- radioactive dust Co-creator Timothy Cain says some players adopt the opinions of the influencers they see.
- Cain says gamers don’t form their own opinions and “look to influencers to tell them how to think about games.”
- The veteran developer adds that he is “concerned” about the future of video game discourse
Timothy Cain, the co-creator of radioactive dust and the co-developer of The outer worldshas shared his opinion on online discourse and how some gamers can no longer form their own opinion about games.
Speaking in a new video titled ‘How the Internet Changed Game Design’ on his own YouTube channel, Cain discussed how game criticism has changed over the years in response to a subscriber who asked how social media and live streaming have changed game design (via VGC).
The developer began by suggesting that some developers design their games with social media clips in mind, specifically what big moments like cutscenes would look like to the player streaming the game and the audience.
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“A lot of designers like me often thought, ‘Well, what will a certain in-game event look like when someone is playing it live or recording themselves playing to post it as a stream?'” Cain said. “We thought about cutscenes. We thought about bosses. We thought about unusual weapons that could be obtained.
“And so, we wanted it to look really good on video. And that was one of the reasons why particle effects became a big thing, because you didn’t just want to go ‘boom’. You wanted a big explosion, and you wanted it to be pretty and colorful and all that stuff, especially in a clip because people will see that on some channel where someone is talking about the game, and they see that clip, and now they really want to play.”
Cain went on to say that developers are now thinking about their games the same way they think about media interviews, explaining that they would need to create snippets of quotes that would generate interest in the game.
“When you went to an interview, you said, ‘Okay, I have to have some sound bites ready, so when I get quoted, I want to make sure they’re quoted.’ Now it’s like ‘what part of our game would be good clips for influencers to show?'” he explained.
Look
Cain went on to suggest that influencers, such as YouTubers, are no longer places where people look for gaming advice, and he worries that some viewers are now looking to adopt opinions rather than form their own.
“We’re in the 2020s now, and a lot of gamers don’t even look for reviews from influencers. They look to influencers to tell them how to think about games. So people aren’t forming opinions from online video. They’re given an opinion from the online channel they’re watching,” Cain said.
“What this means is that I’ve seen reviews ranging from ‘this game has less combat and more puzzles and dialogue to interact with than this other game’ to ‘this game is stupid and slow-paced and made for casual players, I think you should skip it.’
“That’s a big difference in how games are presented. But more and more people are opting for the latter. They say, ‘I don’t have time. There are too many games. Just tell me if I should buy it. Tell me if it’s for me.’ Then they find someone they just like and then that person’s opinion becomes their opinion.”
Cain said it can be beneficial for influencers to offer players advice on a game, what he calls a “silver lining” for someone with the same preferences and a guide to finding new games, but today there are more examples of viewers repeating what influencers have said without thinking for themselves.
“That’s how I look for game critics,” he explained. “I look at their reviews of games I already know. If they like the ones I liked and didn’t like the ones I didn’t like, then I’ll trust them on reviews of games I haven’t played yet.
“But the negative thing about this is that more and more people seem to abdicate their own judgment to that of the people they see online. It’s like ‘I don’t want to think about that, tell me what I should think about it.’ And I see that sometimes on this channel, when I get several almost identical comments from people and I realize that they’re just quoting an influencer online. Sometimes it’s a meme, but more often it’s ‘oh, this influencer said this about this and now they’re just quoting it without any attribution online.’ a comment.’ Sometimes, even when it doesn’t apply, it makes me ask, ‘Are you guys understanding why the person said that?’
The veteran developer added that he is “concerned” about the future of video game discourse and doesn’t know what the 2030s will look like, but that it will go “in two ways because the pendulum always swings.”
He concludes that either things “will be controlled even more tightly in the bubbles,” suggesting that these players will simply observe one or a small group of influential people, “and all their thoughts will be guided by these people,” or “maybe the next generation will get tired of it. They’ll get tired of all the labels and putting everything in a box.”
“‘I defined a box, and this game is in this box, and I’m not going to look at it any other way,'” he said.
“I’m curious where that goes. The Internet basically allows a pendulum like that to swing very far and very fast. So I don’t know where the 2030s will go, but that’s what’s happened with game design, online influencers, and social media over the last 4 or 5 years.”
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