Felipepepe's Videogame History Articles Thread

[felipepepe]

Yeah, I still wanted to talk about Chrono Trigger, Princess Maker 2, Way of the Samurai 4, Dragon's Dogma, The Maimed God's Saga and Wasteland 2... but it's hard to do that without doubling the size of the article - and then very few would read it. :/

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I can assure you that most of the target audience would read nearly any length article. If you are interested in RPGs related topic, you are already more avid reader than most of the gaming population. Also, story related articles, like those about C&C, are more interesting for those players who like to read, so you have a reading niche in a niche which enjoys reading.

 

[Neanderthal]

Good article, about time somebody pointed out tripe that them Extra Credits fucktards spout, an fact that illusion o choice is regressive bollocks an excuses devs yet again. Got to say though I think Heplers call for a skip combat button is another excuse for makin a shit combat system, make a good un an it should be a pleasure to indulge in rather than need skippin, plus I don't think that bird wanted alternate options, just an I win button.

 

[SCO]

The real reason for these simplistic and lame designs is not only audience stupidity. It's just easier to produce and playtest/QA. Truly indies are the only hope for mental complexity because at big companies everyone covers their ass and clutches their gant charts of expected man hours per feature.


AAA games are simply too expensive and the expenses are funneled to the wrong things... or the right things... because they work. Marketing is literally game-satan.

 

[felipepepe]

Good article, about time somebody pointed out tripe that them Extra Credits fucktards spout, an fact that illusion o choice is regressive bollocks an excuses devs yet again.

Extra Credits "lessons" are pure Mediocrity 101, which is unsurprisingly, coming from from a self-professed game designer & consultant that no one knows a single game he made.

Just check his credentials from a 2016 convention:

James Portnow | CEO, Rainmaker Games : James Portnow is a game designer who has worked on games ranging from Farmville to the Call of Duty series. He is the writer of Extra Credits on Penny Arcade and the owner of Rainmaker Games. He currently holds a professorship at Digipen Institute of Technology and has been published by Oxford University Press.

He’s been quoted in The New York Times, USA Today and Wired; he’s been featured on CNN, Global News and NPR. He’s spoken at conferences ranging from GDC to the Penny Arcade Expo and has written for trade publications from Gamasutra to Edge.

James Portnow is an outspoken advocate for the scientific, medical and educational uses of games.

Notice how it's more about publications, speeches and interviews than actually, you know, GAMES.

The other day I came across an old thread and even a spreadsheet with people trying to check all this, and nothing could be found. James never clarified WHICH Call of Duty he worked on (clearly a minor detail), but he's not credited in any game of the series - same for his supposed Farmville involvement. His own LinkedIn doesn't mention neither of those games (obviously he's just busy) and the only credit he has in MobyGames are "Special Thanks" in a few indie games. Also, he's not even listed on DigiPen's Faculty page.

Notice as well how Portnow never personally says what he did or where he worked. It's always from other's mouth, be it a bio at a convention or others brown-nosing him, like this article by a college student on how "Two of the most prolific leaders in the game industry today are James Portnow and Jesse Schell..."

All this reminds me of a Brazilian "success story" we had this year- Bel Pesce -, "The Brazilian Girl from Silicon Valley". She wrote a book, gave speeches and opened a entrepreneur school based on how awesome she is, having worked on Microsoft & Google, earned 5 degrees, founded several companies, etc... but later people found she only did brief college-backed internships, her "5 degrees" were 2 major and 3 minors, and the company she was CEO of never did anything. No one checks this shit - the moment she got a fantasy bio out there, people kept quoting it without checking and BAM - a star is born.

(Also see Brenda Romero, who the press keeps saying made all the Wizardries, without ever mentioning Woodhead, Greenberg or Bradley)

Now, I'm an asshole constantly pointing fingers about flaws in design, but I never claimed to be a game designer. And I don't go around doing paid speeches & consultancy about game design. I'm not a fan of Rami Ismail as well, but he MADE games. Popular games, well-reviewed games, that you can play. He runs a successful indie studio with fantastic marketing, and that I greatly respect. He talks the talk and walks the walk.

Now, maybe James did all the things people talk about, but I don't trust people I can't verify, and his "insightful videos" surely don't impress me.

