- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Controversial gaming opinion: video games are good.
What are controversial gaming opinions you have?
- Location
- Australia
For big investor driven companies like Ubisoft the primary motivation is profit not social activism or passion. I expect that major creative decisions get run by the PR, marketing & brand integrity team.
I expect that the segment that will give Ubisoft points for having a black protagonist is a lot larger than the segment that would boycott the game because of it. The racists complaints are free publicity.
Assassin's Creed is about murdering members of the clergy to stop them from playing God and manipulating the public. It's always been slanted towards a particular political demographic. The racists grumbling may not have been intending to play it in any case.
I expect that the segment that will give Ubisoft points for having a black protagonist is a lot larger than the segment that would boycott the game because of it. The racists complaints are free publicity.
Assassin's Creed is about murdering members of the clergy to stop them from playing God and manipulating the public. It's always been slanted towards a particular political demographic. The racists grumbling may not have been intending to play it in any case.
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- Location
- Ether
Good for them for lucking into the year that Hulu's FX's Shogun is a big hit and hasn't yet squandered its goodwill with the post-book seasons yet, but given that they're finally making a Japanese game in the heels of Sekiro and Ghosts of Tsushima, and they're Ubisoft, I remain skeptical that they're going to be able to make something revolutionary.
Woah, Tenchu is held by FromSoft series now. Shame Sony can't give it another go.
Woah, Tenchu is held by FromSoft series now. Shame Sony can't give it another go.
gyrobot
One China One Nation/Weeping for Concord
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Finally something I can agree on, the idea of bad publicity doesn't work in this time and out age outside of certain demographics who believe acting like they will offend someone will bring in sales.
Racist Complaints isn't free publicity, it is negative marketing buzz no one needs
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- Location
- Russia
Oh, no, bad publicity very much does work. It makes people aware of the game.
The issue is that nowadays it is virtually impossible to predict exactly what would cause the bad publicity to blow up. There are so many games out nowadays that the shitfit-of-the-month is essentially a roll of the dice, with little in how you can influence it.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Sounds strange for the era of unbridled capitalism. But I would be hard-pressed to expect anything different from those who talk about "representation" and "empowerment," even though they have been doing their best to prevent this for decades.
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You presume that the same people talking about that stuff are the same ones making games. That is not the case. =0
- Location
- Australia
If racists complain to everyone that your game has a black protagonist then it creates free publicity among the people that don't care the game has a black protagonist or approve of the representation.
If you make a space flight simulation game and an astrophysicist complains about the game physics then that might turn customers away. If a flat earther complains about the game furthering the globalist conspiracy then your target demographic isn't going to take it seriously and might check your game out.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Generally fair, but games are different - there are projects that are directly created by large companies, there are those that are created under the control of large conglomerates, and there are independent projects (although large companies can still act as publishers). In the latter case I have no doubts, in the first they are very large.
Although I must say that there is also a motive for my resentment. Marxists fought for a century to build a better world - and for this they had to risk their lives, sometimes even from their comrades. And now - all the slogans of "Social Justice" have been stolen by the most important enemies - all these "former ministers, businessmen and bankers, owners of factories, newspapers, ships" talk about how important it is to remove barriers for blacks and women, and are not even against a small redistribution of wealth (yes, even Elon Musk mentioned that he is a socialist). In an era when migrants are miserably exploited, when social benefits are being cut and education is becoming inexpensive, this sounds insulting - but on the other side there are all sorts of fascist bastards. I'm also lucky that I live in Russia - the establishment here is completely conservative (another thing is that the local version of "Cultural Marxism" is too, and this hinders the development of the labor and socialist movement).
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Hmmm.... this feels like a minefield to try and keep on topic.
So! Okay, imagine a cyberpunk setting. Maybe you get a corpo that specifically sells a line of weapons to the punks. They're cheaper, a bit dirtier and spalshed with some good ol' market tested punk aesthetic. Or maybe one of the corps works to turn the protagonist punk into a celebrity. They splash the punk's catchphrase all around, and in so doing they attempt to defang the punk's cause. After all, the punk's cause is clearly winning. Why would people need to fight as hard for it?
I could certainly see that being a plot in a game, and they're tactics to watch out for to be sure.
Is that always the case though? I don't think so. It's inclimal steps ya know? Today gaming companies realize that being progressive means they can sell more games by appealing to those who hold the same values. Tomorrow that lie becomes the truth.
So! Okay, imagine a cyberpunk setting. Maybe you get a corpo that specifically sells a line of weapons to the punks. They're cheaper, a bit dirtier and spalshed with some good ol' market tested punk aesthetic. Or maybe one of the corps works to turn the protagonist punk into a celebrity. They splash the punk's catchphrase all around, and in so doing they attempt to defang the punk's cause. After all, the punk's cause is clearly winning. Why would people need to fight as hard for it?
I could certainly see that being a plot in a game, and they're tactics to watch out for to be sure.
Is that always the case though? I don't think so. It's inclimal steps ya know? Today gaming companies realize that being progressive means they can sell more games by appealing to those who hold the same values. Tomorrow that lie becomes the truth.
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I mostly thought it was hilarious to be honest, but I'll forgive a lot in the cause of exposing a global audience to the proper pronunciation of "Saoirse"
FortePlus
The THRILL from Green Hill
- Location
- Toronto
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This too is the work of GabeN. The dark conspiracy grows...
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
I don't completely believe it here - I think that by the time the trailer was released they had not finished the facial animation properly. It's not like this is the first time this has happened - with Mass Effect it happened all the time.
