Game Devs Crying About Asset Flips?

I believe this is false.

Steam does a great job never showing anything poor quality. I do not recall seeing even one game displayed on a steam store to me that was an obvious quick clone of something. To see this kind of stuff, you need to go looking for it.

 

Yep. If it weren't for people like Sterling and similar actively seeking out these games or having people do it for them, we'd never know these games would exist. They're Bundle Fodder. You get these games for a nickel in a bundle with a bunch of other garbage games from bundle sites that exist solely to ride the popularity wave that Humble Bundle created.

 

I don't have time to spend 2 hours looking at everything for 4 games, but I took a quick browse through the first game and it actually looked kind of interesting for a simple little game. Kind of neat designs (though I imagine they're just from the asset store?), and I liked the breaking glass--pretty cool. Gameplay was simplistic, but I don't really like FPS games in general. I saw a couple of glitches or weird things, but it was nothing major.

For that game at least I think it kind of comes down to whether or not this stuff "belongs" on a high-profile commercial storefront, not whether or not it's an asset flip. Or put another way, whether a user uninterested has to sift through such things to find what they want. And Steam is trying to deal with that, with the suggestion algorithms. I personally have gone through thousands of games in my Steam queue, and I almost never come across such games, and when I do it takes literally 3 seconds to see a screenshot or two, recognize the drab environments and uninspired gameplay, click "Not Interested," and then move to the next game.

(Edit: I will point out that I have come across a number of crappy visual novels, a number of them from a company called bch waves or something, but VNs are a moderately niche genre which tend to attract poor-quality work from English sources so those are easier to deal with.)

I also frequently go through the list of upcoming games on Steam. I don't click on each one, I wouldn't do that even if there were none of these "lower quality" titles on there, but I click on the ones that catch my attention. And I've never come across asset flip-looking games.

I don't even remember what I said before in this thread. Not going to go look either to make my statements line up or anything. But while I can accept that it may be a problem for some users, I also suspect the group it is really a problem for is prohibitively small, and it's largely being drummed up by people unaffected by it. Kind of like the gamers who go around hating EA or Ubisoft--the overwhelming majority of them haven't even played one of their (the company's) games in years, they're just dog-piling because it's popular.

 

I don't think the general game playing public cares as much about this asset flipping deal as everyone seems to think. I personally played games for 3 decades and never heard the term until recently when I signed in to unity forums. I had to explain it to my brother over the weekend because it was a new concept to him as well. Not saying no one aside from the dev community knows of it just that its not as overwhelmingly dwelled upon by the general public.

I will say that a crap game is a crap game even if it uses all handmade crap art and buggy homespun code. I dont think the reuse of assets plays much of a role in whether or not a game is any good. If a game is good its good assets from the store or not. If a game is awful its awful even if you worked really hard and did your best.

I dont care how hard you worked on a game and I dont think most players care either. I care whether or not I have fun playing it. If you whip some junk up from store bought assets and its fun I will play it. If you labor for a year till you've nearly alienated your entire family and release a game thats void of paid assets and fun of any kind then I wont play it.
Theres my 2 cents. Feel free to ignore it as its the opinion of a person who never was quite like the other kids anyway.

 

That's the thing. Gamers were uninformed before and because of games going all digital, especially these days, more and more gamers are monitoring game developers and game development.

So a lot of gamers are more informed about what's being put out there. Before, you were stuck with these generic "games" being bundled in some "100 GAMES COLLECTION" for some poor kid to receive as a gift on his birthday. Now, you not only refund these terrible games, but you also inform people about them so they don't purchase from these scamming "developers" again.

Only indie developers putting in actual effort and not just re-packaging stuff are safe now.

 

No.

It is not gamers "becoming informed" and "learning about all the insidious things going on in the games" (or something). It is just that there's a small group of people that LOUDLY freak out over minor things or try to profit from making others freak out about it. The reason for freaking out, by the way, would be incompetence and lack of information about game development process.

When did this happen? In which year? Are you talking about bootleg NES cartridges?

 

I remember those bootleg NES cartridges. I also remember only the richest kids had them because they typically ran for a couple hundred bucks, on account of being stuffed to the brim with pirated games.