Got to say though I think Heplers call for a skip combat button is another excuse for makin a shit combat system, make a good un an it should be a pleasure to indulge in rather than need skippin, plus I don't think that bird wanted alternate options, just an I win button.

You give people what they need, not what they want.

She's a writer, who doesn't like playing games outside dialog - I doubt she's familiar with how other RPGs handled choice, but I think that a writer like her would love to be able to play an RPG where dialog could be used to skip combat.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

And I don't go around doing paid speeches & consultancy about game design.

Maybe you should? Maybe people would take you more seriously if you did those?

 

[Ninjerk]

He could even be like Jedi Master Radek

 

[felipepepe]

And I don't go around doing paid speeches & consultancy about game design.

Maybe you should? Maybe people would take you more seriously if you did those?

I actually gave one presentation about RPG History on a game school in São Paulo about a year ago, and it was very Codexian.

I was speaking to a class of ~20 people who decided to bet their futures on working as game designers, so in the end I asked: "Who here likes Skyrim?". Everyone raised their hands. Then "keep you hands up if you also played Oblivion". Almost half lowered their hands. By Morrowind there was like 3 hands, and no one made it to Daggerfall.

Then I continued: "Elder Scrolls is one of the world's best selling franchises, it's only 5 games long, yet no one here ever had the curiosity to simply try most of the previous games - which BTW are free on Bethesda's website. You need to study your trade, understand where it was, where it's now and where it's going. You'll never be able to do that if all you play are the latest AAA releases and a few 'cool' retro games like Mario. "

The teacher later told me that some liked the presentation, but some felt demotivated. Clearly, if you want to be successful in the speech business, you should just praise everything and sell empty dreams. "You're all special, all your games will sell, you all can live from iOS games and I'll teach everyone how to achieve the success I never got!"

I'm not cut for this shit. If a few harsh words make you lose interest, you were never really interested in the first place and have no chance out in the real world.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

The teacher later told me that some liked the presentation, but some felt demotivated. Clearly, if you want to be successful in the speech business, you should just praise everything and sell empty dreams. "You're all special, all your games will sell, you all can live from iOS games and I'll teach everyone how to achieve the success I never got!"

I'm not cut for this shit. If a few harsh words make you lose interest, you were never really interested in the first place and have no chance out in the real world.

It's not like you are going to become a self help "Cosmic Debris" guru. Giving tips to the professionals, I hope, plays differently than taking money from hopeless people needing psychological help. BTW, did you only presented previous TES titles as a kind of "required reading" like a school book or did you go on praising Morrowind and comparing it positively with Skyrim? Knowing you I would suspect the latter, but if you were only harsh without praising games much, then I kinda understand those guys. I mean playing 4 TES titles means hundreds of hours spend on playing them, for some people even thousands. There is much propaganda towards older games by marketers, so some of those aspiring devs may have been caught in it and believed stereotypes the marketers put in their heads. I think you should start the lesson with more groundwork, not expecting aspiring devs to be untouched by the popamole.

The teacher later told me that some liked the presentation, but some felt demotivated.

The distribution of X (competence, conscientiousness, resilience, ambition, whatever) isn't uniform among the pool of prospective game devs, so you should expect to lose some even if you pitch to the median. The question is, why be concerned with the pre-filter distribution? You want your ideas to live on post-filter, where the filter is actually going out there into the real world and making games. You're correct that it's easiest to reach them at this embryonic stage, but you shouldn't make the mistake of believing that all of the eggs or even most of them are gonna hatch.

Can't agree more!

 

[Turjan]

That's a fantastic article. Shame no one seems to be paying attention to it, what with there not being any comments.

Yup, it's a nice article. It would be good to have some kind of editor, though it's probably not feasible to get one for free. When the second sentence is "But how did it all started?", many native speakers will simply skip out.

 

[felipepepe]

BTW, did you only presented previous TES titles as a kind of "required reading" like a school book or did you go on praising Morrowind and comparing it positively with Skyrim? Knowing you I would suspect the latter, but if you were only harsh without praising games much, then I kinda understand those guys. I mean playing 4 TES titles means hundreds of hours spend on playing them, for some people even thousands. There is much propaganda towards older games by marketers, so some of those aspiring devs may have been caught in it and believed stereotypes the marketers put in their heads. I think you should start the lesson with more groundwork, not expecting aspiring devs to be untouched by the popamole.

