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Starfield design lead says players are "disconnected" from how games are made: "Don't fool yourself into thinking you know why it is the way it is"

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
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cripterion

Member
Yeah, and there are alot of other developers that can pull it off.

No, gamers don't know all it takes, but they do know end products. The Starfield end product was simply not as good and dated when compared to other games.

So...yeah. Maybe they just need to realize that their last excellent game was over a decade ago, and they have lost their pedigree status.

Just look at what modders are able to fix/create in a fraction of time it would take Bethesda. For a company that has been riding on the success of modders, that dude's statement is even more ridiculous.
 
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Those of us who don't work in the VFX industry, can't we laugh at things such as Lost's infamous sub?

ZYmEYYS.gif


I feel we can..

Absolutely, and I do it too. But it does get incredibly frustrating when you read lengthy rants from your typical MCU afficionado detailing his (or her’s, girls can be troglodytes too) ignorant critique of things that go far, far beyond their feeble comprehension.

So yeah, I understand the frustration.
But getting defensive about it, meh.
 
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Stooky

Member
He's right. If starfield had never been made he still would be right. If star field was GOTG he would be right.
 
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SHA

Member
Just keep quiet. Seriously. This, just like those laughable steam review responses, just makes the situation worse.
It's steam, users paid a high price and expect a premium experience, pc is just an experiment, not a real platform, these reviews were expected, he shouldn't let it get under his skin, otherwise this unprofessional.
 

NikuNashi

Member
Been one surprising response after another from Bethesda folks.

First Todd says their game is optimized and we should all upgrade to new expensive GPUs. Then, they start responding to critical steam reviews by essentially saying "you're playing it wrong". Now this person is saying we should all stop the criticism because we don't know how hard it was ?

Bro, my wife does not know how hard my dick gets, but she still criticizes it. Fucking suck it up and improve your game.

Fix It Naturi Naughton GIF by Power


I wish my wife would suck it up, instead she handles with two fingers at arms length like picking up a dead rat.
 

JayK47

Member
Well, it had to happen. Nobody stays number one forever. The last game they made that I truly enjoyed was Fallout 3. It has been downhill since. I imagine the next Elder Scrolls game will be even worse than Starfield.
 

ByWatterson

Member
Okay but like No Man's Sky was made by 12 people and is better so who cares what I don't understand?

No one is worse than the victimized, thin-skinned developer who thinks he's providing a public service like a soldier or a teacher.

My man, you're an entertainer. Entertain me or piss off.
 
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recursive

Member
Not the consumers fault they made a lifeless game with mediocre design. If they really thought that doing fetch quests that could have been handled via an email is fun then they are out of their league. This game would have been a hit in 2006. Poor form Bethesda guy.
 

EDMIX

Member
I mean....they are not really wrong.

Some of the things stated about this game, people acted like it was merely the engine, yet mods where able to correct a lot of the very issues folks claimed couldn't be done or something. So they would know more about their own engine, then any of us and I agree with a massive disconnect regarding gamers education on their own hobby.

We have folks literally that think GTA Trilogy was being made um..."instead of" GTA VI, only to have zero answer to why we have a trailer and release window for GTAVI
 

DanielG165

Member
Look man, I genuinely enjoy playing Starfield, truly. But for goodness sake, Bethesda need to stop opening their mouths in response to criticisms over their game; they’re only making it worse on themselves in the eyes of the enthusiast community. General audiences don’t care, but members of Bethesda repeatedly making statements like this isn’t a good idea.

Just… Just stop talking lol. The game is out; let people think whatever they want to think about it! If they really enjoy it like I do, wonderful. If not, then that’s okay.
 

Katajx

Gold Member
We don’t have to be a game developer to see that there are still game design aspects that they have been using for 20+ years at this point.

Look at how much of these things feel/seem familiar to other Bethesda titles. That’s not saying they haven’t made improvements.

Look at what they did with Skyrim though, and look at what other developers are doing with their tech and open worlds.

I think it relies way too much on procedurally generated things, and there just isn’t enough of the things they did well.
 

ahtlas7

Member
"I mean, I can guess what it takes to make a Hostess Twinkie, but I don't work in the factory, so what the hell do I really know? Not a lot.”

knowing how it’s made doesn’t change whether you like freaking twinkies. I didn’t enjoy Starfield and no amount of river crying will change that.
 

Gojiira

Member
Bethesda is losing more and more of my respect with each comment they make.