 

The only game I ever received as a gift was ET for the Atari 2600. That game was not an asset flip, though. It was just a bad game. Anyway, after that happened I told everybody not to get me any more games as gifts, since it was obvious that my well intentioned relatives were not video game connoisseurs.

 

I think this problem of people getting fussed over asset flipping is really a problem of lack of regulation of the game industry. Now hold your horses, I'm not saying that it's simply a quality problem per se. But maybe people feel like if devs can put whatever they want out there, they have the right to employ whatever means of 'quality control' they see fit - they basically see the game industry as 'run amuck' and are trying to employ some kind of mob rule over it. To be honest, it's not a completely unfounded point of view but perhaps some people are not reacting in a useful way.

As always, a system reaches an equilibrium at some point. That's why I don't consider ridiculous complaints about flipping a few environmental assets to be something that needs to be dealt with, it's a reaction to something deeper that needs to be fixed, whether with games themselves, with games media or something else. If complaints about trivial things gain so much traction, there's probably something ugly going on that's feeding the impetus behind it.

If I was perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure that the problem is even rooted in the indie camp. Maybe people who dislike the state of the AAA industry, and who see indies as some kind of bastion of light against the darkness, are reacting to seeing what they perceive as bad motives among those who will fix the industry, and are trying to eradicate it.

In any case, I think that once the real problem (which has nothing to do with whether a tree is re-used from one game to the other) is fixed, trivial complaints will disappear.

 

I think you could end world hunger, give everyone everything they want stop violence, end all atrocities and make a heaven on earth and someone would complain. Then someone else would take this minor complaint, blow it out of proportion and use it as leverage to convince the sheep to follow. Our society feeds on tragedy, lives for conflict, has a driving need for a problem to be upset about. When you take away peoples real problems they have no perspective of importance and start thinking its a tragedy worth ranting about when their fast food burger got pickles they didn't want. The point is that people will complain no matter how good they have it and for some reason want to hear others do the same.

 

I think those people can simply go to hell.

They already have an option of voting with their wallets. Don't like the game - don't buy.

 

Current culture in the west is that if someone acts like a brat, it's somehow valuable and they only need to be cared for a certain way. I disagree, I think slamming the door in the brat's face sends a message that the tactic isn't working.

These people - they're given power, they can't take it. If they could take it they would. Instead it's about manipulation, lies, deceit - these are tools that they use to abuse well-meaning liberal people.

Liberal people aren't trying to be asses, but they do let asses rule over them, and that's bad. We can't be a well adjusted society by being so open minded that our brains fall out Children need boundaries, strong ones.

 

Games media does not express sentiment with their wallets. I think that trying to shut down vocal opinion is absurd. And if a certain sentiment gains traction then it's likely that it's something that a lot of people share.

I think the problem, as I've said before, is that there are a lot of games that are simply low quality, and people are reacting to trivial things when they are really upset about that. Personally, I think there's a real problem with lack of quality control. I don't agree with people who consider that asset flipping of trees or something is a problem - in fact I don't have a problem with a near-complete asset flip if it's something really good. But I do think that there are too many half-assed games that are rubbing shoulders with really well-crafted games - especially on Google Play where in any given list you have 90% rubbish, 8% decent and 1% great, with no way to distinguish except on the amount of effort put into the store landing page. I think that sort of thing rubs a lot of people the wrong way who are a bit more zealous about the topic than I am.

 

Its not just the liberal segment of society either, its the entire mob. A person can be smart, strong willed, and act with a certain level of thought. People as a whole are dimwitted, easily led, non thinking herd animals. True democracy dosent work so we appoint a few people to listen to the mob then decide to act with some thought.

I still say most people real problems stem from having no real problems. Humans need something to worry about, something to struggle against. When you take away their real problems the trivial ones become the top of the list. People get irate because they got cut off in traffic or the kid in the theater wouldn't shut up. People dont worry about taking care of their base needs any more. Now this does not apply to the entire world obviously, just the part we live in. There are people with real problems, starving to death or freezing by a dwindling fire but those people dont have internet forums to complain to because they are busy solving their real problem which is survival.