I heard a lot this arguments about how RPGs take much more time to experience than a movie, book or music, so it's unreasonable to expect people to play all these games.

I disagree. Yes, saying "go beat all TES games" is unreasonable. But you can sit down and play 2 hours of each (the length of a movie) in a single weekend. And that will already give you some understanding on how these games work. I.e., it should be enough to finish Daggerfall's first dungeon and go to town, or find Caius Cosades in Morrowind. Obviously you won't become a master of these games, but you'll know that they exist, have an idea of how they played and - perhaps the most important - realize that yes, you can play these games (and might end up playing more than just 2 hours).

That, I think, is the most important thing - to demystify old games as these arcane objects that only Cleve and his race can play. Make these people install DOSbox (or just make a GOG account) and get past the initial shock of MUH GRAPHICS. If I were I teacher, I would give assignments like that - "play the tutorial of every TES game and write a comparison about them, with pros and cons of each approach".

Yup, it's a nice article. It would be good to have some kind of editor, though it's probably not feasible to get one for free. When the second sentence is "But how did it all started?", many native speakers will simply skip out.

Yeah, I've been slowly learning how entitled some native english speakers are... especially on reddit, every time an article of mine is posted, someone goes "can't read due to bad english". :ehue:

 

[octavius]

In a hypothetical universe where I did own an old PC, Amiga and Mac though, I think I’d have gone for the Amiga version, warts and all. I mean, it was 1986. While Mario was jumping around with a handful of colours and sprites the size of trucks, Defender of the Crown was looking like this:

[/spoiler]

Fuck, that game's audiovisuals blew me away like no game before are after. Only Bard's Tale and Faery Tale Adventure (all Amiga versions, of course) came close. Later Ultima Underworld would be a revelation, but for other reasons.
It's sad to think that most likely no game will ever come close to impress me as much as those games did. Although the actual game play of DotC was rather weak, with too hard action mini games, and too easy strategy part.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Yeah, I've been slowly learning how entitled some native english speakers are... especially on reddit, every time an article of mine is posted, someone goes "can't read due to bad english". :ehue:

Use Mustawd as an editor.

 

[Mikeal]

You should also write how to make them running on Win 7. Some of this game seems freaking awesome.

 

[felipepepe]

New article: Learning the Video Game Canon - How to deal with over 40 years of backlog?

Spoiler

I pity future game journalists, designers and researchers.

Back when I was a kid, my guru was Computer Gaming World's Scorpia, the magazine's CRPG expert (a concept I miss dearly). She was first published way back in 1983:

Scorpia was skillful and charming, but she also had time on her side – she basically saw the genre be born and followed it as it grew, covering it for over 16 years. Moreover, she had the historical context of playing games on release, on an actual Apple II, Commodore 64, early IBM PC and whatnot.

By the time I began playing, these computers were already replaced by their 16-bit successors.

Yet I remember my father's Amiga 500, swapping floppies (5¼ and 3½), typing C:\EOB\EOB.EXE on MS-DOS to play Eye of the Beholder, pressing the TURBO button on a 386, buying a 4x CD-ROM drive, wishing for a Roland MIDI synthesizer, being marveled at FMVs (they WERE cool!) and all that jazz.

UNLIMITED POWER!

I bought Fallout 1 on release, and still remember being shocked by the "HUMONGOUS" installation option, which copied the whole CD (about 650MB) to the HD – "that's insane, my entire HD has like 500MB!". That game came out in 1997. Someone around college age nowadays wasn't even born back then.

These experiences, much like going to a cinema with an live orchestra playing or recording songs from the radio on your cassette tape, are now lost to the average person. That's somewhat sad, but rather inevitable. One must be cautious not to become a grumpy old man, teary-eyed for when simply loading a C64 game on tape could take 10 minutes.

However, there's one undeniable advantage: playing games as they were released.

If 2016 alone saw the release of over 4207 games on Steam, how can a youngling in 2017 learn our history and get up to speed with over 40 years of releases? How can one get acquaintance with the "Game Canon"?

The silent agreement
The current "solution" is that we don't talk seriously about this.

As happens with many online debates, any real conversation is lost between "trolls" and echo chambers. Either "everyone is doing their best" or "THESE GODDAMN KIDS KNOW NOTHING!"

