Re: Airoheart
Oct. 4th, 2022 07:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingAbout the "modern audiences have no patience" bit.
I'm happy to give my attention to complicated or difficult work, but only on one of four conditions:
(1) I trust the author or creator because I'm familiar with their work.
(2) It's a thoughtful genre of work that, by its nature, requires patience.
(3) It's experimental, amateur, or student work that is unpolished but inexpensive.
(4) There's something in the work that intrigues me despite its flaws.
The fourth condition is usually my breaking point for more polished and professional work. I'll put up with a lot of nonsense if I find something intriguing. If something is "difficult" and I'm not grabbed by the concept, however, I'm out.
To give an example, the Nintendo Switch port of Disco Elysium is impossible to control, and there's a ton of text, and you have to repeat the walls of text because you die a lot. If Disco Elysium weren't impossible to control, maybe I would have been more patient, but the walls of text weren't really presenting me with a payoff for my suffering.
To give another example, Eastward is filled with mean-spirited sexist humor, which is a small symptom of the larger issue of the writing being shit. I would put up with this if the game were fun to play, but it's not. The combat is absurdly difficult for reasons that seem to have more to do with poor programming than deliberate design; and, on top of that, the game is bizarrely committed to headache-inducing rapid flashing strobe lights. If Eastward doesn't respect me as a player, then I'm not going to respect it with my patience.
If you want me to be patient, I need at least a few concessions for accessibility. Or, if it's something like Hades (in which the initial inaccessibility is a key component of the story), I need to already trust the creative team to know what they're doing, or someone I trust needs to tell me that the payoff is worth it.
For Airoheart, it's like, I don't know the developers. I don't have a relationship with this game. Multiple reviewers say that it doesn't get better. To me, Airoheart seems like an AI-generated attempt to capitalize on people's nostalgia for A Link to the Past, but it has zero understanding of what makes the Zelda series so interesting and fun to play. This game doesn't deserve my $40, and it doesn't deserve my time.
I'm happy to give my attention to complicated or difficult work, but only on one of four conditions:
(1) I trust the author or creator because I'm familiar with their work.
(2) It's a thoughtful genre of work that, by its nature, requires patience.
(3) It's experimental, amateur, or student work that is unpolished but inexpensive.
(4) There's something in the work that intrigues me despite its flaws.
The fourth condition is usually my breaking point for more polished and professional work. I'll put up with a lot of nonsense if I find something intriguing. If something is "difficult" and I'm not grabbed by the concept, however, I'm out.
To give an example, the Nintendo Switch port of Disco Elysium is impossible to control, and there's a ton of text, and you have to repeat the walls of text because you die a lot. If Disco Elysium weren't impossible to control, maybe I would have been more patient, but the walls of text weren't really presenting me with a payoff for my suffering.
To give another example, Eastward is filled with mean-spirited sexist humor, which is a small symptom of the larger issue of the writing being shit. I would put up with this if the game were fun to play, but it's not. The combat is absurdly difficult for reasons that seem to have more to do with poor programming than deliberate design; and, on top of that, the game is bizarrely committed to headache-inducing rapid flashing strobe lights. If Eastward doesn't respect me as a player, then I'm not going to respect it with my patience.
If you want me to be patient, I need at least a few concessions for accessibility. Or, if it's something like Hades (in which the initial inaccessibility is a key component of the story), I need to already trust the creative team to know what they're doing, or someone I trust needs to tell me that the payoff is worth it.
For Airoheart, it's like, I don't know the developers. I don't have a relationship with this game. Multiple reviewers say that it doesn't get better. To me, Airoheart seems like an AI-generated attempt to capitalize on people's nostalgia for A Link to the Past, but it has zero understanding of what makes the Zelda series so interesting and fun to play. This game doesn't deserve my $40, and it doesn't deserve my time.
