@Daz:
You may have missed it, but you're in luck, because theres been an absolute crap-ton of Indie Games that they like, and have been vocal about for years and years.
That was not even the point lol.
The point was that she seems to hold back when talking about popular games and sort of downplaying the actual problems while that same logic doesn't really apply to how they look at some indie titles or games that aren't made by untouchable gaming companies.
Days Gone and Death Stranding are the ones that come to mind.
And that's not just a Sterling problem. It's a problem with almost every channel that is big when it comes to covering games (not talking about the generic reaction and shitty walkthrough ones).
Sterling's Red Dead 2 and TLOU2 coverage, for example, has multiple videos and yet all of them…feel like they are really trying to talk about it while also ignoring lots of the actual problems.
almost entirely big publishers such as Ubisoft, Activision or Konami.
Those are easily the most targeted and the most talked about publishers. That is practically a meme at this point.
What about Naughty Dog? Or Rockstar? Or hell, if we are talking about lack of innovation then Fromsoft?
My problem with Sterling isn't that she is talking about the business practices. The problem is that type of content is super repetitive and has channels upon channels already covering it.
Not to mention that it also ignores a part of the reason why big publishers even do what they do which is; the gamers. Publishers end goal is always profit and they look at the demand to meet that demand. Gamers are also a big reason why games are the same nowadays with actual creative and innovative games going under the radar because of the triple A garbage.
Sterling created a video about the Rockstars obsession with detail…..but didn't really talk about how Rockstars was also just keeping up with how they are perceived in the gaming community. It's the reason why open-world games tend to include pointless activities and bloat when the gamers are the ones raging about how open-world games could only be good if they feature endless side quests and endless NPC's.
I have no idea why videos that tend to talk about the "state" of the industry fundamentally ignores the biggest reason why it is what it is which is gamers.
has also absolutely torn into Rockstars wasteful and harmful practices in general, something they got a lot of pushback for.
I'll wait to see how much they actually accomplishes and means when Rockstars releases GTA 6.
I'm of the belief that videos like these are entirely pointless if gamers still go and support whichever company they are talking about particularly in regards to crunch and terrible management.
Reports about the crunch during Red Dead 2 came out before the game. And lots of people were angry. Then the game came out and most people forgot about it. And eventually it just faded. Red Dead 2 went on to become a critical and commercial success. Rockstar sees the success, not the empty words of gamers, and will repeat the same thing with GTA 6 and the same situation will repeat itself.
Same thing happened with TLOU2. Crunch report come out, people get mad, game comes outta, the crunch is mostly forgotten. The game becomes a critical and commercial success. Company sees that and will repeat the same thing.
Gamers like to get angry but don't particularly like to vote or show that through their actions.
Again, interested to see what ND releases another title (even though Uncharted 4 also had reported crunch and developmental issues but TLOU2 still followed it with critical and commercial success) or Rockstar releases GTA 6 and these types of things….actually have tangibility.
I'll hazard a guess that you're not exactly up-to date on their material?
I barely keep up with their major reviews.
But no, I don't watch every video they ever put out. Especially since the start of 2020.
And just for the sake of it, I went and casually scrolled through their videos since maybe the TLOU2 coverage (around may of last year) and a lot of the content seems repetitive and hardly anything….that they didn't already cover few years back.
If you watched them then let me know exactly how any of that differs from their previous content. I would be interested to see that.
how AAA games exploit unambiguously political stances and imagery for their own benefit, and then try and claim
That's one side of it.
The other side is developers inserting politics to be controversial and relying on controversies as a way to push ideology and market the game towards a certain crowd of people.
It's interesting that Sterling never really touched upon this aspect of say TLOU2. Feel free to point me to the video if I'm mistaken where she indeed talked about this aspect. It's also interesting to note that the creative director of TLOU2 talked about his past and how when he was a kid, he saw some Palestine people kill some Israeli soldiers and he wanted to kill those Palestine people…..ignoring the level of absolute abuse, harassments and downright barbaric nature of Israeli towards Palestine people....And that type of dumb childish mentality is also rooted in the game given how it wants to comment on violence but then ends up saying that violence against people you don't like is cool while violence against people you like is not cool. And then there is also the lazy and downright garbage characters like Lev or Dina whose entire characters revolves around being gay or trans.....and somehow that isn't worthy of criticism and discussion of lazy political pandering.
Again, going after Ubisoft or developers for not being confident about their political message when gamers are so insecure, and weak that they fundamentally would literally cancel you if you say or do anything that isn't according to the popular beliefs?
That is an actual issue. Just looking at it without the context of the industry and how it can lead to a shitstorm coming to the developers real life and involve families is just....dumb. Are we really shocked that devs aren't going to come out and state that the thing they are creating is an observation of the current political situation?