They need to shut up, apologize, do a hello games and CDPR, bunker down, and make their game better. Instead of trying to gaslight the world and tell us all how we don't know what a good game is. I mean these people have been saying the , most ridiculous shit. first 30fps being an artistic choice? then trying to justify where there are loading screens everywhere.....etc

This reminds me of that too-human fiasco... idk.... maybe we are missing the point here, is this a North ameriacan devs thing? Rather than take accountability they attack their critics and fans.
Honestly it feels like just a modern societal thing tbh, same as how Disney calls every critic any number of ‘ists’ to deflect from the garbage they make, from Star Wars to Marvel…
Bethesda though, man they might just be the worst gaming company atm like Pete Hines telling fans lore doesnt matter in a game about nuclear monsters and ghouls, or Bethesda trying to gaslight that no npcs in F76’s launch was immersive, now Starfield where every critic is just playing it wrong, that the repetitive outposts and boring missions is in fact a wealth of unique content, that exploration really is open etc etc…
Urgh yep the worst devs atm, they cant even comprehend their own dated design philosophy and criticism of it is just ignorance apparently…
 
Criticism that includes threats or some way too personal shit is not cool at all, but gamers don't need to know how a game is made, and they also don't really need to appreciate how hard it is, how much talent, overconfident ego and actual smartness it needs, and how many crunch hours were done They want a good game, no BS marketing lies, and devs/publishers that know when they fucked up and correct it.
They don't have to be connected to this site of the work, very much like publishers don't need to be responsible for bad excessive buying habits from adults and unattended kids spending their parents money.
Harsh public criticisms from peers would be unprofessional though and truly damaging depending on timing and respective role, so a dick move through and through (eg like that COD joke at the game awards. it was sorta funny because it was true, but still a dick move to throw other people under the bus especially with the very obvious self awareness), but I would very much hope that colleagues bust each other's balls constantly within a studio and group and also comepting studios not under the same umbrella, especially since they are connected to the work and see the core problem much more accurate. We don't need a safe space world, but constructive, while naturally shallow reviews from Jo Schmo pushing them forward.
 

The Fuzz damn you!

Gold Member
If Mr Pagliarulo doesn’t want people to speculate about the reasons why Starfield was such a disappointment, he is free to use his authoritative insights to tell us all exactly what went wrong with its development. Until that day, however, people will continue to engage in the age-old art of conversation in an attempt to figure it out.

Honestly, I know MS like to control the messaging about their products wherever they can, but this is truly ridiculous.
 

SJRB

Gold Member



Asmon makes an excellent point. The creative industry's fantasy that anyone cares how hard it was to make a game. Nobody cares. Every job has challenges but you'll never hear the car mechanic who busted the engine go "you know, I just fucked up your car but you don't understand how difficult this was so cut me some slack, okay".

"Making games is hard! There's resources, and stress. People need to work together" Motherfucker what are you talking about? That's like 99% of every job out there. You don't see mee ringing up a customer saying "well I understand you are unhappy with our product but you're wrong because we really tried our best and it was a stressful period".

It's a pathetic mindset. What are you, 12? Just own it, like you own the 70 bucks you took from me for the product.
 
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RJMacready73

Simps for Amouranth
I dunno maybe stop making the same reskinned game, all your shit looks identical and you have the worst most wooden looking NPCs that the community has to fix, if a bunch of amateurs in their own time can turn Skyrim into a gorgeous looking game why in the fuck can the actual developers not do the same???
 



Asmon makes an excellent point. The creative industry's fantasy that anyone cares how hard it was to make a game. Nobody cares. Every job has challenges but you'll never hear the car mechanic who busted the engine go "you know, I just fucked up your car but you don't understand how difficult this was so cut me some slack, okay".

"Making games is hard! There's resources, and stress. People need to work together" Motherfucker what are you talking about? That's like 99% of every job out there. You don't see mee ringing up a customer saying "well I understand you are unhappy with our product but you're wrong because we really tried our best and it was a stressful period".

It's a pathetic mindset. What are you, 12? Just own it, like you own the 70 bucks you took from me for the product.

I genuinely think we're starting to see the results of a degenerated education system move into employment. This idea that effort is praiseworthy in and of itself feels very modern.
 

Forth

Member



Asmon makes an excellent point. The creative industry's fantasy that anyone cares how hard it was to make a game. Nobody cares. Every job has challenges but you'll never hear the car mechanic who busted the engine go "you know, I just fucked up your car but you don't understand how difficult this was so cut me some slack, okay".

"Making games is hard! There's resources, and stress. People need to work together" Motherfucker what are you talking about? That's like 99% of every job out there. You don't see mee ringing up a customer saying "well I understand you are unhappy with our product but you're wrong because we really tried our best and it was a stressful period".

It's a pathetic mindset. What are you, 12? Just own it, like you own the 70 bucks you took from me for the product.

Perfect post that applies to nearly every AAA game released such as Forza.
Own your shitty product and admit your vision was flawed.
 
I genuinely think we're starting to see the results of a degenerated education system move into employment. This idea that effort is praiseworthy in and of itself feels very modern.
I think we're starting to see the effects of the talent drain in the industry. Programmers, engineers, designers etc are taking their talent outside game development and it's showing.