I can't speak for everyone, only the small group of society I've been exposed to. From what I see in myself and those around me there are no real problems. I've never worried about not having something to eat. Ive never thought I might freeze to death because I dont have the means to get warm. I dont have a neighboring village of barbarians threatening to steal my children in the night. Instead I have the typical American woes, my pizza got delivered cold, traffic is a nightmare, McDonalds screwed my order up again, I just dont have the money to put down new carpet in the house, I need new car tires, my sunglasses got scratched, none of which amount to anything truly important in this world.

I also believe western media preys on this. We proudly display even the smallest of grievances as a rally point on the evening news. Sure there are the odd heartwarming stories but who pays attention to that, give me dirty laundry. We want to hear about how someone was wronged so we can band together as a force to dispel the evil brought to our attention. When a fireman save a kitten the story is over, when someone is being slighted in some way we can carry on, complain, struggle and stand against the atrocity making us feel like just and right moral superiors.

 

The way I see it, it is not about "shutting down", but rather about not giving a damn.

While the idea of gamedev is to eventually earn some money, there should be some sort of vision there, which may or may not be artistic. And the developer is the one who has the final say in everything - from the way story goes, to how levels are constructed and which assets are used.

Basically, while it make some financial sense to cater to people's demands, the developer is under no obligation to do so, especially when demands are unreasonable.

The whole whining about asset flipping coupled with audacity of assuming that they have the right to dictate developer what the developer should do... I see the whole thing as being spoiled and feeling over entitled.

Those people - the ones who complain about flipped assets - are toxic and useless. They don't even have a fraction of money or experience it takes to make anything, yet they somehow feel they're in position to make demands.

So, as hippo said, the right idea is to slam the door in their face. They have the right not to buy the game. They also have ability to launch their own studio and waste their own money trying to make the game "properly".

I also agree that pandering to the spoiled whining crowds has been taken too far in last years. Would be a good time to kill that practice.

 

Fair enough, all I'm saying is that I think there's a problem that's giving rise to the whining.

That's absolutely true from an individual perspective, but from the perspective of the industry at large I think there's a problem with quality control. Again, that does not equal a problem with asset flipping as such, but I think it's feeding the problem. And also, an individual developer should not have to give a damn about what anyone thinks about flipping some environmental assets or whatever - but unfortunately a lot of crossfire is what happens when things are out of control.

I agree it's somewhat toxic, but it's a product of the systemic problem. The real question is whether enough gamers are participating in this sort of attitude for it to be worth worrying about as a market problem. I have little doubt though that a lot of gamers have a problem with the quality control - the mobile stores are already a mess and it seems likely that Steam is headed in the same direction - given the basic numbers of new applications/unit time that are growing exponentially, and simultaneously all barriers are being removed except for a meager fee.

 

That's kind of not true. A lot of people are easily swayed. They wouldn't normally share the opinion but they're often bullied, harassed and forced into it. I have a friend who only recently changed her opinion and political stance. She was essentially herded into a complete feminist entirely liberal mindset but she realised that it wasn't true feminism, it wasn't even making sense and was filled with hate.

She and many people like her are essentially bullied into "sharing" a mindset. This is far too common.

What I would love is a more scientific oriented way of thinking, for young people in schools. I want people to instead be empowered by the ability to test and see for themselves if something is good or bad, is working or not, and be given the tools to survive mob mentality, illogically banned words and other concepts.

But maybe that's too dangerous for governments and mobs alike. After all if the world was filled with free thinkers there wouldn't be enough money for war.

 

True. When celebrity media personalities are the gatekeepers of society's moral conscience, something is really up to ****. The asset flip debacle is no doubt very much fuelled by the latest trend of these media personalities to market themselves as some kind of voice for the angst of society at large, but I still think that the main reason why it's become a problem is that people are smelling some serious issues with the industry, and are attempting to find the source of the problem in trivial things - the only things that they can publicly identify as a problem in a dramatic way.

 

Emphasis on the kind of, because it is obviously is true to some extent.

