Starfield Dev Blames the Players

[@Yusha7135]

Emil is the same dev who said players are too stupid to appreciate good writing, so why bother creating deep storylines. Bethesda needs to fire him if they ever want to create a good RPG again.

[@giraffeorganic]

The reason he’s been employed there for so long is because no one else wants to work there 😂

[@Dead_Goat]

hes right though. people liked bg3 writing... and it is complete trash.

[@jacobkendall9895]

@@Dead_Goatyou’re joking

[@xRawPower]

Says a lot about Bethesda that they didn't immediately fire him. Bethesda thinks you're stupid if you support them. 👍

[@eacketto2984]

@@Dead_Goat Tell me you aren't serious lol

[@_Just_John]

Dev: "You know nothing about game development." Community: *makes dozens of mods fixing another Bethesda game hours after its release and thousands of incredibly creative mods in a long run*

[@lemao2222]

Also the Community: “…this game is boring, why should I waste my time working on it?”

[@dameanic11]

Mods aka addons can definitely save games we duh best.

[@Volgeirea]

Also Dev: “let’s put out an update on an 12 year old game that adds more paid content and also breaks everyone’s free content”

[@mercurioslevin1877]

Sadly it's because "Skyrim in Space" doesn't make them as much cash as normal Skyrim so they had to update it again to include more cash grab user made mods so they can ask for more cash again 😕 we should put a timer on how long after the Devs finally release the SDK for Starfield till the community fixes it because I know that is already a discord setup for the Unofficial Starfields Community Patch with a checklist of stuff that needs fixing just waiting for it to drop lol

[@Gamers-Haunt]

With -better level design' -better AI -Overhauling the engine to work better and produce error reports -better writing -better characters -better mechanics (Sim Settlement 2 checks a lot of these boxes) -more engaging narrative -better balance -better mechanics -overhauled mechanics -better lighting -better player realtions and on and on we go.

[@ARZZiO]

Imagine going to a restaurant, paying for food and they serve you literal shit on a plate and then tell you that you can't complain because you're not the one cooking

[@keeganmurphy1]

So disconnected from the reality of ‘cooking in a kitchen’ 😂

[@IchbinX]

This has been most of game development, since the early 2000s. They think they're rock stars.

[@viper2785]

"You know nothing of what it's like to cook, do you even know what food is?" XD To paraphrase a comedian, "I’ve never flown a helicopter. But if I saw one in a tree...I know someone fucked up. It's not supposed to be there, that's pilot error."

[@thercf16guy35]

Perfect analogy😊

[@trinodot8112]

Bro you don't know how hard it is to work in a restaurant and not serve literal piles of shit. *Meanwhile restaurant across the street is serving actual food*

[@keebmack]

Thousands of game devs have lost their job this year, yet somehow this guy is in the clear lmao

[@M2xim]

The people doing the firing have no way of knowing who's actually useful in these companies they only look at numbers.

[@kenshii9d147]

Affirmative action hire has ruined gaming

[@Gamers-Haunt]

Don't be to sure on that. Matt Booty is in charge of Zenimax now. Pete Hines already got gone whether you believe he retired voluntarily because it was time or was told to do so or be terminated is up to you. The good old boys club that has run that studio is no longer in charge. Emil wouldn't be lashing out if he had job security as he has enjoyed in the past. He's likely about to get gone and a rumor has Todd Howard "retiring" after Starfield's DLC. Going forward we're probably going to start seeing spinoffs of Fallout and Elder Scrolls as well.

[@deucedeucerims]

How do you get to affirmative action hire ruined gaming when clearly the problem is the lead game designer, a white male, couldn’t be bothered to do his job and create game design documents

[@oualidtrabelsi5784]

Judging by his statement, he is a yes man. That would also explain why someone like him still has a job.

[@YOGO_MUSHI]

Imagine an engineer designing a bridge that fails and then saying. “Well guys bridge building is hard. A lot of people worked very hard on this bridge”

[@benjamindavis2475]

Dang.

[@Rith9789]

It's not a bridge if it's collapsed. It's just rubble. Expensive rubble.

[@amotriuc]

Asom is right that they should not complain. But he is wrong clamming it is easy to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it. The bigger the company the more complex reason on failure is. Comping to an indie development studio is just wrong, comparing to some addon dev is horribly wrong.

[@hehexdxdxd]

​@@amotriucyou said that finding the problem is hard and then right afterwards said what the problem is, "the bigger the company is the harder it is to figure out", well then MAYBE the size of the company and how its structured are problems that need fixing? Seeing and finding problems is as easy as he said for most things, the real difficulty lies in finding a solution

[@amotriuc]

@@hehexdxdxdMonster can be so big that the one side does not know what other side does. And none of the sides does not have power to change it in any meaningful way. The System has it's own life. It can die before it will manage to fix itself.

[@Medicesca]

Emil is quite literally the reason Bethesda's writing has gone to shit since 2006. He really needs to be relocated before ES6, but that's likely to not happen

[@Staring4827]

what exactly does he write? the main stories? if so all of them have been trash. like stuff a kid would come up with.

[@DreadnaughtZero]

Apparently he writes rants on twitter

[@drpeppster3417]

@@Staring4827 Nah a kid has more imagination than what he wrote for Starfield.

[@Medicesca]

@@Staring4827 Emil is the head writer, and has been head writer since Fallout 3, I believe. He wrote the main quest for Fallout 4 and Starfield, as well as various faction quests. He also has a say in each storyline that is written before it's approved for the final game

[@Staring4827]

@cray-z578 I'm trying to judge if he is a good writer or not, because the stories for some side quests are very good, while the main stories have all been bottom of the barrel. Fallout 4's main story is just bladerunner. I'm assuming he does the main stories.

[@todd7934]

Blaming the customer for a poor product seems to be the go to for major companies these days.

[@oath1588]

It's victim mindset, not my fault my business is failing its yours because the customer is mean and selective specifically to insult me Had a local pinball arcade that hasn't updated in years or add additional forms of revenue like merch milkshakes tourneys etc, post on Facebook complaining that no one supports them. It's like yeah no wonder when your competitors are taking steps your clearly not Same goes for games, you release a shit one expect players to go elsewhere (-the people violently high on copium and nostalgia)

[@andrewzubets89]

If managers or lead developers would say "it's our fault" everyone will smear them if they will repeat same mistakes. If they keep silent then people would blame whole company and devs in general which is bad for company reputation and normal devs who is doing their job good would quit to be not part of. But if they blame consumers for big expectations and doesnt understanding how it's hard or labeling and attacking "haters" they would label themselves as dev team protectors, escape responsabilities for their mistakes. Dumb managers thinking it's a good strategy instead doing their job good.

[@TunaIRL]

Or you're just being a victim and think everyone's blaming you

[@miinyoo]

Companies want to find ways to reduce effort any way they can and still get the sales. It's the ever escalating search for efficiency and if it takes a few bummers to find it, longer term, it'll be worth it for them. AI come on board to help. The EA's, Microsofts, Sonys. They don't care. Everything is part of a mathematical equation to them. The only known unknown variable is the users and how they interact. Considering the rise of mobile in the last 10 years, can't ignore. Stupid captive people are far more profitable than finnicky loudmouths on forums.

[@rpgadventurer32]

Mainly American ones and mainly those that are full of political activists and incompetent workers.

[@moedelaun]

I think game developers could learn a lot from Beethoven. Dude made great music, went deaf, started making even greater music, and never ranted on twitter with excuses that he was deaf because he literally could not hear the haters. Just did what he loved and moved on to the next project when he was done.

[@schikey2076]

well.... you don't have twitter in the old days haha.... all jokes aside, im pretty sure in the old days people had different avenues to let go of stress.. nowadays, people go to twitter, post random shit just to do that .. i assume devs do the same 😂

[@kaingates]

Beethoven retired after going deaf tho

[@moedelaun]

@@kaingates he started going deaf in his twenties, and he composed the ninth symphony after he was completely deaf. He tried conducting but they had to have a second conductor because he couldn’t keep time.

[@Lyko5]

Weird analogy, but funny nontheless

[@respectfullyrazerian2154]

See this ix a bad analogy because this almost implies they already made a good game.

[@FuckGoogle502]

To paraphrase a bit, my favorite response I've seen to this is "I don't have to be a qualified helicopter pilot to know you're not supposed to hit the trees."

[@Claudekr]

Yeah whenever you criticize something and someone says "well lets see you do it then". I have no idea how to fly a helicopter but that doesn't mean I'm wrong when I point to the pile of smoldering wreckage and say somebody f'd up.

[@JustinK0]

"I don't have to be a qualified helicopter pilot to know you're not supposed to hit the trees." but you have to be one to know how to fly the helicopter. thats like saying "i dont have to be a game dev to know when the game is bad" which is true but its not the same as knowing the development process, especially all the corporate hoops and restraints the dev has to go through that hinder their progress or prevent things from happening.

[@RecliningWhale]

@@JustinK0 The point is that no part of knowing the development process is actually relevant to consumers giving feedback on a bad product. I don't give a fuck what hoops the devs have to jump through if the end product is shit.

