The year is 2002. I approached the desk at the rental store with a freshly minted copy
of the Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind. After handing over my change and scurrying home,
I proceeded to play for roughly 24 hours straight, more captivated by this finely crafted world
than anything I had seen in my entire 11 and a half years of life. Even boobs.
I woke my dad up the next morning by professing my love of this game and begging him to buy
a real copy of it to replace my rental version. To my surprise, he agreed.
My dad and I would take turns playing on a shared save file where one of us would read
through the player's guide and direct the other who would control the character.
These are some of my favorite gaming memories ever.
We use that player's guide so much it barely holds together at this point.
The cover has been missing for decades. I was driven to get into software development
because I wanted to work for Bethesda for Todd Howard. I wanted to make things like Morrowind,
this piece of art that means so much to me. To say this is my favorite game ever would be
an understatement. Fast forward 21 years to Starfield's release and I tried with every fiber
of my being to find that diamond in the rough, but it just wasn't there. I bought the collector's
edition. I tried to fight off the haters. I streamed it to try to add to the hype,
but it just fell flat. What went wrong? I don't really know. I work here, not in the gaming industry,
and there are people out there that have deconstructed Starfield far better than I can.
I suggest Nakey Jakey's video on the topic he shares nearly identical views to me
and is a better presenter, so just go watch that. What I want to talk about today isn't actually Starfield itself, but the machine
and the environment that made it. The industry is sick, not just Bethesda.
Off the top of my head, other studios that have fallen from grace include Activision,
Ubisoft, Blizzard, EA, 343 Studios, and more. All titans of the industry that used to be known
for releasing generational bangers over and over again, but now seem to just fart out
quadruple A grade trash. And it's not just bad games, it's bad culture, bad PR, bad management.
From the very serious sexual harassment issues at Blizzard, EA claiming egregious microtransactions
are there to enable a sense of pride and accomplishment and rampant layoffs. It's clear
something is wrong, and no, I'm not here to suggest a fix, but I am here to identify a pattern.
See, we've seen this before. Look at Atari and Activision from back in the late 70s.
Atari's leadership was floundering, and some of their key talent broke off, freeing themselves
and forming Activision. I might be grasping at straws here, but it feels cyclical. Many giants
of the 90s and early 2000s are losing their spark, and in some cases, splinter teams are
starting to form. Some examples of this would be Dreamhaven and Frost Giant,
Splinters from Blizzard, or Stoic Studio, a splinter from EA. There are others as well,
and more are forming all the time. And you can feel it too, right? It's not just those,
a new dawn seems to be rising. Steam records are getting smashed left and right unexpectedly.
Arrowhead Studios, the makers of wildly successful Helldivers 2, proudly proclaims on their website
that a game made for everyone is a game made for no one. From Software unabashedly sticks to their
guns when it comes to difficulty and game design, eventually releasing the utterly jaw-dropping
Elden Ring. Larian Studios takes a risk releasing a D&D format game in 2023, something many people
and studios balked at. Yet gamers can't get enough, and it easily won Game of the Year,
continues to receive endless praise, and their leader, Sven Vicki, seems to be incapable of
saying or doing anything, not completely based. The future is bright, it's a great time to be a
gamer, try not to sweat the failures of the old gods, and instead enjoy the successes of the new
ones. Thanks for listening to me ramble, thanks for being subscribed to Flowplain, and I'll see you next time.