I'm terrible at this game, but I love it. Catch me live: www.twitch.tv/legendary_drops

Baldurs Gate3, Elden Ring, there is always another game that is a "Wake up Call". They just don't care. They don't want a good game make money, they just want a game that makes an absurd amount of money. This people make games as a job to earn money, there is no ambition or vision. And that's it.

The DLC is Elden Ring 2. No other company could make an expansion to their game this gigantic and acclaimed within 2 years of its original release. FromSoft stand alone, the true Hero class.

I want miyazaki to make a berserk game before he retires.

Elden Ring reminds me of the 90s-2000s, a time when microtransactions had yet to exist. The Shadow of the Erdtree DLC is what used to be known as an "expansion pack", a full sized campaign added on to the base game. A term long lost yet so apt/

AAA Company will be like : "They over-delivered and undersold , don't expect this from us !", just like with BG 3 .

There's an under-appreciated reason both fromsoft and larian are able to create these kinds of unusual, passionate games: Neither of them are publicly traded companies. Neither of them have much pressure to min-max thier products for shareholder satisfaction each quarter. They have room to breathe and time to work.

Don't let the discussion about difficulty distract you from the fact that SotE, even as just a dlc is still, along with the base game & maybe BG3 one of the best games made in the last half decade & it was only 40 bucks! Not 70, not 100 or 120 to play it 3 days early, 40 bucks & it's magnificent. None of best weapons or armour sets are hidden behind paywalls for real world cash & best of all, it's a complete, finished product. No 'road map', no broken promises, just a complete game. This is why we love Fromsoft.

Watched a whole damn 30 second Elden Ring DLC ad to begin this video, because my stoned ass thought it was your intro.

Getting near 90% of its players back over a year later is incredibly difficult for others to do.

As Hidetaka Miyazaki said, he uses everything the game gives him to play. Elden Ring have a difficulty Level, it is just not in the option menu it is in the game design itself. Are you willing to use what the game gives you? Are you able to adapt your playstyle? Do you use what the game gives you? Do you use ashes? and which ones? And he also said it is absolutely legit to use the Elden Ring Wiki to assists in the game, yes you can go in with different damage types to find out the weakness of a boss and some are doing this and than they write it in the wiki, so you can go to the Wiki take a look on the weaknesses and the resistances of a boss. Elden Ring is as difficult as you want and as easy as you need.

Miyazaki is looking to make Fromsoft sustainable while the AAA industry is looking for infinite growth looking for that mythical game that will appeal to everyone and make infinite money for no investment

So Elden Ring is just one of those games where i always feel good helping newer/less experienced players out

A majority of the gaming industry leaders just wants to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. A majority of gamers just want good experiences made with actual passion and not just cash grabs. Fromsoft is a dev that after Elden Ring, I'll happily preorder from. I preordered Shadow, and Armored Core VI which is a recent underdog, but an amazing game as well.

Baldurs Gate 3 and Elden Ring setting a new standard. “Hey BioWare, how’s it going?” *the veil guard trailer* “fuck”

I saw a comment saying Elden Ring and From Software games is what you when you mix devoted Indie Devs with a AAA budget. How do you guys rate that reference?

The real achievement of Elden Ring and BG33 was making people who disliked their genre (souls-like and turn-based tactical RPG) actually play them and enjoy them a lot. These are masterpieces and why other studio do not try to at least emulate/clone them and instead call them "irregulars" is just nuts.

Exactly the opposite of Dragon Age, Elder Ring and From Soft keep improving and making good games for their fans while BioWare and EA keep trying to stray further from fans and chasing trends to get audiences that dont exist...

The diablo guy telling us to not expect games of this size and quality was unnecessary, nobody is expecting quality from blizzard

There's two types of devs/publishers: Those who are in it for the love of the game, and those who are in it for the love of money. You can always tell which is which, and if want the game dev culture to get better you avoid the money-lovers as much as you can. Indie games are bringing much more value to the industry than some of these AAA devs. And games like Elden Ring or Baldur's Gate 3 SHOULD be the standard every dev should strive to achieve, and players should expect. Companies like Bethesta or Blizzard have no excuse to release subpar games like they do with the resources they have available. Always refund games that don't live up to their promise, you can always buy it later if they bother improving it

Great video. You misunderstood what 'being in the black' means financially. It means profitable. The contrast to this is not 'green', but 'red'. Being 'in the red' is being in debt.

