A very long time ago, I care not to recount the exact number of years, a certain video game known as Fallout 4 was bubbling up to it's release window. I, fool that I was, cared very little for the particulars of video game development and the rigors of improvement and iteration, and was dumbly and simply excited for the next game in a franchise I considered to be legendary. I was voracious for news about the game and swept up every bit of excitement I could muster, gorging myself on forbidden and stolen secrets. Every leak, every tease, every trailer I watched thrice-fold- swept in the flurry of ecstasy and performance. But my guilty mind could relax in the belief that in stolen glances one holds no blame, incidental snippets of 5 second gameplay leaks were accidents to witness, I wasn't piercing the sanctity of marketing at all. Then I saw one leak for the start screen of Fallout 4, and my thin veneer of innocence shattered.
I had no idea, then, how important I found those menu screens to be in the games that I loved, although nowadays it really makes a lot of sense. It's the first thing you see everytime you load up a game, and the familiar glare of that NCR Ranger's black armour, or even the faux round-screen propaganda monitor of Fallout 3, were as memorable to me as faces of friends. More so, in fact, for at least I can log back in and see those front covers as often as I would like. Fast forward to today and I care a lot less. I don't care about the marketing machinations of the industry, I don't care about the morality of leaks beyond how they may effect my ability to play the finished product, and I don't care about seeing the start screen of a game leak. Thus I didn't care when I saw the start screen of Starfield, even in these scant few moments before release. But someone did.
Someone cared a hell of a lot about the Starfield menu screen, and this someone felt so aggrieved and confronted that their civic duty demanded rising up to speak out about the truth of Starfield once and for all. This Twitter user, ex video game developer Mark Kern, decided to slap on his investigator hat as he poured into the stark and evocative visage of a planet's eclipse for a menu. "The Physiognomy of Start screens" he started, instantly calling to my mind memories of Lovecraft's inherently racist pseudo-scientific physiognomy based prejudice. "The Start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed a team was and how much pride they took in their work. Starfield's Star Screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that just didn't care." Bold and confident words for someone who hasn't worked in the industry for a decade.
Now of course, this is rather blatantly the words of a desperate attention seeking Twitter crank. The kind of person who spends all their waking life finding some slim ghost of self worth hosting nowhere arguments across the Twitter space, hiding his own bristling tears of frustrated rage behind the painfully transparent 'laugh crying emoji'. But be that as it may, it's just fun to take this guy's words at face value and see what we learn from them. Firstly, he does offer an 'either or scenario' to try and cover his bases, but one that is quite transparent. He presents a 'benefit of the doubt' that his perceived woes may have materialised because of unforeseen circumstances, but it's pretty well documented how Starfield's development was given over a year's room to grow and polish, meaning that he is, pretty much, just calling the development team lazy and uninvested hacks. Very gauche.
Of course, up comes the 'laughing crying emoji' defence, he claims that he never called the game bad and anyone who read that obvious blatant context was a simple brained idiot for not peering into his intentions through the phone screen- but the egg on the face was obvious here. The man made himself into a mocking machine and over the space of the next week his Twitter mentions were inundated with examples of simple start screens for legendary games. Like, for example, the start screen of the single most recognisable JRPG in the world; Final Fantasy 7, which is just Cloud's Buster sword sticking up in a void of blackness. An image so iconic that the remake replicates it perfectly. But who has time to check their own theory they thought up on the toilet before throwing shade at an entire development company? That takes accountability!
What really surprised me about this whole situation was how many people came to the defence of Bethesda and this start-screen, especially considering the somewhat contentious reputation that the developer has rightly earned over the past few years. Typically the audience is chomping at the bit to launch on them for whatever perceived slight they can envision, but I suppose this diatribe was too stupid even for them to latch onto. Even Pete Hines rose up to comment on the bait, blasting the lack of professionalism presented by another 'developer'. And he did use 'Dev' in quote marks, presumably in a sly nod to the lack of work Mark has recently had in this industry he claims to be the singular expert on. Or maybe just in memory of the fact the guy got voted out of his own start-up for being so insufferable to work with.
If anything let's all look on this as a moment to remember the sound business decisions of industry legendary Mark Kern, who once spent an estimated 3 million dollars on a custom built tour bus in promotion of Sci-fi MMO Firefall; a game which lasted less than a week in the minds of gamers. And the bus looks absolutely hideous, by the way; the kind of bus you hope is a secretly a murder truck upon entering so you don't have to be seen leaving by anyone who might have otherwise respected you. Let's definitely take the advice of a man like that on signs of health in the game development process, because he's clearly spent the past 10 years chewing on the last vestiges of grey matter sticking out of his ears. Still, at least he made a funny punching bag once again even after all this time.
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