This IS a Skyrim board, isn't it?

[rcavanah]

It seems that some of the most active members of this community actually don't like Skyrim much at all.

 

Maybe you're here for the mods, but I mean, if vanilla Skyrim is so sub-par, why bother polishing what is, apparently, a turd?

 

What's more, it seems lots of people think Bethesda is actively out to get their audience. Now, that's just silly. Skyrim could only have been created in a spirit of sincerity, and maybe their eyes were bigger than their mouth, but that's what fuels progress... maybe not now, but someday. That's why there are bugs; it doesn't mean that anyone was actively cutting corners. Sometimes certain bits and pieces just don't come together, no matter how good your intentions are, but it's those little nuances that people seem to tear into, and they can't find a reason no matter how much they rant and rave... because that's just a simple fact of human creativity. Sometimes it doesn't come together, but maybe something... just one thing... is groundbreaking and valuable. For me, with Skyrim, it's the experience.

 

I don't think Todd Howard was slouching in his chair eating cheetos with dollar signs in his eyes... and note, I don't say that because I care about Bethesda, or because I know anything about Todd Howard, because I don't. I say that because of one thing, and one thing alone: there are much easier ways to make money. Ways which make much more money, and take much less time.

 

So, sometimes you just don't like something. That's OK. It feels good to let go of something you just don't like, and it really feels pretty miserable to hang on just so your voice can be heard, in hopes that maybe the next one will be better, or somebody will "fix it..." I mean, I don't wanna get into the whole Mass Effect 3 thing, but that whole mess was a crushing blow to the general "videogames as art" prerogative, because it said that the audience simply isn't ready for games to simply be whatever they are... which is one of the most basic components of art, good or bad.

 

Anyway, I'll let this descend into mayhem in 3... 2... go!

Edited January 19, 2013 by rcavanah

[Brandy1123]

This post is not so simple to reply to. There is no doubt re-playability here. The programming work done is remarkable. The items and game play are really good. Not great, but good. My biggest problem with Skyrim, isn't what Bethesda did to the game or what they didn't do (more later). My largest hands down problem is STEAMypile. There are fanboys who will start flaming about how good it is. You can have it. I freely let you take all STEAMypile is with no problems. Its your right. For me, I say we lost freedoms, rights, and ownership of a purchase. I know about EULA's (by the way go read STEAMypiles) and I know I opted to load Skyrim. What I didn't know about was STEAMypile. I do now. I don't like forced updates, forced to be online even when you check offline (for its twice a month required update or whatever it is) and its intrusion in my gaming habits, my hardware usage and system resources lost. I have to go through them to play MY game, load my game (even though I was mislead to believe the disk allowed me to load the game- why else was it there?). To say most people dislike Bethesda, I feel is over stated. There is nothing you can do that will make all people happy. Someone could win 200 million in the lottery and complain because they paid 42 million in taxes. HELLO... you just obtained for your personal wealth 158 million dollars based on your $25/hour PREVIUOS employment (or less). No, bethesda's programmers and artists are not disliked.

 

The port of this game is a miserable trial for PC users patients. The dumbifying the quests with pointers and hints make the game impossible to lose. THey could have opted to NOT put 10,000 hints at every turn. Instead, they could have worked on quests and timeline events and clear up items they KNEW were problems... ie static locked items in your inventory, broken quests, reduction in graphics to 2D with a3d objects plastered on. It is a game for a 10 year old toybox. We are PC users and were expeceting software technology to be on par with technology available. Again, this does not mean we hate the game. We still wouldn't be here if we hated the game, But we don't love the game. It is palyable and replayable. So is Half-life 2 (which has the same technology level). We are still here because there is no competition and the community makes it an enjoyable way to spend your free hours of entertainment.

 

I have played since 12:11 AM (at least started my download then) on 11-11-11. I still play. theres a lot I dislike, but modders and users make it tolerable and enjoyable. You can't make STEAMypile tolerable, bearable, likeable or want-able.

