Do you guys believe that videos can have "soul," or, conversely, that they can be "soulless?"
The body was too short or empty. The body was too short or empty.
>>41661All games are consumer products, lets not kid ourselves.
What's "soul" or not is how much effort and care the devs put in the minor details.
And the reason most devs don't do it anymore is the ever looming deadline and the fact that whether you do it or not does not matter in the short term sales (it does matter in the long run when people keep talking about it, but it's not like shareholders care about it. And it can become a downright curse in the specific case that is TF2, a game Valve desperately tries to kill, but the playerbase doesn't let them)
>>41666this, ignore the ironic trips
yes it's a vague term and will trigger overly-literal autists here like
>>41662, but that's just make it more appropriate when talking about art
>>41892cool! that changes literally nothing about what i said. would you like me to copy and paste the entire reply again, but with "soul" replaced with "authenticity?"
games that are new to you will always feel more authentic. games that are iterating upon something you already know will always feel less authentic. it's the same shit. you're thinking in a narcissistic way instead of looking outside o yourself and realizing that all 5 of the images you posted all look equally decent, and the only difference between them is literally just the chosen artistic style used by the respective artists.
appealing to your preferences does not make something any more or less authentic.
We could have a talk about actual authenticity, if you would like. then we can talk about how the fans that lack any creativity or ideas who decide to dedicate their free time making a 3D model of a character they've been drooling over for 20 years are actually some of the most shallow and boring people on the fucking planet, and the people who actually have a hand in the franchise, who have been explicitly given the duty of carrying the mantle are INHERENTLY more authentic than any fan that sits there making digital idols for fantasy characters that they have decided to look at as gods.
>>41952it does not have "more" passion or vision. it just appeals to your personal preferences better.
You are arbitrarily deciding that something is less passionate or has less of a vision purely because you like your personal preferences for aesthetics are not in line with the artists creating the product.
frankly i think its absurd that you think ANY title that is a remake or a rehash of previous ideas should be at the top of your list for things to claim have no souls, but here you are saying a warcraft 3 fan project has more soul than a warcraft 3 official remake, which makes it sound to me like YOU lack a soul and are simply clinging to things from the time when you had one.
>>42232im actually doing the exact opposite of defending obvious corporate garbage.
im saying none of the examples OP has given have anything that could be referred to as "soul"
even the indie/fan example is literally just some weirdo worshiping a corporation and doing free work in their honor.
I'm saying there is no soul. There is "I like the aesthetic of this" which is a personal preference of a player, not an incredibly act by a corporation. There is no content for Warcraft 3 or Starcraft being released today that has any modicum of anything that can be referred to as a "soul" or even a "vision" or "passion."
Like I said before: YOU lack a soul and are simply clinging to things from the time when you had one.
YOU are the one that can have a soul. YOU can seek out and take the things that appeal to you. slop designed to prey on your memory of a soul is the same thing as a soul.
>>42237if you would take even a single braincell's worth of effort you could scroll up and find that i already touched that subject, and you are just reiterating what I already said.
go back to bed, honey. You're so sleepy you're saying nonsense.
>>41889>i think what you're referring to as a game with a "soul" is just a game you like and have nostalgia fornah you're totally missing what people mean
the "soul" is usually more associated with a labor of love from the dev, where you will find many details and intricate complexities that a big corporate game typically wouldnt bother with, but which together add up to make the experience that much more unique.
>>42243>the "soul" is usually more associated with a labor of love from the devalright cool! then we go riiiiight on back to what i said before: what you love and what the artists love are not always the same, leading you to interpret labors of love as soulless garbage.
>where you will find many details and intricate complexities that a big corporate game typically wouldnt bother withgive me an example of a detail that big corporations don't bother with and I will show you an example of a big corporation bothering with it.
you are giving companies WAY too much credit just because you like the shiny bauble they've put in front of your face.
just say "i like this, it is my preference to enjoy this, yet all the same i recognize the company that brought it to me is a soulless entity that wanted my money and nothing more"
>>42234>The old Blizzard games were made by a company, so it was soullessYou might be shocked to hear this, but Blizzard wasn't always the corporate behemoth you see today. It started as a fairly small and close-knit development team.
