Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit

Lead Designer @FiraxisGames.
I have only two states, vibing and prototyping.
He/Him.

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

@PotatoMcWhiskey Its always funny to me when someone says "yes lets replace the people who work on our deeply systemic nightmare of menus that fits together in ways only the deranged can track that will immediately make me enjoy future patches more". Big *didn't think it through* energy.

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

@KihraArilith Choose violence. DMUMAD

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

The nuance here is more complicated because what you're trying to get out of the game influences this a lot. And not every game handles failure states particularly gracefully. Overall though? "Try to play it out" will generally lead to more interesting playthroughs.

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

Surprising to nobody, most games aren't designed around the idea of your character also being an immortal time wizard in addition to the other things they can do. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, you will get more out of the games you play if you try not to savescum.

[RetroSpace // immersive discopunk space horror @RetroSpaceGame]

Okay, honest question time. What is your stance on savescumming?

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

Not to put too fine a point on it but he's wrong lol.

The game certainly is an amalgamation of mechanics but to say its cynical? I just cant take that seriously because there is a pretty obvious deep love and "holy shit look how cool a thing we made" all over this game.

[PC Gamer @pcgamer]

Larian publishing boss takes some spicy swipes at Crimson Desert, calling it a 'cynical amalgamation of borrowed mechanics'—but I think he might be the cynical one this time https://t.co/UwOwZ6I9eR

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

That said Crimson Desert is very fun and while the story is a little thin, it mostly serves as perfectly functional scaffolding for all the exploring and combat to sit on top of. I think its worth playing.

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

I think this boils down to the fact that

1. BOTW and TOTK take very passive roles in the storytelling, focusing on link's adventure rather than the text. Crimson Desert is full of voiced cutscenes and writing, significantly more than I remember in either modern zelda.

[Synth Potato🥔 @SynthPotato]

I’ll always find it strange how bad writing is seen as a massive issue for Crimson Desert but Breath of the Wild and TOTK both get away with having the most basic, generic writing and boring storytelling.

Why do some games get a pass for focusing on gameplay & others don’t?

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

2. The game Crimson Desert is most aggressively cribbing from isn't BOTW or TOTK, its Red Dead Redemption 2. A game pretty well liked for its characters and writing. Crimson Desert is clearly trying to make that type of connection but doesn't quite stick the landing.

[David Szymanski @DUSKdev]

The pursuit of photorealism for its own sake is stupid, and has been stupid for years, and I would say has even been relatively attainable for years without any of this, which is why zoomers are consistently blindsided by how good select screenshots of some 7th gen games look.

[David Szymanski @DUSKdev]

Honestly this is probably correct, and that's what makes me so frustrated. It's going to be normalized the same as the last 5+ years of dumb bullshit in graphics tech, which is only just starting to provide a semblance of improvement for the massive resources it demands.

[christina 死神 @chhopsky]

i wrote a big breakdown on why this sucks but ended up deleting it because we all have eyes 👎

[Suzi Hunter @TheSphereHunter]

everything about this is a betrayal of these game’s artistry. painting over hand crafted intentional 3d art with shiny, wrinkly, sunken-in, porous, puckered, fraudulent filtered nonsense is deeply disrespectful. if you want this just watch gen-ai videos all day

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

This is also why (broadly anyway) our designs need to be trying to accomplish something, and I genuinely believe that something should mostly have an emotional component as part of the core design goals. How are changes and features contributing to the emotional tapestry.

[christina 死神 @chhopsky]

@DirtyEffinHippy there is no game design that will make you 15 again, we have to find that joy ourselves

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

Even if you break down lessons, making learning them fun and rewarding is the hard part and I think fighting games really struggle on this front.

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

My hot take on this front is that the goal should not be "to get massive". The goal should be to "reach the players who would love this genre and don't know it yet because approaching the genre can be daunting."

[J I Y U N A @jiyunaJP]

My unpopular opinion is that for Fighting Games to ever reach Chess/CS levels, 99% of FG’s would need to disappear. If the entire community got behind ONE title (see: Japan and SF), we could see actual momentum and growth. But this would suck!

I’m happy being a “niche” genre.

[Chris Meyer, Earthbound Design Spirit @TheRealKeyens]

"Single Player" is a really obvious and easy answer for "A place for players unsure if this is for them to discover that". Which, admittedly, usually sounds more welcoming than "get punched while learning the rules after studying until you internalize them".