this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
187 points (99.5% liked)

Gaming

32461 readers
93 users here now

From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!

Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.

See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
alyaza@beehaw.org
TheRtRevKaiser@beehaw.org
gyrfalcon@beehaw.org
Whom@beehaw.org
The_Hunted_One@beehaw.org
chloyster@beehaw.org
remington@beehaw.org
187
Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are actually made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is" (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 2 years ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/gaming@beehaw.org
88 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

apparently this is in response to a few threads on Reddit flaming Starfield—in general, it's been rather interesting to see Bethesda take what i can only describe as a "try to debate Starfield to popularity" approach with the game's skeptics in the past month or two. not entirely sure it's a winning strategy, personally.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 125 points 2 years ago (14 children)

Yeah, I can imagine the frustration of seeing people who don't know anything about what happened during development blame you as a dev for something that may have been design decisions or budgetary or time constraints that you had no say in or control over.

"So sure, you can dislike parts of a game," he concludes. "You can hate on a game entirely. But don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is (unless it's somehow documented and verified), or how it got to be that way (good or bad)."

"Chances are, unless you've made a game yourself, you don't know who made certain decisions; who did specific work; how many people were actually available to do that work; any time challenges faced; or how often you had to overcome technology itself (this one is HUGE)."

This is a totally fair take. He explicitly says it's fine to not like the game, but just don't try to pretend you know what happened on the back end to make it the way it was, because you're probably gonna misplace blame.

[–] habanhero@lemmy.ca 46 points 2 years ago (6 children)

You know what an even better take is? "We hear you, we'll take your feedback" or just as good, say nothing at all.

Arguing that you are smarter or wiser than your users / customers is paradoxical. You are by definition not smart if you attempt to do this.

[–] peter@feddit.uk 28 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is why we only ever get PR responses to anything that happens instead of actual information or explanations.

[–] rgb3x3@beehaw.org 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's better than arguing with the customer.

Simple explanations like "we felt we were under X constraints" or "our engine didn't handle the loading times as well as we had hoped" would be just fine.

Instead, they just seem to be telling the players they're wrong for disagreeing with many of the design decisions made

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (11 replies)