[Zalman1337]

I like how you repeated the same joke five times.

[AnimeOtaku102]

[...] that whole mess was a crushing blow to the general "videogames as art" prerogative, because it said that the audience simply isn't ready for games to simply be whatever they are... which is one of the most basic components of art, good or bad.

Dear lord, no. EA isn't a non-profit organization that funds artists to make whatever they please, they're a business. There's nothing wrong with being a business, but by their very nature a business lives on profits and dies on losses. They paid Bioware to make a product and Mass Effect 3 was a product. "Video games as art" takes an arrow to the knee as soon as a business-major executive, who likely never played anything more exciting that solitaire, looks at it and goes "I have some design concerns."

Edited January 19, 2013 by Anime_Otaku102

[rcavanah]

[...] that whole mess was a crushing blow to the general "videogames as art" prerogative, because it said that the audience simply isn't ready for games to simply be whatever they are... which is one of the most basic components of art, good or bad.

Dear lord, no. EA isn't a non-profit organization that funds artists to make whatever they please, they're a business. There's nothing wrong with being a business, but by their very nature a business lives on profits and dies on losses. They paid Bioware to make a product and Mass Effect 3 was a product. "Video games as art" takes an arrow to the knee as soon as a business-major executive, who likely never played anything more exciting that solitaire, looks at it and goes "I have some design concerns."

 

 

This is fair, but remember, concessions have to be made for a medium which has really only blossomed in the past ten years or so.

 

The film comparison has its flaws, but it's really all we have to go on, so consider this: some of the most well-regarded films of all time came from 50's hollywood, when the studios were at the height of their creative control. If you look at the exponentially-faster progress of modern art/storytelling media (literature took a certain amount of time to reach a renaissance, film took about half that, television half that, and so on), we're on the brink of that virtual renaissance... and yes, companies are in charge of making art, and independent creative directors are emerging alongside that structure. Just as, in the 50's, artist-controlled film began to emerge (i.e. the French New Wave, Italian Neorealists), now there are indie games coming out, but people are enjoying them simultaneously with big studio games. We may not see it now, but if you're willing to reduce us, as the human race, to historic patterns, well... we're on the verge of that.

 

In a way, I could respond that your reasoning voids the validity of any story in any mainstream game, because most are made by committee... but, obviously, that would be wrong. Good videogame stories often come about as a fluke, or in spite of the environment in which they're produced, sure... but they still find a way to creep to the surface. My point is, as consumers, we have to accept the boundaries of the medium as it is now to actually enjoy any of this in the moment.

 

I guess a big part of my reasoning here is this: When I was a hipstery teen, I used to be very absorbed in the desire to live in a bygone era, to be there at the cusp of a new artistic movement and see it for myself. But then I realized that I wouldn't have known that I was living in such an amazing time; it would have just been... well... life as usual. Someday, there'll be somebody looking back at today, wishing they were us, playing the games we're playing (or maybe the games we'll play in the decade to come). I just realized that, ultimately, I'll be a lot happier with my life if I soak up what our era has to offer. I think videogames are the medium of a certain generation that we all belong to... maybe time will prove me wrong, and that's OK too. It's not like I'm wasting time by trying to be optimistic or farsighted.

 

I guess that brings it back to the point of my post. I hope anyone on the negative side of things can eschew the tendency to blindly defend themselves, and at least consider what I'm saying as an alternative viewpoint (much the way you did, Brandy... it's always good to know that you realize it's complicated, even if you do wind up on the negative side of certain arguments).

 

The Steam thing strikes me as a minor inconvenience, at worst... and actually, a convenience for less technologically-adept people. People I know, actually. Of course, I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm just saying my circumstances don't frame it so negatively.

