Novels and Movies Offer Closure. Video Games Should Too. [The New York Times]

Comments

• mohab@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Hmm… title is a little bit clickbaity—author seems to be mainly going after live service games, not necessarily every video game.

  Also, novels and movies don't always end 😂 Not sure why they threw that into the title. Freaking Fast and Furious will surely outlast planet Earth at this point 😂 What about Star Wars? It'll never end.

  I agree with the general sentiment though: I think players are flexible and will be inclined to give your new IP a shot, but capitalism is risk averse, and will obviously disagree.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Nah, Fast and Furious’ days are numbered. They already broke the glass on the storyboard card that says, “Go to space”, and the only one left to break is, “Time Machine”.

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    • mohab@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      And time machine leads to multiverse, and multiverse leads to reboot. Never mind the spinoff potential…

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    • Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wait there is a space fast and furious?

      I only watched the first 2 movies back in the day. They were OK, but I never felt the need to watch them again (or the desire to watch the later ones).

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• spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Wanting closure is a preference and does not apply to all games. Counter Strike 2 doesn’t have a story and there is zero closure for example.

  The industry trying to force games into a live service model when they shouldn’t be is a problem, sure. There are a few games where the model actually is a benefit though, like Helldivers 2. Other than wrapping up things somehow while winding down the game there isn’t an opportunity for closure while an endless war is going on. The setting itself is why closure isn’t on the table.

  So I agree with the overall idea as it applies to games in general, but it isn’t some universal truth.

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  • ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The closure the article speaks to is also just not turning the game into a perpetual expectation that more is coming. Multiplayer games have always been built around being “endless”, but there was never the expectation that this Halo would be the last Halo and just keep getting updates when you bought it 20 years ago. That expectation has led to sustainability problems we’ve all seen and that the article calls out.

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• NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  I deeply hate articles like this. They are just exploiting the hellish state of the industry to argue for why the games they don’t like shouldn’t exist.

  First and foremost: Clearly the author (and anyone agreeing with the thesis) doesn’t read or watch movies. Publishers and schools basically constantly encourage leaving a hook for a sequel because it is a lot easier to get a follow up in the same universe published. And that has always been true. Same with movies where the vast majority of major studio films are remakes or franchises now. Hell… television is a thing.

  But second? It fundamentally ignores what is ACTUALLY facing the video games industry. Making a successful live service game is the holy grail because it is job security… until it isn’t. But it isn’t like releasing a critically acclaimed single player game will protect you from layoffs because your parent company wanted to juice the Q2 numbers. And just listen to developers like Xalavier Nelson Jr about how hard it is to even get funding for a game these days.

  Shit like this is disgusting. It is “I don’t like X. I am going to say that X shouldn’t exist because I totally care about the industry that I can’t even be bothered to pay attention to”

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• avattar@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Novels offer closure? Ever heard of G.R. R. Martin? How about Patrick Rothfuss? How about 80% of all litrpg?

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  • afaix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Any good litrpg recs? I’ve only read solo leveling and it was good

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    • avattar@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Dungeon Crawler Carl is pretty good and has a great audio book as well. Primal Hunter, Mother of learning (series actually has an ending).

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• sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Video games do, which is why I buy so many story heavy games. If the industry moves more toward live service games, that’s fine, I’m just not going to buy them. There are plenty of non-live service games to choose from that I’m absolutely spoiled with choice to the extent that I’ll never play all the games I own, not to mention games I want to buy.

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  • AngryRobot@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    My wife and I are playing through the Telltale Walking Dead games right now and shes loving the stories.

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• B0NK3RS@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  There are so many games being made nowadays that it’s not even hard to avoid the shitty games. It’s just that the mainstream gamer/society doesn’t bother looking.

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• fodor@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Fuck the Times. Classic shit article.

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• DarkFuture@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Looking at you, Valve.

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