If I wasn't sick, if I had more energy, I'd go in on this but I'm just so tired. Vent time.
So this is a reply to a reply. My thread starts here, if you wanna see. Don't worry, this one is short. https://twitter.com/JazzElves/status/1691223248501981184?s=20
I can't say this on twitter - ok, I can. I could technically say this on twitter. It's not against ToS; the problem is that between engagement and presentation, there's no space for me to make a complete statement; it's not actually a very complex position, but it's one that is, apparently, difficult to comprehend. Between people completely missing the ideas behind the original (and behind Xalavier Nelson's commentary on Larian/Baldur's Gate and perspectives, which I do highly recommend if you can find it) and then this, I honestly believe that it's just not going to fly on twitter. So I'm going to break it down here, where it's safer for me to say difficult things.
This isn't about "all games should be standalone works of art, nothing should get followups". This isn't about "games shouldn't make money". Before anyone says "uh, no one is saying that": yes, they are. Not in so many words; no one is actually claiming "I don't want companies to make money off of games", but every time someone brings up an objection like the one pictured, it's misinterpreting commentary about the extractionist nature of the AAA game and studio industry as the commenter saying "but you shouldn't make a game just because it'll make money". Not immediately; it's several steps down the line, but we always get there. The Profit Motive is so ingrained that we just can't see past it, even as we're demanding "better, more passionate, Good And Finished stuff".
Also obligatory, even though this isn't twitter, I'm still sliding this in before someone snipes the comment: the idea of "just ship a finished game, it's not that hard" is a big and complicated subject. On a matter of principle, yeah, I too want "complete" games on launch. I have major issues with Bethesda's practice of "dw about it, the fans will fix it for us, they always do". I have issues with the idea of "oh we'll release a game that's like, 50% done, and then sell the rest of it to the consumers as DLC" - though I couldn't actually point to a game that's done that, not to the level that the dogwhistlers claim (and I could talk about Stellaris sometime, a game I love, which looks kind of like that from a distance but actually it's more like "we shipped a complete game. Then we had more ideas for it. Then those ideas changed what the complete game looks like. Then we had more ideas for it. Then those...") and it is COMPLEX, let me tell you, and I would 10,000% prefer the modern big fat bandwidth days which allow people to fix up games post-release to the heady days of the 1980's through 2000's where if a game was released with bugs that's it, that's all she wrote, legendary glitches go down in history and sometimes we're left with the back half of an RPG which is completely unplayable because of a major bug that just wasn't caught somehow and, well, that's that unless a fan patches it. I'm not talking about that.
As I said to a friend elsewhere, yeah, I'm actually fine with the idea that a good game comes out and suddenly makes other games look worse. I'm not talking about that either. That's, well... that's how the creative world works. I have a whole other screed about how "the presence of good art shouldn't mean that bad art isn't allowed to exist, or that we aren't allowed to enjoy bad art, or aren't allowed to make bad art", that's not it here either.
They get conflated in because of, JFCVS, it's hard to sum up, the radiation pattern of gamergate fucked a lot of things up even when it's not stuff that it directly affected, and this IS part of that, and anyway I've gotten further off-topic. Sue me, I'm sick, this is inchoate screaming and I understand that it's completely incoherent, but I'm allowed to express myself.
Anyhow, the thing is: follow-ups happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes that reason is "money". The last game was well received, we'll make another one. The last game was poorly received, we won't make another one unless we're really feeling it. Sure, this is fine. Not only do developers need to eat, but also, yeah, there's an extra "passion surcharge" to be happy working on a project that you feel "nobody really likes" for whatever reason. I'm not here to argue about that, I'm not here to condemn that, it's... honestly it's fine. And that's not even what I'm pointing out: the thing I'm pointing out is that studios like FromSoft, like Larian, like Supergiant, fucking.. Nintendo honestly counts here BECAUSE it's first-party, these studios are a rarity in this era of increasing enclosure and AAA enshittification, because the big boys are aiming to extract the biggest value for their shareholders for the least effort with the least delay, and so seeing big players (and good god, Supergiant is an anomaly because they're not a "big player" in this sense but they still grandslam the hits, anyhow)... seeing big players operate like passion-driven indies, seeing them say "no we're keeping this in the oven", saying "yeah we think that selling the game is what will make us enough money to make the next game", this IS an anomaly and that's a bad thing. It's good that they're succeeding! It's excellent! It's ASPIRATIONAL.
But the reason we aren't seeing more of it is
- Developers need to eat
- The people paying the developers in the AAA space are, by and large, not concerned with "good games" at all
- Larian, Supergiant, FromSoft having their own variant revenue streams of all the variant sources is part of what keeps them around to take these big risks that are anathema to shareholder reports
"Where does Bethesda fit in" well, that's ANOTHER subject, because some of the fans will argue that they fit with Larian in the "releasing a whole game with no microtransaction bullshit!" category, others are going to argue that they're poster children for the "sell us the rest of the game at a higher price" category and both are right, both are wrong, there's a lot of parasitical profit (yes, I know, redundant) where fan hype drives, not new games, but "another skyrim rerelease" (without even new features!) and theres just
the whole scene is fucked. There's beauty that comes out of it, there's art that thrives, but it's so fucked. And I can't offer ideas to "fix" it, because it's so much bigger than me, I can't actually SEE a way to "fix" it without a burn-it-down-and-rebuild-equitably way, but even THAT would leave a lot of people hungry - and I'm not talking about customers here, I'm talking about creators (who need! to eat!) - unless OTHER systems are also fixed before/in parallel and just
I mean, yeah, I kind of understand why people have such a hard time getting my point, because it's uncomfortable and people don't want to be uncomfortable, not when it's pretendy funtime gamestime.
But it fucking sucks to try to explain myself and just keep getting met with "but... they follow up games that people LIKE...you fool..."