I suck at games, used to play everything on easy mode and I'm trucking along the DLC just fine. People are obstinately ignoring how helpful spirit summons are. If you don't have the patience to memorize bosses perfectly, these guys will get you through the game. That said, I beat the first boss you encounter with no upgrades or summons and you know what, that's good enough for me because some of these other bosses are literally madness incarnate.

Other developers think making money is like farming Palace Approach Ledge-Road, when it’s really like the lake of rot

Harada, the director of Tekken also just came out with a post explaining what happened with Soul Caliber as a franchise and why we'll most likely need to wait another several years to see a sequel. Basically a lot of it came down to the fact that there's a huge divide between the "the suits" of management, marketing, and sales, and the actual developers/players. Without someone who knows how to develop games and understand it as a player, it's hard to deliver that specific experience to the player. Also with scope having grown so out of control that there's no room to fail, if Soul Caliber was to come back, it'd be because someone bet their career on the success of the game because there'd be no room to fail. That's what happened to the last director of Soul Caliber, and though the game sold decently, it didn't hit the numbers that the suits wanted, so he's no longer with Bamco.

I wish more CEOs made these videos required for their quarterly board meetings.....

This isn't a conundrum. Elden ring was influenced by game developers and fans of gaming while most modern games now are influenced by shareholders

Of course, devs “accepting” to work under highly standardized and overbearing requirements will be frustrated to see success through different approaches.

The Stakes of Marika comment gave me great joy. It is one thing to change from path/dungeon-designed games to open world, it's another to keep the experience balanced. And it's masterful: It is still just a checkpoint. You're not able to level up, change your Ashes of War or your Great Rune right before the boss, so if you realize you have too much runes or that the boss is resistant to your build, you'll HAVE to get through the dungeon/field again. But once you're there and getting your tries on? You can just pop them. That allowed them to put as few Grace in the dungeons and fields as before, and build bigger dungeons (or with way less shortcuts than in previous games), since you have little to no run back. (I'm STILL frustrated by Ornstein and Smough's run back in Dark Souls!) And that keeps the Grace from losing its special status, to be a refuge after treading far and wide, heavy on runes and scared to lose it all, to finally sit down and think of the next step. (Also, thank LORD we have a more fluid fast travel system. DS2/3's and Bloodborne's were great but can you imagine with that much spots to warp to?)

Elden ring might be a wake up call, but it doesnt wake up one man that has a brain that is smaller than a quantum grain of dignity, now hes wallowing with his TV's in prison

It is all about gameplay. Elden Ring didn't amaze me with its storytelling (even if the story itself is really good), but the way it plays is something on another level. I'm not playing fantasy games, so I went into it without any great expectations, but the way it looks, how it fights... all of it is amazing to the point I'm doing my first run and I intentionally make a bad build, because I want to play with all of these cool weapons. AAA industry simply forgot about the fact that games have to be fun in the first place, or they assumed, they can skip that step.

Its amazing how we all go through different phases of our life all with different interests, yet some people dont realize that if you make a good experience in the form of a game, you will have an endless supply of people going through their lives and discovering your work. This is why a pc port is important. It will always be available to new audiences looking for a specific type of game

Finished the DLC (even took a week off for it) and it was great as always. took me 50+ hours and enjoyed every minute of it.

Fromsoft was managed extremely well. When Miyazaki speaks about game development, he isn't just talking about the game - he's talking about the developers, too. He cares about his staff and how they curate their games/careers/visions, etc... He knows so much more than the leads at ANY OTHER game studio.

I still remember my first DS playthrough on the 360. Few games leave that kind of impression. I told my best friend about it and at first he scoffed at it saying it's for 'nerds' and went back to his COD. After a while he caved and tried it and now he's a bigger DS fan than me. Funny how things turn out

FF 7 Rebirth, Elden Ring, BG3, Lies of P, Res 4 Remake, and Hell Divers should be shining examples of what devs should study to improve games.

As a gamer I feel very fortunate to be alive and young enough to enjoy the FromSoft era of games now and for many years to come . You always know you are in for a hell of an adventure with any FromSoft game

Found you through asmongold, subbed after watching one video itself based on how professional your videos look and having good takes in general. I actually didn't notice your subs initially but was shocked at how low they were when I joined, based on your videos I thought you'd be at 500k or a million or something. Looking forward to future videos, keep up the good work.

