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[Nautilus]

I mean, what dev would go on record, even if to its own teams, and say "Don't worry guys, you don't have to do a great game.Being just ok is good enough!"?

 

[YeulEmeralda]

I mean, what dev would go on record, even if to its own teams, and say "Don't worry guys, you don't have to do a great game.Being just ok is good enough!"?

Especially when your budget is 100 million dollars.

Indie games are for risks triple A isn't.

 

[mrmustard]

I hate Metacritic culture, I wish Sony wasn't obsessed with it

Metacritic sucks. They should change the system to a top 3-5 Pro and Cons list.

 

[ProtoByte]

I'm a bit surprised at the reactions here. There's so many people going like “Oh this is good”. “This is great. We need high quality games!”

I get where that is coming from, but I really think a lot of you are missing the implications this has: It stifles innovation and risk taking. Creating something new, innovative and boundary breaking is hard. Creating a game that is new and innovative, while also simultaneously hit it out of the park with a 90+ score on Metacritic on the first try? That is insanely hard.

So why take that risk? We all know how Game critics operate. If you have a successful game & formula (Like GoW), then there's no need to innovate or iterate. Just release “more of the same” with some minor additions, and critics will give it the exact same scores as the previous ones. We see that happen with every franchise.

I reject this entirely.

You refer to a "formula" and use God of War, presumably the new iteration, as an example of risk-averse behavior. The trouble is that this new God of War was born out of taking a risk. After 3 mainline games, a spinoff and who knows how many portable titles of the original character action GoW, Sony allowed SSM to completely gut the IP in terms of tone, aesthetic and gameplay style after initially allowing them to try a new sci-fi IP that fell apart mid-development. To this point, there have been 2 nu-GoW titles, and the next one will undoubtedly fundementally change the franchise yet again. For whatever reason, people seem expect Sony to throw out game frameworks after 1 or 2 instalments, and everyone else can rehash with impunity. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of every "risk" particularly ND and SSM have taken, but it's more than people give them credit for. If anything, Sony's department that deals with this would advise their studios that they need to be proactive in keeping things feeling fresh in order to maintain that level of score.

Anytime someone posits this "innovation" thing like it's an ultimatum, it just rings self evidently wrong. Innovation is quite a nice buzz term, but doesn't mean much. Hate to say it, but a lot of things that can be coherently done in this medium have been done already. I'm not seeing anything really new or "groundbreaking" from anyone else in the industry. Indies and Kickstarter hopefuls are going through the nostalgia catalogue and making low rent spiritual successors or comps to games of the distant past or hopping onto the farming sim/isometric adventure game train, definitely not copying Stardew Valley or Transistor or anything like that. Meanwhile, half of the mid-tier studios seem to be doing a Bioshock impression, or an assorted mishmash of other recently or currently hot ideas with a new coat of paint, often times taking the better part of a generation to get it done, and have an underwhelming product at the end of all of it.

Even if any of that counts as "innovative" the fact is that people don't show up for it. Doing different stuff just for differences sake is a negative if it means quality is subpar.

 

[Batiman]

You never played any of them right? Right.

I have most of them and like/love most of them.

 

[Pedro Motta]

I have most of them and like/love most of them.

 

[Stuart360]

I find this hard to believe, simply because getting 90+ on MC is quite hard. Most great games end up in the 80's because you only need to get 3 or 4 dodgy reviews from Edgy sites and it makes 90+ very hard to get.

I'm sure they demand excellence, but i doubt about the MC specific part.

 

[Nautilus]

Especially when your budget is 100 million dollars.

Indie games are for risks triple A isn't.

Oh don't get me wrong: Every company, Sony included, needs to take chances now and again.

But there is a difference between taking chances and the company going "Let's do something different, but its ok if this has a mediocre reception". A company takes risks BECAUSE it expects that it will well received.