And you say nothing of the indie team of two guys making their own game. Interesting.
>>42244>leading you to interpret yes, who cares, "soul" is inherently a vibe based interpretation of the experience and not a hard definition anyway, and if the artist didnt manage to make you feel his love, it doesnt fucking matter how much he actually loved it. Saying a game have soul usually reflect well on the devs and is mostly associated with smaller teams, but its not about the devs, its about the game experience.
>give me an example of a detail that big corporations don't bother with and I will show you an example of a big corporation bothering with it.but thats the thing, they bother with it after it had success, and try to reproduce a formula for success, rather than making a game as an artistic endeavor and coming up with those kind of details. And it not a single thing, its the addition of all those details that come together to create a unique feeling.
>you are giving companies WAY too much credit I aint giving shit, Im explaining to you what people mean by saying a game have soul
and apparently, you still aint getting it, because you're obsessed by who make the game rather than the game itself
>>42245hey dumbass
none of the examples given were old blizzard games
>>42246>yes, who cares, "soul" is inherently a vibe based interpretation of the experience and not a hard definition anyway, and if the artist didnt manage to make you feel his love, it doesnt fucking matter how much he actually loved it. Saying a game have soul usually reflect well on the devs and is mostly associated with smaller teams, but its not about the devs, its about the game experience.games you like are not all games i like, and games i like are not all games you like. just because you don't "feel someone's love" doesn't mean I won't. Your entire view here is entirely self-centered.
>but thats the thing, they bother with it after it had success, and try to reproduce a formula for success, rather than making a game as an artistic endeavor and coming up with those kind of details. And it not a single thing, its the addition of all those details that come together to create a unique feeling.all i'm hearing is you backpeddling so you don't have to give an example and be proven wrong.
>I aint giving shit, Im explaining to you what people mean by saying a game have souland apparently, you still aint getting it, because you're obsessed by who make the game rather than the game itself
the fact is I AM getting it. I'm looking at it from a point of view that is outside myself. The games I like are not the same as the games you like. You could show me your favorite game on the planet and say it's the perfect example of a game having soul and passion, and I could look at it and see it as corporate dog shit that is absolute brain rot garbage. your personal preferences are not the metric for what does and does not have soul. you aren't giving any examples other than the bullshit rehashing off ideas and stories in the OP, so all I can assume is what I said earlier: your idea of soul is literally just nostalgia. The games you see as unique and full of spirit are just the games you played when YOU were full of spirit.
>>42248literally all of those games are games released about 20 years after warcraft 3. all but two of the screenshots are from recreations of warcraft 3, one of them is based on starcraft, and another is based on warcraft 3.
none of the pictures titles are the warcraft 3 released in 2002.
>>42255once again: you're conflating "soul" with nostalgia.
I could just as easily sit here and tell you that it is completely devoid of soul because it's just rehashing shit that you're familiar with from your childhood because they lack any unique ideas and want an easy way to pump out a game to make money.
>>42256Also, I'm highly skeptical of the "it's just nostalgia" gaslighters
I never played Morrowind back in the day, but when I discovered it I immediately realized that the world was way, way more interesting that what The Elder Scrolls would become.
>>42258i got it 2 years ago. never played it before. to this day it seems absolute dog shit to me.
im glad you enjoyed the game, but there are MUCH better RPGs out there, and if I wanted to be as weird as you are about it I could go off about why morrowind was shit and why the games i like are better and why morrowind was uninspired and dull and my games were awesome and inspired.
>>42257looks like a warcraft clone if i ever did see one.
if it's so inspired and unique and special, then why does it look exactly like another game that everyone thinks of when they think of good games in the genre? and if it has anything original to say or show, then why is it literally just shit from old fairy tales instead of a unique story and world? I could write an essay on why it's uninspired just as well as you could write one about why it IS inspired, but the ultimate answer is that it looks good to you, so it's a good game for you and im happy for you
the point for both of you is that you are allowed to like these games, and thats fine, i encourage it even, but to act like a game is special just because you personally liked it is absolutely silly. Mischief Makers for the N64 is one of my favorite games in the world, and I think it is one of the most aesthetically pleasing games out there. I have never met anybody that gives a shit about Mischief Makers. Everybody I show this game to has told me it looks "creepy" or "weird" and shrugs it off. It's all personal opinion dudes.