Only 3 of my fingers work, i'm on the last boss of the DLC, figure it out, the tools to make it easier are there. Imagine buying a chess board then complaining its not checkers.

I think Elden Ring having things that can make it easier, that you can find in the world, doubles up as making the exploration all the more rewarding. While I liked Stellar Blade very much as a solid action game, one major flaw the game has is that it's exploration is not rewarding. The only chests you find that make you excited are the outfit chests. Everything else is.. pointless fodder. Yet, Stellar Blade just like Elden Ring felt like a good old videogame, made for fun, in a time where so many games are just products made to... cater to everyone, offend no one, try to sell for everyone... But in Elden Ring, you being able to find an item like Mohg's Shackle that allows you to deny the most dangerous attack of the boss... now that is a find.. and for the game to have finds like that makes the exploration all the more exciting. This coming from someone whose first FromSoft game was Elden Ring and it made me see "what the fuzz is about". Before that, I was thinking there's no way I'd enjoy frustration. Until I got the adrenaline rush of beating something that felt impossible on the first try and with practice I danced around the attacks and overcame it. I thought it should have a difficulty level before. Now I'm glad it doesn't. Not because I wanna be elitist and say I beat it, but because it will give so many players that same feeling of overcoming their own limit with perseverance and putting their minds to it. (Elden Ring also has many things you can think through in a way where, if you struggle with one particular thing of a boss, there are items to take the edge off that side, like increase elemental resistance etc.)

This video really gets Elden Ring. I mean this from the bottom of my heart, Dark Souls 1, 2, and 3, Sekiro, Elden Ring, Armored Core 6 and Bloodborne all gave me incredible experiences. Hell, even non-Fromsoftware games like Lies of P capture this wonderful idea. Doing something challenging is in itself rewarding.

This boy loves his Metalcore

Call me pesimistic, but I don't think other gaming companies see elden ring as a wake up call. I have the impression that they are way to stubborn to admit that elden ring is just a better game for the gameplay. It feels like most of the modern gaming industrie does not have their priorities straight. While the majority of players aren't even able to tell exactly why a game is great and what they want out of it, what could have been done better, most developers don't even bother to listen to the players. At least that is my impression.

I’m 42. I had never played a Souls game before Elden Ring. My very first character, rivers of blood dex, I spent 200 hrs on that one. Almost 100% the game my first run. Obviously went and played DS1,2,and 3. And not another Crabs treasure, waiting for Shadow of the Erdtree. I even played armor core 6. I think it’s the no hand holding that I like so much.

FS really need to work on two things: Technical side of their games, Elden Ring and DLC still having issues, especially on PC but also on consoles and well known low wages for most of their employees. Looks like only couple guys at the top get all the credit and money while rest of the devs are paid below industry standard.

Waiting for "Banana is a wake up call"

It sucks to think that once Miyazaki is done making games, we might never get to experience anything as unique as the souls games, when it comes to the depth, storytelling and passion that has been put into all the souls games. Im so glad to be alive at the same time these games were released, and I hope we get to experience many more of Miyazaky's stories, and for others in a distant future, to do so as well, even after he's long gone.This man will forever be remembered as a leyend.

watching your videos sound like I'm listening a fully edited and voice acted audiobook from a top scholar. i love it.

Great video! thanks for sharing your perspective on these games and the industry as a whole. The quote from the Helldivers dev. rings true. Products that are made to please everyone, usually alienate the main consumers of said product. What a great observation, this homogenization of everything in society is really putting a ceiling on what we can make or accomplish

Guts will use absolutely anything to win against an opponent. Any dirty, ruthless, cheesy trick to survive (So long as it's not at the expense of those he cares about / Friends / Honor once he finds himself again.) So beating a Boss in anyway possible is always acceptable. People not playing their own games is like a Director not watching their own movie.