 

[T4keD0wN]

demand = a requirement
aim for = goal

0 chance that it is a key result or a deliverable, that would be in direct opposition with management best practices and they would have to cancel the release of every single game that doesnt get 90+ few hours before release and start working on it again and do another release until they meet the goal. They do not demand shit, that would not be smart and it would be out of scope.

This stuff is improperly translated.

 

[Brigandier]

If I was Sony and I gave some of these studios limitless budgets and as long as they need to create and finish a game, They damn well better release a critically acclaimed game that scores 90+

 

[adamsapple]

Not all fun and games if they tie bonuses to arbitrary meta scores like we've seen some examples of.

 

[Rykan]

I reject this entirely.

You refer to a "formula" and use God of War, presumably the new iteration, as an example of risk-averse behavior. The trouble is that this new God of War was born out of taking a risk. After 3 mainline games, a spinoff and who knows how many portable titles of the original character action GoW, Sony allowed SSM to completely gut the IP in terms of tone, aesthetic and gameplay style after initially allowing them to try a new sci-fi IP that fell apart mid-development. To this point, there have been 2 nu-GoW titles, and the next one will undoubtedly fundementally change the franchise yet again. For whatever reason, people seem expect Sony to throw out game frameworks after 1 or 2 instalments, and everyone else can rehash with impunity. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of every "risk" particularly ND and SSM have taken, but it's more than people give them credit for. If anything, Sony's department that deals with this would advise their studios that they need to be proactive in keeping things feeling fresh in order to maintain that level of score.

Anytime someone posits this "innovation" thing like it's an ultimatum, it just rings self evidently wrong. Innovation is quite a nice buzz term, but doesn't mean much. Hate to say it, but a lot of things that can be coherently done in this medium have been done already. I'm not seeing anything really new or "groundbreaking" from anyone else in the industry. Indies and Kickstarter hopefuls are going through the nostalgia catalogue and making low rent spiritual successors or comps to games of the distant past or hopping onto the farming sim/isometric adventure game train, definitely not copying Stardew Valley or Transistor or anything like that. Meanwhile, half of the mid-tier studios seem to be doing a Bioshock impression, or an assorted mishmash of other recently or currently hot ideas with a new coat of paint, often times taking the better part of a generation to get it done, and have an underwhelming product at the end of all of it.

Even if any of that counts as "innovative" the fact is that people don't show up for it. Doing different stuff just for differences sake is a negative if it means quality is subpar.

I can guarantee that the next God of War is not going to fundamentally change the franchise again. It will take the exact same formula and apply it to a new location. God of War came out in 2018. It was approved somewhere between 2012 - 2015. The decision to reboot it was made nearly 10 years ago under very different circumstances.

God of War as a franchise typically sold around 5 - 7 million copies per installment, not including spinoffs. God of War 2018 sold 22m copies and GoW: Ragnarok is already at 11 million copies. There's a huge difference between taking a risk and reinventing a franchise that sells 5 - 7 million copies and one that does modern GoW numbers. In its current state, there is no way that GoW is going to get such a revamp again. Not a chance. Not until sales will start declining.

 

[ProtoByte]

I can guarantee that the next God of War is not going to fundamentally change the franchise again. It will take the exact same formula and apply it to a new location. God of War came out in 2018. It was approved somewhere between 2012 - 2015. The decision to reboot it was made nearly 10 years ago under very different circumstances.

God of War as a franchise typically sold around 5 - 7 million copies per installment, not including spinoffs. God of War 2018 sold 22m copies and GoW: Ragnarok is already at 11 million copies. There's a huge difference between taking a risk and reinventing a franchise that sells 5 - 7 million copies and one that does modern GoW numbers. In its current state, there is no way that GoW is going to get such a revamp again. Not a chance. Not until sales will start declining.

Right.

And what about everything else I said in response to your post?

 

[vj27]

They’re acting like 80+ (my opinion 75+ = great ass game) is bad. Lmao they’re worse than fanboys in that regard. Like yeah shoot for the stars but there’s nothing wrong with settling for the moon. That’s still hella fucking good.