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submitted 10 months ago by stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to c/gaming@beehaw.org

You'll probably find that a lot of planets in Starfield are pretty boring, but Bethesda says that's kind of the point.

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[-] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 10 months ago

The point of a game is to be fun in some sense of the word, not to depict Mars as scientificly accurate as possible, unless it's Scientificly Accurate Mars Simulator.
If the planneta are boring, then the game about exploring those planets are probably failed at being fun, and that's kind of irregardless of what people want.
Personally I would like all the games to be good, for example.

[-] Chobbes@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago

I dunno, I don’t think the point of all art is to be “fun”. There’s plenty of examples of games that aren’t necessarily fun but do something interesting in some sense or inspire other emotions. Exploring a bunch of dead and boring planets may not be fun and maybe it’s not compelling or worth doing in Starfield, but I think it can be interesting to have something more “boring” most of the time to have other moments stand out… and sometimes something being boring or painful is part of the experience and it wouldn’t be as worthwhile without, like for example particularly difficult games can be pretty painful to play through, but sometimes having gone through the painful thing is a huge part of why you care about the experience.

Of course not everything is for everybody, and more “boring” experiences in general are probably not what the average person playing video games is into… but there’s plenty of us who like a good boring or tedious or painful slog every once in a while :). Maybe it’s rewarding, maybe it sets the atmosphere, maybe it’s meaningful in some other way… I get it, but I think it’s a little sad to reduce games to “just supposed to be fun!” It’s an awesome art form and I love seeing other creative things done with it.

[-] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 10 months ago

By fun I largely mean "brings positive and meaningful experience"

[-] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 3 points 10 months ago

It's a space exploration game with thousands of planet, they can depict planet being a barren rock and can be fun.

Personally i don't think all games are good, arguing with people parroting that is a waste of time. Personally Witcher 3 is mediocre, but i'm allowing people to love it and see it as 10/10. Game is personal taste, if you don't like that sort of thing then it isn't for you, no such thing as "all game is good".

[-] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago

can depict planet being a barren rock and can be fun.

And that will be good then. My point was, that games should sacrifice realism in favour of fun and criticism of "yeah it's boring, but it's realistic" is fundamentally wrong.

[-] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 1 points 10 months ago

I think in Starfield case it's less of sacrifice fun for realism and more of having these realism for a reason. From the review alone, the location is boring, and that's by design, because you can either ignore it or interact with it, like gather resource or build a base. There's thousands of planet, it's not realistic to all be handcrafted and interesting, because what's interesting for the first 10 times will get boring when you do it 50 times.

There's a reason why they design it that way, and i think it's rather fair for this sort of game.

[-] NuPNuA@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

That depends what you're going in expecting. Bethesda have been very clear that this isn't a Space Opera but more hard-sci-fi. I don't expect cities on every planet and alien political intrigue. I expect a cold, barren and uncaring universe that humans are trying to tame.

[-] Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 10 months ago

And the only metrics here would be "is the game fun" in the end. Is exploring barren planets fun? Good. Is it not? Then it doesn't matter that real life Mars is even more boring

[-] NuPNuA@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago

Fun is subjective though isn't it?

[-] bermuda@beehaw.org 1 points 10 months ago

Not surprising to see them get complaints about this tbh. They went for "borderline horror game" with how much of a miserable wasteland Fallout 3 was and got blasted for it.

this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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