Edited January 19, 2013 by rcavanah

[Brandy1123]

This forum is not a waste of time nor are any. Some people have extremely strong views and others don't really care. Some people plant seeds of malcontent just to raise tension. You are right when you say, people of a generation wonder how it was for previous ones. Wondering what it was like to live through "something" as it was happening. I am sure the ones who have struggled with hardships the most remember things quite differently. People have ways of recording history and events through shaded glasses. They remember extremes on both ends but forget the smaller events that brought them to the point that future generations discuss, honor, or condem.

 

You talk about art. What is art? is anything I create considered art? You could vomit in a bucket and someone, somewhere would purchase it as art. Art is one of those things that will never have a true meaning. Here's the definition

1.The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination

2.Works produced by such skill and imagination.

I think this a really hard thing to put into tangeble words. Art and any entertainment or liking comes down to individual tastes. I guess thats life in a nutshell.

 

very thought provoking. It really makes you think about a lot of things that drive you in life.

 

Oh, and for the record, Todd Howard was NOT slouching in his chair eating cheetos. He was slouching in his chair eating Doritos. ;)

Kudos, I really like where you took this.

[rcavanah]

Oh, and for the record, Todd Howard was NOT slouching in his chair eating cheetos. He was slouching in his chair eating Doritos. ;)

 

Probably wasn't even a unique flavor... just cool ranch. WHAT A DOUCHE, AMIRIGHT?

 

Heh, anyway, I'm learning all these things as I'm saying them, of course, but I have seen those around who sort of... yunno... can't see the forest for the trees, and seem to be much more frustrated than happy. To them, I'm not exactly saying "Shoo, get out of here, we're trying to have fun with our game..." Instead, it's more of a "Hey, go look for something you really love, because it's gotta be out there somewhere..."

 

(...and then, "if you can't find that thing, THEN maybe the problem is with you..." heheh)

[Calamachus]

I'll weigh in a bit though I'm generally more a lurker than a poster on this forum.

 

It's not so much the game as art aspect as it is delivering on promises. I absolutely understand that part of the business is promising the moon and obviously not being able to deliver it. However, when you promise 'a player directed experience' and then deliver pretty much the exact opposite at the climax, well, you get Mass Effect 3.

 

Let me put it this way:

 

Suppose you paid money to see an art exhibit advertising 'the greatest masters of the Renaissance' and you go inside and instead you get.... some high school shop class representations of famous Cellini sculptures done in papier-mache.

 

Skyrim has aspects of being an incredible game and I certainly enjoyed it but clearly, clearly it was made for XBox360 and then the PC/PS3 crowd got scraps from the table. Compared to other Xbox360 games it's great - for the PC though it's not hard to see what was given up, what was left out and how much was simply ignored.

 

It's about being treated like a second class consumer and it starts to get old. For example, this whole bit with the Xbox exclusivity for 30 days and associated delays. At this point I'm not really planning to get Dragonborn. I might at some point if there's nothing else around I want to play and it's on sale on Steam but the manner in which it was handled, all the cross-platform stuff, has just left me disaffected. Apathetic is perhaps a better term. Player made mods have given me more content at a higher quality than the expansions have and that's a hard thing swallow when you're giving someone your money.

 

Finally, there's the newcomers. Star Citizen is a great example. It's being made for the PC and the graphics make Skyrim look like a childs crayon drawing. The engagement with the community, the sense of value and appreciation for being given money in return for making something they want to make. That's powerful. I compare that with the 'ignoreignoreignore *vague statement* ignoreignoreignore *excuse* ignoreignoreignore *press release*' approach that major developers seem to have now and it stings a bit more.

 

I think it's fair to say that everyone here loves what Skryim has the potential for and seems to want to be. We love the general principle of what the finished product represents, a huge step up from other modern examples of the genre. We just see the compromises that were made in terms of cross-platform support that clearly and blatantly favors the Xbox360 and the willingness to just blatantly ignore issues, bugs, problems, delays because... well... they can because we have no choice but to take it.

 

If something is important to you, you handle it. You make it a priority. I get business, I understand it very well. I'm in the business business you could say, fixing relationships between businesses and their clients. The model that EA/Bethesda/pretty much everyone elses uses is exclusive content authority. You don't have to worry so much about customer service if your customers don't really have choices in what service they use. If they want X, they have to buy it from you. Also everyone else in the industry uses largely the same model.

