this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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I really don't want to use this comment to shame people for getting their start in game design.
But it's really weird to me to see a semi-major internet publication like this highlight comments from a guy with a youtube channel that has 508 subscribers and who has only been a professional game designer for 2 years as head of an indie studio, according to his LinkedIn. Sure, anybody can teach game design and even teach it well. You don't have to be the next John Carmack to do it properly, but it's weird that this guy was highlighted for an article in this way.
Also his first game with the indie studio is some sort of indie MMORPG that's a parody of RuneScape.
Honestly, it's this part that really bothers me:
Clearly from Linkedin and Moby Games, this person does not have over a decade of experience in the field. If you count teaching as "in the field" (which to me, in the field means not teaching but actually doing.) then they have 6 years of experience. Not counting that, they have 2 years.
Also, and maybe I am out of the loop but this doesn't seem to be a semi-major internet publication to me. This is my first time hearing of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Abrams#The_Mary_Sue this is the only information I really found on it's popularity and it seems kind of weak. Am I missing something, is it a really popular site for something like anime or comics?
I see the site posted a lot so I assumed it's semi-major but I dunno it's just an internet news site.
Anyway I agree the "in the field" part is weird. Also the fact that the author knew the "expert" that was cited and the info came from a discord post makes it seem like a bit of a puff piece.
Yeah, that was the first red flag for me too. Even if it's true, that would mean his experience in game dev is not that much longer than the time it took to make BG3.
But even if we assume years in the industry is not a useful metric, the article makes a bunch of other assumptions. Like saying the player is "punished" by the existence of so many dead end dialogue options. I don't consider it a punishment to not see every single dialogue option a game has. I intend to make the choices in the game that I think are my best option, and if that means I miss out on some content, so be it, that's the experience I got.
But to flat out call the game "not good" us laughable. Particularly from someone so green in the industry.
Outlets these days are more than happy to signal boost random controversial statements for clicks. Every time I see something that says "receiving hundreds of likes on Twitter"... that's nothing. That's practically nothing.
Not gonna lie, this was exactly the first thing I looked up, though I changed my mind in posting because it seemed to be a bad faith article in general. But yes, if you're going to have a person stand by their professionalism and experience, especially when making such harsh criticism over a highly rated game while demanding more media literacy, I think have someone that actual has relevant professional experience would make it far less eye-rolling to read.