Luckily, for us, Cory's rebuke was no idle boast or baseless aspersion. The subsequent release of Cory's game, God of War (GoW henceforth), has proven that beyond any doubt by garnering nigh ubiquitous praise.
Having now had the chance to play it, I can attest that this appraisal is entirely warranted, and not merely "hype." Personally, I never cared for the hack and slash type of game GoW was in prior installments, and thus was no fan of GoW before now. I never played the previous games and frankly never had any desire to play them. I went into this installment with tempered (if not pessimistic) expectations, assuming I was in for a rather brief excursion of 8 hours or so maximum, and only trying it at all because it seemed much more like Tomb Raider or Uncharted (both games I liked very much). Several days of binge playing later, after a superbly constructed story, I've completed the game (though still not everything it has to offer).
Nothing is perfect. But GoW is perhaps the closest thing to such in gaming we've seen thus far. And in my opinion there's a very clear reason for that; a very simple reason. Cory Barlog has principles. Better still, he sticks to them even against the tide of popular opinion, and even when it's at the cost of turning a quick/easy buck. And this was conspicuously conveyed in a discussion he had with a panel for IGN.
I don't know Cory personally and couldn't comment on any other aspect of his life. But Cory apparently takes great pride in his work. And for this reason, this adherence to principle it seems, Cory was unwilling to completely whore himself out and compromise the integrity of his product, by allowing it to be degraded into the sort of insipid revenue generating fodder that pervades many (if not most) modern games. Cory proved, unequivocally, you can be both inspired and profitable and, perhaps most satisfying of all, symbolically shoved Blake Jorgensen's comments up his ass with all the brutality of a Kratos finishing move through the success of GoW.
It clearly eludes some (like Bungie for example), but Cory's sentiments in the above video are the exact reason God of War has been a smash hit, and Destiny 2 (D2 henceforth) was a failure. Bungie did exactly what Cory, having principles and not being motivated solely by profit, would not. And we've all seen the result. Cory's game felt like a comprehensive and complete experience that was every bit worth the price of admission, and was consequently a massive success, whereas D2 by contrast according to many of its players felt like an incomplete and hollow husk of a game. And I stated as much on Bungie's own forums (you know, back before they changed their forum policy to silence large scale criticism of their game) long before God of War came along (and long before D2 came along as well).
"Game developers are increasingly releasing a compartmentalized product, with diminutive content and features up front, in order to fleece the consumer for as much money as possible. Instead of games being released as complete products, they're being deliberately preemptively partitioned, and incrementally dispensed with an additional fee every time a new increment is allotted.
You're all obviously either too stupid to realize, or too young to remember, there was a time when you got 100% of a product for your money. Now, by contrast, morons like you are perfectly content to pay full price for 20% of a product, and pay again every time another 20% is subsequently released."This is basically what Cory is saying he didn't want to do (he even coincidentally uses the same increment measurement). What he didn't do. What Bungie did do. And the results speak for themselves. So Cory was right, and has been vindicated, and through extension all of us sick of this practice among prominent developers were likewise right and have been vindicated. The problem, unfortunately, is we're the minority. When I made my comments on Bungie's forums, there were a few who voiced agreement, but the majority responded with mockery and derision in defense of Bungie to my recollection. The reality is there's a whole generation of gamers coming of age who've never known a time when the practice of partitioning games for hyper-monetization didn't occur. They've never known what it's like to get a 100% of a product for their money up front. They're accustomed to leasing their games in perpetuity. In this it is but a microcosm of the larger society, in which the people accept assiduous socio-political vitiation without question and defend the status quo, because it's all they've ever known or can remember. And likewise as such if not stopped in its nascent stages it will become an irrevocable fixture of gaming.
It needs to be understood (because it's plainly lost on many) that D2 will never offer a complete experience like God of War or be "fixed" through DLC releases or expansions. The latter being conspicuously the hope of many/most Destiny fans, which incessantly voice their hopes of the next DLC release providing the substance the current game lacks. The release of DLCs is part and parcel of and serves the compartmentalization and incrementalist "games as a service" monetization model. It's not meant to be a solution to it, or eliminate incompleteness in a game, it is the cause of it.
Interminable incompletion is the goal of the games as a service model. You're getting a portion of a game, ideally (from the developer's perspective), in perpetuity. There's a reason Destiny 1 players routinely opine that D1 wasn't good until The Taken King; that's the point at which enough increments had been released to provide what felt like a somewhat complete story and/or gaming experience. And thus Bungie, knowing completeness equals diminished revenue, promptly rebooted the franchise thereby allowing them to revert back to increment 1. Likewise, there's a reason D2 players say it doesn't feel like a sequel. And there's a reason D2 over time is reintroducing, incrementally, the same weapons from D1. D2 may have been marketed as one but it wasn't a sequel; it's a reset of the incremental monetization model. But that truth seems lost on many of the franchise's loyal fans who assiduously seek and offer solutions to a problems that exists by design; perpetual inadequacy and incompletion.
It should be obvious from the chicanery employed by Bungie (e.g., xp throttling), that they are not principled developers like Cory Barlog. They have repeatedly engaged in sophistry and coercion in pursuit of endless monetization. And that alone, to any thinking person, would assuage them of any hope for Destiny being reformed. The game's issues come from an ethos which allows, and even promotes unethical conduct, that prevails among the decision makers in the development studio. And a creation will always reflect the values of it's makers. We see the contrast in the values of the respective makers, quite conspicuously, via the disparity in quality between GoW and D2. One creator had principles and wasn't unwilling to sacrifice the integrity of his product purely for personal benefit. One did not and was. At the end of the day that's all there is to it. If people choose to reward the latter over the former, we will naturally have more of the latter than the former.
Cory has with God of War struck a significant blow to the lie espoused by Jorgensen, but that in and of itself will not turn the tide, and the elements that support it (both within and without development studios and publishers) are not defeated. The publishers and developers will continue seeking to fleece their customers to fullest extent possible, facilitated by consumers that are content to be fleeced. After all, the former could not occur without the latter.
In closing, I walked away from GoW feeling like I had a worthwhile experience, and with a contentment inducing feeling of completion as opposed to the emptiness I derive from the ceaseless grinding of games like WoW or Destiny. There was no engaging in monotonous tedium in an eternal pursuit for better loot. There were no loot boxes to purchase. And it was a more rewarding experience than I ever got from those things. And for that, Cory, I am grateful. You took me somewhere I've never been, and showed me things I've never seen, and it was one heck of a journey.
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