[@ChromePyramid]

Even easier terms... I don't need to know how to cook a pot of chili to know it shouldn't taste like shit

[@SorarikoMotone]

especially if said devs then whine about players and not the actual issues, like ceo being dumbasses @@RecliningWhale

[@thedeveIoper]

I'm an indie game developer, and I'm happy that I've been a gamer for long enough to understand that the only thing that matters is the end result. Gamedev is substantially harder than what most gamers realize, but who cares. They just want to pay for an enjoyable experience. Listening to excuses is not part of that, and taking money while giving excuses is absolutely not part of that.

[@Champ2103]

I wish you the Best 👍 good Luck gamedev looks tough as hell wish i knew how lol good luck on your projects

[@MeltonCrest]

And that's the difference, the people working for these billion dollar corporations, despite their claims, are NOT gamers, they're just people doing a job for a paycheck.

[@thedeveIoper]

@@Champ2103 Thanks!

[@dracojay2596]

“Taking money while listening to excuses is absolutely not part of that.” Amen brotha amen

[@CDunn322]

Thank you!

[@nlmnyc]

This is not just a dev, this is THE head writer. The guy who is steering the ship for story design at Bethesda. PatricianTV just did a 3 hour thing where Emil was the main focus. They had no design document when they started..he was proud about this. He says he “just goes”. It’s madness…it’s like taking a trip with no map or building a house without a blueprint.

[@TheBalls2thewalls]

ahhh, the star wars strategy 😂

[@ereviscale3966]

What story?

[@wickian9571]

Didn't a few modders make the UI of the game 10x better in a matter of days?

[@ameridude1]

Yep, same lead writer for Fallout 3 & 4 and Elder Scrolls Oblivion & Skyrim

[@GravityTrash.]

Wait the game has a story?

[@Joshisproblyhigh]

I worked as a QA lead, producer, and quest designer for several studios from 2004-2014 on products from shovelware to AAA games and have credits in roughly 40ish titles. Without going into the broader financial reasons that games suck now, I believe there are 2 major reasons behind botched launches and garbage products. The first is an increasing lack of personal accountability. When I started people genuinely cared if they fucked up or under performed and would often take criticism positively. They were expected to act as professionals and tried to improve their work if it was lacking. If their work was consistently poor, they were sacked. Developers today constantly insulate themselves from any criticism and as often as possible try and change "I" issues into "We" issues. Second, I noticed almost universally that devs do not spend enough time actually playing videogames. The problems are then amplified by developers and production that don't look at QA as a vital part of development. QA is treated as an afterthought and it's assumed that anyone can be a good tester, which is absolutely brain dead if you've ever done the job. This is why indie games are often better overall products than AA or AAA games. The developers of indie games have to get down in the trenches and play their own games, and since there are far fewer of them on a team, their work is easily scrutinized.

[@Eyclonus]

QA nowadays is just a legacy checkbox

[@marcmathes]

"Second, I noticed almost universally that devs do not spend enough time actually playing videogames" I've noticed a similar trend in the wider tech/admin sector. We used to get applications from trainees who had built their own tech labs at home, who had tried their hand at programming, who knew at least something (!) before deciding on this career path. Today, we get people who want to do the job because it pays relatively well and they are comfortable with the Windows UI. These people use a lot more technology on a much more natural level, but they don't know how it works anymore, nor do they have an intrinsic interest in it. This last part is similar to your second statement about developers no longer playing games.

[@audiojake8]

@@marcmathes 100% True - It's really difficult for us to find Good Systems Engineers at work cause people want the job just cause it pays well - Not because they are good at it or actually interested in being a Systems Engineer.

[@raphaelc9492]

yep i 100% agree i would add a third point to that in germany we have a saying too many cooks oversalt the soup (coz every1 is putting salt into it without knowing the cook before did already) what i mean by that is sometimes too many programmers are bad when working on things that should work in sync and if they dont know exactly what the other person has done in the endproduct bugs or failures happen and its hard to see what the exact problem is coz programmer a put that in code so it works in his test and programmer b puts that in his code so it works but both codes together cause problems

[@Ferrolune]

Don't forget, most if not all investors are all idiots with no field experience; none of them are actual gamers.

[@hollywu7768]

In a review for my $5 game, one player said he would rather play Starfield. The biggest roast I ever had.

[@Ksavputin]

What's the name of the game?

[@chugetnuget6230]

What trash did you make??

[@marianrucareanu8802]

Drop the name.

[@nickfulson186]

I'm now morbidly curious....

[@emport2359]

Gimme name

[@Kolljak]

"its funny how disconnected game developers are to their community" especially when its the community that fixes its game.

[@mexicanprime106]

Every fucking triple A devs on Twitter

[@Shellackle]

90% of current Bethesda game players use mods out the ass to do anything from fixing gamebreaking bugs, to improving jank mechanics, to adding new content to the game that would've otherwise died a decade ago.

[@noha7ers]

Skyrim Modding Community literally making all the work

[@thomasjensen1590]

at this point all bethesda games should be made freeware because most of the things that are worth anything in their games comes from the mods

[@MythicKnight7]

Can we just have a massive round of applause to all the heroes that mod and fix games and never ask for anything in return

[@wobblysauce]

Best heroes go unnoticed…

[@mcbain1131]

No they're enablers

[@RyanJosepher]

​@@mcbain1131 Someone is traumatized

[@mcbain1131]

​@RyanJosepher modders who add content provide value but modders who fix problems enable companies to just let content slip to less and less. Fo76 is a prime example of this.

[@lovetrain2455]

I highly doubt people are going to fix this game and rather put effort in making stuff like New Vegas even better

[@raulgillette3669]

"We made a bad, blank and boring game, therefore, let's blame the players for pointing out that the game is bad" Absolutely genius move, 10/10 for the effort 🙄

[@Samuraiedge2]

Ah yes the classic blame your customers card.

[@clark2109]

Idk when Bethesda's gonna learn that 90% of their games' bad reception is their own fault. They have no goodwill left in the community, and everything they say is met with skepticism, because they do nothing but gaslight us from announcement to launch to post-launch.

[@gerwyn8340]

The guy is probably worried because he is going to get the push. Probably because he cannot write a logic table to save his job.

[@hafirenggayuda]

We already see how the customer support handle the reviews, we kinda know how their reaction are. We just don't expect him openly stating it

[@bobjoe5937]

Bethesda has completely lost touch with their fans and what they want or expect. I'm still dumbfounded how they completely abandon what made their games magical; worthwhile exploration with good environmental storytelling. Starfield is so bad and I have NO hope for TES6. I'm done with them.

[@wahtari2994]

its easy. dont buy those games and they might increase quality.

[@damiencarle8344]

This is a prime example of "I don't need to be a chef to know your food tastes like shit." You don't NEED to know the full process of game development to properly critique the final product when you can compare it to the vast majority of the industry.

[@wakeup3843]

Great analogy. I don’t care how you prepared it. I tasted it, I don’t like it, I am not going to keep eating it. I am not a chef but I am qualified to say say I don’t like soup sandwiches. Ohhh….and based on what you just served me….I am not looking forward to your next meal.

[@FuTxDannY]

Im a Dev and i agree

[@Xazamas]

This also applies to more complex matters. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to point out that a rocket blew up on the launch pad or fell back to Earth before making out of the atmosphere.

[@tommyllama4558]

especially when such gourmet meals came out this year, and so many, it just points out the flaws that much more. That and Bethesda just aint doing any favours with stuff like this and with Fallout 76.

[@1337GigaChad]

NOOOOOO TRUST THE EXPERTS!!!!

[@BOOMbear214]

It's so annoying how creators can't take any amount of criticism anymore. Criticism helps you grow as a creator. Failures help you learn, but you need to own it first.

[@charmolettafranquestafiestayam]

emil has been a lil bih since oblivion. promoted beyond his abilities. made a bunch of changes in fo4 then cried about how hard it was to do those changes. There's a funny read about it if you google 'Until Bethesda fires/relocates Emil Pagliarulo, do not expect quality storylines ever again. Yes, it's that bad' which was hilariously a reddit post from 7 years ago talking about this very fellow.

[@dmitrystelefona8453]

Im working programmer in big studio, and while i did big systems of a game, im not creator in any kind. Decisions been made somewhere, deadlines ware predetermined, ive got shitty technical specifications which didnt cover anything and then was poorly tested and shipped while ive moved to different thing to fit dead lines on other stuff. What accountability should i accept, for not standing up to obvious mistake/decisions made way above my pay grade? Fuck that.

[@JesiAsh]

He is going to get fired and made an excuse statement to shift blame. After so many L takes I would not be surprised with Bethesda itself making big deal out of firing him to promote the fact that they are changing... despite company being shit overall. The only truth that guy said is that they have normal people working there... where they should have extraordinary people.

[@Alphonsio]

Dont worry ppl will keep buying bethesda games and cry when its trash.

[@merlylvsm]

@@charmolettafranquestafiestayam It baffles me how Emil obtained that position. Same goes for the goto Bethesda QA fella (forgot his name), I pissed myself laughing when Starfield flaunted that he's QA lead, now. Was like an ill omen.

[@KotaManyColors]

I love how a dev will say "I'm a game dev with respect for my cohorts, it would be unprofessional to complain" BUT when a game successfully breaks away from what people don't like about a devs game they shit on what they don't like.