There needs to be a Fromsoft boss called “modern audience” 😂

10:55 This reminds me the the latest Factorio Friday Facts Wube released where they mentioned periodically doing company-wide LAN parties where they tried to play through the entire upcoming expansion in a week, and how they gleaned very valuable insights from them (such as completely reworking the gameplay loop for some of the new planets to reduce repetitiveness)

What really astounds me is that Elden Ring's world is already so vast that it warrants the roughly 50-60 GB that the full package comes with... But then you start realizing there are HUGE areas hidden underground like Sofria River and that just made me take a genuine step back. The last time I was EVER this shocked at the size of a game world had to be BOTW. This game is not just good, it's also HUGE and the replay value is insane as you could never do everything the game has to offer in a single save and there's always some sort of new build or challenge to run. But then you get the DLC and the DLC alone is big enough to be its own game with a whole new map to explore, a new leveling system, new enemies and weapons, 10 bosses which are arguably both harder and better than base game bosses (massive shoutout to Messmer for not being the final boss but feeling like the final boss) and the price for this DLC? 40 dollars. Mind you, the industry standard for a base game nowadays is 70 and half the time, it's hit or miss since so many of these AAA games come out rushed, unfinished, or buggy/glitchy. Elden Ring is in that small category of games alongside BOTW and BG3 of giving players an absolutely huge experience for a price that is almost absolutely worth it. BG3 without paid DLCs manages to beat out games that came out not only in its release year, but in the following year as well in terms of total value. BOTW is the undeniable GOAT of Nintendo's Switch catalog as not only was it a release title, but it is also arguably the console's best title across the board. And we're supposed to believe that we have to pay 70, 90, or 120 dollars for an unfinished game or have to feed into a shitty live service title to get a "good" experience.

rule of thumb in 2024: critics praise, stay away, critics mock, pay attention. you cant trust game journalist/activist because they are in cahoots with "narrative consultation studio" to boost or tanks sales. stop paying "diversity goblins" and discover what your customer really wants. you make a good games, gamers will buy and they will create a community around it.

5:48 Excuse me you said 2009 dark souls instead of 2009 demon souls.

Another developer who deserves a lot of credit is Capcom. They have come along way in the past 7 or 8 years and make some of the best aaa games in the business

The stake of Marika mechanic reminds me of how the ascend ability ended up in Tears of the Kingdom. Basically, a member of the dev team made it to help testing the game and it was so useful that they decided to make it a mechanic in the final release.

To be fair to those tweets, the quest and UI design are probably the game's weakest points. But where it makes up for it, it makes up for it tenfold; incredible open world design, challenging encounters, and tight combat. There are some criticisms to be had about the direction boss design is heading in terms of the pacing, but the overall sentiment remains; Elden Ring is the best open world game out there.

It will never matter, because 100 "Elden Ring" tier games wouldn't come close to the income of FIFA, Madden, or Genshin Impact

Elden ring was my first game man I have not played one game after that makes me that happy

Just woke up with this video in my recommendations. Bout to play this video as i play the elden ring dlc. Just got it this week. So excited !!

I think the first time I really noticed the massive difference in quality from a small studio and current AAA games was Valheim. Those guys made a major league grand slam on a high school team budget. I immediately thought to myself, "If they can do this with that tiny team and that, comparatively, trailer park budget, what the hell are these huge multi-billion dollar companies doing?" Then Elden Ring came out and it was the first time in a long time I had seen a AAA developer release a game that was phenomenal on every level and was worthy of the AAA title. Then shortly after BG3 dropped and it is beyond incredible. It's pretty much everything anyone who claims to be a gamer could ever want in a beautiful, shiny package that is sublime in it's function and visuals. I actually had a moment of hope that the industry would learn from these genius studios and smarten up. But, nope. They immediately started the trash talk and the big push to lower our expectations because what FromSoft and Larian did was, basically, impossible. According to them, to expect this quality from a studio was ludicrous and they should be ashamed for setting the bar so high. Because, of course they said that. I don't know what Ubisoft, Activision and EA are doing right now but they should be taking notes. I know they're not. Too much money, too much ego. Maybe they're sitting, mouth agape, watching their own obsolescence materialize in slow motion. That seems like the more likely scenario to me.

2 days ago I finally beat the last boss of the DLC. I attempted it for an hour at Scadutree Blessing level 17, and then took a break to collect the rest of the fragments. Came back at blessing level 20, and it only took me 5 more tries to beat it. didn't use player summons, npc summons, or Spirit ashes. The blessings helped a TON. Finished the DLC at RL200 on regular NG.

