this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024

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Arkane's founder left because Bethesda 'did not want to do the kind of games that we wanted to make', and that's how it ended up with Redfall (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by nanoUFO@sh.itjust.works to c/games@sh.itjust.works

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[–] CodexArcanum@lemmy.world 57 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

He likens Arkane's approach to studios like Larian and FromSoftware: "Those are people that have been doing, over and over, the thing they know exactly how to do, until it hits super hard. So to me, that's what Arkane had to do."

Damn, what a concept: doing the same kind of game multiple times, iterating on the design to perfect it. Obviously Bethesda gets releasing the same game over and over again, but this idea of "improving" the design is so alien to them. Wouldn't adding thousands of microtransactions be an improvement?

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean creators club worked so well...

[–] Granite@lemmy.world 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Why not have unpaid labor do it for us?

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If they choose to, out of the love of the game, great. Let em do their thing. Hell, some will even raise capital on GoFundMe or Patreon.

[–] Granite@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago

Oh yeah, modding for fun is great. But the devs shouldn’t rely on the modders to make their game quality.

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world -5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I still don't understand why people have so much hate for Bethesda for... Paying independent creators to make better mods for their games and charging for those mods.

I can understand criticizing the execution: the quality and price of each mod, the grey legal area where these weren't included in Season Passes that were supposed to include all DLC, etc. And I certainly wouldn't call the results a success.

But nothing about it ever seemed particularly greedy or "unfair" to me. It solved a lot of problems that the modding community has. It protected the creators from having. Their content stolen and re-used or re-distributed. Mods (especially for-profit) were always kind of a grey area legally because... It's Bethesda's platform and IP. Bethesda may not be as great with modders as other companies, but they're a lot better than the worst offenders like Nintendo. The Creation Club has better quality control. And it's better for the end users- easier to install, usable on consoles, no need to go to sketchy 3rd party websites or mess with the installation. I know people complain on the Internet anytime Bethesda updates one of their games because it breaks their mods- I could be wrong but I've never heard of that happening with CC mods.

Seems to me like most of the hate for CC comes from people just wanting more content without paying for it.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Creation Club goes against modding values, which is why people hate it. It's Bethesda's attempt at profiting from 'mods', they don't actually give a shit about modders being paid. But honestly, CC shouldn't even be compared to mods, it's content Bethesda contracted people for and then they sell it on CC and keep the money.

Nobody is asking for free content from modders, most create mods out of passion and the players enjoy that, they can always open donation links that people can use (I have donated to many mod creators in the past, have you?). The best mods are created this way and without the player freedom, the quality of content would be a lot worse overall or simply not exist.

[+] paultimate14@lemmy.world -15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

What the fuck are "modding values"? Women with ridiculous anime proportions and almost non-existent armor? Adding Shrek and Thomas the Tank to Skyrim? Gatekeeping mods to a small community of individuals who play on PC and have the technical skills to do that? Slaving away while the rent and bills like up out of some sense of obligation to a community? Hoping people donate? Putting all the time and effort into creating something and taking on all of the risk? Being. Subject to the whims of Bethesda's management and hoping management doesn't change their tune to be more like Nintendo?

How can you calin that Bethesda doesn't give a shit about modders getting paid, when they pioneered the first real legitimate attempt at paying modders? That's some serious cognitive dissonance. And perhaps the most important piece of the equation is the financial security it provides. The Creation Club paying modders up-front greatly mitigates the business risks of investing that much time and effort. It is not the best fit for everyone, but that allows a lot of mods to be made that never would have been possible otherwise. And it doesn't remove any of the mods that already existed or prevent anyone from making free non-CC mods.

As for donations to modders- those companies like Patreon are taking their own cut as well. And that's a legal grey area because modders are profitting off of Bethesda's platform. Then you have the issue where Bethesda updates their game and provides an improvement for literally millions of people while a couple hundred PC players flame them on Twitter for breaking the mod they paid or donated for.

Personally, I've never donated or paid for any mods because I don't use them. I've messed around with mods and the vast, vast majority of them suck. They feel completely out of place and ruin the vibe of the game. It's not worth all of the hassle of installing a mod manager and working through all of the issues just to add memes to the game. The ones that add more quest lines are usually just way worse versions of the radiant quests that already exist. Maybe if I had a more powerful computer back in like 2012 or 2013 then graphics mods might have made sense, but with the updates in the Special and Anniversary editions there's not much point. If I wanted to go back to Fallout 3 then maybe there's an argument there, but I'm not really interested in going back there in general.

The "best" mods can be created In a variety of ways. I'd argue that the Hearthfire, Dawngard, and Dragonborn DLC's are better than any free mod I've ever seen. The vast, vast majority of free mods are shitposts or school projects that no one cares about.

[–] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Mods have always been free, a labor of love from the community for the community. Fuck paying for mods. I don't give a fuck if the modders get paid - they mod because they love the game and want to participate in their own way. Modding has ALWAYS been this way and requiring a financial transaction to be a part of the community is scummy. Whatever your beliefs are, they belong only to you and Todd.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Yikes.

