The Video Game Industry

Is it wrong that, if that's true, I'm kind of glad they did because I don't own a Playstation?

You know, I have to wonder if this would lead to the FTC contesting Microsoft's status as a tech holding firm. Prolly not, but it might be amusing if it did.

Huh. That's actually quite odd. I thought Bethesda enjoyed the whole PC mod scene.

Maybe Sony would have offered them that Sony money for exclusivity.

Still, I'm gonna be honest, Starfield doesn't really feel worth buying Bethesda over.

I legitimately forgot Starfield is a thing.

Microsoft did get exclusivity for all Bethesda games going forward, not just Starfield.

Bethesda has been using the same engine since Skyrim, so the game will probably be jank as heck.

Not that I know yet, of course though Microsoft has NOT had a polished exclusivity rate as good as Sony or Nintendo the past years (last one was Hi-Fi Rush). Maybe Nintendo’s quality output can go down a bit after the bare sports games and the last Pokemon games.

Was jet lagged as hell when I posted and didn't clarify, but I'm pretty sure it was console exclusivity Microsoft feared. (Article isn't entirely clear there tbh.) I seriously doubt Bethesda would have skipped out on a PC release.

Edited by Karxrida on Jun 24th 2023 at 10:19:35 AM

Google is attempting streaming games again, this time using Youtube, either desktop or app versions.

I wonder if this is a course correction and they also needed the money? I mean, they just restored the "Sort by Oldest" feature recently.

Who let Desperate Idea Guy in?

So how long do you think this idea is going to last once it rolls out?

I'm betting two years

This isn't how engines work, Doom Eternal technically uses the same engine as the original Doom (id Tech) but the games couldn't be more different.

Broadly speaking this criticism has always been baseless, developers iterate on their engines all the time. I'm not knowledgeable enough to claim that the Creation engine has no persistent flaws but the idea that using the "same" engine is intrinsically bad has always been a take that shows a critical misunderstanding of how game development works.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 25th 2023 at 7:09:54 AM

Not to mention that at the very least using the "same" engine over and over helps cut down on development time. You don't want to have every other game get delayed just to use different engines that everyone has to learn.

yeah,they do modify their engines to make it run with their newer games,it's just they're terrible at removing the bugs that come with it!

Exactly, even if switching to a different engine would have benefits there would still be a very real cost to doing so.

Considering how lengthy their development time already is (at least five years if not longer until we get a modern Elder Scrolls game -_-) I for one am quite happy they aren't going through something that disruptive.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 25th 2023 at 7:12:09 AM

I'm pretty sure Fallout 76 used that engine. And it wasn't exactly a good fit.

Bethesda still using the Creation engine when it's known to be kind of jank is a legitimate concern.

Fallout 76 was a multiplayer live service game, comparing it to Starfield is apples to oranges. What the engine needed to do for the former was unprecedented and thus much more difficult, by contrast the latter is well within their experience.

Furthermore, I would not say it's a legitimate concern. Not when the criticism made is frankly superficial. As stated lots of engines have technically been used for a long time, that says very little about the ultimate quality. If someone wants to argue that the continued use for a version of the Creation engine is a cause for concern they need to cite something more specific then that.

I think a lot of the problem is legit just that Bethesda’s general extremely lacking approach to Q&A means that they never really ironed out a lot of the core problems with it and them having built game mechanics around an element that just straight up didn’t exist in the past is a red flag.

(In Fallout 4, the game encouraged you to create settlements with defenses and stuff, but the game didn’t keep track of anything that specifically when you weren’t physically present in the area, so the defenses literally didn’t do anything when you weren’t there. Apparently that’s a limitation of the game engine, but it didn’t occur to anyone in charge that maybe encouraging people to do a certain thing and then the game engine literally can’t take advantage of that thing is really discouraging and just looks like bad design)

It’s things like that, where Bethesda either seems unaware of limitations or doesn’t realize where the limitations plow directly into what they’re asking the players to do, that makes people think the Creation Engine is poorly designed and poorly suited for the job it’s being used for. There’s also a legit question of how well optimized the Creation Engine actually is for running an open world environment or how well Bethesda knows how to use it, because they’re kinda known for having really inefficient code.

Edited by Zendervai on Jun 25th 2023 at 11:03:49 AM

Agreed, that's part of the reason I dislike the excessive focus on the engine. Whatever issues the engine causes it's been clear for quite a while that the most problem has been design decisions made by Bethesda and other issues.

In a way focusing on the Creation engine is a red herring, whatever its strengths and weaknesses the more focus on superficial factors such as its age the more we ignore the actual reasons Bethesda games tend to be flawed.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Jun 25th 2023 at 8:06:06 AM

It’s like…yes, does the Creation Engine have clear limits, like an inability to keep track of what’s actually present in an area where the player doesn’t happen to be? Yeah. But that’s a reason to not try and design a game mechanic that pretends that this limitation doesn’t exist. It is straight up baffling that Bethesda decided to do that and apparently didn’t notice the contradiction. It involves a limitation in the engine, sure, but the question isn’t “why is Bethesda using an engine like this”, it’s “why did they include that mechanic in the way they did?”

It’s a recurring thing that a lot of the people in charge at Bethesda don’t really seem to know what they’re doing in a lot of ways, or have weird priorities that don’t seem to line up with what actually makes games enjoyable. They usually manage to get it together enough that the games are still fun for most people, but if you ask even a lot of the really hardcore fans, they’ll admit that Bethesda drops the ball enough that a lot of the mods people use really shouldn’t be necessary.

And even if the engine is just bad for open world games…Bethesda designed it. That’s kind of a problem, when you custom design an engine and then you forget to make it function properly for the purpose you’re making it for. That’s not the engine’s fault, that’s Bethesda’s fault.

Edited by Zendervai on Jun 25th 2023 at 11:13:51 AM

Was it Bethesda that spawned the meme "It just works" or how their games are made from magic?

I think the latter was something from Bioware.

Specifically Bioware Magic which is just a glorified excuse for crunch.

The former was from Todd Howard's "It just works."

Edited by RedHunter543 on Jun 25th 2023 at 11:25:54 PM

Todd is the one who said “it just works”, the comment about magic is from Bio Ware (“Bio Ware magic”) in the aftermath of Anthem.

Edit:

Edited by raziel365 on Jun 25th 2023 at 8:27:57 AM