The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe Review
xeiaso.net
xeiaso.net
I haven’t played most of these games but I have played a lot of Celeste and I don’t really see how it challenges what games can be or experiments with radically different kinds of art. Don’t get me wrong, it is an absolutely amazing game and one of the best platformers of all time with a sweet, well written story but at the end of the day it’s a 2D platformer. Yes the controls and art are much better than most but there is nothing in the gameplay fundamentally different than what the original Super Mario Bros had on the NES.
I’m also not really a fan of the snobbish tone of the article. Horizon Zero Dawn is certainly not revolutionary in terms of game design but nobody claimed it was. Genres exist for a reason and just because a game (or TV show, or movie, etc) conforms to the expectations of the genre doesn’t make it bad. Also as a side note, I really resent them calling Aloy a “waifu” since Horizon is one of the few games with a female protagonist that is both undeniably a woman while also not being made as a sex object. Metroid is famous for being one of the first games with a female protagonist but for the entire game Samus might as well be a guy, non-binary, or a robot since all you see is her armor. You only find out she is a woman after beating the game and discovering that based on how much of the game you completed the more clothes you can strip off of her until she is left just wearing her underwear. Tomb Raider on the other hand had an obviously female protagonist but one that was intended as a sex object for guys to ogle with her large breasts, skimpy clothes, and near complete lack of personality. Meanwhile Horizon presents Aloy as a strong protagonist who doesn’t need men to save her at every turn while also not being sexualized to such extremes that you feel like the real reason she exists is so that men have someone to ogle at while playing the game. The fact that Horizon (and The Last of Us series which presents its female protagonists similarly) get such extreme hatred from capital G Gamers because “they made them look like men!” should be evidence enough that this is revolutionary in its own way in the industry.
Celeste is derivative of Donkey Kong Country. I agree that for an author who thinks derivation itself is stinky, using an overly reductive critical framework where every game is derivative of, I don't know, unaliving Donkey Kong at the arcades, it was odd to see Celeste as a counter example.
Most of game innovation the past decade has been in the monetization model, moreso than mechanics. The author looks down their nose at microtransactions so they have probably missed all the innovation even as it continues to cross pollinate with every aspect of the games industry. No wonder they think Stanley Parable is still a noteworthy observation in 2022.
Then again, I'm also someone who has been suckered into spending over USD$200 on Fortnite skins, so a lot of my rejection of microtransactions is rooted in the fact that I am vulnerable to their temptations and would rather they be anywhere but in the games that I play on a regular basis. Nintendo games are usually good about not trying to fleece you for cash in a game you paid full price for, so I play a lot of those.
However, more people play video games than ever before and more games are released per year than at any other time in human history. So what died exactly? Certainly not an industry. Only a business model has died. A game's business model has always been inextricably tied to its design, going back to arcades. So designs you like are dying.
This is why I classify your behavior as gatekeeping. All those happy gamers must be enjoying games wrong. The designs they like are not valid game designs because they aren't adherent to your design aesthetics.
Do you miss paying a fixed price for a fixed amount of content, never to be updated? Nothing about that is incompatible with microtransactions. In the old days we called them expansions. These days they're called battle passes.
Do you miss paying for access to a live game server? Those used to be called subscriptions. Now we've found a way to offer free subscriptions to any and all, subsidized by gamers who have the financial freedom to support their favorite games.
[edit: for politeness]
Have you made free to play games? Anyone who has taken even a small look at it obviously KNOWS that it's not people with "financial freedom to support" who are putting money into these things. Stop kidding yourself.
It's also notable that Elden Ring has been one of the most successful games of 2022, it managed to trend on gaming twitter for over a month and a half and still comes up on trending every once in a while.
Back then games had a huge problem with equitable access. You needed the equivalent of $90 disposable income in 2022 just to try a game sight unseen. Gamers were incredibly wealthy and privileged in those days.
The industry dealt with rampant piracy from those who wanted game experiences but couldn't afford them. Gamers relied on written reviews by a handful of curators to derisk purchases.
All the while the table stakes to develop a game were rising. The nature of the console games industry is a technology reset every decade which undermines economic efficiencies in development tools. Development costs were kept artificially low by poor working conditions for those in the industry. Poor job security and stolen wages.
I haven't yet mentioned that gamers' expectations for control schemes, camera behavior, animation fidelity, environmental realism, and much much more have only grown and contributed to table stakes.
I think you are putting the momentary happiness of a niche gaming cohort on a pedestal and it blinds you to what the industry has become and just how many it benefits.
Lastly your claim that whales are gambling degenerates or people with poor self control is FUD. This claim is itself part of the gatekeeping from capital G Gamers because it assumes people spending money on games in novel ways can't possibly be enjoying those games. Whales are wealthy people with loads of disposable income. The same people who fly private jets or hire famous musicians for private parties. And everything in between. Why should games miss out on monetization models benefiting other entertainment formats?