[@Ioganstone]

Remember when it was light coming through the clouds when BG3 came out and the devs did not say "It would be unprofessional of me to COMPLIMENT the game" and instead "This is a good game but don't expect it from me" at least he was being honest

[@tjakal]

Being both a dev and a gamer it is funny how disconnected some developers are from understanding the realities of what's important to get right about thing they're building.

[@Darth_Rimuru]

I've seen no shortage of disconnected gamers, definitively not just a few disconnected and/or incompetent developers.

[@Wunderhass]

imagine going to a Artist and telling them how their Art should look like. Thats basically whats going on here.

[@jeroenvandenhoek9860]

​@@Wunderhass thats a stupid take😂, the artist made something the public doesnt like that much, but the artist complains to the public: 'You dont understand the beauty of my piece! You have to look at it for 100 hours, then you will see it.'

[@BobsVagene]

​@@Wunderhass lol what? imagine not being allowed to have an opinion on Art unless you are The Artist. what a troll.

[@kavinh10]

@@Wunderhass yes my doodle is equivalent to the Mona lisa now pay me you privileged gamers, you don't know what art looks like so how dare you criticize me.

[@jeffreyrhoten8652]

Emil Pagliarulo is the lead writer for Fallout 4. He gave a talk where he said you can identify a badly written game by how unfocused the themes are in the narrative, then went into great detail explaining the cluster fuck of themes in Fallout 4's story, totally unaware that he just dunked on himself.

[@chessophiler]

Perhaps Emil can read the writing on the wall: "Pathetic Loser."

[@charmolettafranquestafiestayam]

That was so hilarious. He mentioned the dialog options for fo4 and how important voice acted protag is and then complained about it on and on about how hard he made it on himself

[@Chopstorm.]

He also wrote the MQ in Skyrim, which was also very underwhelming.

[@karpai5427]

He said that Design documents are too hard for him to update so they didn't had one for Starfield and Fallout 4.

[@AR272fhdodne]

It’s crazy to me this is the guy leading the direction of the stories of Bethesda titles. Someone linked a Reddit thread of 7 YEARS ago going on a rant that Bethesda will never have a good story game with him at the helm and they’ve been right since. It’s insane how disconnected these devs are with what good games actually are.

[@yosharian]

Link to the thread?

[@T.O.Wallee]

Starfield Dev's gaslighting is another level

[@NibblerPDX]

I'm really worried for TES6. Instead of learning from their mistakes and working on improving the game, the devs are arguing with reviews on steam and complaining about critics on twitter. It really shows how detached they are.

[@italianspiderman5012]

My wild guess is that they don’t play other games, maybe new staff that didn’t work on previous games? It’s like they think they know what they’re doing, but they don’t.

[@R4d1o4ct1v3_]

My copium is that the good devs were busy working on TES6 and this was the B team.

[@sir_arsen]

@@R4d1o4ct1v3_ very unlikely but I will take take your copium too

[@devindickens9321]

Modders have been fixing their games for far too long. Now they've finally grown ungrateful smh.

[@italianspiderman5012]

@@R4d1o4ct1v3_ yeah, like apparently the b team was working on f76, which was bs, at this point I’m fairly certain that they don’t have anything but a b team, maybe c as well.

[@AlwaysMorenZi]

Emil: We got rid of design documentation because I couldn't be arsed to make them to guide my team. Also Emil: If you cannot show through documentation how the design process is flawed, it isn't actually flawed. Genius

[@BobsVagene]

the key thing to understand, and Asmongold doesn't call them out on this, is that this guy is LYING. of course they know why stuff sucks and who worked on what features and did what art. that's trivial. every manager will know what his team worked on and who told them to work on those things. it can easily be pieced together. this bethesda guy is straight up lying saying that these things can't be pinpointed with extreme accuracy. project management isn't rocket science. and it's documented automatically in JIRA, emails, and slack logs. so yea, it could easily be diagnosed and improvements could be made. they would just rather make excuses. Asmongold is right about one thing though. It's a collective issue. All of these devs were hired and retained for a reason. So this whiny director level person probably shares a significant part of the blame for why this product sucks.

[@radiantveggies9348]

It's crazy how dumb asmon is. They're not saying that the "difficulties" affected them and are difficult for them personally. The issues they face directly affect the quality of the product. It's like if they told the highway worker you only have x dollars as a budget when x times 5 is needed. They're going do their job regardless. But it's not going to be good

[@radiantveggies9348]

Also lol at asmon comparing streaming to engineering.

[@ywbpelle421]

@@radiantveggies9348 How is Asmon dumb when you're proving his point. If a highway worker have x dollars and only an x amount of hours, but a higher amount is needed, then as Asmon says himself "the system is f*cking terrible", but the system being terrible still isn't the consumer's fault, it's the company's. He isn't comparing streaming to engineering, he's stating that a lot of jobs have problems, but it can never be the consumers fault. Also, why defend a game that objectively compared to other games, are terrible? Doesn't matter whether the problem is unskilled workers, trash engine, bad work environment etc. no matter what the reasoning is, don't put it onto the consumers.

[@jacobd6315]

​@@radiantveggies9348 glad you brought up an example to prove asmon wrong by bringing funding into it. How many times did Larian almost go bankrupt working on BG3, btw? Just curious.

[@Aurazan]

I'm a game developer (character artist) with over 8 years of experience. This is my message to developers like this: - Do you f-ing job better then you won't be sorry. Kappa.

[@OblivionSoldier]

Which company do ya work at? Just outta curiosity.

[@KeavyGoesLive]

Dear game developers, we all work hard at our jobs, we all make mistakes. What matters is how we handle the reaction to our mistakes and Bethesda’s NEVER handled any criticism appropriately.

[@spoutnik7703]

"we all work hard at our jobs" lol, no.

[@Isomeria450]

@@spoutnik7703 okay, FINE. We TRY TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE WE ALL WORK HARD AT OUR JOBS. Some just do it better than the others.

[@Sairiui]

Weird how the cash shop always works fine, and they go after people exploiting the game almost immediately, but bugs and the broken mess of their game takes months/years to fix.

[@CristiMariusPatrascu]

Sounds familiar..

[@Guntfarm]

to be fair companies usually do hire coders to specifically make and maintain the cash shop tabs/pages

[@KiotheCloud]

Cause cash shop brings a constant stream of income so its a priority its that simple. Imagine it like this if u were to choose between working without pay vs working with pay which will prioritize? obviously the 2nd right? Im not saying its great but we have to be realistic their a company and their priority will always be income especially big ones compared to small companies where the owner is actually the one making the shots. Most big companies have a board of directors who vote and even if ur the owner u dont have full control of the company especially if u sold shares.

[@KipaYumiya]

​@@Guntfarmwith how diablo immortal hired psychology graduates to make their cash shop i feel like devs do that often without us knowing

[@bsherman8236]

Piracy is a problem because they always fail to deliver now

[@freshii3716]

What the hell is up with devs recently blaming consumers for their bad products?

[@xiangli7417]

lack of competition, too easy to make money, all of these create a sense of entitlement for these people.

[@SuperBennnnnnnnn]

because their jobs are under siege now more than ever if their main product they've spent years investing time and money into doesn't turn a profit.

[@miriamkapeller6754]

They're probably copying this behavior from Hollywood who are attacking their viewers whenever they don't like the latest woke nonsense movie they put out.

[@mayhem8264]

People buy pre orders. Why should they care about the launch when they already got your money?

[@miriamkapeller6754]

@@mayhem8264 Well, they at least care enough to post long rants on Twitter about how it totally isn't their fault they made a bad product.

[@kingtonp656]

"It takes hard work to be mediocre" -Bethesda

[@Ioganstone]

This is actually reminding me in a sly way of Troy Baker and the "the man in the arena" quote. It's like resorting the The Progressive Era worldview when their one game is shit lol.

[@johnskauge]

That twitter guy is the type of guy that actually believes everyone is talented in game development. I have to assume this mindset comes from the whole participation trophy bs we've been taught when we were young. Not everybody can be talented. Sorry... it's just not possible. If everyone is, "talented" then the bar needs to be raised.

[@tylercollin3270]

If you spend 1 month carving a marble sculpture and people look at it and think it’s ugly, they are not going to care or feel bad for you that you spent so much time and effort on it. They will think it’s ugly and move on.

[@heavyhauler426]

That's the unfortunate truth. Rather than lashing out, they should be asking how to make their product better.

[@Blaidd7542]

Especially when they're being charged £60 to get into the exhibition.

[@Grimdock]

It's absolutely insane that they would blame the players when they've invested such an ungodly amount of cash into the game. NOT A SINGLE Big developer of a high end high rated game should stoop to that level.

[@anhiirr]

never forget POE/GGG was a grassroots/indie dev....and the second they got on a gravytrain/10cent/capital pool....they MADE damn GOOD on having access to development/capital. BAR none i cant think of a finer/example than POE esp when you contrast it with devs like bethestda/blizzard etc...bullshitters.

[@maofria1452]

Call of duty sends alo

[@ScottyDoesntKnow69]

It’s hard hiring good developers when your hiring on diversity first and foremost and then teaching them the job instead of hiring a talented developer

[@Grimdock]

Kind of disgusting to stoop to that level too. Any manager worth his salt knows to prioritize a persons experience and ability to provide over the persons identity.@@ScottyDoesntKnow69

[@dango2917]

EA and Capcom have at some point in history if you look back far enough

[@tlothompson6935]

"You MUST know what it takes to create anything before you're allowed to critique it!" - People not good at what they do and scared of criticism.

