Successful Mediocrity / Failures

[VoidWanderer]

I have always found those games that are critically acclaimed, but get destroyed in terms of sales to be interesting in how they came about. Psychonauts is a classic example of this. While the game was not perfect, it was incredibly fun to play while the sales for the game mean the game was a failure.

But what I really want to talk about is Destiny. I had a pre-order for this game, because it was interesting enough to get my attention. Then I played the demo. And I was underwhelmed by almost everything. Yes, the game was pretty, and the gunplay worked but that shouldn't be celebrated. For over 500 million dollars, that is the lowest standard we should judge this game by.

[DISCLAIMER: Before I continue, I want to say that this is my objective opinion. If you enjoy this game, then good for you, I just don't for the reasons mentioned in this post.]

In the demo I did the same few missions that everyone else got to play, and the story was pathetic. Seriously. I wasn't drawn into this character I was playing. There was no explanation as to why my character was chosen, just brought back from the dead and I went through the tutorial mission. Maybe you get more details later on, but I wasn't grabbed at all. In a game with the tagline 'Become Legend', you need to explore where you came from and who you are to claim that. But they don't.

There may be people who say it is up to you, but there is no foundation. I was dead, and now I am not. Wee. Do they tell you more about the big enemy you are fighting, do they tell you more about the Traveller? Not from what I could tell in my personal experience. And not by the reviews I have seen for the game.

And before you say, 'They will explain it in the expansion packs', I say 'NO.' That is not good enough. You are given 20 levels to build your character up. Not the 30 that you see as that is gear-related. That shouldn't count. Gear should take you beyond the limits, not push the bar higher.

I have played a few MMOs, but with my ... interesting work schedule it is not very viable for me, as I am not able to do raiding like I want to do. I had a level 85 Draenei Shaman, that I loved healing with but got sick of the grind very fast to get the requisite gear necessary to get me to the bottom rung of raiding. I know other people feel the same way. I also have toons in SWTOR and D&D Online.

But I had stronger hopes for Destiny. I mean it's by Bungie. I have a PS4 and PS3 myself, but I respect what Bungie had done for Halo, but I felt let down. I had not reason to care about the world or my character so why invest my time in a game that clearly felt no need to motivate me. If I wanted to play Borderlands, I'd play that instead.

To me, Destiny shouldn't be lauded as a great MMO, because it isn't. MMOs have a overarching story you can explore for a while, and getting gear shouldn't become a joke. Bungie stated that it would take weeks people to get through their raids. I mean the loot thing was a shambles and prove that Destiny shouldn't be celebrated. Years of development, millions of dollars, and no-one bothered to let people play to the endgame to identify a problem QA should've picked up on?

Just because the name is big, doesn't mean they have earned our eternal praise and worship. Tim Schafer is widely known throughout the gaming community, but some of the decisions made recently really brings the integrity of the name under fire. I am not trying to talk people out of playing a game they think is fun, but I just want them to have another think about the game they are investing their time into.

I mean they made their money back extremely fast, but is the game worth the half a billion dollars? Simply put, no.

What do you guys think? Agree, disagree, have other examples? Should we as a gaming community bring our favourite companies under closer scrutiny?

 

[Demonchaser27]

I've not played Destiny in any of it's carnations, but from what I've seen of gameplay and reviews I didn't think it was worth the budget they spent on it. Quite simply though, it's all marketing and voice actors. That's usually where the bulk of every budget gets spent these days. Sadly it works for most people. If you hear a game has a massive budget behind it, you should probably steer clear of it until you can get a test of the final product in some way, shape or form. Because it will likely just be a massive hype train with little to nothing to show for it.

The problem with Destiny and other bigger budget games is the same problem with Pepsi and Coke. At this point and time in video games the bulk of audiences don't "actually" care about video games. Video games are mild entertainment... something to kill the time for most of the wide spread audience. It's unfortunately the way Capitalist markets have proven to work in the past. I'm gonna start with the bad part of all this.

