaloreGaming's video on 'Limbo of the Lost'. The game itself while being "so bad it's good" also showed why that's rare and why those kinds of games can be frustrating with a few of it's really obtuse puzzle solutions and pixel hunting parts.
I'll add to this conversation: I never care too much about games that are so bad it's good. From a story, characters, or cutscene perspective, usually I didn't mind, but if it's from a gameplay perspective, all bets are off. If the game play is that poor, asinine, or not fun, then it's not worth seeing the ridiculous of the story. I'm a bit more lenient to a certain old school arcade games, but even that has its limits.
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I think the only game I know of with gameplay that's so bad it's good is Sonic 2006. Apparently, although the bugs are numerous and ridiculous, they're very consistent in how they break the game, so if you understand how they work then you can do stupid stuff and fun stuff, particularly for speedrunning.
I for the life of me, have never touched Sonic 2006 and never will. That game was such a huge disappointment. It was when I started losing faith in Sega. It was also the first Sonic game I chose not to buy. But that's the crap I'm talking about right there. Something like that wouldn't even qualify as so bad as good for me. I hated that game so much.
Well, for me anyway, Silksong was the *other* game I was looking forward to this year (after RE4). And now I don't even have that. There's a glut of media out there but I think most of us only look forward to 2 or 3 of each every year. Not that some indie couldn't shadow drop and catch my attention further down the year, but RE4 and Silksong - a remake and a sequel - were all I had marked down in my calendar.
I'm not even that diehard of a Hollow Knight fan. I only played the game a couple of years ago on PS+, and haven't really followed the development of sequel until last year when Sony (my main platform) confirmed console ports. It just happened to be the last game I was looking forward to this year, and we're not even halfway through.
I suggest you start looking for something else or go to your back catalogue.
Or go off their meds and start making schizophrenic rants about the sun attacking their psyche or something and preventing them from working on sending the game to their backers. Saw that one happen once.
I think it would be more common if you broaden the range to watching a Let's Play of a bad game. Example: Lifeline was a game developed by Sony for the PS2 designed to be controlled by voice command with the Playstation USB Headset. Obviously this is a terrible idea and combined with the shaky voice recognition technology of the time and some other questionable design decisions makes for a very frustrating gameplay experience. However, as a Let's Play it's fantastic and the game couldn't misinterpret commands with better comedic timing if it tried.
I wouldn't count out Silksong coming out this year. We're not even halfway through it, and the reason they announced the delay was the previous projection that it was targeted for May, so it was more an acknowledgement that they were aware of the expectation, not really much of an announcement per se.
Which brings me back to the topic of why a dev like this is "excused" more than the bigger companies- isn't kind of the dream for many wage slaves (including myself) to not be bogged down my arbitrary deadlines? To just work competently and with some creatively to make something good and be done when it's done? Not "Q2 projections" or "the holiday shopping season."
Realistically, that's as much fantasy as anything because people generally DO need deadlines. But video games allow for fantasy and the romanticism of artists being creative, with the reality being very much in the middle.
The makers of Hollow Knight and Silksong are making the game they want for the players they want, and it's pretty cool to imagine them having integrity and working on something awesome for their fans. And it's a lot easier to imagine this for an indy dev than some Big Evil Corporation.