Video game developers often contact YouTubers and journalists and hand them review codes (or hand them the codes on request) for upcoming releases. However, these codes come with instructions on what to say and what not to say or when to say them. Apparently, Mark Kern, former World of Warcraft director, received the code and shared more than he shouldn’t.
Trouble started when Kern sent out a series of critical tweets, using the Starfield title screen as a mirror to judge the experience that the game will likely offer to players. Kern suggested that the game was likely rushed.
“The start screen of a game can reveal a lot about how rushed the game was and how much pride they took in their work,” Kern wrote and shared the start screen. “Starfield start screen either shows hasty shipping deadlines by a passionate team overworked, or a team that didn’t care.”
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Kern further justified his observations in a second tweet that read, “Start screens are often done at the very end of development. Teams are too busy making the core game. It’s quite common for the start screen to completely change once the game is shipping or on patch 0. Teams that take pride want to put a good face forward and will often redo these just prior to [the] game going live.”
That tweet attracted lots of backlash including from Pete Hines, head of publishing at Bethesda. Hines refuted the claim that Starfield was rushed and defended the title screen as staying true to the company’s preferred menu presentation for years.
“Or they designed what they wanted and that’s been our menu for years and was one of the first things we settled on,” Hines said in defense of Starfield’s menu. “Having an opinion is one thing. Questioning out a developer’s ‘care’ because you would have done it differently is highly unprofessional coming from another ‘dev’”.
Fans react to Kern’s criticism of Starfield title screen
Kern’s comment about the Starfield title screen attracted lots of sarcastic responses including one from inXile entertainment, the studio behind the upcoming game titled Clockwork Revolution. Although the tweet is now deleted, a Redditor was able to grab the content of the tweet.
“We are moving all dev resources off the game and onto the start screen. The campaign will be 45 minutes long, but the start screen will be 20+ hours,” read the deleted tweet according to the Redditor.
DarkNRG wrote, “I don’t play a start screen, I play what’s behind it.
Jason Ochoa praised the start screen saying, “This start screen looks like @ExpanseOnPrimetv show intro.”
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While most of the comments we read didn’t think there was anything wrong with the title screen, they are of the opinion that it should have a little bit of animation and music—which happens to be the norm in recent years’ AAA titles.
Just as Hines mentioned, it is fine to have a different view of a design or layout. However, that doesn’t mean that there was anything wrong with the original design. Kern’s emphasis on the title screen contradicts the idiom that says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and makes a mockery of the entire Starfield franchise. We can’t help but wonder, “To what ends?”
Starfield is scheduled for a 6 September 2023 global launch. However, the game is already available for preload on Xbox Series X|S and will be available for preload on Steam starting from 30 August 2023.
The system requirements show that the game will gulp a massive 125 GB of storage space. Recommended OS is an updated Windows 10/11, AMD Ryzen 5 3600X or Intel i5-10600K, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080, and 16 GB RAM.
The brawl has questioned the relevance of video game journalists
Jade King of TheGamer decided to weigh in on the Starfield conflict from another angle. In a post that was arguably in support of Kern, King said, “Press and influencers need to be more than torch bearers of hype for game developers”.
The argument was that “journalists are little more than tools of publishers, paid off to say good things about video games with zero integrity”. King argued that journalists are rarely allowed to write critical assessments of a game—especially when they have received codes that grant them free access to the game.
According to King, that simply reduces journalists to hype men that drum the support for a particular game and possibly push up the pre-orders of the game—which sadly they never get to share in the revenue. On the other hand, King argued that this behavior is making it harder for the populace to believe game reviews—which in the long run will make video game journalists irrelevant.
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“Consumers have grown to expect press and influencers to act like fans and believe those who dare to take their work seriously aren’t real gamers or shouldn’t be trusted to critique,” King wrote.
King is admonishing the press to wake up if they would ever “be taken seriously” or the consequences may be grave. In a world where many journalists are struggling to survive, many will do whatever it takes to preserve their early access because that is how they will get reviews out on time and get more traffic. Therefore, the trend of the press acting like a fan will surely stick around for a while.
Do you think it is logical to judge a game by the title screen? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.
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