Yes, I have played Bethesda games for decades, going all the way back to Elder Scrolls 1: Arena.

Yes, I play Elder Scrolls Online even to this day, though I am now reconsidering that.

That does not and should not have any consequence whatsoever when it comes to my, or anyone else's, opinion when it comes to how fucked up Bethesda/Zenimax are as corporations, and the corporate ownership at Microsoft for that matter.

My interest in Starfield has diminished significantly and the hype wave is already putting me off. Yes, it's only one individual's story and not the first from the company, but I'm not reddit-logo enough to LARP as a perfect logical machine that only does perfectly Rational(tm) calculations regarding whether I should care about something or not.

I expect Hexbear to have a lot of "let people enjoy things" discourse about Starfield in the upcoming weeks and months, and a lot of it will ride on the "everyone does these bad things in game development" thought terminating cliche that primarily serves as a palate cleanser so the consumer can avoid feeling as much guilt or disgust for what they're now consuming.

Fuck that.

And fuck that corporate empire.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    No Man's Skyrim

    kelly

    I think a lot of it is spacebrain. By that I mean the same consumerist itch that made some gamedads plunk down thousands of dollars into Star Citizen, all because they really, really want to be spacemen and feel "realistically" spacey when shooting projectile points of light at WWII dogfighting ranges. grillman

    And no, there is no "let people enjoy things" bullshit here for the most part as far as I've seen.

    I sincerely hope it stays that way. "Multiversus" got some defensive pushback here, and even mandatory psychological abuse of artists working on Mortal Kombat did, as I mentioned already.

    And Genshin Impact's predatory monetization grifting is practically a meme, and by a meme I mean accepted standard practice that is just chuckled about.