 

EA is the worst. Absolutely the worst in my opinion. I get the profitability involved in this model, I do. The 'art' card was played on Mass Effect 3 by the way as an excuse. In the same way you catch someone trolling on a forum, you call them on it and they say 'I meant to do that/come across that way because (insert shallow excuse here)'. Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 were not sold as 'incredible artistic experiences'. They were marketed as games where players had control over the story, how it began and ended. Then, at the climax, they dropped in a deus ex machina and just left it hanging. It was a poor choice and people flipped. The 'artistic integrity' card was played by EA as an excuse.

 

As to Steam, it's an example of compromise. The problem with compromise is that you compromise between 'average' and 'lowest common denominator' enough times and your point of compromise ends up pretty far down the scale. Skyrim wasn't a compromise between 'bleeding edge PC performance and experience' and 'Xbox360' (not that I'm dissing the xbox. It's not a PC but it's the standard for the console industry, its inexpensive and easy to get into, etc) but a compromise between 'average PC at the time development started' and 'entry level Xbox360 casual gamer experience'. Steam is a compromise of convenience. Skyrim made a lot of them.

 

Mods are what really make Skyrim a rich, worthwhile PC game and not a casual console game. More content and less than perfect patches from the developer are not changing that.

[AnimeOtaku102]

 

This is fair, but remember, concessions have to be made for a medium which has really only blossomed in the past ten years or so.

 

[...]

 

The Steam thing strikes me as a minor inconvenience, at worst... and actually, a convenience for less technologically-adept people. People I know, actually. Of course, I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm just saying my circumstances don't frame it so negatively.

Those are valid points and I wouldn't disagree, and (ironically) my job actually does entail me reducing people to patterns, but I would have to wonder what impact information technology has on this creative cycle. For example, in both Dragon Age: Origins and the Mass Effect games Bioware did say they were able to collect information on gameplay statistics, determining such things like quest completion, hours played, choices made, so on and so forth... and took that knowledge into consideration during the design process of subsequent games; on one hand that just means they're refining popular features, but on the other hand that invites a stagnation of creativity. I would argue this might the one of the contributing factors to the state of ME3's ending: Bioware simply determined a vast majority of players would inevitably wind up in one of those three endings and it would be pointless to dedicate resources to servicing the outliers. I don't think this is unique to Bioware, as many mainstream developers seem more dedicated to formula and only rarely flirt with innovation, but improved IT seems to just further enable it.

 

On the other hand the increased ability to self-publish via online retailers and the advent of kickstarters seems to be a very promising turn of events for creativity in video games, but I can't say much about the latter because I have yet to play a game that's funded by a kickstarter. Maybe when Dead State comes out and eventually Project Eternity.

 

So, short story long, I have no idea if the cycle will be hastened or hampered by technology. At least the film makers of the 50s didn't have to worry about legions of foul-mouthed amateur critics descending upon them with unkind words to crush their creative spirit like fragile family jewels in a cliff-related biking accident.

[formalrevya]

 

 

So, sometimes you just don't like something. That's OK. It feels good to let go of something you just don't like, and it really feels pretty miserable to hang on just so your voice can be heard, in hopes that maybe the next one will be better, or somebody will "fix it..." I mean, I don't wanna get into the whole Mass Effect 3 thing, but that whole mess was a crushing blow to the general "videogames as art" prerogative, because it said that the audience simply isn't ready for games to simply be whatever they are... which is one of the most basic components of art, good or bad.

 

 

 

If you can honestly say you played through all 3 games in order, put in the countless hours ((Mass effect 1 had about 50 hours total run time, and that's if you didn't drag your ass every step of the way. and this is just the first entry in the series)) necessary to get a full scope of the story, and were satisfied with the way the original endings played out. then there's something really wrong with you.