They (developers) had to start fresh and new after the crash as video games did in the late 80's. They had to quell in any support they could muster. So they went to great lengths to make masterpieces of design. Things with depth and vigor and soul to them. But before too long, their dreams had to have increased money supply to get realized. This is where the "market" comes in. They began looking at publishers. Big companies saw a rise in the new market for video games and decided to create some off branching publisher companies (this is how capitalists work, they exploit money opportunities, they aren't there to add value to anything inherently) to get in on the new money. This combination of factors takes us to the late 1990's to early 2000's where the market is increasing. Players are also increasing because they realized that video games are becoming something special. But it's not enough. See large companies want to be larger. The only way to do that is to increase the consumer base. But they never get directly in contact with the consumer base. They operate on the now, which is why they're often terrible long term planners. Want to see proof of this? Read any Economics book published in the last few decades. Probably the first chapter will be enough for you to find it.

So what happens now? Well... marketing. We have been heading this way at an alarming rate in the past decade. We are hitting the point where the target audience has changed from those who want to see games advance and develop further to more outside audiences (basically your average joe/jane who comes home and watches cable television, reality shows, etc.). Not trying to degrade these people, but the general masses just don't give a flying **** about advancement. They're going to be using this technology based on what everyone else is doing. They follow trends just because, hell why not? It's something to eat up my couple of hours of free time between work shifts. This happens with a lot of things. Art is a major sufferer in this regard. As art has now become a sort of non-terminology. Art is basically everything now, so it holds little meaning for anyone outside of personal preference. As a result art grows very seldom and has been stuck where it was several decades ago. Music hit a similar stride and has had a rough time with the actual major's of music. Lots of debate going around there. Television and cinema has long been there. Terms like "Michael Bay Film" are common criticisms for just a special effects extravaganza with the same tired themes and tropes. Well, gaming is going to be hitting that very soon, if not already. There is a pretty decent sized market for more meaningful, deeper experiences but the market for average samey games is huge right now. That's why publishers are afraid to let developers have more control over their own games. They don't want to lose that "precious" money. It's the inherent flaw with money being the driving force behind a market. Does it get products out the door? You bet. Are they good though? That's extremely debatable. They certainly aren't up to par with what they could/should be. And evolution is extremely slow in the midst of big time savers who just want to sit on giant sums of cash.

Now about the good news. This isn't necessarily final. One thing that can and has happened a few times in history is that amongst the debates going on between people that are knowledgeable about a said field is that they find ways to convince the major audiences that the advancement is going to be better than what they want now. That better is merely a demand away. You see people like Jonathon Blow (surprisingly a developer himself) asking developers and audiences to think about what's truly advancement and what's just new for the sake of saying it's new. He's raised a great question in video games about whether a game has true depth or is just a manipulation of the player's weaker mental addictions. He made a great comparison to how TV shows used to be and how great they are now in comparison. He proposed the notion that perhaps what we like today isn't really as good as we think it is. Perhaps there is something more that we need from our entertainment. Or there's more we can do. Now whether his games are good or not, I don't know. But the point is that creators and critics like this are important in driving this hobby to something greater, where capitalism itself fails to. The drive for money gets us nowhere. The drive for better, however does. And these influential minds help to get us there. Whether we agree with all of their assertions or not is of little relevance. It's the fact that we pose the right questions.

I feel for you on Destiny. I've had several games that I thought would be excellent just turn into essentially hype fetishes and little more. I've seen entire series that I adored turn into homogenized goo. Always demand better of these people. The biggest failure of modern consumer culture is that it has been convinced to reason with the complaints of corporations. They aren't complaining because they really can't meet demands. They are complaining because it's more profitable to convince audiences to lower their standards so they can give you less for the same price or for more. I agree, none of what happened with Destiny is acceptable. It wasn't acceptable in 1995 and it's not any different now. No, it's not acceptable for DLC and "Expansions" to finish a product. No, it's not alright to have bits of story and gameplay held off for extra purchase later. No, it's not okay if microtransactions infest every single marketing scheme. Do not ever accept what they want you to accept unless you can find obvious facts from outside sources that are not affiliated with these corporations that clearly state why, with good reason, they cannot meet your demands. They are the supply chain and you are the demand chain. They have to EARN your money, not the other way around. At least for as long as we continue using capitalism/money as our system.