I mean, why would you work at a place to where you're pay isn't as high as it would be somewhere else or why would you work where it has an extremely high turnover rate? You wouldn't, so if you have the skill to work elsewhere you do and for those who don't? They work in the video game industry.

I honestly believe that's the reason why you're starting to see more games shift to procedurally generated content. Not just because it's easier on development but also because it bridges to talent gap.
 
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BbMajor7th

Member
Bethesda: "Test? Learn? Evolve?! To hell with that, it's the players who need to take stock of the situation and grow as consumers!"
 
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Hudo

Member
At the very least, Bethesda should just shut the fuck up. Be quiet, make TES6 good. Whining about people saying the game's mid and bemoaning the fact that Starfield is not the next Skyrim doesn't help anyone, especially not Bethesda themselves.
Your product is mid, learn from it, make TES 6 good. That's all there is to it.
 
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WitchHunter

Banned



Asmon makes an excellent point. The creative industry's fantasy that anyone cares how hard it was to make a game. Nobody cares. Every job has challenges but you'll never hear the car mechanic who busted the engine go "you know, I just fucked up your car but you don't understand how difficult this was so cut me some slack, okay".

Anyone with some low level iq knows this. If you need jesus face to explain this, you are a mental midget. Assmonky earns a shitton of money so he will say whatever the viewers want to hear. Basically a clown.

I think we're starting to see the effects of the talent drain in the industry. Programmers, engineers, designers etc are taking their talent outside game development and it's showing.
Nah, it's the idiotic choices people - not meant to be directors and leaders - make is the problem. The selection process of these peepz is problematic on many levels. You can have the best talent if the leader is an idiot, you are all going to, figuratively speaking, die in the process.

I mean, why would you work at a place to where you're pay isn't as high as it would be somewhere else or why would you work where it has an extremely high turnover rate? You wouldn't, so if you have the skill to work elsewhere you do and for those who don't? They work in the video game industry.
People work in the games industry because they like what they do, it's a dream come true for them. There are also a lot of maximalists, who just simply love their work.

I honestly believe that's the reason why you're starting to see more games shift to procedurally generated content. Not just because it's easier on development but also because it bridges to talent gap.
Procedural has always been the suit people's own deus ex machina. Let's make gold by making less. If you put a hedge fund manager on top of your gaming company, the goal will be to make procedural games. Money ppl do not understand what gamers need, because, well, they don't play games. They see the numbers.
 

Kamina

Golden Boy
I honestly don’t think Starfield is bad, or at least not so much was people make it out to be.
But it is certainly far from what it could be with a more modern engine and game design approach.
Bethesda being in denial explains exactly why their games are usually bug riddled abominations, but that fits to the general Zeitgeist nowadays of “Criticism = Hatespeach”
 
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Shut0wen

Member
Eh, no, plenty of directors blamed their audience for not seeing their films. Marvel schlock lately, the awful Ghostbusters movie and many more.
Not as many as game devs, atleast 3 devs a year bitch and moan and make excuses, movie directors have 2 excuse, producers and executives being to involved in a movie or they generally made a shit movie and blame it on costs, arkane and bethesda literally have no excuses, redfall was shit because it was being made by inexperianced script kiddies because 70% of those that worked on dishonoured and prey left the studio, bethesda had near enough 8 years to make a new ip, realised there engine is total dog shit and some how pulled off starfield, dont get me wrong im impressed with alot of shit bethesda pulled off with that engine to create starfield especially space combat but it shows how much the game suffered because of it, the game has no soul
 

StereoVsn

Member
Not as many as game devs, atleast 3 devs a year bitch and moan and make excuses, movie directors have 2 excuse, producers and executives being to involved in a movie or they generally made a shit movie and blame it on costs, arkane and bethesda literally have no excuses, redfall was shit because it was being made by inexperianced script kiddies because 70% of those that worked on dishonoured and prey left the studio, bethesda had near enough 8 years to make a new ip, realised there engine is total dog shit and some how pulled off starfield, dont get me wrong im impressed with alot of shit bethesda pulled off with that engine to create starfield especially space combat but it shows how much the game suffered because of it, the game has no soul
Look up in the thread. There have been recently many directors complaining their audience was wrong and blaming the audience for their bombas.
 

Bond007

Member
Clown behavior.
Dont care what the justification is. If you gotta try to convince us it's fun- there is a problem. We may not be game creators but most people know how to determine what fun is.
 

