What (if anything) is wrong with the gaming industry?

[Kyriakos]

All gone. The gaming golden age was really the 16bit through to PS2.

At least for variety. Not counting indie type stuff plenty of variety there more towards the bigger type stuff.

I have a working boxed copy of Megalomania PAL Megadrive,) And sensible soccor and lemmings and.......

Fun fact: Sensible Software just used the same sprites for the unarmed humans in Megalomania, as football players in Sensible Soccer

From time to time I am thinking of making an indie game in the style of Megalomania, just set in the Byzantine era. Obviously to be called Byzantinomania

 

[Tristan_C]

Yeah there is political tension between the customers and the content creators. The customers run the full spectrum politically. The content creators do not. It could be an overblown issue though. The SJW messaging that gets inserted into modern games may be more isolated than the pitch of complaints about it. Still, its presence is a bit at-odds with all the talk in this thread about how modern games are pure money-grubbing.

TODD

HOWARD

Why do people hate him in particular? I stopped TES after Oblivion, had enough of football field sized "provinces." Even if Daggerfall's 65,000 square miles were procedurally generated, I thought it was more immersive.

Meh. The problem is capitalism. Everyone knows it but its lazy to just leave it there, so I'm going to make an attempt to describe part of the problem as I see it.

The situation as you described it seems more related to hard disk space than capitalism. Pong was written by one guy and did not have a lot of content. Whereas, modern games have gigs and gigs of divers assets. But what good would something measured in gigs have done anyone in 1972? The industry has not shaped an environment where only content-rich games (that is to say, high budgets) can survive; rather, the environment changed with the real world: peoples' hard disks and processors allowed games to get huge.

 

[Synobun]

What SJW messaging? That gay people exist? The horror! The pandemonium! The moral decay!

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Even if Daggerfall's 65,000 square miles were procedurally generated, I thought it was more immersive.

Yes, I find it very immersive to fall through a dungeon floor and get trapped in an endless void.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Why do people hate him in particular? I stopped TES after Oblivion.

answered your own question there, my friend

basically, if you want to see precisely what Todd Howard stands for in his design philosophy, all you have to do is play Fallout 76. it's all of his ideas, maxims, etc. taken to their logical conclusion.

his design approach from day one way essentially to "reduce complexity" and to make everything more fun, less frustrating (read: less challenging) and, if I had to just use one single word to describe it, it'd be

s t r e a m l i n e d

What SJW messaging? That gay people exist? The horror! The pandemonium! The moral decay!

if you're against steam having a rape simulator you're an SJW and hate free speech

 

[Gorbles]

oh, what is le wrong with the gaming community you ask?!

two words

TODD

HOWARD

Okay especially after your last post I'm not sure you meant your this post as the joke I took it as, but I took it as a very good and Extremely Online joke. If anyone needs evidence that I should probably take a walk outside occasionally (I do, however I regret to you inform you all this does not help), it's this post here of mine. Feel free to link me back to it periodically.

(Todd Howard gets a lot of poking at on social media, mostly non-serious stuff thank heavens. By serious I mean that feeling you get when X is trending and you wonder if they've died or turned out to be a massive disappointment. Howard, for all his games-related faults, ain't that so far)

 

[yung.carl.jung]

it was definitely meant as a joke. Todd Howard DID work on Morrowind and Oblivion, both of which are some of my favorite games ever. It's pretty stupid to blame a single person for everything wrong with Bethesda post 2010, that's just memeing. I do really think his general design philosophy sucks and he shouldn't be leading any game studio at all, though.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Todd Howard DID work on Morrowind and Oblivion, both of which are some of my favorite games ever.

The test cell in Morrowind is called ToddTest.

 

[Tristan_C]

What SJW messaging? That gay people exist? The horror! The pandemonium! The moral decay!

I was pretty tepid about it. There's no need to lay into me with this crap.

s t r e a m l i n e d

I definitely noticed the disappearance of the cruel learning curve after daggerfall and the walls of text after Morrowind. I just read up on Todd Howard, too, it seems like whatever criticism people have for the much-loved TES and Fallout franchises (and everyone who's played them has criticisms), it is popular, socially acceptable, and potentially semi-accurate to blame everything on Todd Howard.

Yes, I find it very immersive to fall through a dungeon floor and get trapped in an endless void.

iunno, the hand-crafted, s t r e a m l i n e d mini golf courses that are the later titles might be more your speed

 

[Synobun]

"Video games are only fun and worthwhile if they are equivalent to spending a late night in a 1980s university library, cramming for a major dissertation review." - Someone very smart, probably.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Haven't played Fallout 76 but I've played all the SP Fallouts and TES series and enjoyed them all.
Theres nothing wrong with making a game like Oblivion or Skyrim that's fun and easy to play and nothing wrong with making a spreadsheety RPG like Daggerfall.
They appeal to different people and/or moods but theres a place for both. The only problem is when you completely change the approach of a series like Fallout 3 did. That's inevitably going to upset fans of the earlier games. Its why I hated on Oblivion for a long time.

 

[Zardnaar]

The thing is, though : how come it just happens so systematically ? EA manages to ruins every single company it buys. I don't ev

Bioware is probably the only notable company they bought that didn't get completely destroyed in a couple of years, and even then it's still impressive how everything they made went immediately several steps below what they used to do.

What SJW messaging? That gay people exist? The horror! The pandemonium! The moral decay!

It's more like they shoe horn in stuff where it doesn't belong.

A game had a female commando in a WW2 game with a prosthetic arm.

Not to many female commandos in WW2 about 0 iirc.

Basically don't use historical backdrops for games and put in modern expectations unless it's sort of fantasy based or maybe somewhat plausible.

 

[Synobun]

It's more like they shoe horn in stuff where it doesn't belong.

