Friday, Mar 18, 2022 • 17min
Who is Hating on Elden Ring? - Inside Games News
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No one keeps Elden Ring down!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/insidegamesYT https://www.patreon.com/insidegamesYT
Lawrence: http://twitch.tv/sirlarr | Bruce: http://twitch.tv/brucegreene | Charlotte: http://twitch.tv/whatashow
Edited by: ShooklynTV
https://twitter.com/ShooklynTV
CORRECTION - The Gamer's article does mention the date of the reviews, apologies for the oversight.
Written by: Lawrence Sonntag
Sources --
[FromSoftware] Brand New Action RPG "ELDEN RING" 1M Units Sold in Japan, 12M Units Sold Worldwide! - https://bit.ly/3CVOBJv
[Twitter, @DarkSoulsGame] https://bit.ly/3CRs94g
[ArsTechnica] Putting Elden Ring’s 12 million sales in context - https://bit.ly/3JnGPdT
[GamesIndustry.biz] Elden Ring is the biggest new IP since The Division | European Monthly Charts - https://bit.ly/3IoS9VM
[Eurogamer] Elden Ring described as start of a "new franchise", following enormous 12m sales milestone - https://bit.ly/3JqdoYC
[iFunny, Twitter Screenshot @Salamatizm] https://bit.ly/36tUphe
[reddit, r/EldenRing] The UX director of Ubisoft Stockholm is insulting the devs at Fromsoft - https://bit.ly/3u5VZOJ
[reddit, r/Battlefield2042] Who approved this UI lol - https://bit.ly/3NesZx5
[reddit, r/EldenRing] If Ubisoft developed Elden Ring - https://bit.ly/3udIlsZ
[Twitter, @chainedchaos31] https://bit.ly/37IB3pq, https://bit.ly/3udIyfL
[reddit, r/EldenRing] Some people apparently missed the tutorial at the start of the game. - https://bit.ly/3u985GT
[TheGamer] FromSoftware Employees Report Poor Pay And Working Conditions - https://bit.ly/3KZGJtB
[Career Connection] FromSoftware Inc. - https://bit.ly/3Jo6Qdj
[reddit, r/DarkSouls3] What its like working at From Software - https://bit.ly/3Il5iiL
[Bandai Namco] ELDEN RING - Patch Notes Version 1.03 - https://bit.ly/3Jpp3qQ
[twitter, @Distortion_2] Rip Elden Ring Speedruns - https://bit.ly/3D7FBkZ
[Dark Souls 3 Wiki] Patches - https://bit.ly/34TCLTV
[YouTube] Industrial Mixers and Mixing Equipment - PerMix Powder mixer, Model PTP ( Paddle Type ) - https://bit.ly/3CQnr73
Music:
Switch It Up - Silent Partner https://youtu.be/r_HRbXhOir8
Get Back - Silent Partner https://youtu.be/iQYmgOrPEvs
Kula - Topher Mohr and Alex Elena https://youtu.be/0bywp0qTVNo
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Talking about
Speakers
(3)
Lawrence Sonntag
Bruce Greene
Charlotte Avery
Transcript
Verified
Bruce Greene
00:00
Welcome back to Inside Games. The only gaming news channel brave enough to actually look at
Elden Ring
discourse on the internet.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
00:06
Ain't no course like discourse, Bruce. I've been waiting all week to say that.
Elden Ring
launched to critical and popular acclaim, which of course means that there are both players and developers who are just so over it, and can't wait to tell you why it's overrated.Share
Charlotte Avery
00:17
God bless the internet. Filled with videos of high-powered industrial mixers. You been watching those videos again, Lawrence?
Share
Lawrence Sonntag
00:24
3D animations of mixers doing what they do best really just makes me feel good.
Share
Charlotte Avery
00:28
Industrial mixers and people that can't wait to be angry about video games. How can people be angry when the PerMix PTP series paddle type mixer's out there, mixing it's goddamn heart out? We'll never know.
Share
Bruce Greene
00:40
Maybe it's because
Elden Ring
has sold really, really well, seemingly defying all conventional wisdom that difficult, obscure, and weird games don't break into mass market sales.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
00:50
This is unprecedented, really.