[@RemOmni]

if they aren't capable of acting on the criticism the criticism has far less meaning to them.

[@szponixx]

Right? That's the dumbest argument ever. I facepalm everytime someone uses it. It's like me asking car mechanic to fix the car. He takes the money, car is still broken and he tells me: "You can't complain if you don't know how hard it is to fix cars. You need to provide solution, otherwise shut up!". Dude, sure I don't know how to fix a car, that why I am paying you - so that you would find a solution for me.

[@lacrossev]

"I paid you for a hotdog, you gave me a burger. I don't care how you managed to give me a burger when i ordered a hotdog, but gimme the damn hotdog"

[@RemOmni]

@@lacrossev that's a terrible analogy lmfao although it would be valid for the day before.

[@jasonma4525]

An example from my country: Do I have to run faster than a horse before I can critique horse-racing?

[@williamschlass6371]

Talent is exceptional, and its marked by the ability to do great things with limited resources. If youre a dev working at a AAA studio with all of its resources, and you create mediocrity, youre the opposite of talented.

[@WitherAndrot]

Well said.

[@abadenoughdude300]

I'm always amused when people say how game dev is hard these days, with all the easily accessible game engines, knowledge bases, assets and what not, while devs way back had to code instructions paying attention to CPU cycles and where the cathode ray tube scanline is at the given cycle without extensive documentation on the internet. Talent isn't having all the tools in the world at your fingertips and making something barely functional, it's making things work properly despite having none of it.

[@Eins3467]

Gaslighting your customers. 2023 is truly the year of gaming.

[@nocturnowl_0100]

The best of times, the worst of time.

[@FourCogs]

This sounds very much like Emil responding to The Patrician's Quick (8 hour) review of Starfield that was incredibly indepth and nailed down pretty much exactly how Starfield came to be the way it is. TLDR is they don't do design documents so nothing is cohesive and things get constantly thrown out and stripped down.

[@leandromadeireira8840]

Man, that video is going to let some marks.

[@scanti2]

Yeah a youtuber called Blaze did a video (Bethesda doesn't use game design docs) about how crazy it was that Bethesda, a AAA game studio, doesn't use design documents. When I was at college I was taught that for the first 20% of any computing project you don't do any programming. You sit down, work out what you want to accomplish and design the systems to achieve it. Only after you have everything worked out, do you start programming. Otherwise you can get into the programmers equivalent of chasing your own tail.

[@leandromadeireira8840]

@@scanti2 just wait for a crowbcat video of it

[@tommasoannoni4836]

Bethesda doesn’t do game design documents?? Omg Do you have a link to that response you mentioned?

[@bandawin18]

Yeah, it really makes you realize exactly WHY Bethesda games are so shit. They waste so much time thinking they're saving time and even still each Bethesda game is riddled with the same bugs that are over a decade old now

[@guby6460]

As someone working in tech, can confirm that lack of accountability is a huge issue. Its a problem with company culture, and very few companies handle that well these days. Its usually worse the bigger the company is, the rot accumulates over time if management sucks, and management usually sucks. That is the one advantage that small teams have over big teams, big teams require more qualified management.

[@ceu160193]

I thought it's due to management having no technical experience themselves, so you can't really explain to them, why that feature they ask for is impossible to make/would break everything.

[@billybob4274]

I think there used to be more accountability years ago, but with the current culture of not wanting to offend anyone, accountability has gone out the window. It's like that in what seems most places now.

[@yerpderp6800]

@@ceu160193 It's moreso that the more complex a product is, the higher the stakes of something possibly breaking when a change is made. This means each change effectively needs to go through a vetting process of sorts, sometimes requiring approval before it can even be tested. This really slows things down and starts making it difficult to pinpoint where delays and hiccups start to happen, especially when it's not 100% clear who made what changes at specific times (it's easy to cut corners if teams aren't on top of deadlines. Maybe several changes are pushed at once vs testing each change, edge cases aren't checked before something is pushed into production, scaling wasn't considered as a possible issue, etc). It really boils down to appropriate record keeping if you want accountability, and unfortunately it's usually management in charge of that stuff. Still not impossible to do with the right hierarchical structure implemented (I also didn't go into detail about managers purposefully being vague of who did what. Once names start dropping you can start holding a manager accountable for incompetence. Buuuut a manager can try to blame issues on external factors outside of their control as one example).

[@CubeInspector]

He that can't do, teaches. He that can't teach, manages.

[@kentakobashi1197]

You got it so right! Probably 50% of their employees work at home office and the company lost track of what they are actually doing. So they decide to earn money in a cheap and lazy way, not because they are so good at that, but because they suck in delivering good products and the cycle of losing intelligence and human skills goes on.

[@benjaminmatheny6683]

A lot of the problems in Starfield aren't with the devs in the trenches. The problems come from the management's choices. Sarah doesn't look like shit because the dev making her is incompetent. It's because they have to make Sarah within the character creator so everything still looks cohesive with the player character. The character creator doesn't have much effort put in because everyone is going to be playing in first person. It's a major problem with large bloated companies, various managers are making individual decisions that make sense to them without being able to see how those choices will cascade into problems for others. That's on Management for lack of cohesive vision. Not to mention that priorities are probably borked in there somewhere too.

[@AkaRystik]

I hate whenever a company shits out a dumpster fire of a game there is always some dev who comes out and makes some inane tirade about how nobody is allowed to complain because making games is really hard guys so you need to just shut up and be happy with what we give you. It's peak arrogance, assuming that everyone else is just wrong because they are being critical of the perfect game developer. A job being hard doesnt mean shitty developers are any less shitty.

[@ToyokaX]

Right? It's like if a car crashed and the company that made the car says "Well, making cars is really hard! You can't blame us!". No. Piss off. No one cares how hard it is to make. That's your job! If you can't do it right, don't even bother doing it at all.

[@JACKXK]

This just seems to indicate that ES6 is going to be awful -- and that makes me really sad.

[@SeanHoltzman]

Usually the ones pulling the toxic narcicissm aren't actually even the dev code writing teams. They're failures of management bloat, from intentionqlly hiring the wrong ignorant and uneducated people for jobs that actually need skillsets and knowledge bases. Then the lean on these managers to go say baseless and inane shit to tow the company line, then fire them anyway because of their terrible actual performance, and the corpos just wanted fall guys in power positions to toss out and claim "they've fixed problem elements of the company"

[@tylerulfmann4586]

@@JACKXKwell I mean the modding projects are doing a really good job at making ES6 at this point So take heart with enough autism and the fanbase new projects new developments and effectively new fanbase expansions will constantly come out

[@Guntfarm]

No one should be blamed for the Challenger exploding. Building rocket ships is HARD guys.

[@joevonash3699]

Here's the moral: don't buy Bethesda's games - you won't be to blame.

[@dickbehringer7064]

This is so cathartic. I’m so sick of people saying “it’s not the devs, it’s the execs!” No. Time and time again these devs have shown themselves to absolutely be a part of the problem, they do not get a free pass.

[@tennke205]

Depends on the company tbh

[@enzomedina3118]

Damn, u're not working in the industry at all and thx god lol.

[@hannya_little]

I mean, what was being explained about executives aren't exactly wrong. But the point is, you don't make excuses to the customers about it, it's your workplace, it's your product, if there is something wrong with them, then fix them, not crying to the customers who paid for the products when it turned out to be bad.

[@LethalShadow]

​@@enzomedina3118 I work in the industry and it is very often absolutely the devs' fault. It's also often the exes, but pretending like there is not a massive amount of bad devs is ridiculous and tiring.

[@Jardynq]

Emil pagliarilo is basically an exec. He is right under Todd Howard in the corporate ladder. He is the one making bad decisions that the devs have to work with. Please don't blame the actual devs doing what they're told instead of the ones making the decisions.

[@bengunderson712]

No Mans Sky is how you respond to valid criticism. They released a shit game. They wrote down all the criticism and sorted it. Then they shut up and started fixing the game. 8 years later and its fantastic.

[@Eyclonus]

8 year old game outdoes billion dollar StarField

[@lizdevilz7271]

This also reminded me of Cyberpunk 2077 case. CDPR didn't blame players for it. Instead, They acknowledge their mistake, Apologize and working their games into what I can called "A Masterpiece" state now within 3 years span. Sure, It's might missed many things they try to promote but I still respect them for don't giving up and actually learn from their mistake. That's what make CDPR a really good team. They don't go around and pull "Players don't care story so I will make story so bad" card like Emil did. They know modern gaming state, What players want or not want.

[@advancedaistudios78]

I am a game dev, just released my own game that we made with 2 people, all i have to say to this person is: GIT GUD

[@emptybottle1200]

What is your game? Can I play it?

[@advancedaistudios78]

It's called Warbringers of Angrul, it's a mix between bannerlord like battles and a campaign like total war and set in a fantasy world. Def not a game for everyone, but it was our dream game.

​@@advancedaistudios78That sounds cool!

[@advancedaistudios78]

@ You are the first person to say that, so that's really fun to hear!

[@DamoMartin]

Any links?