 

[LaoJim]

Haven't played Destiny, so bear that in mind during the comments below.

To me, Destiny shouldn't be lauded as a great MMO, because it isn't. MMOs have a overarching story you can explore for a while, and getting gear shouldn't become a joke. Bungie stated that it would take weeks people to get through their raids. I mean the loot thing was a shambles and prove that Destiny shouldn't be celebrated. Years of development, millions of dollars, and no-one bothered to let people play to the endgame to identify a problem QA should've picked up on?

The first question is who is lauding Destiny as a 'great MMO'. Its averaging 77/78 on Metacritic at the moment with only the Official Playstation Magazine giving it 90+. The general consensus as I've read it, at least from the Escapist, is that there is some fun to be had with it, but there are also lots of issues and the game lacks soul. Obviously the marketing campaign has been pushing it as the greatest thing ever. Probably because we're at the start of a new generation, there have been many attempt to establish new franchises, most noticeably this year Titanfall, Watch Dogs, and Destiny. All games that have had a vast amount of money spent on them, have maybe 'not quite hit a homerun' and are not perhaps as revolutionary as they claimed to be.

They (developers) had to start fresh and new after the crash as video games did in the late 80's. They had to quell in any support they could muster. So they went to great lengths to make masterpieces of design...

I think you are right that there was more innovation in the 1980s than now, but I would also note that, while Super Mario Bros might have been a masterpiece of design, there were a hundred and one cheap SMB clones that were released after it. I'd also say that there are still examples of masterpieces of design around (Arkham Asylum, Bayonetta, the original Dead Space) they just don't happen everyday.

So what happens now? Well... marketing. We have been heading this way at an alarming rate in the past decade. We are hitting the point where the target audience has changed from those who want to see games advance and develop further to more outside audiences (basically your average joe/jane who comes home and watches cable television, reality shows, etc.). Not trying to degrade these people, but the general masses just don't give a flying **** about advancement. They're going to be using this technology based on what everyone else is doing. They follow trends just because, hell why not? It's something to eat up my couple of hours of free time between work shifts. This happens with a lot of things.

True up to a point, but the simple truth is that these people genuinely enjoy Halo and Call of Duty, so why shouldn't they buy the next game from the same developers? For the average casual gamer Destiny and Titanfall probably do have enough 'advancement' over the previous series that they feel reasonably new.
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I have always found those games that are critically acclaimed, but get destroyed in terms of sales to be interesting in how they came about. Psychonauts is a classic example of this. While the game was not perfect, it was incredibly fun to play while the sales for the game mean the game was a failure.
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What do you guys think? Agree, disagree, have other examples? Should we as a gaming community bring our favourite companies under closer scrutiny?

I'm not sure exactly what your point is here as we've kind of got derailed into discussing Destiny. Its universal truth that some good games don't sell as well as they deserve and some bad (or at least average) games sell better. There's not a lot we can do about this as gamers except for keeping aware of and supporting the good games and spreading the word when we discover something special (or alternatively overhyped).

 

[Evonisia]

What do you guys think? Agree, disagree, have other examples? Should we as a gaming community bring our favourite companies under closer scrutiny?

Yes, absolutely. In fact nowadays we should be more cautious about developers we like making a game (in the AAA market anyway).

Destiny was basically "from the makers of Halo" and even without playing it I can tell that it was cynically designed and tried to merge single and multiplayer together even though the Halo games had separate modes which were both good (for the most part). Halo: Reach wasn't a good game by any means but you could tell that they put their heart and soul into making that game as a nice tribute to the series (even if it didn't hold together all that well). The achievements of Halo: Reach are all quotes from the previous games because this was their final hurrah and you needed to be reminded every step of the journey.

Titanfall did something similar. It tried to sell itself based on the fact that Respawn Entertainment were the majority of Infinity Ward before Activision pulled a stupid. Please buy our game! Remember when Call of Duty didn't suck and Treyarch were inferior to us? Love us again, please please!! (they forgot that they made MW2 as their final game but I'm willing to forget that ever happened).

Watch_Dogs tried to hype itself over it's visuals which were a guarantee from Ubisoft games. I mean how pretty were FarCry 3 and AssCreed IV?