A much simpler explanation is that Gamers who had grown accustomed to being the Alphas in a hobby they self-identity with, are grappling with the economization of their hobby and being priced out of Alpha status. In effect, the games industry has sold out, man. A naive position that overlooks all the economic realities I outlined at the start.
But tons of non-microtransaction games are coming out all the time. I game lots and don't see any impending shortage of that kind of game. They're coming out at a higher rate than ever, as far as I can tell, and I've been PC gaming and console gaming since something like 1990. I can't keep up with 5% of them, total—as in, I don't think I'm even aware of the existence of a solid 95% of what's coming out, but I can see enough that I'm certain I'm missing a ton—and can't even manage to try all the AAA titles of that kind at the rate they come out, let alone the vast ocean of indie and hobbyist games.
If the whole pie's growing, it doesn't follow that growth of microtransaction games are cutting into the availability of non-microtransaction games. Both could be growing. If non-microtransaction games are dying, it sure looks like they decided to flourish to a degree they never have before, just before they die (which must still be some point in the future).
Whatever the truth of the rest of what you're pushing, this part doesn't pass the smell test, at all.
There's nothing about microtransactions that makes premium games unreleasable. This is part of why I view the anti-MT stance as gatekeeping.
> [...] So designs you like are dying.
Yeah, this seems to be the case and this is really unfortunate. I'm keeping a close eye on the indie scene though, that seems to be where the real innovation is with exceptions from Nintendo and other AAA developers like From Software. Indie games are generally made with a lot more heart and soul anyways, which I personally prefer. Plus with indie/Nintendo games you generally buy the game once and then you don't buy anything again unless they make more content for it. It's perfect for my needs.
> The designs they like are not valid game designs because they aren't adherent to your design aesthetics.
I think there's room for nuance here between games they like for the game themselves (such as with Tetris Effect being a super well implemented version of Tetris with an added VR mode), games they like for the aesthetics of the games (such as games like Pokémon where a friend of mine tries to play the game to assemble a viable team of creatures they think look cool and doesn't care about anything else), or games that have suckered people in using manipulation tactics to give them just enough of a drip feed of dopamine that people end up thinking they like them (such as my subjective and personal experience with games like Fortnite, Genshin Impact and other gachapon games).
I'm not trying to say that people that like microtransactions aren't happy. I've seen people get financially ruined over goddamn FarmVille (remember when that was the big thing in gaming??) and other such games that I'm beginning to wonder if we as a society should tolerate this kind of outright manipulation. And if this means that as a player that I will have to pay a fixed amount of money for a fixed amount of content and that if I want more content I need to pay more, then that is what I will prefer and seek out. Hell, I already do this. I have at least 130 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and I bought the expansions for the game something like 20 hours into playing it because I genuinely liked the experience and wanted more. These things do exist in the modern day. I preordered Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and its expansions upon announcement (mostly because I liked Xenoblade 2 _that much_). IGN's review says it's a 150 hour game. Looks like I have my gaming diet for the next few months ironed out.
Besides, things never being updated after being released makes game preservation very easy. You can go play the day 1 unpatched Breath of the Wild game and it's mostly the same as the one we have with all the various bug fixes it got over the years. When you don't need to have live services attached to a game to play it, the ability to play the game doesn't rely on other people's servers that they can turn off at any point. If that happens with a live services game, the data on my disk is useless no matter how much I paid for it.
> Do you miss paying for access to a live game server?
I pay for the Nintendo Switch Online and PS Plus subscriptions because I do online gaming with friends on my Switch and my PlayStation. I don't have to miss it, because this is already the reality to me. Besides, if a game was genuinely enhanced in some way that was only possible with a subscription (outside of a "battle pass" which is just a FOMO gate for cosmetic items or real-world currency), I'd put my money where my mouth is. I haven't seen a game out there that offers such a thing though, so I haven't.
Maybe I really do come from a different generation of thinking about video games. It's quite sad if this means that "being almost 30 years old" means that I have a totally fundamentally different view on what I want out of video games compared to the vast majority of the market though. It'd be really sad if this was the case.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...
During your lifetime consoles have been largely static and mobile gaming came out of nowhere and eclipsed every other form of gaming combined. But you're also old enough to have fraternized with those who rode the big console wave. 'Big' here is of course tiny compared to the mobile gaming wave. But it felt big at the time (and was.)
There are those who believe that games aren't how much money they make so they continue to ignore mobile gaming. Still, the timeline at least explains developers' behaviors.
Also--you say that other gamers are happy with microtransaction-heavy games, but that begs the question: Is it because of microtransactions? Or is it because they are able to enjoy these games despite the microtransactions?
I hate it so I just play old and indie games most of the time.
Almost anything turns to shit as soon as the masses come.
I've been doing some serious innovation in plumbing lately. Cut the drain pipe of an upstairs toilet so now it just drains into the room under it. If you hadn't been paying attention to letting-toilets-drain-into-occupied-rooms, you might not think there's much innovation going on in plumbing.