[@stanleylutzow3132]

Japanese game developer making bad games : I have shamed our company, I apologize, I will resign. Western developer making bad games : It's your fault customer, you don't understand how hard we tried (making the bad game). OOps, don't forget to sell the stocks when down and buy the dips.

[@ZanathKariashi]

Japenese game developler making bad games: I apologize and resign, as otherwise i'll be given an entirely new made up position that does nothing but wasted work to bully me into quitting or suicide because they can't legally fire me.

[@khanhnguyen-tt3ff]

lol Japanese game developer dont said anything when they make a bad game, the most we going to get is we do better on the next game. it super rare for a game to make one of those game director to resign ,

[@stanleylutzow3132]

@@ZanathKariashi well, I'm just joking based by the extreme examples. They mostly atleast apologized and fix the problems.

[@mrthewhite2620]

As someone who's interested in following the industry and learning more, I enjoy when devs pull back the curtain and explain why certain decisions were made or why certain limitations existed for them but this guy isn't doing that. He's excusing their shortcomings and telling people they shouldn't be complaining about them not meeting the current day standards of AAA gaming.

[@Wunderhass]

What are AAA standards? there isnt one. A game is either a Indi or big budget game.

[@powerbeard5653]

@@Wunderhass AAA just means big budget genius.

[@MGrey-qb5xz]

bitcjes like these are everywhere on steam and reddit so i think there are other devs in that company who act the same

[@Gamers-Haunt]

That's not what happened here. What happened here is a narcassit who is likely about to be let go as new management from Microsoft has been put in charge of his good old boys club, has come out to blame the consumer and lie throughout his rant. From a publisher that has stolen music, is embroidered in a hundred million dollar lawsuit for sabotaging development of Rune 2. From a developer who has stolen mod ideas and then with a larger budget and staff somehow done the ideas worse than a person building the mod in their freetime after working a regular job.

[@danielschmaderer]

For the “hard work” comment at the beginning of the video, I totally agree. I’m an electrician and when we’re working on a high rise, the owners want everything done and fixed so the fire marshal can sign off the building to let tenants move their stuff in. Towards the end of the job, they want what doesn’t work to be fixed. They don’t care how hard it is. Sometimes someone fucks up something very small on the fire life safety equipment and a smoke detector doesn’t work, sometimes the programmer mislabels a smoke detector when it’s activated, and sometimes an entire floor doesn’t work due to a group being incapable of knowing what to d, which really never happens. The point is, if your job is hard, don’t complain. Either get better or find a new job. No one cares about your problems. Get it done. That’s why you’re employed by whoever you’re working for and get paid your rate. This goes for the people at Bethesda. They need to step it up. The games were fine back in the day, but doesn’t stand up to today’s standards.

[@nefrace]

_"The game you're playing is in some ways a freaking miracle in and on itself. Normal people have come together to work for years for one goal - to bring you fun and happiness"_ And you didn't even deliver that lol.

[@cyberius14]

It's a miracle because they didn't think the game would function 😂

[@hg1651]

And it’s all everyone else’s fault.

[@matthewtaylor2040]

To be fair, if everyone isn't united then we all become disconnected = microtransactions

[@vinvin4884]

It is very odd that modders can create fixes for game breaking bugs in less than 24 hours and yet it takes a major game studio months to release a patch. I also found it strange the number of people in Starfield that look eerily like Todd. Like they're trying to cram his image down our gullets.

[@iko20101]

When a modder added DDLS to Starfield before the game even officially released and it took Bethesda months to add DDLS. Bethesda is a massive company and info has to be sent back and forth through departments in the company and to different teams to decide what can and will be worked on first. And that decision takes a long time to be made because of things one department might buttheads with another department on what is more important to work on. The modder who makes the mod isn't a massive company that has to wait to be informed on what to work on next, so the modder can make and release the DDLS mod fast but not without issues. When Bethesda would officially release the DDLS update to Starfield it works better and more fluently with everything in the game to work better. I know people love to shit on game companies for taking a long time to release updates that are needed for the game but they don't understand any of the complications of working in a massive company like Bethesda or any other big company.

[@araaraaura1887]

@@iko20101 All that means is that your managers have designed a shitty system. Studios are a like a factory that makes games instead of whatever widget. If your widgets are coming out slowly and all fucked up, you need to redesign your factory.

[@iko20101]

@@araaraaura1887 every AAA company is like this. Every single one of them

[@Doomweapon66]

@@iko20101 It's still a bad system. Just because the norm in the AAA gaming industry is multiple levels of management and going through multiple departments to add in DDLS doesn't mean it's a good system. And even if it "gets the job done" the 2 questions are does it do the job well and does it do the job better than if you had a smaller, more focused team and less corporate bureaucracy in the way? The answer to both of those is probably no. Call it what it is. It's a bad system of corporate bureaucracy with multiple unneeded levels of bloat full of people who would rather complain on Twitter about how coding is difficult (as someone who has done coding in high school, I understand coding is difficult but that's not a viable excuse for why the game is buggy).

[@iko20101]

@@Doomweapon66 All AAA companies are built exactly like Bethesda is. Why do you think it takes so long for a BIG Minecraft update to happen? Or why it takes so many other companies like Blizzard, EA, Activision, Valve and so much more to update their games or systems?

[@robertmathews7971]

The disconnect for me is the idea that when a bad or mediocre game comes out, the team that built it isn't bad. They're not even competent but stuck with unfavorable variables. It's always that they're talented, put upon, and probably making miracles behind the scenes to get the product functioning at all. It's always "probably someone/something else's fault screwing them over." Idk. It's a weird trend to me to assume not just good faith, but Best faith for the teams in these cases. I'm not saying to be unreasonable, or overly harsh, or even assume the worst. But sometimes people are just not good at their jobs and a bad product is made. "Talent" in my mind is being able to roll with the punches and make something better than baseline anyway.

[@TheGallantDrake]

This, pretty much.

[@thetruemonarch9294]

It's incredible how Devs think we will keep falling for this, just shameful...

[@DefianceOrDeath]

We do keep falling for it though. I've been calling this shit out for fifteen years. Most gamers don't give a shit. I sincerely from the bottom of my heart think that Gamers are the real problem. We continue to throw money at these companies. We continue to pre-purchase. Starfield being a failure shouldn't have surprised a single person that is even remotely involved in video game culture. We saw what Fallout 76 accomplished. We knew where Bethesda was at. The fact that people are even outraged about it is a problem. Bethesda has been dead for a very long time. No one should have pre-ordered Starfield. No one should have purchased it before waiting for extensive reviews. But a lot of people did. Just like a lot of people will pre-purchase ES6 because of some copium infused bullshit about how Bethesda wouldn't dare make a bad ElderScrolls game. Like JESUS CHRIST, they made a TERRIBLE Fallout game. Why would Elder Scrolls be immune?! Blizzard is another great example. They're making record profits even while their community is shitting on them. People will talk trash about Blizzard and then turn around and buy ten character transfers for $50 each because they're literally braindead. And the icing on the cake is, what I do doesn't matter, because me spending $50 on a game when some moron will spend $500 on microtransactions means I have no voice. They will cater to the people that throw money at them and expect very little. Consumers such as myself don't matter in their eyes. They don't make games for gamers anymore. They make games for addicts. The devs know this, they know that gamers have no self respect or standards. They will continue milking us, and nothing will change. I don't even blame them. As a business this is what they should do. They should provide a product that people will spend the most money on. Period. End of story. And unfortunately creating high quality games that aren't riddled with micro transactions causes developers to lose money. It is what it is. Nothing will change until gamers change, and gamers might as well be heroin junkies.

[@annefrank125]

The average AAA gamer will keep falling for it.

[@pastdue7170]

​@@DefianceOrDeath public companys don't care they want money. They be going bankrupt and won't change a thing. You blame gamers,but i know many dont even buy most games anymore. All but few that work hard and have a life outside but gaming a few hours a day if not a week. Some are also kids that use adult money without understanding any of this. You want vote with yout wallet then buy stock in company and vote because untill more gamers own stock in companys and demand change they only listen to share holder that demand more profit at all cost

[@iko20101]

@@DefianceOrDeath Starfield wasn't a failure though, financially it was a massive success because of the amount of new Gamepass subs for the game. Fallout 76 was also a financial success. Also they only made one "terrible" Fallout game and that was only on release but it was still a success in the long run like Cyberpunk. Fallout 76 was Bethesda's first ever try at a fully online title and yeah when it released it was really bad and needed improvement, but after a few years it is a good game now. Also people always say "Don't Pre-order!" or "Wait till reviews come out" but that doesn't matter because not only will no one listen to what you have to say but also if they really want to play the game they will pre-order it. No one is actually going to stop purchasing these games made by AAA companies because if they are GOTY worthy or the worst game imaginable they will still make profit one way or another.

[@NewsofPE]

except that people still do, it's been at least 15 years since gaming has been going to shit slowly, and guess what, people still pay for micro transactions, people still pay for season passes, and games keep going up in prices

[@ForgottenMyth]

As somebody that works in customer service, i would happily trade places with this dev

[@silotx]

As someone who dives in shit to remove clogs and fatbergs I would gladly change my position with you.

[@luminica_]

I don't give a fuck how hard you work, how much it cost to make the game, how many hard decisions you had to make, how passionate you are about the project, how you did not have enough time, etc, etc, etc. I just care how good a game is and how much it costs, if you're charging $70, it better be good.

