Deep Rock Galactic roguelike dev says innovation for innovation's sake is too expensive to survive: "We're a studio of 50 people with bills to pay"
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Starfield was just weird. Like, I expected the load screens and all the other GameBryo/Creation jank. But that's not what made it disappointing. It was just... Boring. I couldn't get immersed in the world because nothing about it was interesting once you scratched deeper than the surface. Even the twist ending/NG+ system which is actually kind of a neat idea wasn't done well (like you might have to go through the entire, boring-ass game up to 7 times before you even see a difference).
The draw from Skyrim and other ES games is wandering around and stumbling on cool stuff.
They both removed wandering by having you fly your ship to a planet, and removed the cool stuff by making the planets procgen.
It's good fun exploring the cities and space stations but then that's it. They designed out the entire game in favour of more procgen content.
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"It sounds weird but we try to keep our innovation as low as possible," the director explained. "We'll say 'it's this game but with that.' It takes so much time to innovate. Sometimes you find the hidden holy Grail of game design, but often indie developers sit for five years trying out stuff. We're a studio of 50 people with bills to pay. So we can't do that."
I would pay $10 a month (ongoing, MRR) to be able to fly their home base ship to different asteroids and occasionally have the bugs invade it. I would play the fuck out of that game.
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"It sounds weird but we try to keep our innovation as low as possible," the director explained. "We'll say 'it's this game but with that.' It takes so much time to innovate. Sometimes you find the hidden holy Grail of game design, but often indie developers sit for five years trying out stuff. We're a studio of 50 people with bills to pay. So we can't do that."
Deep Rock Galactic is owned by Embracer Group.
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"It sounds weird but we try to keep our innovation as low as possible," the director explained. "We'll say 'it's this game but with that.' It takes so much time to innovate. Sometimes you find the hidden holy Grail of game design, but often indie developers sit for five years trying out stuff. We're a studio of 50 people with bills to pay. So we can't do that."
DRG Survivors is innovative enough for what it is. More importantly it's well-made and a fun addition to the world of DRG. Does it reinvent the genre? No, but it does some interesting things with its different challenges so it stays fresh for longer than most bullet heavens.
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Deep Rock Galactic is owned by Embracer Group.
What's your point? What makes Embracer different than any other gaming conglomerate?
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"It sounds weird but we try to keep our innovation as low as possible," the director explained. "We'll say 'it's this game but with that.' It takes so much time to innovate. Sometimes you find the hidden holy Grail of game design, but often indie developers sit for five years trying out stuff. We're a studio of 50 people with bills to pay. So we can't do that."
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I asked a friend who plays it and he says its good with randoms, but great if you have a crew you regularly game with.
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IMO, "it's this game, but with X" is innovation. It's certainly more innovative than "it's this game, again, with absolutely nothing new" like Ubisoft basically does with every sequel to every IP they handle.
And too much innovation will alienate people anyway. People want something new but at the same time want something familiar. If it’s too out there people can’t relate with it, especially before the purchase, and feel it’s too risky to spend time and money on. And for the people who do try it you still need to convince them to push through the beginning stages of the game. Since very innovative gameplay comes with a steep learning curve and not just skill wise since it breaks conventions there is also a cultural (in the gaming sense) learning curve.
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I honestly don't know why they don't simply make those a subscription service at this point. They change nothing but the stats to try and reflect real life in most iterations. Sports games are the one type of game that because of how they already do them would be perfect for the live service bullshit, and yet, inexplicably, they are the one genre that has next to no live service games. I can literally only think of one of the FIFA games which is free 2 play and live service.
These kind of games run on a shit ton of licensing deals, from player likeness, club branding and music. Bet it is much more advantageous for the studios in these licensing deals to just create single releases. With a subscription service the IP holders will demand a deal based on playtime.
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"It sounds weird but we try to keep our innovation as low as possible," the director explained. "We'll say 'it's this game but with that.' It takes so much time to innovate. Sometimes you find the hidden holy Grail of game design, but often indie developers sit for five years trying out stuff. We're a studio of 50 people with bills to pay. So we can't do that."
I guess I know not to buy more from then in that case. I'm tired of playing same slop from different companies that dont want to try anything new. DRG is good game but it also feels like its not living up to its fullest potential, now i know why.
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Absolutely. I think most of us are excited for incremental evolution.
And conversely a lack of that is the chief source of my frustration with games. Bethesda is another dev that comes to mind with the loading screen debacle that was Starfield.
I honestly did not expect Starfield to have actual flyable spaceships and vehicles. That was a pleasant surprise, so Bethesda evidently has not stagnated completely. The problem is Starfield has issues with many other game elements (like loading screens, mediocre worldbuilding, etc). Also the fact that it was simply a game in a different genre than previous Bethesda games didn't help. People expected a handcrafted open world a la Fallout 4 but got a kind-of-procedurally generated sandbox.
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I asked a friend who plays it and he says its good with randoms, but great if you have a crew you regularly game with.
It's great either way. It has a good community.
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What's your point? What makes Embracer different than any other gaming conglomerate?
Because Embracer especially has a bad case of bag chasing and layoffs right after. If Ghost Ship downsizes, don't act surprised.
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I guess I know not to buy more from then in that case. I'm tired of playing same slop from different companies that dont want to try anything new. DRG is good game but it also feels like its not living up to its fullest potential, now i know why.
This isn't DRG, this is DRG survivors
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I'd say try it out to see if you like the gun mechanics and movement/different classes. If you do then you'll love the game even more when you get to the higher difficulties. If it's not your thing, you can refund on steam if still under 2 hours of playtime.
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I personally would not recommend it. I've played ~20 hours with friends. Despite being a simple co-op game, it has these seasonal battle passes and multiple currencies that I would expect from something like Fortnite / Call of Duty / pay-to-win mobile games. That's mostly an aesthetic gripe because it doesn't directly effect the gameplay, but I'm not a huge fan of the gameplay either. Combat is really imprecise/messy, which I'm sure is the point but I can't get behind it. May be worth to play with friends, but I would not recommend it solo at all.
What I can say I really like though is the 3D map tool for the randomly generated caves
beautiful 3D map -
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Because Embracer especially has a bad case of bag chasing and layoffs right after. If Ghost Ship downsizes, don't act surprised.
It would be the same if they were owned by Activision or Ubisoft or EA. That's just the industry right now.
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I personally would not recommend it. I've played ~20 hours with friends. Despite being a simple co-op game, it has these seasonal battle passes and multiple currencies that I would expect from something like Fortnite / Call of Duty / pay-to-win mobile games. That's mostly an aesthetic gripe because it doesn't directly effect the gameplay, but I'm not a huge fan of the gameplay either. Combat is really imprecise/messy, which I'm sure is the point but I can't get behind it. May be worth to play with friends, but I would not recommend it solo at all.
What I can say I really like though is the 3D map tool for the randomly generated caves beautiful 3D mapAll of those “currencies” are free. There is no paid way to get them. You just have to change which season you are playing to get that season’s scrip. There is no pay to win. There is merely paid skin packs
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All of those “currencies” are free. There is no paid way to get them. You just have to change which season you are playing to get that season’s scrip. There is no pay to win. There is merely paid skin packs
Yes I know. I just mean that the multiple currencies is something I didn't like and is a downside of the game for me. Not only because I think they are not fun to collect, but because they aesthetically remind me of pay-to-win currencies and it's a slight ick. As they say in the article, they deliberately copy elements from other games to add to their own. That's cool, but I don't like the specific things they copied: battle passes and multiple-currency upgrade trees.
