Readers’ Opinion is a place to share your thoughts in the comments section below. We’ll feature our favorite replies in the next installment.
Days Gone director Jeff Ross has been terminally online recently, repeatedly making the case for his underwhelming zombie-’em-up on Twitter. He’s insisted the game should have been an 80 on Metacritic, he criticized Sony’s apparent belief that it was a disappointment, and he put out some sales figures for the game that may or not may be incorrect. He’s also spoken of Days Gone 2 — a sequel that almost certainly won’t be happening anytime soon — and how it would have been the “definitive” edition of Days Gone.
But does anyone actually want Days Gone 2 on PS5? I’m being a little facetious here, as Days Gone certainly has its fans (as almost any game does), but Ross’ comments seem to come from this alternate reality where only critics were disappointed with his game and that it somehow got an unfair shake of the stick.
Take this utterly absurd excerpt from his interview with USA Today, for instance:
I think that the technical issues set us back 10 points. The studio director argued with me on that, but let’s just look at it from an objective point – let’s just say that we got to 70, now divide that by three for tech, creative, and design. You lose one point here, you gain one here. One of the points that we lost was due to creative decisions, but a lot of the points that we gained were because of creative decisions.
When you’re talking about a video game as though it should be assessed in the same way you would assess a toothbrush you’d purchased from Amazon, you’re too far in the deep end. To me, Ross is living in a separate reality where Days Gone had the deck stacked against it, when in reality a game as conceptually humdrum as Days Gone being given such heavy promotion by Sony was the only surprising thing about this completely unsurprising game.
Sony is a console manufacturer that already has a behemothic zombie franchise under its belt, and that Days Gone not only closed one of its E3s but was also pitched as one of its biggest exclusives is shocking in hindsight. No one likes to see a game not live up to expectation, least of all the people who made it, but Days Gone didn’t match the caliber of Sony’s excellent line-up of exclusives and that is surely all there is to say about it.
But maybe I’m wrong — maybe I’m missing the bigger picture here and Days Gone 2 deserves to happen. Let us know either way in the comments below and we’ll feature our favorite replies in our next Readers’ Opinion.
You said…
In the last Readers’ Opinion, we asked why anyone would want NFTs in their videos games.
Sammy replied:
This weird utopian vision of NFTs only works if every game implements a common standard to allow items to move between each other. Since we can’t even get cross-platform multiplayer most of the time I’ll let y’all do the math on the odds. That also expects there’s a comparable place for that item in the receiving game; am I going to be able to port my apegun from COD23415 into Skyrim for the PS9? Bad example because that’s actually way more likely but you can see the point.
NFTs are just in game items, tied to a game, which die with the game. Once those servers turn off, they’re useless, all you own is a receipt for a hyperlink pointing to a dead address.
Barricade had a different take, writing:
You see, I don’t think bringing NFTs in existing games is a good idea and that’s not what they should do. It’s also the most likely thing they’ll attempt though.
However, if they make a game from the ground up built with NFTs in mind, I don’t think I’d mind that. (kinda like Sorare, which is a fantasy football game built on Ethereum.) Because then you basically have the choice of getting into that game or not.
I also don’t mind NFTs about games that are their own separate thing, so not in-game items. Because just like above, it’s up to you to buy them or not. Basically buying a digital art piece or piece of history of a game/gaming franchise to support the publisher and show off to your friends. (If you’re into that I guess.)
As long as they don’t see (possible) success in this as an incentive to bring NFTs into existing games as a like-for-like substitution for MTX.