Elden Ring
, publisher Bandai Namco
announced via press release on March 16th. The game has sold 12 million units worldwide in the three weeks since its launch. That's a lot. That's a lot, a lot. That word doesn't really do it justice, it's too short.Share
01:06
At 12 million,
Elden Ring
is already in an entirely different class sales wise than any of FromSoftware's
previous games and most video games in general.Share
Charlotte Avery
01:15
If you look at the numbers,
FromSoftware's
previous top-selling title was Dark Souls III
, but that only hit 10 million sales as of May 2020, a full four years after lunch. Elden Ring
has beaten that in three weeks.Share
Bruce Greene
01:28
To find comparable numbers, you have to start comparing some of gaming's biggest sellers of all time. Ars Technica's Kyle Orland did that homework already. Thank you, Kyle. Finding that based on this single data point,
Elden Ring
sales are on par with Red Dead Redemption 2
, Grand Theft Auto V
, and yes, our favorite game, Cyberpunk 2077. That also means that adjusted by date of release, Elden Ring
is outselling Grand Theft Auto IV
, The Witcher 3
, and Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
01:57
GamesIndustry. biz also provides a few more relative points of data.
Elden Ring
is the biggest new IP launch in Europe since 2016's The Division
, and the biggest game launch in general since last November's Call Of Duty: Vanguard
.Share
Charlotte Avery
02:09
Unsurprisingly, all these little dollar signs mean we've got a hot new franchise on our hands, perhaps? It gets a little weird, but many websites are quoting the press release saying that, in a joint message,
Elden Ring
is described as a new franchise. However, that quote doesn't appear in any press release we could find.Share
Bruce Greene
02:27
You can bet your ass this is turning into a franchise, it sold 12 million copies. The press release's hosted on
FromSoftware's
website. So did FromSoftware
and Bandai Namco
include this in a previous draft of the release? Those words, new franchise, and then later maybe they edited it out.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
02:43
Well, right now, the press release asks us all to "look forward to more of
ELDEN RING
as an IP (characters and other intellectual property) in hopes of expanding beyond the realm of games."Share
Charlotte Avery
02:55
Additionally, a quote from
Bandai Namco
President and CEO, Yasuo Miyakawa, states the publisher's intention to "continue our efforts in expanding the brand beyond the game itself, and into everyone's daily life." Whatever that means. Ooh, come on, Elden Ring
Pop-Tarts make your way to my shelves.Share
Bruce Greene
03:13
I don't want any of that shit in my daily life at all. Just give me a friendly pot. I just want friendly pot. That's it. That's all I want.
Share
03:19
So maybe the whole release was edited to remove the implication of another
Elden Ring
video game? It's easy to imagine a scenario in which publisher Bandai Namco
is ready to publish an entire Elden Ring
trilogy, and a Elden Ring
HBO show with George R. R. Martin
behind it. This is all based on sales, but FromSoftware
might have other designs, we're not sure. This is all conjecture, we're just guessing.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
03:39
What are we thinking then in terms of non-video game IP? An anime, maybe? Live action? Maybe an
Elden Ring
Netflix series where it's just too creepy dudes whispering at each other across 8 60-minute episodes for some reason? Who knows. And it's kind of hard to imagine Soulsborne storytelling in any other format than a video game. Maybe they could just tell the story of the lands in between two million years ago when they were just putting their first baby hand spiders together.Share
Speaker 4
04:03
Who's to say? But the future is bright if you like
Elden Ring
, that much is certain.Share
Charlotte Avery
04:07
Yeah, certainly. Now that the game has launched and already achieved record numbers, we are left to wonder just how high this game will soar. It's unlikely that
Elden Ring
will go on to be the second best-selling game of all time, like Grand Theft Auto V
, since that game's longevity can partially be attributed to the ongoing support of GTA Online.Share
04:26
But still, the mere fact that a weird challenging game made by
FromSoftware
of all companies could be doing comparable sales to GTAV
is proof the simulation we're living in is starting to break down.Share
Bruce Greene
04:36
Unexpected success could be why some game developers and players are actually starting to throw a little shade
Elden Ring's
way. Ubisoft Stockholm
UX Director Ahmed Salama kicked off one of the bigger slap fights on March 3rd. Tweeting from a now privated account, Salama posted his frustration with Elden Ring's
high review scores. Seeing it as evidence that "reviewers don't give a flaming poop about Game UX". And that "My life is a lie".Share
Lawrence Sonntag
05:02
Brief aside here, just for context. UX is short for user experience. The term used to describe the overall, you know, user experience involved with using a website, a piece of software, or a game. UI is a part of that, it's kinda in the mix really. In this case, Salama clearly thinks that the
Elden Ring
user experience is poor, given its trademark Soulsborne method of providing extremely subtle player direction.Share
Charlotte Avery
05:25
Nixxes Software graphics programmer Rebecca Fernandez O'Shea responded, noting that the game's "PC graphics, stability & performance" issues on PC didn't seem to bother reviewers much, either.