The most common deflection is the old "games are too long". Every medium faces this backlog challenge, but while a movie takes ~2 hours to see, a game can take up to 100 hours to finish, so it's absurd to expect a young game critic to be as knowledgeable on older works as a young movie, music or book critic.

This argument stands on one leg: finishing a game = knowing that game.

That's bullshit.

Mastering Parallel Universes
Say you've beaten Super Mario 64 grabbing all the 120 stars. Awesome, you probably feel quite confident about your knowledge of the game, you feel like you truly mastered it!

Then you see this video:



How much time must pannenkoek2012 have played/researched SM64 and debated it with other players and speerunners to acquire this level of knowledge? Can you properly write about SM64 without knowing anything about “scuttlebug transportation” or "quadruple parallel universes"?

Sure, this is an extreme example, as these are all speedrun gimmicks that will never appear during regular play. But, still, isn't relevant to know that SM64 holds all these possibilities? Are you really qualified to talk/write/criticize SM64 if you know nothing about all this?

"Do you even know whom you face?"
Let's take a less extreme example: Baldur's Gate 2.

HowLongToBeat.com says Baldur's Gate 2 takes on average 72hs. A completionist run can take over 140hs. That's already pretty intimidating, but would you truly know BG2 after "just" that? Here's some nuances:

• Baldur's Gate I - BG2 is (obviously) a sequel, and not only many plot points begin in BG1, but you can import your BG1 party into BG2 as well. Clearly you should play it.
• Replayability - BG2 has a lot of content that requires multiple playthroughts to see. I.e., there are eight possible strongholds, ranging from temples to a castle, a theater company, a druid grove or even a planar sphere. Which you get depends on how you play and your main character's class. Same for the 17 (!) companions, all which have personal quests and gender-specific romances.
• Solo runs - A popular choice, there's countless threads, guides and Let's Plays where people trade their six-man party for a single multi-class Fighter/Mage/Rogue character or a crazy dual-class like Kensai/Mage, Wizard Slayer/Thief, Swashbuckler/Cleric, etc...
• Difficulty - The game offers five difficulty levels: Novice, Normal, Core Rules, Hard and Insane.
• D&D - Baldur's Gate uses the 2nd ed. AD&D rules, but cuts some parts of it and adapts combat from turn-based to Real-Time-with-Pause system. You can play it without knowing D&D rules (relying on a massive 264-pages long manual), but can you judge how well the rules were adapted? How faithful the system is? What is THAC0?
• Faerûn - The game is set on the Forgotten Realms, and while it does a good job of introducing it to players, only tabletop veterans will know who Elminister and Drizzt Do'Urden are, recognize the Shadow Thieves or be able to debate how well BioWare handled Drow society's rules.
• Mods - Baldur's Gate Trilogy fuses BG1&2 into a single game using the same engine, Stratagems of Sword Coast improves the game's battles even further, Unfinished Business restores cut content, Ascension was done by one of BioWare's own writers (David Gaider) to alter the ending and the insane BiG World Project is a guide on how to install over 400 mods without compatibility issues.
• Enhanced Editions - Both BG1 and BG2 were re-released recently in "remastered" form, with new UI, fixes, companions, content, etc.

Unlike SM64's speedrun tricks, these are mostly elements an average player can come across even during their first playthrough. Apparently simple questions like "should I use mods on my first playthrough?", "Normal or Core Rules?" or "what's a good party for beginners?" can be quite hard to answer.

If simply finishing BG2 can take up to 140hs, how many hours must one invest before they can credibly write about the nuances of Baldur's Gate 2? 500hs? 1000hs?

"Brave soul, art thou done?"
Simply beating a game does not mean you truly know it.

This is valid in any medium – a film reviewer will write his impressions after a single screening, but a film critic will certainly watch it multiple times, trying to get to the soul of the film.

But films are passive narrative experiences, every time you watch it it's the same thing. We praise games for being interactive, but often fail to fully grasp the weight such feature carries – "I'll just play it once".

Still, while narratives have improved, gameplay is still the core of a game. It's what compromises most of your time with it, and understanding it is as (or more) important as knowing the story it tells.

I.e., when Demon's Souls was released, it was something fresh and new – it was hard to properly explain it.