This is also something that Outer Wilds did really well imo.
Frankly, Outer Wilds plays like shit. The controls are extremely complicated and difficult to wrestle with. However, that really suits the exploratory nature of the game. However, in terms of game design, Outer Wilds is clearly _far_ more interesting and revolutionary than Celeste. Totally physics-based 3D platformer and space exploration game on a time loop is obviously far more mechanically interesting than a 2D platformer with a restricted mid-air dash...
I like Outer Wilds! It's fun, I'm currently playing through it. However, Celeste is the more mechanically interesting game when you combine the intentionally limited movement and the forgiving nature of its levels. My 9yo is currently trying to work her way through it, yet gives up on harder Mario levels. Celeste made hard, 2D platforming accessible.
This is reinforced by how it came to be. Basically Introversion spent too much time and money on a tech demo without any concept of turning it into a game [1]. Prison Architect took a safe, well-trodden paradigm that was easier to turn into a finished, profitable protect. Subversion was the sort of game that could have broken the mould if they'd ever figured it out. I remember being underwhelemed hearing about what their new project would be when they gave up on it.
Doom challenged standards, but Doom could be made by 5 people crammed in a house. Metal Gear Solid. The Sims had more people credited for music than Programming, Design, and Graphics combined (21). Minecraft was one person for the most part.
Look at the credits list for Morrowind: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Credits
And for Skyrim: https://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/elder-scrolls-v-skyri... At the time, development costs were estimated at $100M.
The latest Skyrim Anniversary Edition remaster will surely have a credits list dramatically longer than the 2011 release. AAA games are expensive now, and no one's going to invest tens of millions on the hope that billions of people across the world understand your cryptic commentary about nuclear weapons or whatever.
SimCity. The original Civilization/Colonization. The Wing Commander series (privateer). Syndicate (1993). F-19/F-117. (The Janes sim series??) AAA doesn't mean high budget, just the highest budget games in the market at the time, those backed by market leaders.
It's not too unlike other programming puzzle games from zachtronics or Tomorrow Corp, but its interface is a lot more abstracted and it feels like a different paradigm than those.
I haven't played Glittermitten Grove, but Frog Fractions is a great meld and full of surprising genre shifts. It's not revolutionary, but it certainly has its own feel.
I'd have added Return of the Obra Dinn and Papers Please to the list, though. Maybe instead of Celeste, like you said.
As someone who really enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn, I agree. It was a fun romp with a lot of spectacle, and there's surely room for that in the world. Not everything has to push the boundaries of the art form.
I suppose it's true that basically no AAA publishers release anything that does push those boundaries, but that's unsurprising, since pushing boundaries isn't where the money is. For every Baba is You or Outer Wilds that takes off there are a thousand games that make next to nothing. It's similar with the visual arts or music; by challenging norms or experimenting with "radically different kinds of art" you're much likelier to end up with something that displeases almost everyone than you are to be the next Jackson Pollock or Ornette Coleman.
> I really resent them calling Aloy a “waifu”
Given the amount of hate Guerrilla got for not making Aloy ultra-sexy in Forbidden West, this was pretty unfortunate phrasing.
Maybe they hate human protagonists on games wholesale. I’m on anime side and has a personal hate against a broad spectrum across Disney/furry/cartoon. Due to this background I am easily triggered and might go on to a rant of similar scale if, for example, a graphic, visually homosexual werewolf character would become an AAA protagonist.
The author’s odd reaction to just a modern female protagonist seems to be on that kind of internal logic and magnitude.
All software engineers should be assigned an Industry-Standard Reassurance Rubber Duck as part of their training.
The Duck will be with you at all times. It will be your greatest ally. It will never betray you. It will not mock your code. No matter what trials or tribulations you might encounter, the Duck will always be there to reassure you.
(If you like the "cubicle-based existential nightmare" genre, give Severance a watch; I really enjoyed it.)
In French we call that a nanar.
https://www.nanarland.com/glossaire/c-comme-couloir-film-de....
(You can use DeepL to translate French to English, it’s much better than Google translate https://deepl.com ).
It likely feels more like a sequel if you choose the "played it before" option at the beginning of the game-- that introduces the new content much earlier. If you tell it that you haven't played before, it takes much longer before it starts introducing the new content.
The original was interesting in its kind of a game, but more of a experience. The narration was excellent and there were some interesting nooks to find. I definitely didn't find everything. (I think there was an award to not play the game for a year).
There's about the same amount of old and new content.
It's not an upgrade, it's a remake. They recreated all of the original content from the ground up
After looking it up, they actually didn't bother re-recording the voice lines from the original so now half the narration is by someone a decade older.
> The script for this new content is longer than the script for the entire original game.
If you don't want more content you don't have to buy the remake. The original works fine.
Let people like what they like