What makes a good video game? Wow. What a colossal question to answer. I've been a game reviewer for a long time, and no, I don't post nearly as regularly as I should, I admit that. But I've also spent the last 4 years studying game design in order to break into this field, and that's the one question that has plagued me for my entire higher education. What the fuck makes a game good?
What has become clear to me in recent years is that most AAA companies with big publishers have no. fucking. idea. what makes a game actually good. The cynicism is so blatantly obvious and present. The fact that 343 Industries and The Coalition exist in the first place is proof positive of that. The fact that Bungie made one of the most successful video game franchises of all time, knew when it was supposed to end, ended it, and then 343 dug up its corpse for a quick buck. The fact that The Coalition just couldn't leave Epic's magnum opus alone. At least Gears 4 was good, unlike Halo 4.
Lawbreakers released into an extremely over-saturated market, and instead of trying to actually distinguish itself, decided to pander to the market as much as possible in order to put itself in direct competition with the juggernaut titan that is Overwatch. That is not how you make a game. Thanks to a recent video by Crowbcat, I really started to think about why it is that Lawbreakers failed like it did. I will link the video at the bottom of this post, just in case you would like to watch it, too.
In it, Crowbcat does not speak. Just as he always does in his videos, he simply lets Cliffy B. and the team speak for themselves. And while it starts as something fun and interesting, the cynicism creeps in after a little while, and it becomes painfully clear that Cliffy B., great designer though he may be, has become an extremely arrogant ass since his retirement from Epic at the conclusion of Gears of War 3. In another one of his videos, Crowbcat compares Bungie in their Halo days to 343 now. The differences speak for themselves.
This is the core problem with AAA. There is a very real reason that good indie games have a rock solid following. There is a reason Undertale is as popular as it is, and deservedly so. It's because Undertale is fun. It's because Toby Fox took a risk, and made something with love. It's because he was a perfectionist with an idea. There is no substitute for passion, and he nailed everything about Undertale. Bungie wanted to make something fun with Halo: Combat Evolved and its successors. It is still entirely possible to create a game that good in the modern era, Doom (2016) is proof of that. It's even possible to do it with a new big AAA IP, as Horizon: Zero Dawn proves. But these games are, depressingly, not the norm. No AAA company would risk making Undertale. None of them would risk making OneShot. None would venture into the territory of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, or Wasteland 2, or Owlboy. These are thought of as the scraps, left only for partially competent indie devs, experiences that are too risky for publishers to get behind. Yet these games, offered for half or less the price of a "premium" experience, are often the greatest games created in the modern games market. Because they remember what passion is.
That's the core component that the vast majority of current AAA games lack. Passion. Drive. Mixed with a healthy dab of perfectionism. Not cameos, and the "cinematic" (gag) experience, fan service, or the "premium" game. They have forgotten that for a game to be good, first it must be fun. That before a level is pretty, it must feel good. Before a gun is implemented, it must first be unique. Before a core mechanic is finalized, it must first enrich the experience. Dead Space 3's gun building was detrimental to the game and ruinous to the feel because it was not properly supported in the game. The cinematic bullshit that was added to Halo 4 and 5, replacing the player-first mentality of Bungie's work, destroyed the player's relationship to the game. And for god's sake, can we please stop this trend towards making absolutely everything an open world experience? It's not good for every game! It's just not! Dragon Age did not need to become open world, and it massively damaged the pacing of Inquisition in comparison to Origins and II. You know what the best parts of Inquisition were? The directed, limited-area DLC's that returned to the design principles of the first games.
Do you want to know what fun is? Fun is exploring Yharnam in Bloodborne, because the game is incredibly tight and exactly as directed as it needs to be. Fun is delving deeply into the world of Torment: Tides of Numenera and rollplaying in a setting that actually has replay value. Fun is what The Elder Scrolls and Fallout had before Skyrim and 4 respectively, before they forgot how to make a world that's good to explore rather than a cash-in with a trash story that does nothing to further what's enjoyable for the player. Fun is what The Legend of Zelda had before Ocarina of Time ruined it with formulaic tripe that cheapened and worsened an experience that should be about exploration and becoming a hero. Ocarina is how we got the travesty that was Skyward Sword. All of Skyward Sword's problems started with Ocarina. Never forget that, I don't care how much you like the game.
Great games are objectively great, but in an intangible way, and that is what is so hard to understand about them. They are not great because of any one feature present in all of them. They're not great because of perfection in a certain realm of design, like soundtrack or level design. But they do share an intangible means of wrapping the player seamlessly into the flow state, that indescribable feeling where the interface melts away and the player is within the game itself. Because the core of the game is so damn good that nothing else matters. That is how you make a game good.
I know that no AAA producer is going to read this post, and that's fine. They don't give a shit about player feedback anyway. If they did, DICE's disgusting, failed attempt at Battlefront would not be the flea-ridden travesty that it is. Mirror's Edge: Catalyst would not be the haphazard open-world mess that we got. Dragon Age: Inquisition, for as much as I love the game, would not have been bogged down with useless mechanics like shard collection and astrarium puzzles that set fire to the pace of the game and took time away from what really mattered.
You don't make a good game by adding bullshit. You make a good game by removing what isn't fun and refining what you have until it is fun. You don't rest on your laurels and just expect players to enjoy what you shit out because you think it's cool, you rip the game apart every time it's not fun and you ask yourself, "Why?" And then you rebuild it and repeat until you find the fun. Only then are you allowed to move on.
THAT is the difference between Undertale and Dead Space 3.
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The Lawbreakers video by the great Crowbcat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ4v2LgVlEA
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