Just enjoy the things you enjoy, know the reasons you enjoy it beyond just "it has soul" (because "having soul" is meaningless) and accept that not everybody is going to agree, and you liking a game doesn't make the game better than any other game outside of your own worldview.
>>42260 (me)
seriously tho i actually thought morrowind was one of the worst RPGs of all time, and will die on the hill that it is one of the worst looking games ever made, even if you DO try and work under the assumption that they were going for a very dull and bleak world. ive seen dull and bleak worlds done in ways that are at least visually interesting and doesn't look like every single person in the country sees literal shit as the most beautiful building material and aesthetic.
>>42258Digital art has introduced some now played out practices that have over the last decade become somewhat of an eyesore - which genai managed to speedrun in 2 years with its hypercoom style. As its commercial art it falls under the same law of value as any other commodity and capitalists will try to increase productivity. Some of these practices are deleterious for the production of beauty and should hopefully be reevaluated but probably won't.
t. hobbyist trad artist.
>>42256>you're conflating "soul" with nostalgiaidk i think a big part of why old games are good and new games are bad is because old games meant you built a for purpose engine and new games mean you mash assets into an existing engine. one gives you emergent gameplay and strategy based on the quirks of a purpose built system where the other is more like a on-rails guided tour through an experience where emergent interactions are squashed in favor of authorial intent.
its the difference between having a full fledged map editor like in broodwar that gives you stuff like dota and having a limited arcade that locks down IP to ensure people cant innovate or profit, and then ensuring this through centrally hosted servers and the "service" of balance patches. soul is when they profit because the sandbox is good, no soul is when they profit by locking you into their controlled ecosystem.
>>42264so games need a map editor to have soul?
think about what youre saying here. 99% of all platformers lack soul according to you. 100% of shmups lack souls according to your given interpretation.
you need to just accept that this is a much more complex conversation than something just "having soul" or not.
If you would like, we can have a conversation about each individual part of a given example, and see if we can uncover which parts DO have that passion you care about, because in nearly all cases there is passion put into some amount of that game with a percentage anywhere from 1-100% and there needs to be some nuance to your examination to uncover why something may be "bad"
for example, ALL of the images you showed in the OP are images that look perfectly fine to me. NONE of them are images that you can say for any certainty lack passion or care.
you wanna talk about a game that lacks soul? lacks passion? lacks a vision? we're gonna immediately be talking about a lot of VERY popular games that look VERY pretty.
Destiny is a visionless slopfest built on the bones of halo 3 by a team of people who have no concern for why anybody loved their original games and now just use their aesthetics and IPs for cash grabs. games look lovely tho!
a game i love as an example too: modern warfrare 2019 or CoD cold war! absolute mindless slop. its GORGEOUS looking and is one of the most realistic looking games ive seen in a lot of ways. genuinely impressive stuff! this game is devoid of passion or ideas. it exists purely as a utility.
you have an incredibly shallow way of looking at games. your entire view is "does this game look good to me" and it ends there. your brain is NOT throbbing and you are NOT cooking
>>42265actually, this is a great example!
there is no way on this earth you can say smash is made without passion. sakurai is one of the most publicly devoted to his craft developers there are. there are literally stories of him working on the games to the point of breaking his body.
the choice of adding tripping was LITERALLY a choice made in passion; he wanted to level the playing field because smash was quite literally his dream game; a game where anybody could play with anybody without worrying about being bad at the game. it's not how people ended up playing the game, and it's not what people like you or me love about it, and it has even been walked back by sakurai at this point, but that WAS the intent, and that WAS an choice made with love and passion. tripping was a result of "soul."
wavedashing was an accident that was never intended to be in the game.
tripping was the result of a man wanting a pro player and his son to play a game on equal footing and have that game be a game worth playing. tripping was the result of sakurai loving his vision a little too much. if anything the removal of tripping was a choice made in conformity and abandonment of vision.
this is why i say your view on game development is shallow. for you it literally all comes down to "i like this more" and is followed up by you disparaging developers that dont appeal to your specific tastes.
you wanna know why games are getting worse? its because the would-be next gen developers that went to school with you saw how you talk about the people they would be succeeding and drop the fuck out and get a law degree instead. you need to understand that you need to stop being toxic as fuck about developers if you want anybody to ever aspire to be a developer.