Share
05:36
Guerilla Games senior quest designer Blake Rebouche tersely chimed in, noting that reviewers also apparently didn't care about quest design.
Share
Bruce Greene
05:44
Salama then got his plate and went back to the buffet for another helping of salt, tweeting that "
Elden Ring's
UX is so bad that I can only imagine FromSofts
devs smoking at their desks and using CRT monitors".Share
05:55
It's kind of a weird, hyperspecific dunk. But hey, you know what? Whatever.
Share
Lawrence Sonntag
05:59
Yeah, I don't know. As you might expect, given both
Elden Ring's
and FromSoftware's
popularity, these comments didn't go over too well. I mean usually it has to be a good day for devs to say anything without getting yelled at, much less coming after the king. On top of that, Ahmed Salama currently works for Ubisoft
, and that's a company that has grown synonymous with bloated and uninteresting open world games through the Assassin's Creed
and Far Cry
series.Share
06:22
With a minimal map and minimal in-game UI,
Elden Ring
clearly took a much different approach to that genre. So it could be read as just sheer bitterness. But audiences prefer Elden Ring's
approach to Ubisoft's
.Share
Charlotte Avery
06:32
To make matters even worse for Salama, their Twitter bio includes credits for
Battlefield 2042
and Star Wars Battlefront II
. Both games that most agree had really confusing and repellent user experiences. Battlefield 2042's
beta UI was especially confusing, making it very difficult to tell which options were set where thanks to color inversions.Share
Bruce Greene
06:55
This is all too fertile ground for a good internet dogpile, as you would imagine. And you better believe those dogs got to pillin'. This ranged from legitimately amusing dunks on
Ubisoft
game UI. For real "Press X to Activate Tarnished Sense" is a good swipe, to more regrettable online harassment, which nobody should be doing, that led both Salama and Rebouche to private their Twitter accounts.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
07:19
It is worth noting out of all of this, out of the three developers, they're kind of like we're under a rain cloud there, O'Shay's comments are objectively legitimate. The game did have stability and performance issues at launch, which again, didn't really influence too many reviewers impressions of the game. Others' comments about UX and quest design, that's a bit more subjective and can read a little more negative, but yeah, the game stuttered pretty badly on PC, and that's O'Shea's specific line of work. So there you go.
