The (Awful) Way We Talk About Games...

It was really disheartening seeing people I follow on social media who usually have pretty informed takes jump on the dev-bashing bandwagon for BG3, spreading that they were just mad bc it meant they couldn't put microtransactions in their games, a point I have not seen a single developer in the original discussions even imply.

Get well soon dude, love your stuff. Great vid too 👍

An example of an annoying game mechanic that was shoehorned into so many AAA titles for no reason other than to add a mechanic that was popular in earlier games is.... crafting. The newest Star Wars game by the Apex Legends crew made an extremely in depth crafting and customization of your lightsaber, appearance, and robot companion but it saves this mechanic for me by making it entirely cosmetic. Other AAA titles that have a out of place crafting bench that pulls up screens with a whole bunch of percentages makes me pull my hair out. (and this is coming from an autist who loves powerscailing) Not everything needs to be customized! I'm completely happy with a linear game with linear upgrades, some games with crafting mechanics break up the flow and has me spend too much time on grinding things that are so repetitive and unenjoyable. This video made me think of a Tumblr post I saw where someone was encouraging the current writers strike indefinitely because we have an enormous library of past media to enjoy. Games could stop coming out for a few years, and while I would feel sad because I enjoy the community around getting excited for a new game together, I have such an enormous backlog I could work through -- and could find out many more!! I adore the CRPG genre, and I am so excited to play BG3 soon. Fire vid!!!

I usually play smaller games on my switch and honestly dont know any games you mentioned but i Really enjoyed your perspective

Great to have you back Henry and a great video to boot. I echo many of the sentiments you've mentioned in this video. Starting the video with a discussion on "Value" before going into Baldur's Gate 3 and how consumers perceive it's value is excellent. We should herald and celebrate games without feeling the need to constantly pit them against one another.

I think the sentiment is also carried to manga and anime. Gear Fifth Luffy made his debut a few weeks back, and instead of celebrating it, people feel the need to talk down about the transformations of other series in order to gas up Luffy. It's stupid! It don't matter.

One of the most genuinely braindead takes i saw was that 2023 was the worst year for gaming because Redfall and Gollum game exist, as if Hi-Fi Rush and RE4 remake haven't came out by that point, along with more releases on their way (to be frank, it was on Reddit, and it's not like it's known for the intelligence of the average user).
Honestly, the gaming discourse as of late just feels like a bunch of theater kids trying to create drama by blowing things out of proportion, that are more concerned with pushing a narrative than actually trying to have a discussion. The whole "controversy" with Baldur's Gate 3 genuinely baffled me with how people tried to make people with not too unreasonable concerns into some greedy, malicious fucks that want to rob them of good games, and only Larian standing as a paragon of gaming industry. And after that, they STILL claim that gaming is dying despite games like that still being made in ample amounts (i already mentioned Hi-Fi Rush and REm4ke, which was my GOTY before BG3 came out, and people here can probably give a few more examples too, be it among AAA, AA or indie scenes), only shows me that people are more concerned about complaining about games than actually playing them, at least among those that spread shit like this. And the fact about players expecting every game to be like Baldur's Gate did make me more wary as i am a beginning game dev, who's not even dreaming of making games of this scope, so far only focusing on small, self-contained stuff.
Anyway, rambling comment over, hopefully i made whatever point i was trying to make clear. Great video.

‼️ Virtual-on mentioned ‼️


Great video as always!!

great video as always goat, take my like subscribe and comment 💯

My To The Moon moment was definitely 'Gone Home' I will remember them forever

I think this has helped me better articulate my issue with a lot of content focused on criticism of games and media in general. Criticism is primarily valuable as one tool in the larger framework of discussing media you have genuine investment in. What works, what doesn't, and how it could be better.

When highlighting flaws is the point of a discussion with no meaningful meditation on why those flaws exist, or how to improve upon them, criticism becomes empty, save for entertainment value.

Certainly it can be enjoyable and validating to see someone else tear apart something you dislike in an echo-chamber kind of way, but I have little to no interest in seeing media I like, or even media I'm neutral to, get torn apart solely for the sake of insulting or venting frustrations on it. Even if what they're saying isn't overtly wrong, there's little discussion to be had when their thoughts end with why something is bad, with little interest in what did work, or how it holistically could have been better.

I truly hate the idea that a game’s worth is tied to how long it took you to beat it. Incredibly unfair, and I really hope that ideology dies off.

Hurtworld

Good commentary

I’ve been playing amazing games for years now and know well enough that a lot of titles that I played as a kid weren’t as perfect as the internet remember them to be

On the one hand, I'm glad that gaming has a passionate fanbase that music and movies don't have as big a share of. Because gaming is an active medium, again unlike the other two, our experiences with games are immersive and unique, and we have strong feelings about those experiences. On the other hand, this active involvement in consuming a game somehow gives a vocal minority a sense that their experience with a game is more informed than that of others, that they have the moral high ground on what you should like and not like because, well, they played it and felt feelings, so those feelings and opinions must be objectively true. Games should elicit strong feelings, positive and negative, but too many people think they have a monopoly on how a game is perceived and they need to get out of their own heads.

43 minutes and you didn't even touch the glaring issue of identity politics in games. Wow. Just wow. You don't consider a problem when games antagonize their very customers with content they don't want. They shove an ideology and moralistic view that's controversial to say the least. They w**re themselves to ESG legislation and requirements from investors because they can't help themselves wanting this money. They can't resist leveraging their power over the user to openly mock their preferences. That is such a selective blindness that you engage on that you didn't think it was worth mentioning in the whole video. Incredible, just incredible.

Regarding the cost of games, when I was a kid in the 90s a Genesis or SNES game cost aboot £30. When I was running an internet radio station in the '00s, I had to quit smoking to afford the server cost for the sake of havin' 20 concurrent listeners. Inflation is a thing. I'm surprised it took this long for the price to go up. When people talk about gaming as a kid, they mention that they only had a few games which they played all the time and got memories from. They'd go to meet friends to play different games. Nowadays, people have backlogs and get worked up about it. Gamers are as spoiled as [insert big bad company here] are. Gamers won't vote w/ their wallets, and devs are too afraid of their shareholders.

I'm gonna go back to playin' Ace Combat 7 soon. It's a game you can complete in 4 hours. I bought it for about £60 IIRC. I play it now and again when I want to because I love the series and enjoy flying games overall. Project Wingman is half the price and can be completed in less than half the time. I enjoy it because it's a love letter to the AC series and captures a lot of the same feels. I play warframe sometimes and rarely spend money on it, but sometimes I splash out on a new frame I really want. This isn't because I'm scared of the grind, but because I want to help keep the servers on.

I'm grateful to be able to spend my free time enjoying some games, but I don't make my free time into a second job. Better than having to work myself to death just to be able to try and buy food like some people. I've never had a lot of money, so I try to spend what I have extra on something I'll enjoy. I enjoy things that hit me in the feels. One of my favourite games ever is Hyper Light Drifter. I completed it once, spent a lot of time after that vibing in it, and haven't played it in about 6 years. I still think about it all the time. That's a good game.

tl;dr - it's not about how much you pay, or how long you play, but how much it means to you.

The reason gaming got so expensive: Our mums stopped paying for our subs.

great video, and i totally agree, but i think you drag it on too long and repeat yourself too much. overall loved the video :)