As a player who is never interested in the lore of most other video games I played, even after I finished the DLC a few days ago, I have been searching corners of the internet to know more about its lore and even craft it in my mind myself. What I love is that Elden Ring lore is vast and impactful but it doesn't shove it in my face but just give me enough hints to be excited to find out more on my own. With other games I hate sitting through trivial cutscenes and dialogue but if I skip them I feel like I will miss out important things so I'm forced to watch it, leading me to drop the game all together. Elden Ring's cutscene and dialogue is so rare that when you see them, you want to read every last bit of it, and the cutscenes are all epic stuff, not 2 characters talking to each other with seconds in between to express their emotions like a Bollywood edit.

The number and retaining of players is impressive, and it makes sense when you take a look at FromSoft games: -Want a challenging game? It's designed to do that, and New Game+ or personal challenges can enhance that part. -Want to enjoy the game, but not that good at challenges? Summons, community builds and tools are here for you! -Like investigating a deep story in a game? The lore is SO deep and you can find some of it both in easy to find areas or in obscure corners. And descriptions aren't everything, context where you find things in the environment are really important too! -Like a straightforward game? If you don't push the "more info" button in inventory, the _personal_ story and goal are pretty straightforward. Not knowing the deep lore doesn't prevent you from knowing that you have to become Elden Lord, or link the First Flame, etc. and knowing about where your next step is. -More of a RPG gamer? Plenty of side-quests and NPCs, LOADS of gear to personalize your character, and a silent protagonist so you can project your own dialogue flair. -Not a fan of that? Once again, all of that can be completely ignored, you can make a build-based character, not interact with NPCs that aren't tied to the goal you chose, and it won't remove from your experience. What I am saying is, they know their player base. They know that as much as there are thrill-seeking and lore-diving players, they know that most players aren't those, at least one of those, and extend a hand so they too can enjoy the game. No baby mode, you still have to deserve reaching the end, but something so you don't have to perfectly build your character, have Saiyan reflexes, or know the deepest code specifics to achieve it.

miyazaki is far to humble... the truth in his secret heart is he can beat the game blindfolded using a ps1 dance pad that isnt plugged in

Very well said. Elden Ring brought me back into gaming after a 15 year hiatus. Now I am a soulslike junky. They managed to make games feel like playing games when I was a kid, where dying actually meant something. Amazing.

That part when you said Demon Souls was the first time you had seen your imagination spill onto the screen and that it was closest thing to a perfect game in your eyes was exactly why i fell in love with Fromsoft every single souls game they have put out and more were and still are my perfect game the game i always imagined and wanted as a kid not just gameplay but aesthetics and just all around the way it makes you feel, I was always a huge fan of fantasy, awesome battles, and expansive lore.

I can't believe I only spent like $35 for this "DLC". This is basically an expansion, not a mere "DLC". I've been kinda forcing myself to play games for the past year or two, but I dropped everything to play this game. I'm even playing after 10 hour work days stacked with going to the gym because I can't get it off my mind. This type of drive and wonder inspired by this game is such a rarity anymore. I originally bought Elden Ring on the PS5, but I bought the combo pack for PC because I now have a good PC and wanted to experience Elden Ring at it's best fidelity. I'm wrapping up the game tomorrow, but I can see myself coming back. FromSoft is amazing

Larian & Fromsoft retain talent, and make gendra defining games. All the other big companies chew and spit out talented staff every wednesday because they are afraid their bottomline might dip under the "pool full of money" line (despite telling the new employees every time that they have cash to spend). It's pretty depressing.

And then Microsoft closes studios like the makers of hi-fi rush and a day later says they need more games like hi-fi rush

New subscriber Pure video perfection. I am very impressed with how well you articulated your point. Well done, sir.

Bg3, Elden ring, Stardew, hollow knight, the Witcher 3, Elden ring again…. How many “wake up calls” do you people need before you realize that the industry chooses to stay asleep?

Sweet video essay really good points, you could use a bit of work on the video / audio editing side but the quality of the righting And good microphone balance make it really enjoyable

It's like a simple dish to cook. You can just throw in the basic ingridients according to some random recipe, and it comes out somewhat edible. OR you can do it like Fromsoft, take the best ingridients you can find, thinking about what benefits the taste, adding a few special herbs, not to forget the love for what you're doing. It's still a relatively simple dish, but then it becomes one of the best dishes you've ever had.

