| The article is worth reading, it introduces some criticisms of AAA game/product design that are interesting. I agree with many of them but never quite formulated them in such a way. However, WoW example is exactly backwards: > WoW nostalgia, monetarily leveraged through Activition Blizzard’s release of WoW Classic, feels (and is) a regressive moment for games (...) WoW Classic didn't happen because of nostalgia. It happened because there has been a _huge_ community of people hosting the vanilla version (and the first expansion) of the game for quite a while now. It was simply acknowledging the fact that many players didn't like where the game went after its initial release plus one maybe two expansions. WoW is a perfect example of a franchise that got butchered over the years. It lost what made it magical and didn't expand on the aspects that made it unique. It was a social game where you would find your grandma and your school buddy in the same virtual world, each playing in their own way. People thought they wanted more shiny things, instant gratification, less dependence on other players and the social aspects of the game. So it turned into something generic and quite frankly ugly. If you look at the history of the game, it already had all the things in place to make it the dull, money grabbing game that it is now. But at the same time it had elements, some accidental, some pushed by certain designers that barely made it, which were encouraging social interactions, small and large scale organizations and player driven stories. I feel like AAA games _should_ look back and re-learn why their franchise even had success in the first place. Re-discover what made them _good_ and why players built a culture around them that wasn't just oriented around consumption. |