A lot of people hated the forklift segment. “Why am I coming home from my job to relax by doing another job?” was a common refrain.
The article is a stretch, but is is downright mundane compared to the explanations of game designs I’ve heard straight from the mouth of Japan’s rockstar designers who made them. They enjoy wearing sunglasses and black leather jackets and getting extremely abstract about game design.
That was the problem. The game's lead, Yu Suzuki, was not primarily a game designer. He was known to push ahead games with revolutionary graphics, see Space Harrier and Virtua Fighter. But he was nowhere near as good at game design as Miyamoto or Naka.
I loved Shenmue for the immersive experience which was unchallenged at the time. It was the first of its kind, and for a long time no other open world game paid as much attention to detail. But its traditional gameplay mechanics were weak.
I think the design is pretty great, we have a virtual fighter combat system with training, (and many hardcore fighter game fans appreciate Virtua fighters mechanics) we have an arcade with actual games from the era, we have a gacha system. But the point wasn't to make an arcade, the point was to create something like a real world where you can walk around and explore. It's not about dopamine hits.
I think one famous mechanic besides 3d fighters that Yu made, was the arcade that has a vehicle you ride on.
Well the forklift part only happens for a very short window, so it sounds like those people didn't really play through it. The point was Ryo needed to raise money after a thing happens.
Hating the forklifts is not the point of the piece. Ignore that if it bothers you, and continue reading for an insightful take on how narrative and gameplay interact in a game you played.
A ton of other people hated it though. Is there a reason people hate Kotaku so much? It's always seemed like a pretty normal game site to me except for the fact it leans a little more liberal on social issues.
Social issues definitely seem like part of it now, but Kotaku was disliked in hardcore communities well before Gamergate or any of that other nonsense. My recollections of late-2000s Kotaku are similar to how I feel today about a lot of tech publications where personal expertise in their subject area makes it painfully obvious that they don't really know what they're talking about.
When you spend hundreds to thousands of hours mastering a game and immersing yourself in the culture surrounding it, an article on "your" game, unless it's written by someone as keyed-in to the meta as you are, is likely to come off as a series of poorly informed hot takes. In other words, generalist journalists frequently have a hard time developing the level of experience in a particular area necessary to write about it in such a way that's not laughable to the "experts". This effect is particularly bad in video games, where the amount of rabbit holes you can pour yourself into is practically uncountable. Everyone's an expert on something, and it only takes one crappy article on your pet game to destroy your confidence in anything that outlet produces, even if you lack the experience to see the lie in each and every piece.
> When you spend hundreds to thousands of hours mastering a game and immersing yourself in the culture surrounding it, an article on "your" game, unless it's written by someone as keyed-in to the meta as you are, is likely to come off as a series of poorly informed hot takes. In other words, generalist journalists frequently have a hard time developing the level of experience in a particular area necessary to write about it in such a way that's not laughable to the "experts".
An alternate way to say this is that these communities are incredibly insular, and the most active participants work hard to keep them that way by using their status in the group to set themselves up as gatekeepers, policing the bounds of acceptable opinion. Perspectives that differ from that of the in-group threaten their status, so they react against them violently in order to signal to the group that they're still in charge, nothing to see here, move along.
These gatekeepers also often see their "elite" status in the group as a fundamental part of their self-worth, so they interpret challenges to their ideas as attacks on them personally, and respond in kind. And it doesn't help either that gaming communities tend to disproportionately attract teenagers and young adults, who are right at that moment in life when their passions tend to run hottest.
I think the author of this piece clearly considers Shenmue one of "their" games. I don't think we're seeing the result of an outsider, but quite the opposite. Someone who has analyzed this game this deeply is clearly enmeshed in it. Rather, I think we're seeing two effects:
1. When someone loves a game, I think they have a tendency to over-estimate how disliked some of the more unusual aspects of it are.
2. When someone loves a game, and they point out that most people don't like some aspect of that game, other people who also love that game group themselves into "most people" and then disagree with the author.
What I think is more important is that whether or not the forklifts were hated is not the point. The author's point is that the forklifts were an integral part of the narrative experience of the game, as they contrasted player experience with that of the main character. Focusing on a throw-away "so-and-so is hated" is silly.
On one hand, I understand what you're saying. For example, I'm a big fan of Evangelion, and there's a decent amount of meta context to be aware about when going into that series.
On the other hand, I think we need fresh (and even naive) looks at these older works. Shenmue, Evangelion, etc -- they should be continually reevaluated and challenged. That's the difference between a living fandom and an echo chamber of folks smelling their own farts.
Oh, sure, I didn't mean to critique this article in particular. I thought it was actually somewhat interesting and went off on some fun mental tangents around how the form of the creative medium can influence the message, the obvious example being the interplay of mechanical difficulty and narrative in Fromsoft games. Stuff like this definitely benefits from a fresh perspective. Nobody needs another self-referential addition to the homoerotic subtexts in Madoka fandom wiki page.
Where I and others have had problems in the past tends to be around content that's less interpretive, like this, and more factual, like "a window into competitive play in ___ MMO", where, if you're a competitive player of ___ MMO, the gaps in understanding are on display front and center.
I mean I game a lot and overall their quality seems pretty average compared to other sites. Other sites have the same issues but don't get near the same amount of hate.
I get thinking it's quality is middling but I've ran into a lot of opinions that go beyond that quite frequently.
their media group was purchased in 2016 for $136 million and was sold recently for less than $50 million. in 2017 they generated $80 million in revenue at only a $20 million dollar loss.
Kotaku is very partisan in its Nintendo fanboyism. In their view Nintendo can't do anything wrong, where as the slightest hint of a mistake from Valve or Sega or others, they pounce upon with extreme outrage. Also they kind of patronizingly fetishize Japanese gaming culture, over others. They'll have pages and pages of articles about even the most obscure Pokemon game releases, while they give lesser coverage of a Total War game.
Note to mention the click-bait and hyperbole laden writing style.
And Kotaku has a weird focus on things like "cosplay", which as I perceive isn't really a part of gaming culture, for example I don't see any other gaming press making that conflation.
> the recent outcry from game journalists to add an easy mode to Sekiro to allow them to "experience" the game when for a From Software game, the difficulty IS the game experience.
Based on what I read on Kotaku (and elsewhere) about Sekiro and the difficulty issue, this is an incredible mischaracterization of the truth (with a healthy dose of opinion) and, for me, enough to disqualify the rest of your comment from serious consideration.