But in the few hours it takes to beat the first area, creating your character, exploring the Nexus, climbing the walls of the Boletarian Palace and defeating Phalanx, any player would "get it".

You would die a billion times, learn attack patterns, grab some loot, find secrets, talked to weird NPCs, read cryptic messages, get burned trying to get the dragon's loot, connect shortcuts, level up, etc...

That's the core Demon's Souls experience.

Most games have these moments – not when the tutorial ends, but when everything clicks together and you understand your goals & the gameplay loop – usually after beating the first area/boss.

Obviously, if you stop playing there you would barely know the game. You would have no idea of the mid-game plot twists (if any), of the next challenges you'll face, how powerful you become, etc. You're not in any way qualified to write about it other than "quick impressions"...

...but now you're aware the game exists, and what it plays like.

That's a HUGE progress.

Are you experienced?
Thus, I would say the big "knowledge milestones" for a game look something like this:

The key here is the first gap: going between "never played it" and "played for 2-3 hs" is the most important part – it's the difference between having no idea how a game plays and understanding it, even if just a bit.

Moreover, it's the simplest gap to bridge.

Finishing Baldur's Gate 2 once can take 140 hours, mastering will take A LOT more, but simply finishing the initial dungeon and walking around for a while will take 2-3 hours and tell you a lot about the game already.

Superficiality > Ignorance

I wrote about this before, but many moons ago I was invited to give a talk on CRPG History to a class of about 20 young aspiring game developers.

I started by asking how many had played The Elder Scrolls FIVE: Skyrim. Almost everyone raised their hands. Then I asked about Oblivion. About half had played it. Only two or three knew of Morrowind, and not a single soul had ever played Daggerfall or Arena.

Students betting their future on games never even TRIED the early titles of one of the most popular game series of all time. A five game long series, FFS! And both Arena and Daggerfall are freely available on Bethesda's website!

The problem stems from several sources: lack of curiosity, the "outdated" aura the press & industry constantly gives to any pre-2000 game, unfamiliarity with older platforms, abandonware controversy, etc... but also fear to engage in a huge perceived task: finishing these massive games.

Indeed, HowLongToBeat says a completionist run of Daggerfall takes about 200 hours. Ouch!

I wouldn't know. I love Daggerfall, but I never actually finished it – it's too long, gets repetitive later on, creating new characters is more fun, etc. And I don't think you need to finish it either. But you should definitely play it.

Because the biggest issue I've seen so far with the ever-growing backlog (and ignorance over it) is not the lack of expertise on specific titles, but rather the lack of basic knowledge on entire genres & eras.

You know, like "retro experts" that brag about beating Battletoads but never played a single Apple II game.

How many people write about Fallout 4 without ever playing Fallout 1? About Skyrim without ever playing Daggerfall? About Legend of Grimrock without ever playing Dungeon Master or a single 90's blobber?

When David Brevik gave a presentation on GDC last year about how Diablo "was when the ARPG was kind of born", how many people listening, reporting and reading that quote had ever played a pre-Diablo real-time ARPG, such as Dusk of the Gods, Shadowlands, Al-Qadim: The Genies Curse or goddamn Ultima 8?

It's time we end this farce. Knowing little is better than hiding you know nothing.

History Abridged
For CRPGs (my passion), here's a quick list I made:

Playing 2-3 hours of each game there would be faster than blindly finishing Daggerfall. And it would give you some notion about the evolution of the genre, paving a roadmap one can return to later.

I'm pretty sure that similar lists can be made about other genres, guiding people to at least try out key influential games – likely in less time than it takes to finish an average AAA title.

Is it a compromise?

A MASSIVE one. Almost the equivalent of learning about classical books via Wikipedia summaries, about movies via trailers or about Rock n' Roll history by watching this (awesome) video:



However, it's a first step – a quick overview – and much better than knowing nothing.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Indeed, HowLongToBeat says a completionist run of Daggerfall takes about 200 hours. Ouch!

Completionist run of Daggerfall? You could spend your entire life playing it and still not see everything.

 

[Grauken]

New article: Learning the Video Game Canon - How to deal with over 40 years of backlog?

Spoiler

I pity future game journalists, designers and researchers.

