Standing up for yourself

 Choose a Starfield to live by

We've always been taught to stand up to those who get a bit too 'up in our business' in life; because afterall- we should look out for ourselves, right? Defend who we are! Fight for our right to party! Insist how we're right! Tell all advertisers, people whom we desperately need in order for our company to survive, to f--- off because our fragile feelings got hurt. (Maybe not that last one. Leave that one to all the South African blood diamond inheritors out there.) Either way, everyone wants to be the Anime Protagonist who stands up for themselves in the middle of the lunch hall and launches the Bully halfway across the cafeteria with their secret hidden powers they didn't know about until just that moment, at which point they'll pretend to feel bad for causing undue harm whilst secretly relishing in the moment of power and go on to crave similar sensations in the future leading the beginning of their villain arc. What were we talking about? I slipped into 'How Amazing Spider-Man should have gone' mode.

Right, retaliation. Lets take things back a little from the antagonistic angle of standing up for oneself, going into battles of wits and all that- very melodramatic! Let's stick with the simple art of receiving feedback. What is that worth? What even is feedback? In the best of scenarios it's a constructive comment on what you have achieved from which improvements can be built. That's the sunshine and rainbows example. But even in the more neanderthal example- grunts and slurs, some glint of information can be gleaned. If you've pissed off an audience member who you wanted to count among your player base, then maybe you've done something to upset them. And if you didn't want that class of character among your players, then perhaps such dissatisfaction is lionising. Like hearing game reviewers complain that your game's difficulty scales too high- that's pretty much a glowing endorsement!

But then how should one receive criticism? In the world of writing I was always told to hear others reports on what you've written without any comment, because if what you've presented requires a verbal defence in order to explain itself then you've failed at the job of having the text be it's own sovereign entity- which is kind of the whole point of writing, no? But others in other fields might see criticism as something of a back-and-forth from one creative to another. I imagine when working in a project with a team that might be more how that sort of thing goes, because everyone is looking for the same end in that instance- to iron out kinks and create the absolute best of the best! Ideally. What happens if you take that open dialogue to a setting with a slightly colder reception? What happens if you're the developer of a game, a massive developer, who decides to respond to every negative review? Why then you'd be Bethesda.

Now I don't believe that Bethesda have taken the time to respond to every negative review for Starfield and Fallout 76- but the community manager has certainly outdone themselves in the sheer amount of traction they've been able to receive from this 'outreach' if we were to label all of this that. Somehow the news that Bethesda prowls it's Steam reviews with some canned responses is so affronting to the general populace that multiple people have made a sport of reading out each and every comment regarding how each paints a terrible picture of Bethesda and their rough-boy response to loving criticism. I'm going to be honest, it's largely a bunch of baloney. Glance at a few of these 'slap backs' and they're all boilerplate responses to criticism, nothing spicey or scandalous. It's more the fact that Bethesda have taken the time to do this which is worth talking about.

The biggest responses you'll see out of the Starfield side of things follow this trajectory. 'Hi, we're super grateful you've taken the time to comment about your experience!' (Boilerplate intro), then pick one trigger word out of the review and use that to determine the body of the response (scanning- they said 'boring' once.) 'If the game feels boring, try changing up what you're doing! Also, when you're finished, the game isn't over!' Then there's a 'Say, if you want to send the development team some feedback you can do it through this link. On our website. Not this here public forum, pretty please.' It's so bland and generic that people's attempts to turn this into a controversy have been damn laughable with Youtube videos entitled things like 'Bethesda say your critiques don't matter'! Which is stretching the facts for sensationalism at it's worst, making a mountain out of a mole hill at best.

If anything, Bethesda's attempts at responses are actually somewhat equitable. They're trying to meet people and say 'look, we can't exactly make a new game to fit your preference but maybe you'll meet us halfway and find something decent to kill your time with.' And I'm sorry, I just don't see the 'underlying malice' that so many others seem to see there. Sure it's really weird to have a developer personally reach out with copy past answers, but I actually like the message that sends. How many developers disappear when their games don't land so hot? Like- all of them! Bethesda are reaching out, confirming that they're reading negative responses and at least creating the impression that they care. It's all a play for effect, but it better sells the idea that this is a project they want to work on for an extended period of time.

I also love the one response where Bethesda tried to meet the anger about the ludicrously overstuffed loading screens between destinations (they're not long, but it's still immersion cutting) by basically saying 'try to consider the amount of calculations our relic of an engine is having to compute!' How the creation Engine is apparently incapable of hiding loading scenes between Grav Jumps like Elite Dangerous does I do not know, but if the team could somehow figure out a way to have us plot and travel between systems without going into our menus- boy would that be swell! (Seriously, play other space games- they figured this out over a decade ago!) I'm not really sure why people are upset. As though they expect Bethesda responses to go something along the line of "You're absolutely right, we screwed up this system and now the person in charge of implementing it has been shot. That's what you wanted right? They're bleeding out right now. Does this solve your dissatisfaction with the project? They're screaming for their family, but deep down they probably know they won't live long enough to see them again. Have we resolved your grievances yet? Please let us know about any other teammates you want killed for your amusement on the form below!"

Do I really consider this Bethesda standing up for themselves? Nah. It's really just a new costume that Bethesda are trying on as this ultra-responsive AAA developer. There's not really a parallel to that yet so it feels super weird and ungainly, and I don't really know how it will shape their image in the public eye at all- but I think twisting this into some nefarious power play is a little asinine. Starfield made the money it needed to, Bethesda don't seem to be worried about that. Was it as well received as they expected? I suspect not, which is bizarre considering they must have done a little bit of internal testing. Was the team just too scared to tell Todd how many times they got bored and started doodling on their phones during exploration missions? They must of. At the end of the day there is one takeaway from all of this. New Vegas scored a higher average review score when it released and that game was made in a year on the bones of Fallout 3- Bethesda owes Obsidian an apology!