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm sure it will hardly be revolutionary but that isn't to say it will be bad. Maybe this is a controversial opinion by the standards of this thread (though hardly an unpopular one in general) but the Assassin's Creed games are generally pretty good. Hardly best in class when it comes to stealth and combat gameplay but the games have a scale to them that games in similar genres simply don't, on top of being visually quite remarkable. Odyssey is a real stand out in that regard. Some people don't really rate this as important but like ... whatever lol
As a long time player of AssCreed I'm interested by Shadows in part because of what it represents relative to other games in the series: it's the first game in what will be the third 'phase' of design. It's also a return to a relatively recent time period after a lengthy period of pre-Assassin era games and will be the first game with gunpowder in nearly 10 years. They've touched on some interesting elements like destructible environments for Yasuke and the map environments changing based on the seasons, and it won't have traditional viewpoints (though those have been pretty deprecated for a while now). It's not likely that the game is going to be revelatory and I wouldn't want to make presumptions before a gameplay trailer is out, but it'll likely have its own merits.
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
I dropped off the franchise around Black Flag, but they were definitely pretty fun overall, yeah. I heard the ancient egypt and norse ones had issues around introducing rpg mechanics like leveling to your player, and thus stopping you from killing random mooks in a single stab from ambush? Not sure how that would've affected enjoyment.
My only complaint about the series would probably be the inability to tie the non-historical plot segments together that well. Desmond's journey was fun, but Black Flag had you as literally a videogame tester, and I dunno what the games after it did.
...Wait, this shadows game the thread's been discussing is an Assassin's Creed title? I thought it was some Japanese original IP around some historical events they had. Or mythological.
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Starting with Origins, and going into Odyssey and Valhalla (but I don't know about others; I haven't played Mirage) the games introduced levels and gear (at least in Odyssey and Valhalla, I can't recall if Origins had gear but I think it did); this made it so that, for example, you could stab a mook from a high-level area in the neck with your hidden blade/teleport-spear in such a way as to nearly decapitate them, and they'd lose an amount of health so small their bar wouldn't even move; IIRC you also needed to buy talents to unlock stuff like 'can assassinate the Big Guy enemy types' and 'can assassinate more than one guy at a time'.
I, personally, found it to severely negatively impact my enjoyment at the start of the games, and turned the games into brawlers instead of assassination games, though there was always that tendency. There were some neat combos that built up if you got the right talents, though, like 'assassinate a guy, throw his weapon at the next guy, grab and throw back the javelin that was launched at you to kill guy three' and Odyssey's teleport-spear was great fun once you got it upgraded and all the talents lined up.
gyrobot
One China One Nation/Weeping for Concord
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Still for an industry centred around avoiding bad pr while simultaneously getting money for being a good person at face value. This only adds to the amount of antipathy AAA devs already receive, the only reason why they can continue their practices is they are virtually indestructible. Smaller companies have to listen to the audience even at the expense of being seen as a bad guy because you still cling on to outdated stuff and won't change because it will upset the same people showing antipathy at AAA devs
- Location
- The Hague
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Broadly the post Desmond games have had three general arcs:
- The Abstergo Entertainment games (Black Flag and Rogue)
- The Helix Initiate games (Unity and Syndicate)
- The Layla games (Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla)
The Abstergo Entertainment games were essentially bridging the gap between Desmond's death and what was going to come after, but as part of the soft reboot with Unity they didn't have a great sense of that so they didn't really bridge to anything lol, though they did introduce the idea of sages and the Instruments of the First Will to the setting which has ended up being reasonably significant. Layla's trilogy (which represents the 'second phase' of AssCreed) had an interconnected storyline around gathering information to stave off a catastrophe caused by the events of the original trilogy, explored the Isu some more, and ended on quite the bombshell lol
This is really the thing about the second gameplay model: it feels awkward at the beginning but you do unlock a lot of genuinely fun tools over the course of the game. This is especially true of Kassandra, but I think Eivor had a lot going for her, especially with how much flexibility you could have with her gear set ups. Bayek has it a bit worse than those two because he was the first attempt at this approach and they hadn't found their feet. As action games I think they compare pretty well with prior games (which took a long time to really move past the 'hold deflect and bait a counter kill' combat design) but as stealth games they don't fare as well, at least not until you're fairly deep in. They aren't really built around that aspect, too.
- Location
- That place in the thing
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Bold of you to assume Ubisoft is smart enough to plan anything ahead.
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And the chances of it causing an even greater shitfest depends on how big the budget is and how shit the game is.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah, this is what I find fairly irritating about the discourse around modern Ubisoft games. There's this real sense of myopia about how people talk about them. It's one thing to not enjoy them (that's completely reasonable) but it's common to see people in Reddit and other places act as if it's a complete mystery why anyone would play them. That kind of attitude demonstrates a major lack of perspective. Surely it's not that hard to grasp why so many people find historical fiction set in a massive open world sandbox to be extremely compelling?
It's like looking at Fortnite or Minecraft and not understanding what appeal those games have. It just tells me that you're (the general you) out of touch lol.
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I mean, are you expecting people to make a secret of not being 'in touch' with the popular thing? In this of all threads?
I like Minecraft, but not the way people who make Minecraft a big thing like it, and I quickly determined battle royale games don't appeal, so.
Fortnite: Save the World sounds like it might actually be neat I guess?
That's not what understanding appeal means.
I can know that people have opinions without understanding why they would.
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Exactly this. I have no interest in Fortnite but I can easily comprehend why people like it, the basic gameplay loop looks engaging enough and the amount of game modes/tie ins they get is psychotic. It makes perfect sense to me that people play it religiously.
I know it's not for me but that too is a product of comprehension.
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