>>42274>games need a map editor>passionWow missed the point twice in a row. I said community driven emergent interaction and didn't mention passion once. You are literally describing the reason I think it is bad(removing options because of a creators "vision"; i.e. sales goals) as if its good.
>you wanna know why games are getting worse? Capitalism.
>>42310>bro you didn't have to kill him like thisby defending rent seeking tyrants?
>>42274>wavedashing was an accident that was never intended to be in the gameThis is commonly spread misinformation: Sakurai mentioned how to perform the technique properly through a Q&A released online shortly after Melee's release, way before any of the competitive scene we know today took off, and, besides, "advanced" techniques such as L-cancelling were already in Smash 64, and also detailed online through a website hosted by Nintendo.
Sakurai, in the youtube series he made talking about game design, mentions that he was an avid fighting game player and personally loved how technical and mechanically deep they could get, but that when making Smash, he prioritized "making the best game possible" over making a game that fit his own personal tastes perfectly. You can bitch about the particulars of this approach, i don't personally think Brawl or Sm4sh or whatever were casualized in an ideal way, but you can't argue with the results, especially not when compared to other (platform) fighters: whereas other genres such as shmups or puzzle games nowadays enjoy new indie releases that offer creative, interesting innovation on types of games that you could say were already "perfected", platform fighters that aren't Smash choke themselves to death huffing eSports-branded gas exhaust trying to chase the high of Melee. Whenever it's due to lack of creativity or because their creativity's being stifled by the idea that what makes a good game is a set of good systems and mechanics (and, conversely, that Melee already had a perfect set of systems and mechanics), they start from "let's make something i like" and what they end up with is something that they like. Which in most cases means that the biggest practical difference between Melee and Nickelodeon All-Stars/Rivals of Aether 2/Rushdown Revolt/Combo Devils is that it's Spongebob or some OC doing upthrow -> upair kill confirms instead of Fox, or that they jammed stupid resource meter mechanic into the systems that's ripped off another 2D fighting game (again, good system + good system = good game) and that the overall quality is (much) worse.
IMO it proves your point that the more interesting developments in this space are shit like Lethal League, Volleyball Melee or Tetherball in RoA1 which are exploring the possibilities laying in the basic elements of "player versus player on a single stage, knockback-based combat, platformer movement" beyond just trying to replicate 1v1 twitch-streamed EVO sweatlord deathmatch for the millenial audience that hates Nintendo now.
>>42327being incapable of understanding that other people might not like your game is step #1 for making a soulless husk of a game. i fucking hate morrowind but im also smart enough to understand that morrowind is good because its okay with people hating it.
a good game fills a niche, and a niche wouldn't be a niche if everybody liked it.
>>42345He's directly stating that the much more generic fantasy of Oblivion and Skyrim are better than Morrowind's much more unique setting. I get that Morrowind's gameplay is controversial. I don't get preferring a generic fantasy kingdom over being swept away into dark lands under strange moons. I don't hate the generic fantasy kingdom setting, but I cannot see having a strong preference for it over a more distinct setting.
That, and hatred for Morrowind might be because of its many questionable and niche design decisions, but just as often it's "I don't want to have an adventure, I want to be lead to a place and fill out a list."
>>42368the issue is actually that the adventure is not interesting and the destinations are boring as shit, so i dont care when i get to them.
i dont want to be led to locations, i just want locations worth seeking out. everything in morrowing looks like shit and theres nothing interesting in the whole map. the unique and distinct setting doesnt matter if the unique and distinct setting is a toilet
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