Fromsoft does something that should be standard practice in all games studios: dream big. REALLY big. Other studios play it safe all the time because they're only interested in safe short-term financial success. Fromsoft never had a reason to play it safe because they were always the underdogs. They had to take big risks. It'll be very interesting to see what new direction Miyazaki and Fromsoft are going to take.

I’d love to hear more from the team that crafts the boss fights, love hearing from Miyazaki but I think they would have a lot of interesting things to say about their philosophy on boss fights/enemies

Imagine giving a damn about your customers, and not just lip service, actions...making a solid product and delivering on your promises, not biting off more than you can chew and sticking to what you know and do best and innovating on that. Imagine that being what people like: a consistent, thoughtful company that deserves the money it makes from the game it sells. Souls games give so much replay value for the price of admission: no nickle and diming, no BS. No battle pass. No live service. The DLC has an enormous amount of content: weapon types, ashes of war, spells, incants, dungeons and places to see, monsters to fight and overcome: and a satisfying new level of difficulty.

I really can't tell you why Elden Ring is one of the best games I've ever played. It confuses me, too, because I can't really put my finger on it. A video game is a series of encounters with the various challenges the devs have devised, and so I suppose in Elden Ring each of these challenges is somehow fun to overcome. I can't tell you why, though. Maybe it's the combat. The combat is very complex so successfully downing an enemy is often more than just swinging a bonk stick with reckless abandon. If you trade damage with enemies, by and large, you die. But trading damage with enemies is fun for some people, so Elden Ring makes it possible. You can invest in skills (like Endure) that facilitate trading damage. Maybe it's so much fun because no matter what playstyle you enjoy most, in Elden Ring you can find a way -- using stats and skills and certain weapons -- to make it viable against the hardest enemies. This means that 5 million people are playing the game using 5 million different playstyles, all perfectly designed for their own enjoyment, and all facilitated by the vast array of possibilities available for player character builds. Maybe the flexibility is what makes it so enjoyable for som many people. But, like I said, this is just a guess. I have no idea why it's such an amazing game. But I've played through it 9 times, and plan on doing the same with the DLC.

Great take. Love your content. But completely off topic, I just had to say Ice Nine Kills is my fav band. Love the shirt!!!

I'm playing the DLC right now. I've attempted to explore the Shadow Keep three times and failed each time. Because I kept stumbling upon pathways that led me miles away to even more content somewhere else. I'm so happy they didn't mess this up, my favourite game of the last decade has just got even better.

Am trying to be a writer, and a trap i keep falling into is what is called "world building hell". Its where instead of focusing on your story, you instead do some worldbuilding, its a trap because you think you are doing something when you work on your setting, but that is just some dressing on top of the cake, you can keep adding cherries and cream, but if you dont work on the cake itself, you dont have a cake. Its the same with videogames, things like UEX and graphics are just the set dressing of the game, if you dont work on the core experience, then things like UI, UEX and graphics dosnt matter. Take Minecraft and Undertale, both are massively successful games, and they are pixelated with a rubbish UI, but we still love them because the core is great.

I can guarantee you that 90% of devs know what needs to be done to get an Elden Ring level title, but they’re not the ones paying for the project. Developers want to make art, management wants to make money. The best restaurants are the ones where the owner gets customers in and money flowing, but lets the chef do his thing cause that’s what people are here for.

I just love that soulsgame (and elden ring especially) have so many ways to make the game as hard or easy as you want to be. playing a shield build with a speer while summoning and using mimic tear will make the game near trivial while staying lvl 1 makes it extremely hard... No external difficulty slider needed

Beautiful insight, thank-you!

Great video, enjoyed it, a lot of this also goes towards arrowhead studies and helldivers2 , the developers actual play and enjoy their own game

Legit my only 2 gripes with Elden Ring was the no new items tab WHICH THEY ADDED, and the second is all the armor and weapon tabs are towards the back instead of the front.