Shut0wen

Member
Look up in the thread. There have been recently many directors complaining their audience was wrong and blaming the audience for their bombas.
I know this, not 100% on the marvel directors but dont watch those cuck movie anyways but like you mentioned about ghostbusters, havnt seen it but it looked shit and was sumit no one wanted but i still stand game devs cry way more any directors
 

Reizo Ryuu

Gold Member
knowing how it’s made doesn’t change whether you like freaking twinkies.
6 pages in and still nobody is reading so there are shit posts like these.
He agrees with you, don't like it all you want, scream it off the rooftops if you don't like it, but that's not what he's talking about; he's literally only talking about speaking with authority about why the twinkie is the way it is, not just disliking it jfc.
You don't like the twinkie? Great, voice that opinion all you want, but you have no idea how it was made, so saying anything extra like you do know is worthless.
 

tmlDan

Member



Asmon makes an excellent point. The creative industry's fantasy that anyone cares how hard it was to make a game. Nobody cares. Every job has challenges but you'll never hear the car mechanic who busted the engine go "you know, I just fucked up your car but you don't understand how difficult this was so cut me some slack, okay".

"Making games is hard! There's resources, and stress. People need to work together" Motherfucker what are you talking about? That's like 99% of every job out there. You don't see mee ringing up a customer saying "well I understand you are unhappy with our product but you're wrong because we really tried our best and it was a stressful period".

It's a pathetic mindset. What are you, 12? Just own it, like you own the 70 bucks you took from me for the product.

I just watched this entire thing, he is on point with every. single. thing.

Everyone's job is hard, that's not an excuse, you make millions, sometimes billions, in revenue with the final product. If obvious changes would have significantly made the game better you either have a talent issue (fire them) or you're incompetent.

He's absolutely right in also saying that no developer who makes a good game ever complains about shit like this, just do better. Period.
 
I’m sure its frustrating to work on a project so long, knowing its weaknesses, but always striving to make it the best it can be with the resources you have, only for some random ignorant person to harshly criticize it based on the fact it’s not no man’s sky. I see people that think this way a lot, they cherry pick the best features from the wide swath of games available and then complain that x game doesn’t have y feature from z game. It’s as if they think these game systems are mix and matchable across engines and teams, and all developers need do is select the best ideas, completely overlooking the challenge of developing them into a cohesive software package. It’s as if they think the team wanted the game to be a series of boring conversations separated by loading screens, rather than that being how it turned out. They can’t all be zingers folks.
 

Sushi_Combo

Member
I’m sure its frustrating to work on a project so long, knowing its weaknesses, but always striving to make it the best it can be with the resources you have, only for some random ignorant person to harshly criticize it based on the fact it’s not no man’s sky. I see people that think this way a lot, they cherry pick the best features from the wide swath of games available and then complain that x game doesn’t have y feature from z game. It’s as if they think these game systems are mix and matchable across engines and teams, and all developers need do is select the best ideas, completely overlooking the challenge of developing them into a cohesive software package. It’s as if they think the team wanted the game to be a series of boring conversations separated by loading screens, rather than that being how it turned out. They can’t all be zingers folks.
Not a gamer issue if the game sucks.
 

GooseMan69

Member
Lol. People kill me. You dont care how its made but in reality, there is a solar system of difference between playing a game and making one. Thats just the truth. The man put out a genuine statement that's just as valid as your criticisms, but lets just crap all over his thoughts and real world experience because we have a right to our opinions. And you're right, we do. Just dont get confused in thinking because you have an opinion, its correct. Most times it falls flat against someone who actually works in the field.

I work in the film industry. Its always amazing just how out of touch people are when they attempt to tell you how to do your job when they have no idea what it is you actually do. At the end of the day, we bust our asses making the best film we can, do our due diligence to correct any creative decisions that may not be in the best interest of the production, put it in the can and hope for the best. Thats literally all you can really do. There is no formula to determine whats a banger and what isnt until the production is out in the wild, This happens even AFTER youve taken feedback from other films you've made. There's just no guarantee. Game development is the same way. Hell, all creative endeavors are. Its madd easy to criticize someone's creative product from the sidelines.

That said though, I'm glad this man has decided to draw a line between gamers and developers. It NEEDED to be said. There's a lot of genuine criticisms about Starfield, there's also a bunch of it in bad faith. In truth, there's way more positive out there about Starfield than negative, only the negative is much louder and its popular to crap on the game throughout social media. The game is still the tenth best selling game this year, and still sits on the 7th most played game on Xbox, and still talked about after four months from its release. Thats bound to increase after all the DLC, mods, etc. Its still a stellar game (especially being a new IP) even with its flaws. I just believe that gamers begin to believe in their own legends when it comes to these enthusiasts forums because they a free to say whatever they want to say. And no offense but GaF is notorious for crapping on anything Xbox as its primarily Sony centric. By default, that makes this place the LAST DESTINATION you want to visit if you're looking for REAL, GENUINE constructive criticisms or reviews when it comes to the Xbox platform.

Imagine stanning this hard for a mega corporation.
 
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