Share
Charlotte Avery
07:44
And to O'Shea's credit, she later clarified, she's "not saying the game itself is bad" just that she's "kinda bummed that performance and stability (aka the kind of work I do) doesn't affect scores much". O'Shea even managed to find a silver lining in the
Elden Ring
fan club dogpile, posting that "a bunch of students saw my pin tweet and have been asking about getting into graphics programming" and that it "Was nice to answer some genuinely curious people". Well, that's that's good.Share
Bruce Greene
08:12
Similar waves of capital D discourse circulated a few days later when a post about the easily missable tutorial at the beginning of
Elden Ring
went viral because it is.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
08:21
It seems to me the discussion around
Elden Ring
seems to be confusion at how a game that is so implicit about its mechanics and content could get so popular. It seems to fly in the face of design principles that have made previous open world games so popular. Like explicit map markers, guided tutorials, big glowing objectives. I mean, that's what made World of Warcraft work so well, Skyrim, these games like did really well because they told you exactly what to do and how to do it. And here's Elden Ring
blowing up the world by doing the exact opposite.Share
08:49
I don't know. What do you guys think? Do you think
Elden Ring's
design is better? Do you think it's overrated? What do you guys think?Share
Charlotte Avery
08:56
Do I understand the story in
Elden Ring
? No. Does anyone? I don't think so. But that's not to say, I don't like it. I appreciate all the scraps I'm getting. I feel like the game truly wants me to discover it for myself. I could compare it to another AAA game that I've been playing recently, Dying Light 2
, which has a very on the nose story that is told through cut scenes, and I could not tell you a single thing that is happening because I just could not make myself care. It's a boring protagonist in a world and situation that I feel like I've already seen.Share
09:28
So I mean, it's everyone's got their own opinion. I haven't played a lot of
FromSoft
games. This is probably the most of any I've played, and I'm having fun picking up the scraps. I do feel a little lost at times, but I wouldn't say that reflects poorly on the game.Share
Bruce Greene
09:42
I agree all the way around, Charlotte. I played
Dying Light 2
. I played a bunch of open world games and those stories, even though they're on the nose, and they tell you exactly what to do. I don't really care. So it's like Elden Ring
is really obtuse, and I don't really care. Dying Light
is really on the nose, and I don't really care. That said, the developers absolutely did have a point about that UX. I am not a FromSoft
fan. I've played a lot of the FromSoft
games and put them down after about 5/6 hours because I don't, I just didn't want to deal with it.Share
10:11
Elden Ring
has a much more approachable gameplay for me as an open world thing. So I feel like I'm exploring, but that UX is terrible. I can't stand it. I don't know where I'm looking. I've played 60 hours of the video game, and I'm still trying to figure out what helmet does what and why and which button I should be pressing to read the description. Nah, it's all bad. So I agree. I really love, I love the game, but that UX is bad for me.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
10:37
Yeah, we did do co-op last night, and that involved jumping through a series of weird hoops and figuring out what the boundaries are and all that sort of thing. It makes you wonder why you can't just do it from a menu, you know? But that's not immersive enough. I don't know, for me, I tend to see this a little more philosophically about art in general because people argue that the game is bad because people miss things or that there's a tutorial but not everyone who wants to find the tutorial can and therefore that's bad.
Share
11:04
I get that argument, but it also assumes that the goal of the game or the worth of the game is laying all of its contents bare for every player regardless. I don't know that that's necessarily a universal good. Games can be intentionally designed knowing that people will miss it. I mean, they play test this stuff, and they see it, and they're like, well that's just how it goes and that's the experience we want to create. So some people don't seem to acknowledge that the goal of art isn't to entertain as many people as possible. Sometimes it can be to provide a specific experience, knowing that that'll shake some people off.
Share
11:37
I remember there were some comments in some reviews for Turning Red that also made some people really angry. And it was critics basically saying that like, these aspects of the movie might make it alienating for some people talking about it as though that's a negative against the work when it can be intentionally made that way. Not everything has to be for everybody.
Share
11:54
So that's kind of what I feel is the seed of a lot of the discourse around
Elden Ring
is people point to it as like, it's a gotcha. We found a way in which it's bad, but that assumes a whole series of values about what it's trying to do. That may not necessarily be true. I don't know, that's my thing.Share
Charlotte Avery
12:12
I like seeing other people's experiences with the game. I like hearing about it because it's completely different than mine. I saw a video from somebody in like mega knight armor, and I was like, this is not the same game that I've been playing. It can't possibly be.
Share
Bruce Greene
12:24
I just respecced to magic, and it's an entirely different video game playing with only magic. And I feel like a glass cannon versus when I ran it all the whole thing melee. So, but again, like Lawrence said, that doesn't make the game bad, it just makes the game different and if you like it and can stand it, then you'll play the game and I have.