[@tehpwnerer7]

Just remember that the next elder scrolls game is being built in the same game engine as all their previous games so don't expect it to look anything better then starfield, and because clearly all their good writers are gone don't expect it to have any good dialog in it either

[@yellowraincoat.]

Everyone link arms and say a prayer for the billion dollar company that tried their hardest but just couldn't even match what indie companies can do. So sad, so brave smh... 🙌😔

[@cgoodwin256]

What indie game compares to Starfield? I'd like to give that a shot.

[@yellowraincoat.]

@@cgoodwin256 No Mans Sky? Indie devs make better looking, deeper, more expansive and actually interesting games with a fraction of the budget and workforce.

[@cgoodwin256]

@@yellowraincoat. Isn't No Man's Sky that "indie" game that was funded by Sony to the point they were forced to launch one of the most unplayable games in modern history to only go radio silent for months before they could patch the game into the masterpiece it is today? And can we please get some consistency with our Starfield kvetching? Is Starfield's writing team too big or too small?

[@yellowraincoat.]

​@@cgoodwin256Yep they did fix it in a few months but in 2 years Starfield is going to be in the same place, of course unless modders do the work for them. I'm not sure if you are actually defending this BILLION dollar company that hyped this game for 5+ years only to release this garbage. How about Valheim which was made by 3 people? This is a billion dollar company that releases broken boring messes of games that only sell of brand loyalty and hype. There doesn't need to a space exploration game similar to Starfield to see how terrible it is for the resources that they have.

[@cgoodwin256]

@@yellowraincoat. What about this game wasn't exactly as advertised? They said from day one there would be loading screens and you wouldn't be able to fly around planets. It's far from perfect, nobody debates that, but it isn't nearly as bad as the rage farmers and history revisionists want it to be. NMS didn't find it's stride until Atlas Rises which was a year after launch. Valheim is a masterpiece, if graded on a curve that it was a side project for Coffee Stain employees. It isn't even close to a AA game. To me it was obvious that Bethesda played it conservative in order to release a stable, relatively feature rich game on time. It released early without complications and that can't be said about many other games of this scope. Also, let's not pretend that everyone from Todd Howard on down isn't expecting modders to do the heavy lifting when it comes to QOL features in Starfield.

[@Dhcmillar123Angel]

1 word to explain the creativity that went into Starfield... "Starborn"

[@frostysDaMan]

dragonborn?

[@Argento_Wolf]

@@frostysDaMansimilar yes but in space and the words of power are fives times harder to find and locked behind three times the loading screens

[@himself6363]

nobody complained about dragonborn though.... and starborn is more catchy i guess

[@MrVeps1]

@@himself6363a lot of us complained about the whole dragonborn thing. Skyrim was enjoyable despite its main story, actually a lot of the questlines were enjoyable despite their stories. The whole bit where your character is archmage nightingale boss thief murder cultist Jesus is stupid. Bethesda peaked at Morrowind.

[@himself6363]

@@MrVeps1 I know people complained, but it seems that "starborn is so stupid" has actually become a thing but that never happened with dragonborn. And yeah I never finished the main story until years later when I picked up the game again. I never knew side quests could be more enjoyable in a single player game until skyrim. And then that's all Bethesda became. The company whose games are better with mods, whose side quests are better than main story and the bugs are just part of the charm. Bethesda is basically an industry plant

[@ricsoda5108]

Damn, asmon was really based on this one. Devs are so entitled nowadays to even think that they can make something this bad and think they are above backlash

[@danieldimov8625]

Almost all his takes were pretty good, one was a little tone deaf but still good video.

[@english-inquisitor8620]

I used to work in a nursing home, no one cares how often you or other staff gets hit or shit thrown at you , they just care that the place looks nice and the residents looked presentable. Absolute nightmare.

[@trvkv]

I'm an Indie dev. I'm making small games by myself. Most of them just for fun. One of the main principles to make ANY game is a scope of the project. I'm working alone, so my scope is small. If Bethesda's scope was too big, things were too hard to make, it means that Bethesda shouldn't make those things. It's really simple: if the game is too hard for you to make, don't do it. But they did it.

[@clark2109]

If you only knew how hard it was to develop a bad game, you wouldn't think it's bad. You would be in a state of constant awe at the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the shitty UI as you navigate the mapless cities.

[@everythingpony]

Yeah his take took me a back, he's just a streamer, like go work on the road and have hr ignore your complaints and be harrased

[@bobsteven2363]

Stop coping. Games are hard to make but its beyond easy for a big company to make money in that industry. They made fallout 76 and still made loads of money. Its also not hard to hire good devs. People compare Starfield with other games, including Bethesda's older games, and quickly realize its worse. Doesn't matter how much effort you put into something. Bad product=bad product.

[@DefianceOrDeath]

@@bobsteven2363 New to the Internet? Your sarcasm radar is failing you.

[@user-unknown1705]

@@everythingpony if ur company is doing that wouldn't it better to just quit n look for another job? it not like the industry have a lack of job anyway, u already got some experience working for that sh*tty company

[@bobsteven2363]

@@DefianceOrDeath nah, I just skimmed the first sentence. I didn’t notice bad or shitty

[@Lorddraigo]

I can feel empathy for the developers for being in shitty conditions and want those conditions to be improved. I can also want my video game to be good and tell you when it isn't. Both things can be true.

[@ned1274]

Asmogold should try to get what ever modder hes refering to to interview in a video explaining the relative ease they had with fixing the problem. I think it would be a good watch

[@IAmRickMagic]

Great idea

[@quintonwinton7210]

I guarantee you the moder will say modding is easier than game development

[@onu2488]

If he's the game director, we may not know how all the mistakes came to be, but we obviously know now that this guy did his job worst of all, by not directing those mistakes and approving a bad product. He might be trying to protect his devs, but he's the one that brought this on them

[@andrewzubets89]

As a developer(not from bethesda) i can bet he is protecting himself and company mostly. Many normal developers would simply quit to avoid damaging reputation so "smart" managers starting to blame consumers.

[@TrundleTheGreat]

Spot on with the passing the blame and taking ownership. My old boss went off on the department in a meeting because I was the only one owning the mistakes, just taking blame for things even when they weren't my fault. I can't count how many times someone would blame me for something and I'd just take it and move on because it was easier for me than trying to play the nonsensical blame game. Oh and yes I work in tech just to make that clear. I think a lot of it is ego as well. Too many people who think they know more than they do, not accepting their own weaknesses and getting ahead by fooling others into thinking they are competent.

[@crazyfingers619]

good on you

[@miinyoo]

If you can delegate properly the avalanche of incompetence back to its originators succinctly, competently and amenably, you make an incredible manager. Shoulder burden, divvy resources, assume no blame. Rinse, repeat. Anyone who is a lazy fuck 3 times can gtfo. Seems reasonable. Valuable part of a dev chain.

[@G1G4HEX]

theres a saying. "It doesnt take a chef to know the food tastes like shit"

[@TheCyrus1988]

Creating a mod for an existing environment is like going to a 5-star restaurant, ordering the best item on the menu, and when it arrives, sprinkling a bit of salt on it, claiming, 'Voilà, i made this....' You didn't prepare or cook it, nor you got the ingredience and etc...; you only added the salt. What I am saying is that it takes a fraction of the time to build a mod for an existing game and fix a bug, but it takes years to build one from scratch. The comparison you made at 6:45 is utterly nonsensical, speaking from a developer's POV.

[@alexivanov2737]

or it can be going to a local takeout restaurant buying the food in plastic container, and then serving it on a nice plate in a nice setting for a nice picture for Instagram or whatever else, so it would only look like meal in 5 star one TLDR stop capping, ur analogy is not good from another developer's POV, it all depends on the exact situation

[@TheCyrus1988]

​@@alexivanov2737 Could you please share the Steam franchise page for your games? Your extensive experience adds a unique touch to the gaming community for sure, and we'd love to see your creations!

[@alexivanov2737]

@@TheCyrus1988 nice way of proving the point - going after the fact that the one who's not agreeing with u may not have "credibility", so their point will be invalidated on the grounds of "u don't know what u r talking about". But okay I'll use ur own example to explain the flaw in ur logic. If the modder who is not even close to the level of the actual developer and doesn't have direct access to source code is able to solve the bug/issue, then surely developer will be able to solve this exact issue even faster. Or a chef can add the salt himself so that dish is properly seasoned, instead of the customer asking a waiter (or whoever the modder is in ur analogy) to season it for him. Or it is wrong again just because I'm not part of the clique?

[@CeanHerzfield]

I agree with you 100%. All of these 'armchair experts' are the most obnoxious people around. They couldn't produce a decent game or mod if they tried but they 'know it all'. Modders enhance what is already there and what took a huge team years to accomplish. It's common sense but trying to convince these people of anything is like arguing with flat Earthers. There really is no point.

[@TheCyrus1988]

​@@alexivanov2737 Thank you for the link; your games look fantastic... You truly know what you're talking about... However, having an opinion on a subject, which neither you nor Asmond not nearly seem to understand, doesn't make you smarter talking about it. The mere fact that, as a self-proclaimed fellow "developer", you seem to agree with that statement demonstrates to anyone in the development industry that you are entirely clueless, just as Asmond is, about the game development process and the context of modding games. You've truly outdone yourself.