Back when I was a kid, my guru was Computer Gaming World's Scorpia, the magazine's CRPG expert (a concept I miss dearly). She was first published way back in 1983:

Scorpia was skillful and charming, but she also had time on her side – she basically saw the genre be born and followed it as it grew, covering it for over 16 years. Moreover, she had the historical context of playing games on release, on an actual Apple II, Commodore 64, early IBM PC and whatnot.

By the time I began playing, these computers were already replaced by their 16-bit successors.

Yet I remember my father's Amiga 500, swapping floppies (5¼ and 3½), typing C:\EOB\EOB.EXE on MS-DOS to play Eye of the Beholder, pressing the TURBO button on a 386, buying a 4x CD-ROM drive, wishing for a Roland MIDI synthesizer, being marveled at FMVs (they WERE cool!) and all that jazz.

UNLIMITED POWER!

I bought Fallout 1 on release, and still remember being shocked by the "HUMONGOUS" installation option, which copied the whole CD (about 650MB) to the HD – "that's insane, my entire HD has like 500MB!". That game came out in 1997. Someone around college age nowadays wasn't even born back then.

These experiences, much like going to a cinema with an live orchestra playing or recording songs from the radio on your cassette tape, are now lost to the average person. That's somewhat sad, but rather inevitable. One must be cautious not to become a grumpy old man, teary-eyed for when simply loading a C64 game on tape could take 10 minutes.

However, there's one undeniable advantage: playing games as they were released.

If 2016 alone saw the release of over 4207 games on Steam, how can a youngling in 2017 learn our history and get up to speed with over 40 years of releases? How can one get acquaintance with the "Game Canon"?

The silent agreement
The current "solution" is that we don't talk seriously about this.

As happens with many online debates, any real conversation is lost between "trolls" and echo chambers. Either "everyone is doing their best" or "THESE GODDAMN KIDS KNOW NOTHING!"

The most common deflection is the old "games are too long". Every medium faces this backlog challenge, but while a movie takes ~2 hours to see, a game can take up to 100 hours to finish, so it's absurd to expect a young game critic to be as knowledgeable on older works as a young movie, music or book critic.

This argument stands on one leg: finishing a game = knowing that game.

That's bullshit.

Mastering Parallel Universes
Say you've beaten Super Mario 64 grabbing all the 120 stars. Awesome, you probably feel quite confident about your knowledge of the game, you feel like you truly mastered it!

Then you see this video:



How much time must pannenkoek2012 have played/researched SM64 and debated it with other players and speerunners to acquire this level of knowledge? Can you properly write about SM64 without knowing anything about “scuttlebug transportation” or "quadruple parallel universes"?

Sure, this is an extreme example, as these are all speedrun gimmicks that will never appear during regular play. But, still, isn't relevant to know that SM64 holds all these possibilities? Are you really qualified to talk/write/criticize SM64 if you know nothing about all this?

"Do you even know whom you face?"
Let's take a less extreme example: Baldur's Gate 2.

HowLongToBeat.com says Baldur's Gate 2 takes on average 72hs. A completionist run can take over 140hs. That's already pretty intimidating, but would you truly know BG2 after "just" that? Here's some nuances:

• Baldur's Gate I - BG2 is (obviously) a sequel, and not only many plot points begin in BG1, but you can import your BG1 party into BG2 as well. Clearly you should play it.
• Replayability - BG2 has a lot of content that requires multiple playthroughts to see. I.e., there are eight possible strongholds, ranging from temples to a castle, a theater company, a druid grove or even a planar sphere. Which you get depends on how you play and your main character's class. Same for the 17 (!) companions, all which have personal quests and gender-specific romances.
• Solo runs - A popular choice, there's countless threads, guides and Let's Plays where people trade their six-man party for a single multi-class Fighter/Mage/Rogue character or a crazy dual-class like Kensai/Mage, Wizard Slayer/Thief, Swashbuckler/Cleric, etc...
• Difficulty - The game offers five difficulty levels: Novice, Normal, Core Rules, Hard and Insane.
• D&D - Baldur's Gate uses the 2nd ed. AD&D rules, but cuts some parts of it and adapts combat from turn-based to Real-Time-with-Pause system. You can play it without knowing D&D rules (relying on a massive 264-pages long manual), but can you judge how well the rules were adapted? How faithful the system is? What is THAC0?
• Faerûn - The game is set on the Forgotten Realms, and while it does a good job of introducing it to players, only tabletop veterans will know who Elminister and Drizzt Do'Urden are, recognize the Shadow Thieves or be able to debate how well BioWare handled Drow society's rules.
• Mods - Baldur's Gate Trilogy fuses BG1&2 into a single game using the same engine, Stratagems of Sword Coast improves the game's battles even further, Unfinished Business restores cut content, Ascension was done by one of BioWare's own writers (David Gaider) to alter the ending and the insane BiG World Project is a guide on how to install over 400 mods without compatibility issues.
• Enhanced Editions - Both BG1 and BG2 were re-released recently in "remastered" form, with new UI, fixes, companions, content, etc.

