Question Of The Week [May 29th 2024]

Q: What can be done to save "DOA" games?

A: I came across a article about how Starfield's DLC should just be scrapped and they should stop supporting the game and move on. And while I do agree for the most part, as Starfield really disappointed most people (my wife being an exception, as she loved the game), it really didn't make the impact that most thought. Bethesda is going to continue to put on a smile and act like most love the game when it's just not true. I personally had a good time with the game, but man it could and should have been so much better with the amount of time that it was in development. I think there is a simple solution to this situation.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Seriously though, The biggest issue (besides the fact that the game just was Fallout in space and used the same engine from decades ago and was "janky") is that it just didn't have enough stuff that was interesting. Boring sidequest and NPCs and whatnot. And with AI now a real possibility as a tool, it can really speed up development in certain aspects.

Give Starfield to a small team, to continue to develop it and update it over the next year while everyone moves on. That team can then use and learn the AI tools to have it craft hundreds of new assets, planets, guns characters, voices and storylines. They can then comb through them, tweak the best ones and move on to implementing them into the game for a Seasonal/Yearly update for the next couple years. This doesn't just apply to Starfield, or Bethesda. This can and should apply to the entire industry. AI is a very real issue, but it also is a tool more than anything else, and if it's used as such, it can really help jumpstart and automate these larger updates. Which in turn allows the devs to move on and go full speed into the next game development.

Gaming has gotten to this weird stage where most games are looking to become “Games As A Service” and it’s a scourge right now to most gamers. Continually updating a game with the most basic of updates to squeeze the wallets of everyone still playing the game. Implementing predatory practices and Fear Of Missing Out or “FOMO” to ensure people continually playing a game way past it’s prime. With the right implementation it can really invigorate and revitalize the industry and change this Games as a Service model into something more. Something Better.

Artificial Intelligence (which I have always thought was a stupid and inaccurate name for what this technology really is) is a much bigger topic, which we’ll cover in a different Question of the Week; but we can talk about implementation here and now. I personally, don’t believe there would be anything wrong with taking a under-preforming game and using AI to shift the initial creation of several updates to offer more “content” to the customer, as long as it was human tweaked and verified, and put into the game as a well crafted few DLCs/Expansion Packs.