[@bleekeat4964]

“ITS YOUR FAULT YOU DON’T FIND LOADING EVERY 5 SECONDS AND EXPLORING EMPTY WASTELANDS NOT FUN”

[@AgrPerez]

Wastelands? This was supposed to be a Fallout game?

[@iwannaplayssbb6665]

devs getting their egos wounded and having melties on twatter has to be one of the most hilarious things ever

[@suzukimemories]

Just imagine if Emil P. goes to a pizza shop and gets a shitty pizza. He gonna start arguing and asking for a new one or money return. But employe gonna say - sorry bro my job is hard, eat what I gave you. 🤣

[@belava82]

Emil Pagliarulo was lead designer for Fallout 3 and this game had childish trash writing and a boring main story. He was a lead designer for Skyrim and this game had a childish trash writing and a boring main story. He was a lead designer for Fallout 4 and this game had a childish trash writing and a boring main story. He was a lead designer for Starfield and this game had a childish trash writing and a boring main story. On top of that their engine is basically the same that was used in Morrowind 20 years ago. They were programmed for failure both on technical and on a writing sides of this project.

[@garou1911]

Don't have to be a chef to say the soup has too much salt. Don't have to be a dev to say the game has bad models and a boring story. I'm sure the chef worked hard on that soup. Sweated in a hot kitchen chopping ingredients and simmering broth with a team of people doing the same. Soup still has too much salt

[@slickydee5507]

I often think about the fallout creator and the story about the enemy AI that he wrote in an afternoon so they could at least test combat, and his staff told him it would take at least 4 weeks.

[@that_damn_kiddo]

Tim Cain, in case other people want to look for it. I think Asmon reacted to the video.

[@kecaw]

The whole story how Fallout " came to be" is surreal. Like he was tasked to "make a game" So to get the initial peeps (that he didnt have) he left a fucking note of " hey i will be in this room after work to talk about this thing i have pizza". The idea for one of the best Post Apocalyptic Role Playing Game came to be in a fucking damp room, after work hours that a dude baited people in with pizza.

[@memitim171]

@@kecaw Surreal it may be, but it's surprising how often this kind of thing results in a game that ends up a titan of the genre or just straight up invents a genre. All this designed by committee nonsense clearly has a lower success rate than pizza in damp rooms...

[@m4nt1c0r3s]

@@memitim171 No, thats how greatness starts, with passion, it ends up with a corporation throwing money to get it, plucking its soul to milk as much as they can from conveyor belt games, to movies, and all sorts of merch before leaving it a worn out husk. And thats actually not the worse they can do, the worse is actually "improving it for modern audiences" by turning everything in it diverse and rewriting the whole story and history and start blaming the fans that made it all possible for being phobes for not liking what it got hijacked into, thats the nightmare scenario, and we as fans are living it over and over again because "evil doesnt sleep", and also doesnt create. :P

[@memitim171]

@@m4nt1c0r3sGood games are still made like that today, they just aren't AAA games...

[@riverdays364]

"Am I out of touch? No, it's the players that are wrong!"

[@ZeallustImmortal]

When i was working in a broken shop with no A/C, none of our pumps or jacks working properly, having broken tools, etc 10 hours a day me and my team still did thorough and quality work within the timeframes we were assigned by the managers that dont know what is realistic. We also had a positive attitude with our customers, and took responsibility and pride in our work.

[@chrishess6394]

This is the best take I've heard by far and I 100% agree and I wish even one million dollar studio would watch this and grow a team and not fire them

[@felipesoaresMaster]

one million studio but cant 60fps😂 and cinematic ending

[@invertexyz]

Bold of this person to assume nobody criticizing them is also a developer. There are a lot of experienced game developers in the world and many of the majorly viewed criticism came from other devs, not just armchair opinionists.

[@jp.metalhead]

No wonder Fallout New Vegas had a fantastic story. It's because Obsidian was the developer.

[@jjstraka1982]

If Fallout: New Vegas came out today literally all you would see is video after video like this one complaining about it being an unplayable mess on a technical level.

[@Dr.Dementor]

Emil Pagliarulo, the guy who couldn't write a good quest even if it would save his life!

[@vi6618]

Also you have the issue in a team where often the worst most incompetent people are the most outspoken, and say they know what they're doing when they don't. And then the actually talented person sits there wondering why that one incompetent person is taking 2 weeks to do something that would have taken them 2 hours. (PS Personal experience).

[@spacegoat_3d801]

Then they make that incompetent person your manager and the people working under them start to leave the company.

[@Py-Py-Py]

Lmfao I was thinking that the entire time when I saw the twitter post. Also, speaking from experience.

[@toasty862]

Then that person fails upwards because of their well honed ability to BS.

[@Dawubbz]

Really goes to show that the strength of a game comes down to the strength of the leadership behind the project. That can sometimes be the creative leads, sometimes it's the producers. Regardless, if the leaders are unwilling to take responsibility, have a cohesive vision, or show pure contempt for their audience then it's fair to say that whatever that person makes will suffer as a result.

[@nnnnnnnnn8888]

Its all comes down to how strong and clear the purpose and vision behind a game

[@zack2920]

Playing soothing Oblivion music while absolutely annihilating a Bethesda dev is AWESOME

[@Erowens98]

When an engineer responsible for designing the headlights of your car fucks up, the car is recalled and the company is out millions. When a gamedev fucks up, he rants on twitter about standards for his products are too high.

[@unleased_dev]

I will say that programmers in general are talented, except like you said, in a corporate setting, it is much harder for them to actually use that talent in meaningful ways (especially creativity and innovation)

[@bemlok]

I'm sorry mr dev, I'm sorry for wanting a good quality product as you promised, I'm sorry

[@Maverrick2140]

Starfield is the epitome of a company stopping to innovate and standing still .. building a game on a 15 year old game engine because "it has always worked before".

[@raghav1026]

It just works 😂

[@FineIChangedItYoutubeDontBeMad]

Yep like my grandpa lol

[@MerlinTheCommenter]

Holy crap this was based. I freakin loved it. FINALLY someone said it. TIRED of hearing animators, game programmers, designers and comic artists crying on social media about how hard their job is. STFU, SOME OF US LITERALLY DO LIFE OR DEATH WORK. Not once have I ever complained about doing surgeries. Bros out here having their dream job and they still find something to complain about. ENJOY THE DREAM because one day it may just go away. If you hate it: learn a new skill and quit.

[@SevenminutesisallthetimeIhave]

Don’t talk about what you don’t know. Ever heard of crunch? Ya know, that whole thing? Well, they have money, who cares if their work environment is toxic to the point people actually kill themselves. At least they get paid. Just because your life is hard does not mean others have it easy just because they make video games or have a higher salary. Look outside your self, and maybe you might see how fucked what you’ve just said is. To clarify! If your life is bad, I’m sorry. No one deserves to have shit. But that doesn’t mean you can just assume others have it better, and say they shouldn’t complain because on the outside, their jobs are nicer.

[@ivanshulika5359]

Yea, that part where "overdispersed responsibility = bad" is true af. I am a back-end dev for business app. When our new (she left our company by now) project manager tried to do this bs, where I fked up, but on meeting with director she starts to talk about "everyone are at fault", I asked her as politely as I could to not do this again. In the end, she was calling me "toxic" and that I am SHAMING OTHERS FOR MY MISTAKES BUT PUTTING PROBLEMS IN MY PART OF THINGS ONLY ON ME. Yea, our director was not too hyped of her approach, so, after like 2-3 months of this, we have no project managers again (what a shame :(( ). I tell you what - when you are full of responsibilities, you are making yourself to work at full capacity of your capabilities. And if you are doing so in programming enviroment (I believe it is that much easier to improve in "intellect-over-physical labor" jobs) - it helps you to grow as a professional THAT much faster. Somehow after an year under huge self-appointed pressure, I feel no "burn-outs", no thoughts like "my work is hard - respect me for it!" - nothing of sorts at all! Yep, quite the opposite of what those whiners in bloated teams crying about every day :D

[@JoseAoQuadrado]

I work as a DevOps dev/engineer and I've been doing it for a year and some. I had no experience on this field before starting at this company but I was put in charge of handling all the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD processes (it's a fairly small project so I had room to learn as I went and I had 3 months of training), with a bit of app develoment in between when needed. Nowadays I feel like I learned a lot and I have a certain degree of confidence on my skills. The main reason for this being the case is exactly having that responsability thrown on me and knowing that any mistake could not only break something but most importantly (since we're talking about Cloud) costing the company hundreds or thousands of dollars (this happened one month, I learned my lesson). So I always tried to learn as much as I could about every task I was assigned so I could not only come up with the best possible solution but also understand why I used that particular solution, so that if shit hit the fan, I could figure out why it did, solve it in a timely manner and explain everything to the managers clearly. It also eventually comes down to your work ethics but having a certain degree of responsability in a product definitely incentivizes you to push yourself. If I never got blame for something breaking or being done poorly I would probably solve some tasks in a half-assed way to just make the Owners happy.

[@namanhlehoang9999]

When Talkers tell Doers how to do things 😂😂😂

[@bustywaifus]

I worked 4 years in the video game industry and the devs were almost all bad (including me). There's very few talented individuals in the industry.

