Starfield and the nature of criticism on the internet

 

Video gaming these days can be a quite lonely experience in meat space. When video games were dominated by the arcades, video gaming was more social and less reliant on communication platforms such as Reddit. However, in this current moment, we have to rely on sites such as Reddit in order to communicate ideas and trade information with each other. However, the site has become a place of much toxicity. I have been subscribed to the Starfield subreddit for many months and it has become a place of negativity and mostly just attacking the game. 

Starfield isn't a perfect game by any means, but I have truly enjoyed the size of the game. Just the thought that there are spaceships in this game that have interiors and crew on them gives me a sense of scale that is just not found in other games. Starfield is not a game that be everything. There is a limit to its ambitions, considering that it had to be released on the Xbox, which can only handle so much as result of its hardware and software requirements. However, what we got is a game that is truly amazing. Some say that it is boring, but I say that is probably one of the most interesting games that I have ever played honestly. 

It is not your typical science-fiction, even though I really enjoy those type of stories a great amount. Starfield is trying to be something else, which is really tough to do in a genre that is known for its huge spaceships and large battles. It is original and very interesting. The developers who were in charge of making the game were wise not to be too dependent on other works of science fiction. While it is clear that the developers were influenced by important science-fiction works such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, they needed to make something that was their own and not a rip-off of those properties. Starfield may pull its punches in the way that it approaches it science-fiction, but it is more grounded in reality than most.

This is really the dilemma that many Science-fiction stories face with their narratives. How realistic do they need to be? 

Too many games are in the realm of more soft-science fiction than more rigorous types. That doesn't mean those games are not great, but we need to have a greater variety in stories. Starfield's strength as well its weaknesses is that it tries to be many things at once and that sometimes helps the story and at times hurts it. However, I believe that it helps more than hurts the game. I believe that Starfield's emphasis on realism grounds it in way that one cannot see in other games. 

Mass Effect is probably the closet analogue to Starfield other than No Man Sky. Mass Effect has been praised many times for its incredible story and characters but its emphasis on space opera means that it is somewhat a game that is not part of the moment in human history. Starfield is tied to human history and tries it best to make sure that the diversity of humanity is in the game. This diversity is for the sake of pushing agendas but to show the variety of perspectives in humanity. Unlike too many sci-fi games, we have many people of all walks of life in the game. The organization, Constellation, in miniature, represents a variety of people who come together to further space exploration. 

Many people on Reddit tend to be cynical people anyway and they are not interested in anything that doesn't push in a new direction. Starfield seeks to break new ground and it isn't a game that wants to rest on its laurels. While it continues in the same tradition as other Bethesda games, it is a new game. Saying that Starfield is somehow a game that is outdated is pretty ridiculous, considering that a very small number of games even do what Starfield does. There are many video games that are loved by the YouTube aristocracy that generally have outdated gameplay mechanics. This is just a way to hate on a game in order to get views and clicks. Most of the criticism on Reddit and YouTube is just ragebait and isn't really trying to critique the game. 

Reddit has been known as the front page of the Internet but in reality, it's more of a sliver of the internet than its front page. English speaking content dominates the site and while Spanish has some presence, it is mostly in English. We have to take what we see here with a grain of salt. Reddit is not representative of the Internet at all. The Japanese internet for example is much more traditional than the American one. The Japanese still use Yahoo as a main site in their country and they are well known for still being very heavy into blogging unlike Americans. It is easy to think that Starfield's fans are only speaking English, but it is a game that was released in international markets. Other perspectives are needed to really see what is going on with this game. However, on YouTube and Reddit, all we see are English-speaking perspectives. I really want to see what other people who generally only speak one language think about this game.

Curiously, I spent time looking at Japanese reviews of the game, which is possible while using machine translation. It isn't prefect but it provides a different perspective that is generally missing when talking about video games. Some are positive on the game and others are negative. The negative views are same as in the Anglosphere, the game is boring, and that it is too big. However, Japanese people tend to be less obsessed with making all their criticisms about the game in this loud and incredibly annoying manner. 

Criticism on the internet is really easy and comes naturally to people honestly. However, making a game is not. It requires a great amount of effort. The team that made Starfield was about 500 people, and this is huge considering that AAA games are not that common compared to AA games and independent titles. Many of our favorite games in the industry were made by teams that were not that big to begin with. Starfield's development team pales in comparison to some of the titles made by Rockstar Games such as GTA V which had around 1,000 people working on it. I expect that GTA VI will have even larger amounts of people working on it. Starfield is one of those kinds of games that shows how big games have gotten and how many people are needed to make those games.

I think we have to understand that Starfield is a big game and that people have to understand that not every game is going to be like GTA, and we should understand that. Criticism is okay but it requires a degree of discipline to not to go off on tangents that are just about getting views and likes on social media sites. 

I believe that Starfield will be a very successful game, but people need to give it a chance instead of trying to criticize it. I choose to be constructive about Starfield and I criticize it when I want. However, I am not interested in just getting attention as I critique a game.

This game is truly something special and I hope gamers are willing to appreciate that.