Sorry, I can't tell if this is ironic or meta in the context of people not thinking critically / for themselves XD Not offering it as an argument, but I think "I have a friend" needs to be called out when offered as evidence in such a conversation as you people are currently discussing

EDIT: didn't mean "you people" in any grouping way, wanted to say "you guys" to sound friendly but didn't want to risk implying I had assumed gender, instead perhaps I made a bigger faux pas *sigh*

 

I think that pretty much sums up the point Free thinkers would work out you meant no harm, and even if you did, you can't harm them or offend them.

You're not a free thinker if you merely copy someone else's statement, accept it or reject it without testing it.

My friend is real by the way. It's an anecdote, and I'd rather not name her. But it's not just her. I know large amounts of people whom I've managed to convert into people who think for themselves. I do not need to provide evidence because it is not important for me to convince anyone.

I'd love people to read this and start questioning and making their own minds up about things though.

I quite like it if people don't agree. It's interesting and volatile in a good way. It's up to people to make up their own minds and opinions rather than merely accepting anything.

But on topic, the problem with peer pressure is huge: these groups basically unfriend you and you're an outcast all of a sudden if you disagree. I'm fairly sure most people reading this will understand what I mean.

 

The industry at large is defined by big players and neither you nor me are the "big guys". "You should care about industry" ultimately can be used as one more excuse to guilt developer into doing something someone else wants. If the industry can crash because of asset flipping, it should crash. That's the way I see it.

The "industry" level things are ambiguous, unpredictable, and it is not really possible to say how something will affect everything else.

So, I think developers should care about themselves first, pursue their own interests first, without being guilt-tripped into doing something they don't want to do.

Well, here's the thing: What can you do about it? Those who are going hysterical about asset flipping certainly aren't helping in any way. If you can't do anything about it, there's not much point in thinking/worrying about it.

 

I'm standing here with my salt shotgun a-waitin' to back yer brit arse up in case of a rising of upstart brats occur

 

Be aware that the fact that they complain about it doesn't actually mean that they think it's a huge problem.

We're here on an internet forum, complaining about people complaining about making games. All of this is so far from being important it's not even funny. But we can acknowledge that and still discuss this.

 

I think it' a huge problem wait...

 

The uprising against corrupt game devs seemed to really take off a few years ago. That was back when Steam featured each new game (regardless of quality) on the main page, and before Steam added a very pro-consumer refund policy. Back then, it made sense for popular YouTubers to lash out against some of the worst games that appeared, because back then those games were being featured and gamers had no refund to protect them.

But none of that is the case today. Today, every small game is completely buried and hidden from view by default. Today, gamers have an easy refund policy to immediately get their money back if they play a game less than two hours and decide they did not like the game. I think much of the rage certain YouTubers are focusing on game developers today is for the YouTuber's benefit rather than the consumer's benefit.

I do thank YouTubers from bringing this issue to the foreground and pressuring Steam to adopt consumer friendly policies. But now that the battle has been won, those YouTubers need to look for other thing to build traffic.

 

It depends on your perspective. If you think that a refund policy is all that the store needs to satisfy customers, fair enough. I don't agree. I think the key is:

... yes, the good, the bad and the ugly. The question is, what makes a game become unburied from amongst its lesser brethren? If the solution is to do something outside the store itself, by creating some kind of media campaign, I would argue that there is a big inefficiency there. Frankly, as a gamer I don't really go anywhere except stores themselves, I certainly don't go chasing down facebook profiles of tiny indie studios to find out what kind of game they have made.

Sure, I agree the asset flipping issue is a fairly trivial one in most cases. Sure, the media is trying to stir the pot. But I think that the reason why they are able to wave this issue around without appearing to be out of touch is because it appeals to the sentiment that there is a real problem with lack of quality control of indie games, that is very likely to worsen in the near future.

 

Well, the only place where it has made a measurable difference is the "new releases" section. It used to be useful up until the early greenlight days, since a game could stay there for a few days and get a decent amount of exposure. As soon as Steam started accepting more and more games it has become less useful.

(and to be fair, Steam knows this and now the new releases section is not really on the front page any more)

 

Emphasis on "to some extent", because...

Well, the person in question did think for themselves, they just went along with a social default for a while first.

The thing is that we can't critically think through literally everything for ourselves. Maybe we could do the thinking part, but the knowledge gathering part is a time sink we just can't jump into on every single issue. So at some point, for many issues, we end up implicitly trusting others based on incomplete information.