A game had a female commando in a WW2 game with a prosthetic arm.

Not to many female commandos in WW2 about 0 iirc.

That was the most unrealistic part of the game for ya, huh?

 

[Zardnaar]

That was the most unrealistic part of the game for ya, huh?

IDK I didn't play it. It looked stupid though as I saw a clip of it.

It also depends on the genre, Assassin's Creed for example takes liberties with physics for example.

If you're using a historical back drop you should probably make the effort of replicating that eras values.

Wonder Women for example. You had exceptional women but there's also an element of fantasy in her movie. She has superpowers and is a demigod and it's a super hero movie. Doesn't break immersion it's fine.

A female commando is out if place in a WW2 setting. A female resistance leader or Soviet fighter pilot not so much.

There are stories of a female pope for example but once discovered she was in trouble. Having a female pope for example would be very silly if you're doing a historical setting. If it's fantasy it's fine.

 

[Tristan_C]

In most every game since Dungeons & Dragons, characters are able to run and operate at full efficiency despite having 1hp left. However, because there was no obvious political motive behind this design decision, it seldom annoys people.

 

[Zardnaar]

In most every game since Dungeons & Dragons, characters are able to run and operate at full efficiency despite having 1hp left. However, because there was no obvious political motive behind this design decision, it seldom annoys people.

It's also fantasy.

I play 5E and they've jumped through hoops to make it more diverse but they're not shoehorning stuff in where it doesn't belong.

For example there's poc using weapons, women being spellcasters and warriors etc. They've toned down the cheesecake type art as well. It's fine it's also fantasy. If a female archmage blows up a castle it's consistent with itself.

But they have added in lore that's a bit silly outside the core books. Elves can gender shift. Missed that part in older editions so I don't like it. I wouldn't have cared if a new gender shifting race was added.

They have also added gay NPCs which I have no problem with. Gay people exist so yeah sure. They did however have that character be married which did rub people the wrong way. I didn't care b(I voted for gay marriage I suppose) adventure is also one of the worst ones for other reasons (it's a disjointed mess).

There's also a trans women game designer. She designs good stuff so once again no problem.

So it depends on the situation.

 

[Commodore]

The thing is, though : how come it just happens so systematically ? EA manages to ruins every single company it buys. I don't even think they do it on purpose, but come on, it's just uncanny how they are the death knell of any acquisition.

Bioware is probably the only notable company they bought that didn't get completely destroyed in a couple of years, and even then it's still impressive how everything they made went immediately several steps below what they used to do.

Because going from working for a small studio that values creativity to working for a massive corporation that values profits is not something that is very appealing to the types of people that get into game development. So when EA comes along to buy up your studio and start running things their way instead of just letting you do your thing, you are going to bolt pretty quick. Either that or you will eventually get fired for clashing with your new corporate overlords.

Now you might then claim that it's still EA's fault for not letting the studios operate as they used to before being acquired. And that might be a valid point. However, smaller studios value more created be practices that might not exactly be the most profitable. For example, developing a new IP is much riskier financially than just developing a sequel to an already established and successful IP. The smaller studios tend towards the former practice, while big corporations like EA tend towards the latter. And it's not because EA is evil, it's because they are a publicly traded company that has shareholders to answer to and those shareholders want maximum profits and don't give a damn about creativity or the art behind video games. So it only makes sense that a company like EA gets rid of those who tend towards practices that don't maximize profits and replace them with people who do.

And despite what you may think about their practices, EA has mostly delivered those profits so there is really no reason for the shareholders to pressure them to change.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

iunno, the hand-crafted, s t r e a m l i n e d mini golf courses that are the later titles might be more your speed

Is that supposed to be an insult or

 

[Hygro]

They don't make the games I want.

 

[Gorbles]

IDK I didn't play it. It looked stupid though as I saw a clip of it.

It also depends on the genre, Assassin's Creed for example takes liberties with physics for example.

If you're using a historical back drop you should probably make the effort of replicating that eras values.

Wonder Women for example. You had exceptional women but there's also an element of fantasy in her movie. She has superpowers and is a demigod and it's a super hero movie. Doesn't break immersion it's fine.

A female commando is out if place in a WW2 setting. A female resistance leader or Soviet fighter pilot not so much.

There are stories of a female pope for example but once discovered she was in trouble. Having a female pope for example would be very silly if you're doing a historical setting. If it's fantasy it's fine.

If you really wanted to, you could find a lot more that's ahistorical about the aforementioned WWII game. The issue here is you're picking a very well-publicised (and by publicised I mean fodder for the YouTube outrage engine) example over anything else in the game. So you're noting it's ahistorical, and this doesn't match up for you.

The problem is that the sources in this case, in these clips that you see, is that they're manufactured to cause controversy over these specific (usually women and minority) characters. If you applied that level of historical accuracy to the rest of the game, you'd come up with tons of issues. Guns not jamming would be a nice big one there. People who then justify that based on how jamming might affect their enjoyment of gameplay then reveal their bias - that it's okay to make something ahistorical because it benefits a certain aspect of gameplay, but it's not okay to include women and / or minorities (which benefits gameplay for those demographics, and sometimes us white dudes as well!) because . . . I dunno. Discrimination? Selfishness?

It can only really be one or the other, you see. Either the person is happy with their bias, or they just selfishly prefer the game to specifically cater to them. I can't forsee any negative consequences to having women shoot a gun in Battlefield, right? It doesn't exactly cause me to bleed out of my ears or some other horrendously violent reaction.

tl;dr: popular shooter franchises are effectively fantasy because they don't adhere to any realistic form of combat or strategy. They're all about being the biggest badass and killing other big badasses. To impose the limitation of being historical on them but only for specific subjects, means you're not fairly applying that limitation on the whole game.