[@0potion]

That's kind of the point though with the amount of tools that are out now even people who are and I quote bad at being a Dev can still make a good/great game. Which is why it doesn't make sense that a triple-a studio with years of experience who theoretically should not be bad has no excuse for making a bad game.

[@_Vengeance_]

Especially love it how 1 of the things he mentions is (paraphrased): "you don't know how many people were available" Uh... if fewer people worked on the game, the development costs should be lower in the same amount of time. So if quality was sacrificed to reduce the development cost, then I expect the savings to be reflected in the game's price. You can't charge full AAA price and then expect people to accept cost-saving arguments, that only works if you pass the savings on to the customer (hence I do accept the small dev team argument of Indie devs who charge far less).

[@idonomaeatomoku9322]

If there weren't enough people to get a needed job done, couldn't they, I dunno... use their some of their stacks of cash to hire another person?

[@ianwulf24]

A great example of game devs responding positively to criticism and feedback is Terraria. That game has been around since 2011, and the amount of respect the devs have for their players and community really shows in the amount of bug fixes, patches, rebalancing, content additions, etc, over years and years and years.

[@abrahamlincoln3181]

Christopher Judge was hilarious. The Cod devs retracted their statements when they didn't get the response they were looking for.

[@tzzar9907]

Imagine a doctor saying their job is hard so that they do a shitty job more than half the time.

[@chrismiller5940]

Considering the game engine goes back at least to Oblivion if not Morrowind it isn't surprising that their open world experience has never changed. I have done some modding in Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 but mainly in Skyrim and it has been the same base engine recycled over and over. Some of my experiences modding these games: - Disabling VATS in the Skyrim ini (yes Skyrim) by adding the line 'bVATSDisable=1' will make the kill moves play in normal combat instead of the cinematic view - The first mod I made for myself in Skyrim was porting an Oblivion mod (some swords) simply by changing the master file from the Oblivion esm to the Skyrim esm - Creation Kit features that worked in Fallout 3 (like quest progression and objectives) that would update automatically once the conditions were met no longer worked in Skyrim, it all had to be done with scripts - NPC AI packages were made the same way between all of the games - There is an option in Skyrim when making NPC's to have their level scale automatically with the player at a percentage of their level (lower level rate or higher) but isn't used. Instead they made sets of pre-leveled npc's that max out at less than level 30. - Each version of the Creation Kit / GECK that has been released has had more and more functions broken and unusable. If this truly is what Bethesda is using to make the game world it's no wonder that it is always so riddled with bugs.

[@Xfushion2]

At this point I honestly think the reason they keep using the Creation Engine is because of the modding community experience with it and for how they unironically rely on them to patch and improve their games. That outdated mess of an engine should have been scrapped years ago.

[@iko20101]

No the game engine doesn't go back to Oblivion, Starfield is run mostly on Creation Engine 2 with some bits of it originally made on Creation Engine 1. Oblivion was made on Gamebryo which is the precursor to Creation Engine. That is like saying Fortnite is made on a 25 year old Unreal Engine because it is currently running on Unreal Engine 5.

[@DudeAlexey017]

@@iko20101 they can call it whatever they want, but this is obviously Morrowind engine with just minor tweaks. Any modmaker (including myself) will tell you that. Don't even compare Gamebryo with Unreal.

[@Xfushion2]

@@iko20101 The Creation Engine 1 is just a edited version of Gamebryo (they forked it) that's why Fallout 3 console commands work on Skyrim and the base files all share the same format between games despite being in _different engines_ and why it inherited all of it's flaws, the same thing applies for Creation 2 which is what Starfield was built in. The engine is garbage, unlike Unreal it doesn't really get any better with each iteration and Companies that have their own engine, like Capcom (RE engine) or Id Software (Id Tech) put it to shame mainly because the games they put out using their in-house tech are mile better than anything Bethesda has ever done.

[@iko20101]

@@Xfushion2 Yes Creation Engine 1 is just a more improved and better version of Gamebryo just like how Unreal Engine 5 is better than Unreal Engine 4 or 3. What is your point? Also Creation Engine 1 is so much better than Gamebryo and Starfield wasn't fully created on Creation Engine 2 and is a mix of both Creation Engine 1 and 2.

[@phafy]

The Devs at Larian had fun at making the hame even tho its hard. They were extremely transparent when it came to development and thanks to their Early Access release (yes even if early access is often being used for bad stuff) they could listen to the community and implement and remove stuff people liked/disliked. They showed in livestreams and social media posts how they work, what they work on and you could see that they liked what they were doing. In the end they delayed the game because THEY SAW some flaws and wanted to change these flaws before release before they release a game that the players don't like and the devs didn't like either because they wished for more time to fix these flaws. And someone would had to stand up and say these flaws to the team without being scared of being fired. When you go to work and you are scared of underperforming and being fired AND don't like going there, you are going to underperform constantly. If you work in a workimvoroment like Bethesda's nothing "great" comes out of it, its only gonna be "good enough".

[@ethanfreeman1106]

Well said. Bethesda is a prime example of everything that is wrong with a corporate entity with zero soul working people to the bone while never learning to have fun, so how can anyone expect them to produce something that is fun for people to enjoy? I'd say we should have seen this coming miles and miles ago. Their work consists of mostly busy work going back and forth with no two teams ever cooperating effectively, following incompetent upper management who are never clear about what they want or know what they need, resulting in lots and lots of wasted time and resources just for the final result to amount to jack shit. Sorry about the profanity, but thinking about the development hell that the people in the company had to go through makes me simultaneously mad about their company leadership and sad for the people who work there. I've worked for a few companies with that kind of culture so I can sympathize a bit, not that it excuses the employees for making a bad product, but it does reflect the insanity of the situation where the people in charge are making everything worse off for everyone just by being there, and then shifting the blame and never owning up to it when they effectively led the whole operation to ruins. Leadership having zero accountability is about one of the worst things you can see if you happen to work under that leadership. Gaming is supposed to be fun, so making videogames should also be a fun process. Inspiration matters a whole lot, then comes skills. Don't do it like Bethesda does and make game development hell for yourself.

[@matteovincenzi7024]

You are so right, not just in the gaming industry we have these situations where is nobody's fault so the real problem is never going to be solved

[@arneanka6777]

True. But i am sure it can be solved. The adults must stop pampering the youth. They need to learn that not everyone in a team is a winner. That they arern´t always right. That there are more beautiful people than them etc etc. And they should stand by their faults and be proud of them. This need to start when they are children. And the problem will be solved in a few generations.

[@CubeInspector]

The entitled leftist culture of rejecting any form of accountability unless it's making people accountable for hurting your feelings has a disastrous effect on overall quality across any industry. It's just most common in the game industry because it, and tech in general, has such a high concentration of the entitled leftists (>90%)

[@MrJimbeezee]

Completely agree with your point re: customer is always right and it’s not their job to feel sorry for how hard developers have it. I’m a surgeon. There was a week when I was on call during which I had to work non stop without sleep from 7 AM to 7 PM the following day (so 36 hours straight). This included 4 back to back emergency surgeries I had to do from midnight to 7 AM. By the end of that shift I was so tired. But do you think if I had caused some operative complication during any of those surgeries I could have just said “well I’m overworked and had no sleep” and expect the patient to be understanding?? Hell no. If you show up to work it’s your job to get it right.

[@chessophiler]

So true! Your job?--then get it right or get the F out. This Emil is pathetic and should be fired.

[@miinyoo]

It's only when you put in that effort and subsequently are abused because the goal posts move or are rearranged. I've had that happen several times in production for TV shows. Episodes get swapped for very logical reasons but we in post production are not told until it perpetuates our crazy hour workload for a few more weeks. That's media but in the end it wouldn't have changed anything. Everyone knows it was a dick move and we talk amongst ourselves about it but when it comes to criticizing the shot callers, not very much. Finance doesn't care about production. Customers don't care about production. No one actually cares that you get to have fun at work but at the same time have to solve crazy problems in limited time. I can appreciate the dumb frustration. And people wonder why some TV shows look like shit even though they have solid graphics. It's the same thing. A good production is very smooth. It really is. No questions (there are loads of intermediary debates but those are details), everyone is on the same page. Good productions and pipes really work well. Same goes for film, games, print, any media including instagram, youtube and tiktok. It's hard to fake user content because everyone will call you out. So don't fake it. Be real.

[@chessophiler]

Wouldn't be too (to?) hard on the Dr.--put in 36 hours, after all!@@jjstraka1982

[@nine9nine9]

​@@jjstraka1982babes, yeah. That's totally fair. You're not his boss, nor is he writing a marked essay. He is allowed to just WRITE words

[@userequaltoNull]

I'll be honest, the fact that you're willing to perform SURGERY when you've been awake for 36 hours straight is a problem. Even battlefield surgeons in the Ukrainian Army get more sleep than that. I, quite frankly, wouldn't want a surgeon who's been awake much longer than 12, let alone 36. Even fucking truck drivers are required by law to get more sleep than that.

[@GhostingMyEx]

It sounds like Starfied Dev’s feelings were more important than the actual product itself. On game day, they failed to perform because they felt one way or another. All show no go.

[@slxxpyhollow]

I'm not even an Asmongold fan but this is 100% straight up facts!! Love this rant!