For example, I don't follow politics well enough to make a properly informed decision based on my own knowledge and experience. So, at voting time I end up trusting some 3rd party source has done a reasonable job of collating facts and policies for each party and vote based on that. I don't have time to do my own research and verify how well they've done. Whether we realise it or not, that's already more rigorous than the decision making most people put into most things, including myself. (Partly because we make so many decisions implicitly.)

 

I am in complete agreement. The problem is perspective. Something is only small when something larger is known. When there are no real problems to worry about the trivial things go to the top of the list. I'm sure anyone complaining loudly about some slight injustice will realize it dosent matter if they actually think a bit about things that dont directly affect them. People dont usually do that though, mostly we see whats directly in front of us half blind to the rest of the world. When lil Jimmy is crying because he dropped his sucker in the dirt thats what is percieved as most important to him right now. He doesn't even realize that he's completely taken care of, has more food in the fridge than he wants, toys out the ass in his room and parents to calm him. My point is that the perceived size of a problem in no way reflects how much of a problem it actually is only where it ranks on your list. If your list is void of any real problems then the little stuff seems much more important.

Example: I take my wife to dinner for our anniversary. Some people at a nearby table have a 2 year old raising hell. I'm a bit irritated. Kid throws some food and it lands on my table knocking my wineglass over which spills in my lap. Now I'm pissed. Now if i calm down a bit and think this isn't that big of a problem in the grand scheme of problems, there are people who would kill to have food thrown at them. In the moment during normal day to day thought I dont see this though. I have my real problems solved. I have plenty of food, warm house, car to drive and a bunch of other crap I don't need. My base needs have been met from birth and I dont even see them as a problem to be solved most of the time. Without stopping to think about things on a higher level than normal my brain tells me that the glass of wine in my lap is an absolute tragedy. The waiter who is scrambling to apologize for someone elses kid agrees.

My response was brought about by this. I think its false. I think the more real problems you remove the more trivial problems you will hear complaining about.

 

The more real problems are removed at the same time that satisfaction is not provided, the more trivial complaints there will be.

Part of this lack of satisfaction probably has nothing to do with games, and the rest has to do with the mudslide of the game industry after spending too long exposed to games of diluted quality.

 

My point was no matter how good things are people will complain. When your biggest complaints are about trivial things it means your doing it right. People are never satisfied. Its not in our nature. If there are no real problems we invent some to conquer.

 

I see your point, and to a certain extent I agree - but I think that if really great and exciting things were happening in games there would be little interest in trivial things like someone flipping a tree asset. The problem is that the most compelling thing about games right now is how much of it is junk and what to do about that.

On a related note, I think No Mans Sky had a chance to reboot the optimism of gamers about the future, but unfortunately didn't succeed. I feel that something is required to herald a new 'era', since the present one is currently having its carcass fed on by vultures (nothing against vultures, that's just what they do when something is lying around smelling funny).

 

I don't know. What was NMS ever really going to bring to the table? I have the game, and I enjoy it when I play it, but the actual gameplay is not really all that unique, and never was going to be (despite the wishes of many).

Could probably say something similar for Star Citizen, though that's in a different place, being in the MMO space. Still though, things like that aren't really elevating the medium for a user. A dev like you or myself (or even some of the more interested users) can really appreciate the tech behind the scenes, like all of the procedural generation, but that doesn't necessarily change the user's experience.

I feel like games that change the user experience in some way, be it through compelling and intricate game systems (BotW) or through medium-unique stories (Nier Automata) or something to that effect, are really going to be what garners true critical acclaim and breathes "life" in to the industry.

 

I agree that great things get talked about. I refuse to believe you can make anything great enough to completely overshadow our need to complain. ArrowX could release a new quauntum ai console that read your mind and created a virtual universe perfectly suited to you and Jim Sterling would still bitch because the procedurally generated environment used the same half billion textures as every other game. Then people would climb on board because thats the only problem anyone could think of. We have a driving need as a species to find the problem and gripe till someone else fixes it. It runs so deep in our genetic history its unavoidable. Even I get caught by it unless I really stop and open mindedly think. I dont think great things will stop the griping about trivial things. The only way to stop it is to find a greater evil to thwart. When things are at their best the non important issues become all you hear about. So in my view its not remove the big problem and hear less about the small ones but the exact opposite, remove the big problem and all you hear about is small ones.