"they make games for everybody, but not everybody plays games" damn, that one hit hard

Thing I find about BG3 and ER is they're popular because people made them popular (and thus they've become well known litmus tests for your gamer pop culture group identity and standing) Means people are more willing to overlook poor accessibility, performance, and tedium; because they get to brag about they're experiences over social medias and within gamer groups. Whereas new games by unknown indie devs, or from "AAA", they get the opposite treatment. They're expected to be bad, so people look to confirm their biases. Hence we are caught in remake, remaster, reboot cycles; inclusive of iterative sequels and expansions.

love your vids sm just so authentic, thoughtful and passionate - i send u all my best keep these up much love ur way 🫶🏼

outstanding work hitting that subscriber count in such a short time, you're clearly doing something right

It is the overall company motto the main issue. I’m pretty sure people working on the projects want to give out the best product but are not given the time. While Japanese companies motto is to have every single part of the process perfect. This motto does not work in U.S. companies at all because Toyota was helping GM increase their quality but GM was getting killed in time. Therefore, they gave up on each other and everything went back to the same. Developers will need to start a news company under Japanese management system to work towards having quality products.

That's Legendary Drops for ya. Precisely.

I’m also one of those 20% that played ER on launch but hasn’t played the DLC yet. I will, just waiting a bit to get it. Too busy right now. Will 100% for sure play it looks great

For the billion dollar companies: They are lost. Their games are ordered to be made by shareholders. Designed to seem interesting to as many people as possible instead of appealing to a set of players that resonate with what the game offers. They are made to maximize profits and minimize efforts. Poorly optimized minimum viable products made by overworked, underpaid staff anxious about keeping their jobs. If it doesn't perform as planned the studio gets closed. If a skin takes an artist one afternoon to recolor or a week to design just to be sold for 5 bucks to the entirety of the playerbase, why would you not do that if you have shareholders whose sole interest it is to make money? That's the people you'll eventually have to answer to. A team of over 100 devs work on a full price title for 3-4 years and then it gets sold for 70 bucks. A single microtransaction costs like 10% of that. Think of the profits compared to selling a complete, satisfying game that isn't filled to the brim with bs to buy. They can't seem to replicate what Elden Ring is doing because that's not what they want to be doing.

Greed is considered a deadly sin for a reason. It can kill passion and drive for anything else, replacing yearning for knowledge and meaning with wanting more money and wealth.

Elden Ring also is commonly misportrayed as an "arrogant" game that doesn't care for the players. You look at how any of these people are playing and you will see they are putting unreasonable restrictions on themselves (e.g. no magic, no spirit ashes etc.) and then complaining the game is too difficult. The game DOES have unfair BS, like slippery platforming puzzles that inexplicably push you off with invisible walls, but they are few and far between. There are so many obvious "difficulty toggles" that were included to make the game accessible to people who don't have hours to sink into beating one boss. You can use spirit ashes, status buildup, summon an NPC or real person, even the very existence of powerful ranged magic builds like Comet Azur the boss nuke are a type of toggle. Ironically, it is the people calling the game unfair and arrogant that are being unfair and arrogant towards themselves.

These AAA studios don't make games for their players. They make games for their shareholders, and the ones making decisions usually don't play games. Instead, they spend their nights looking at spreadsheets.

5:00 You know, playing WoW Dragonflight after not playing WoW for 4 years and seeing what they changed in WoW makes me think "do those developers actually still play their own game? Or do they just toil away in the office, stopping to want anything to do with a Blizzard game they are working on when they get home? I believe they don't play their own game, otherwise I can't explain some of these mechanics. Especially Diablo 4 is a big culprit. You have to ask yourself, "do those guys even look at other games in the genre? Or just at Diablo 3, 2 and 1?"

Who would win: - Devs with multiple degrees, experience, all the funding and technology the west has at their disposal, terabytes of market data, huge marketing teams, the best writers and voice actors in the world; VS - A japanese man who likes feet and keeps stealing ideas from Berserk, his team of overworked devs high on caffeine who need to stop him from putting even more feet into the cutscenes, and occasionally a a writer who can't finish his own book.

When I first started playing games, some of them were absolutely brutal, and I didn't have the internet to sew opinions into my brain, so I just kept playing and getting better until I beat the games. With so many games essentially being fomo generators that were built to maximise profit, I see games like BG3, Elden Ring etc as being utter breaths of fresh air. I also notice when these masterpieces appear, other games devs try to hate on them, and I have come to see that as a seal of approval, because it scares greedy devs out there.