[–] misterdoctor@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Feels like this guy overheard a conversation about what mods are at a crowded buffalo wild wings in cleveland eight years ago and never researched the topic further, assuming they know everything they could possibly need to know

[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 2 weeks ago

Mentions lack of mods on consoles in both posts, maybe a console player a bit angry their platform is locked down? Either way, yep, they clearly don't participate in the mod space much, so should probably spare their opinion on the matter.

[–] AMillionNames@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

Honestly, give me a good singleplayer vampire game that has Netflix Castlevania-like depth.

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 29 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Capitalism well destroy everything you love then charge you for a photo of the experience.

[–] telllos@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I was at universal japan, in the super mario world. My son goes to one of the block, were we've seen kids hit to make the sound of coins. He it's it and and it goes the way it sounds for fake blocks 🚫 🚫 🚫.

Turns out you have to buy a special watch to make the coin sound ! Thanks capitalism.

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You've got to be shitting me... 😩

[–] telllos@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Nop, well, looks like you can do more than hit blocks. But that thing isn't even a watch

Still $40 above the entrance ticket.

[–] blindbunny@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That's dumb, that power up band should be in the price of admission. Imagine your parents bringing you to super Mario world and you can't do half the shit there because they could barely afford the admission price. Fuck that makes me sad.

[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago

It’ll be one of those photos from a ride at a theme park where everyone is screaming in terror.

[–] Wahots@pawb.social 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Tbh, I'm fine with big AAAA games burning in financially, like Anthem or Redfall. The AA games from smaller devs are great, and I just don't buy the next game if they buy out a smaller studio and all the OG devs go on to building a new company. That's how we got games like Half Life, when MSFT devs got sick of working for a mega company and decided to build their own game.

If they buy out a studio and all the devs leave and form a new studio with the proceeds of the prior studio, it means more quality indie titles.

[–] CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago

You say that but Arcane didn’t deserve this fate. I’d be rooting for a Bethesda game to fail but BioWare and Arcane? That’s just sad. They were both amazing studios ruined by BS. And the AAA space is large enough these days that actual big budget games can indeed innovate.

Like say though, I won’t exactly shed a tear for failing studios like Ubisoft or Bethesda that have been churning out the same crap for awhile now.

Also not every game needs to innovate and it’s not like you lose a lot by having average selling games come out. But even in games packed with AAA bangers, indies still sell incredibly well. It isn’t a zero sum game.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

AAAA games are so last year. It's all about the AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA games now.

[–] toynbee@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Like this one?

[–] AMillionNames@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

Why did they go multiplayer instead of story driven singleplayer? It almost kept me from Deathloop, too.

[–] the_gmg@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

He sold the company in 2010! Big searching for the guy who did this energy here.

[–] paultimate14@lemmy.world 0 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean... It's hard to really find solid numbers because Bethesda hasn't published them, but we know that Prey's opening week of sales was 60% less than Dishonored 2's was. All the estimates and discussion i can find on the Internet either concludes that the game lost money or, at best, broke about even.

It got great critical reviews. People who identify as "gamers" seemed to love it. But it gets compared to Bioshock a lot- Bioshock Infinite came out 4 years earlier and the market was saturated with similar games by the time Prey came out.

So I don't think it's unreasonable for management to want to move in a different direction. That direction ended up being a terrible one with Redfall, but i can't automatically assume that the studio would have been any better off making another game like Prey.

You can find every example you could look for in history. Studios who changed direction successfully, like Insomniac going from FPS to 3D platformer. Gamefreak went from platformers like Pulseman to making JRPG's and ended up making the most successful media franchise in history, while all of their later attempts to do anything else have failed miserably.

And it's not as if it would have made sense to have Arkane make Weird West. You can't just slash a AAA studio down to an indie overnight.

[–] commandar@lemmy.world 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This is ridiculously well trod ground, but Prey also wasn't at all helped by Bethesda's marketing.

They had what is probably the truest successor to System Shock 2 that's been made on their hands and Bethesda made Arkane use the title of a 15 year old portal based shooter that had absolutely no relation to the game and didn't do particularly well because they owned the IP.

The entire Bethesda-Arkane relationship has been pretty thoroughly mismanaged.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Wait, I thought that was just a remake of Prey. System Shock 2 is one of my favourite games of all time.

[–] commandar@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

lol and this is exactly why that decision was so baffling.

The game has absolutely nothing to do with the 3D Realms Prey game. It's truer to System Shock than the Bioshock series ever was. It routinely goes on sale for next to nothing -- highly recommended if you're a fan of SS2.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

You need to stop what you're doing and play Prey right now.

[–] PunkiBas@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

Its become my favorite game of all time. Try it asap

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

You don't need to slash a AAA studio down to the size of an indie; you can just spin off a small team from your larger one and roll resources on and off of that project as needed.