Unlike SM64's speedrun tricks, these are mostly elements an average player can come across even during their first playthrough. Apparently simple questions like "should I use mods on my first playthrough?", "Normal or Core Rules?" or "what's a good party for beginners?" can be quite hard to answer.

If simply finishing BG2 can take up to 140hs, how many hours must one invest before they can credibly write about the nuances of Baldur's Gate 2? 500hs? 1000hs?

"Brave soul, art thou done?"
Simply beating a game does not mean you truly know it.

This is valid in any medium – a film reviewer will write his impressions after a single screening, but a film critic will certainly watch it multiple times, trying to get to the soul of the film.

But films are passive narrative experiences, every time you watch it it's the same thing. We praise games for being interactive, but often fail to fully grasp the weight such feature carries – "I'll just play it once".

Still, while narratives have improved, gameplay is still the core of a game. It's what compromises most of your time with it, and understanding it is as (or more) important as knowing the story it tells.

I.e., when Demon's Souls was released, it was something fresh and new – it was hard to properly explain it.

But in the few hours it takes to beat the first area, creating your character, exploring the Nexus, climbing the walls of the Boletarian Palace and defeating Phalanx, any player would "get it".

You would die a billion times, learn attack patterns, grab some loot, find secrets, talked to weird NPCs, read cryptic messages, get burned trying to get the dragon's loot, connect shortcuts, level up, etc...

That's the core Demon's Souls experience.

Most games have these moments – not when the tutorial ends, but when everything clicks together and you understand your goals & the gameplay loop – usually after beating the first area/boss.

Obviously, if you stop playing there you would barely know the game. You would have no idea of the mid-game plot twists (if any), of the next challenges you'll face, how powerful you become, etc. You're not in any way qualified to write about it other than "quick impressions"...

...but now you're aware the game exists, and what it plays like.

That's a HUGE progress.

Are you experienced?
Thus, I would say the big "knowledge milestones" for a game look something like this:

The key here is the first gap: going between "never played it" and "played for 2-3 hs" is the most important part – it's the difference between having no idea how a game plays and understanding it, even if just a bit.

Moreover, it's the simplest gap to bridge.

Finishing Baldur's Gate 2 once can take 140 hours, mastering will take A LOT more, but simply finishing the initial dungeon and walking around for a while will take 2-3 hours and tell you a lot about the game already.

Superficiality > Ignorance

I wrote about this before, but many moons ago I was invited to give a talk on CRPG History to a class of about 20 young aspiring game developers.

I started by asking how many had played The Elder Scrolls FIVE: Skyrim. Almost everyone raised their hands. Then I asked about Oblivion. About half had played it. Only two or three knew of Morrowind, and not a single soul had ever played Daggerfall or Arena.

Students betting their future on games never even TRIED the early titles of one of the most popular game series of all time. A five game long series, FFS! And both Arena and Daggerfall are freely available on Bethesda's website!

The problem stems from several sources: lack of curiosity, the "outdated" aura the press & industry constantly gives to any pre-2000 game, unfamiliarity with older platforms, abandonware controversy, etc... but also fear to engage in a huge perceived task: finishing these massive games.

Indeed, HowLongToBeat says a completionist run of Daggerfall takes about 200 hours. Ouch!

I wouldn't know. I love Daggerfall, but I never actually finished it – it's too long, gets repetitive later on, creating new characters is more fun, etc. And I don't think you need to finish it either. But you should definitely play it.

