- Fallout co-creator Timothy Cain says some players adopt their opinions from the influencers they watch
- Cain says players don’t form their own opinion and “look to influencers to be told how to think about the games”
- The veteran developer adds that he’s “concerned” about the future of video game discourse
Timothy Cain, the co-creator of Fallout and the co-developer of The Outer Worlds, has shared his opinion on online discourse and how some players can’t form their own opinion about games anymore.
Speaking in a new video titled ‘How The Internet Changed Game Design‘ on his own YouTube channel, Cain discussed how gaming critique has changed over the years in response to a subscriber asking how social media and live streaming have changed game design (via VGC).
The developer began by suggesting that some developers design their games with social media clips in mind, specifically how the big moments, like cinematics, would appear to the player who is streaming the game and the audience.
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“Many designers like myself, we frequently thought: ‘Well, how is a certain event in the game going to look like when someone’s playing it live or recording themselves playing it to put up as a stream?'” Cain said. “We thought about cinematics. We thought about end bosses. We thought about unusual weapons you could get.
“And because of that, we wanted it to look really good in video. And that was one reason particle effects became a big thing, because you didn’t just want to go ‘boom’. You wanted a big explosion, and you wanted it to be pretty and colourful and all these things, especially in a clip because people will see that on some channel where someone’s talking about the game, and they see that clip, and now they really want to play the game.”
Cain continued, saying developers are now thinking about their games like how they think about interviews with media, explaining that they would need to come up with sound bites for quotes that would generate interest in the game.
“When you went into an interview, you were like ‘Okay, I got to have some sound bites ready, so when I get quoted, I want to make sure the sound bites are quoted’. Now it’s like ‘what part of our game would make good clips for influencers to show?’,” he explained.
Cain went on to suggest that influencers, such as YouTubers, are no longer places people look for advice on games, and is concerned that some viewers are now looking to adopt opinions instead of forming their own.
“Now we’re in the 2020s, and many gamers don’t even look to influencers for reviews. They look to influencers to be told how to think about the games. So, people don’t form opinions from the online video. They’re handed an opinion from the online channel they’re watching,” Cain said.
“What this means is I’ve seen reviews go from ‘this game has less combat and more puzzles and dialogues for you to interact with than this other game’ to ‘this game is stupid and slow paced and made for casuals, I think you should skip it’.
“That’s a huge difference in how games are presented. But more people are going for that latter. They’re like, ‘I don’t have time. There are too many games. Just tell me whether I should buy it. Tell me if it’s for me.’ So they find someone they just like, and then that person’s opinion becomes their opinion.”
Cain said there can be a benefit to influencers who offer players advice on a game, which he calls a “positive side” for someone with the same preferences and a guide to find new games, but there are more examples nowadays of viewers repeating what influencers have said without thinking for themselves.
“That’s how I look for game reviewers myself,” he explained. “I look at their reviews for games I already know. If they like the ones I liked and didn’t like the ones I didn’t like, then I will trust them going forward on reviews of games that I haven’t played yet.
“But the negative to this is more and more people seem to be abdicating their own judgment to that of people they see online. It’s like ‘I don’t want to think about it, you tell me what I should think about it.’ And I see that sometimes on this channel, when I get multiple nearly identical comments from people, and I realize they’re just quoting an online influencer. Sometimes it’s a meme, but more often it’s ‘oh, this influencer person said this thing about this, and now they’re just quoting without any attribution in a comment.’ Sometimes even when it doesn’t apply, which just makes me go ‘are they understanding why the person said that?'”
The veteran developer added that he’s “concerned” about the future of video game discourse and doesn’t know what the 2030s are going to look like, but it will go “one of two ways because the pendulum always swings.”
He concludes that either things will “become even more tightly controlled in bubbles,” suggesting these players will stick to watching one or a small group of influencers, “and all of their thoughts will be guided by these people,” or “maybe the next generation is going to get tired of that. Get tired of all the labeling and tired of all the placing things in a box.”
“‘I defined a box, and this game is in this box, and I’m not going to view it any other way,'” he said.
“I’m curious where that goes. The internet basically allows the pendulum like that to swing really far and really fast. So, I don’t know where the 2030s are going to go, but that’s what’s happened with game design and online influencers and social media over about the last 4-5 years.”
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