idyllic_optimism

I think the title of the article is misleading a bit. According to the article, the game has been in development since 2018 and they've been having issues they cannot seem to be able to fix to their satisfaction and it sounds like it's more viable for the studio to abandon the project than try to fix it by throwing more money and time at it. And it's a console game, so that limits their market, too.To me, reading the article, "narrative driven games don't sell anymore" is not the main problem.

It was very telling EA announced almost right after the launch that they won't release any DLC's and they're moving the team to ME5 already. If that was not the sign EA left DA:V for dead, I don't know what was.

If the leaks to be trusted, they expected to sell 10 million copies but now they're talking about they maybe can sell 3 million copies for the lifetime of the game.

Veilguard is far from success, and it's because it's the worst-written DA game to date. And that is on EA. They had every chance to make it a good game (as the art book they published shows just what a good story it was shaping up to be before EA forced them to start over for a live service version) but they chose to waste everyone's time for 10 years by changing their mind mid development multiple times, firing the veteran team members right in the middle of development....

What doesn't sell are the games that don't have a well written story or well-written characters. Or the games that their developers themselves don't have any passion or interest in, games just made to please shareholders.... Or games that get preachy on issues without proper care...

This experience but in my case, I got a significantly lower grade despite the fact that I worked on the paper longer. It was a great shock to me, I never got that low of a grade when I did those papers at the absolutely last minute.

For games specifically, I have to binge or I'll never go back to it and next time I wanna play, I have to start over. Books or TV shows etc. don't have the same problem as they are more passive consumption than a game.

The colonists you are given all have character traits and there is a social aspect of the game. Colonists can start relationships, start families, break up, start social fights and end up in infirmarry... Sometimes, family members of your colonists come to your colony as raiders. All these stories forming during gameplay is the real strength of the game for me.

For example, there was this one colonist woman in one of my playthroughs. She was the tough, soldier type. She started one or two relationships in the colony but ended them. Then she tried to go back to them. It started creating some complicated feelings among the colony so I sent her to scavenge a nearby abandoned base.

Before she can leave, a band of raiders popped in. One of the raiders was her teenage son! So I start getting so invested in saving the son and bringing him back to the colony. I'm not that skilled in combat or tactics so I save the game multiple times until a trap injures the boy so his mom can snatch him without fighting. She takes him into one of the intact rooms in the ruin and patches up his wound, shares her food. (She takes him prisoner and you can keep talking to prisoners and convert them into your colonists. )

Here is a scene where raiders running around outside, raiding. And a mother and son, hunkered down in a room, trying to reconnect.

While the boy is recovering in the impromptu prison room, she gets out and shoots the raiders one by one. Rest of the raiders leave the map after losing enough members.

Mother and son talk about family, son talks about some childhood memories. Eventually, he is no longer a prisoner but a newly recruited member of the colony. Woman comes back with her son. Son turns out to be a psychopath but that's ok. At the Rim, we love psychopaths, they do gruesome task of disposing raider corpses, for example, without getting emotional strain.

Mother stopped creating drama in the colony after son joined.

....

If you read people's stories in the steam comments (there are a lot of war crime simulator stories, too, be warned) you may get why it's so addictive.

And modpacks....all the modpacks! All of them turn the game into a whole new game.

I was thinking of Stardew Valley and Rimworld while reading your post, sure enough SDW was mentioned at the end :D

Sorry for adding comment after comment, I've been in a position to talk to teenagers and experienced when they tune you out, when they're interested in what you have to say.

I find it works best if you start with the positive. As adults, we should challenge ourselves to find the positive at times, since we tend to slide into correction mode without realizing.

Sometimes, we'll start with positive and then talk about the part that's problematic and why. Sometimes, we should just mention the positives, good examples, well thought out arguments, a good word choice etc. In fact, noticing and mentioning good examples will be the real game changers.

And be genuine, I cannot state the importance of this at all. Consider what your friend would think of the tone you're about to use. If your friends would think you're trying to preach, your kid will feel the same.

Keeping the tone casual and at their level should work better. If it sounds like an exam question or job interview, kids would find it difficult to engage. It's a learning process for adults, too.

Thinking about our own childhood and how we would react to the critical thinking questions should help. Instead of a pop quiz sounding questions, we would prefer the adults talking to us to be genuine and not trying to lecture us, or test us.

You wouldn't talk to your friend in a way "what's the streamer's motivations?" but you'd make a conversation out of it. "I was there with them right until they said this..." And you'd state your reasoning. Think of it talking to your friend, but keep it 12 yo. level.