 

Definitely agree that it was never going to be all that different, but I think that if it had not stumbled so badly, it might have been elevated as a symbol of something to come. To a certain extent, I think Limit Theory could have been something of the sort too. Unfortunately neither of these games had as clear a vision (IMO) as gamers believed they did.

Totally agree. I consider the game to be flashy tech built around a totally un-extraordinary core. That's not to say that it's necessarily going to be a bad game in any way, but if it has any evolutionary quality, it is a totally horizontal one - i.e. scale.

If there's any game that can be said to bring something fresh to the last half a decade or so, it's certainly BotW (though I haven't played). I would like to agree with your basic assertion but I have a feeling that the seeds of the next era of games cannot be found in simply returning to some kind of authenticity of the past.

 

The bit where I disagree is where I think that the very fact of not having a unifying problem, is the problem in itself. When one hears trivial and stupid things in the media, it is because there is nothing particularly interesting for anyone to talk about. The same way that a listless person expands small problems into huge obstacles, the same goes for society. If someone could get up and talk enthusiastically and compellingly about the future of games, Sterling's tone would be completely out of touch. But instead games are going the way of movies, where seriousness and fundamental optimism has been replaced by light-hearted humor masking a deep cynicism and apathy, interspersed with uncontrolled self-evaluation and censorship - basically all the signs of socially-adjusted clinical depression.

Anyway, all I'm saying is if games were rockets, and we were in the sixties, nobody would be listening to a word that anyone like Sterling said.

 

There were a great many people who felt the moon landing and space program in general were bad. No matter how exciting it was there were those who opposed. In recent times we look back fondly and dont even remember the people who saw all the problems but at the time there were complaints and people did band together to listen. With rockets in the 60s people listened to that eras Jim Sterlings. There is no avoiding it. People will complain.

 

For one thing, I doubt the concerns were trivial ones, and for another, the naysayers would probably have either been in the minority or faced by a very strong and compelling opposition. In this case, Sterling is as mainstream as it gets and there aren't really any convincing voices in the other direction presenting anything incredibly exciting. Even though I only agree with about 20% of what Sterling says at least he has a strong opinion about anything at all. All the other journalists I've listened to just sound like they are trying to tread the line and not alienate any of their audiences.

 

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement.

I think the truth of it likely lies somewhere between us. Jim isn't terribly mainstream. We have spoken alot about it and a good number of people know if him but I think the overall percentage of game players aware of his rantings isn't as high as it appears. I also think alot of people like me just like to hear irate brits going on about anything as a source of comedy. I've watched and laughed at Jim quite a bit but that dosent mean I 100% back his stance if at all.

You have a good point about new things drawing attention away from trivial issues. If games were rockets and it was the 60s people would talk alot more about the new wonder of it. Still no matter how much wonder abounds you will have those who seek to make a buck from rallying people behind a perceived problem. Ten years later though no one even remembers the sterlings so I find their rantings to be as insignificant as the issues they pose. I do however always expect to hear them.

 

Yeah there's definitely always pot-stirrers, but I think the fact that they are the most audible (or among the most audible) voices right now is a sign of the current state of affairs. I don't find what anyone says to be fundamentally insignificant (even if I 100% disagree) when they are leading a mob that's bigger than what anyone else is leading.

 

I don't watch all of Jim's videos, but I got the impression he has very recently stopped to use the term "asset flip", and has started putting "spray 'n' play" into the thumbnails for videos about games that used to be labeled "asset flip". To me that looks like he's making an effort to communicate he is focusing his criticism on the "low effort and quality" aspect of the games, rather than where exactly the art assets came from. From his last ~20 videos I only count 4 covering crappy games, most of his current content is complaining about AAA's bad practices. I see these "spray 'n' play" videos as a form of niche comedy for a very small audience. On average his other videos seem to get a lot more views.

 

This is the point we differ on I think. I don't see Jim as leading a majority mob. He is a small although loud voice. I dont see him as a game changer. He isn't the activist followed by millions spurring change in the world. He is a loudmouth with a buck to make. I believe that only a small percentage of his followers follow him because they believe in the cause. I think he knows there is no cause to follow.