Because the biggest issue I've seen so far with the ever-growing backlog (and ignorance over it) is not the lack of expertise on specific titles, but rather the lack of basic knowledge on entire genres & eras.

You know, like "retro experts" that brag about beating Battletoads but never played a single Apple II game.

How many people write about Fallout 4 without ever playing Fallout 1? About Skyrim without ever playing Daggerfall? About Legend of Grimrock without ever playing Dungeon Master or a single 90's blobber?

When David Brevik gave a presentation on GDC last year about how Diablo "was when the ARPG was kind of born", how many people listening, reporting and reading that quote had ever played a pre-Diablo real-time ARPG, such as Dusk of the Gods, Shadowlands, Al-Qadim: The Genies Curse or goddamn Ultima 8?

It's time we end this farce. Knowing little is better than hiding you know nothing.

History Abridged
For CRPGs (my passion), here's a quick list I made:

Playing 2-3 hours of each game there would be faster than blindly finishing Daggerfall. And it would give you some notion about the evolution of the genre, paving a roadmap one can return to later.

I'm pretty sure that similar lists can be made about other genres, guiding people to at least try out key influential games – likely in less time than it takes to finish an average AAA title.

Is it a compromise?

A MASSIVE one. Almost the equivalent of learning about classical books via Wikipedia summaries, about movies via trailers or about Rock n' Roll history by watching this (awesome) video:



However, it's a first step – a quick overview – and much better than knowing nothing.

Commendable attitude, but what you're arguing for is an almost professional mindset when most of the gaming press is almost exclusively done by amateurs (in the worst sense of the word). Do you really expect anybody to take you up on this who doesn't have a drive to this in itself

It's also not even a new problem, e.g. if you look at books. Sure, most big games take longer than a book, but the written history is even more massive and reviews there suffer from the same problems. I don't know how often I've seen reviews declaring something as a new and bold direction never done before, only because the reviewer had no clue that it's copying fifty year old books and style. I assume movies are similar, though I often get the feeling reviewers there's have a better handle on classics and the "canon" as movies can easily be sampled in a short manner of time

 

[Grauken]

When I was younger I would have found the attitude to play games just a bit abhorrent, but with age you feel like you really don't have to follow the all or nothing philosophy, some games really don't need to be finished to be appreciated or judged, but getting there took me a few years. I imagine there are a few younger reviewers who have a similar problem, if they can't finish a game, they won't even start

 

[Elwro]

I have the same with books. Years ago I just had to finish any one I'd started. Not nowadays

 

[octavius]

For me it's the opposite. I finish all books I start and most games nowadays. Some of them are even books and games I didn't finish 10-20 years ago. But then I have more free time now than I had 10-20 years ago.

 

[Grauken]

Are you retired or what? I don't even have a family and still feel like I don't have enough time to do all the stuff I want to

 

[octavius]

Are you retired or what? I don't even have a family and still feel like I don't have enough time to do all the stuff I want to

I work less, have less of a social life and don't waste time watching TV anymore (I usually watch downloaded sitcoms when eating, though).
Also, nowadays nearly everything is available for free (Abandonware or Torrents) or dirt cheap (GOG and Steam sales). That was not the case 10+ years ago. So nowadays it's actually possible to catch up and get an overview of the history of things - CRPGs and "speculative fiction" in my case.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

About replayability and multiple ways of playing a game to see everything, as presented in the BG 2 example, I'm a player that kind of don't put much value in choices and consequences, for the verg fact that when I replay these kind of games years later. I tend to repeat all my choices in previous playthroughs, and always play similar characters.

Not only in RPGs, but even games like Deus Ex, Dishonored. I always play the stealthy character in Deus ex and explore all routes available. Thus I pick skills that will be useful for me to get around everything. Also, when confronted between good/evil choices, i always choose the good side.

So I try to get everything a game has to offer on the 1st playthrough. That doesn't mean I don't fiddle with the choices i normally don't make: when I get bored of playing serious, I play it "wrongly" just to see some different results, and then i resume the next day from the last serious point.

 

[Neanderthal]

Always smell bullshit when media whine about not havin enough time for games, like they can't play again tomorrow for a couple on hours, or they say all this then next time gobshite about wanderin around in Skyrim, Fallout or Witcher for hundreds on hours. Just bullshit.

 

[Severian Silk]

Too much nerd power on this forum.