 

Definitely never intended to imply that going "back to the past" would be the answer, if I mistakenly did so. And I wouldn't call BotW simply a "return to the past" by any stretch of the imagination. You should definitely play it, but there have been quite a few articles talking about the ways they've combined all these different systems to allow for player to interact with the world in new ways. It's definitely not merely going back to the past.

I think systemic gameplay and intriguing stories are the future (both of which I tend to focus on).

 

Maybe, but I mean that relatively speaking, as a games media figure he seems to be definitely one of the most influential. I think that if there was a journalist who was able to expound the virtues of current indie games and where they are headed in a way that was convincing, there would far less interest in that sort of inflammatory point of view.

I think I wasn't clear, I agree that BotW is something quite fresh. I was really only considering the second half of your paragraph when I made that comment and probably misunderstood it, sorry. I just wanted to say that I think that trying to recapture the sort of character and handiwork investment of games of the past would not be enough to really spark something new in the industry, especially because of how the scale and detail of games has grown.

But you're right, BotW is not really about that, and I do think that a successful evolution of interactivity in games will probably be part of the next stage. What I don't like about Star Citizen is how it seems to have pretty much the same amount of interactivity, the same essential gameplay experience, as any other fps of the last half a decade. It's touted as something new but it isn't.

Regarding NMS, you mentioned that the game wasn't ever really going to be different. But I would suggest that there was potential there, because of its procedural design, to create a really different kind of experience. Everything they did for the gameplay had the potential to be multiplied by the scale of the universe. Whether this potential would lead to something fundamentally different is not clear, but I think that's what a lot of people were hoping for. I think that avenue has probably not been fully explored, because both of the main contenders (NMS and Limit Theory) succumbed to a focus on creating an infinite high-fidelity universe before creating compelling procedural game mechanics, and I think these priorities should be reversed.

 

But he only seems that way. In all reality he is a small but loud voice given far too much credit by the unity forums in general. The common player of games is much less likely to run across the rantings of Jim than a game dev on unity forums. I did some quick googling just to get some perspective.

Jim Sterling : 580,000 youtube subscribers.
Electronic Gaming Monthly : 587,000 circulation
game informer online: 3,000,000 subscriptions
Game Informer: 6,000,000 circulation
DanTDM: 14,400,000 youtube subscribers
Jacksepticeye: 14,800,000 youtube subscribers
KSI: 16,000,000 youtube subscribers
Markiplier: 16,800,000 youtube subscribers

 

Half a million is hardly un-influential in itself, but Jim Sterling gets reported on by others, Youtube channel The Know (1,247,000 subscribers) reports on him seemingly semi-regularly for example.

Besides his video "When Jim Sterling Was Sued For $10 Million By Digital Homicide (The Jimquisition)" (a hard to watch 40 minutes in length) has 1.6 million views*.

Even if he only directly influences 2 million gamers, the Bacon game means most everyone understands terms like "asset flip" I suspect.

EDIT: *his video on "The Slaughtering Grounds: A Steam Meltdown Saga" has 2.8 million views

 

Half a mil sounds like alot until you stand it next to 4 other youtubers with over 14 mil each.

Even in my short list of roughly 60 million subscriptions a half million is a small share. I could only imagine that a more comprehensive list would render Jim nearly invisible.

 

You seem to be confusing influence with popularity

 

I would not think someone as divisive and sharp-tongued as he is would be as popular as they would be influential. But anyway, like I've been saying, I think a lot of this asset flip stuff is ridiculous. And what I want to say is that while I don't think the idea that asset flipping is a problem is shared by a large percentage of gamers, I do think that the idea that there is a problem with quality control probably is. And even though the asset flipping pitchfork mob is not that large, its size relative to the logical veracity of its opinions definitely is, and I think the reason has to do with a larger problem that is feeding a particular kind of sentiment.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say. I can't prove it one way or the other, it's just what I'm seeing from where I'm standing.

 

If Jim Sterling wasn't influential, we wouldn't even have the term "asset flip." It's a term he literally coined himself.