Share
12:44
While the internet's nerds continue to stumble around debates between commercial and fine art, yet again, seems the real final boss is capitalism. Following the launch of
Elden Ring
, TheGamer ran an article noting that FromSoftware
doesn't have the best employee ratings on Career Connection. That's a Japanese site where employees can leave ratings for their employers.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
13:02
The company currently has a 2.6 out of 5 rating based on 21 reports, which individually note the low pay, high workload, and lack of accommodation for pregnancy and childcare for female employees.
Share
13:13
The problem is TheGamer doesn't note that many of these reviews are up to 10 years old and there's only 20 of them. Which seems small given the size of
FromSoftware
. The exact same headlines, in fact, circulated after the launch of Dark Souls III
5 years ago.Share
Charlotte Avery
13:27
We're not suggesting that
FromSoftware
is without issue, of course. Just that, as games and their associated companies climb the SEO ranks on Google. Suddenly, they start to get a lot more scrutiny from the diligent watchdogs of the internet, blogging from home in their sweatpants. That said, you know raising awareness of pregnancy and childcare stuff, I think, you know net positive.Share
Bruce Greene
13:48
Hopefully that's raising enough awareness, and they'll change it more once they see it again circulating in the news.
Share
13:54
FromSoftware
is clearly wearing their outdoor pants today though, as they've issued a major patch of the game, rebalancing tons of skills and even adding new NPC quest phases and other content. The map can even record the name and location of NPCs now. Whoa! Providing an uncharacteristic in-game tool to locate the game content. Well, finally!Share
Lawrence Sonntag
14:15
Bad news for everybody that was hoar frost stomping through the game though. The damage has been decreased and the cast time increased. That was apparently a really operative skill for speed runs too. It's obliterated the speed running meta at a drop. Souls speed runner Distortion2 sadged about it on Twitter.
Share
Charlotte Avery
14:30
This patch is unique for
FromSoftware
though in that it actually adds content to the game. Both a completely new NPC named Jar Bairn, Jar Bairn, and new quest phases for Diallos, Nepheli Loux, Kenneth Haight, and Gatekeeper Gostoc.Share
Bruce Greene
14:44
FromSoft
has been diligent with post-release patches in the past, but those largely fixed existing issues and rebalanced game weapons and abilities. Adding content in this manner could imply that FromSoftware
is treating this as a service-based game, and certainly the sales numbers it's experienced so far would justify that approach. It could also simply be that the development team had some content on deck that wasn't quite ready to be included in the shipped game or day one patch.Share
Lawrence Sonntag
15:05
Yeah, I should disclaim. I'm mostly working off of memory in claiming that
FromSoftware
doesn't really patch content into their Soulsborne games after launch. Could be very wrong about that. Somebody's probably already bashed out a very angry comment. Thank you for your very, very kind correction. Always appreciate it.Share
15:23
It's a neat idea though if they continue to develop for
Elden Ring
, which might make it kind of a muddy question about they're doing a sequel? Who knows. If Elden Ring
has hit that critical level of sales, it justifies ongoing support and development. That's a good thing, right? Would somebody complain about that? More Elden Ring
stuff? That'd be cool.Share
15:40
The map is so big that
FromSoftware
could easily patch in new content over the course of the coming years, which would then feed into longer term sales, like we've seen with games like Grand Theft Auto V
and The Witcher 3
. Those just sold and sold and sold forever because post-launch support was there.Share
Charlotte Avery
15:54
Just as long as they don't hit us with the
Ubisoft
style microtransaction. So, you know, oh, we noticed he died on this boss four times. Do you want to spend some maiden coin? I don't know, 15 or 20 on this invincible suit of armor?Share
Bruce Greene
16:06
You know what? Actually we'd like to thank a few patrons for loading us up with maiden coin, dreskell, Guthrie Leath, Christopher Glavin, Cr4bf04m, and Aaron. Hey, thanks a lot.
Share
Lawrence Sonntag
16:15
I got a few more for you, Bruce. James Bowser, Sean McLaughlin, Matt, Albert colomb, and loveless. You're all our maidens. Thank you for filling our flasks.
Share
Charlotte Avery
16:23
And hey, thank you, dear viewer, for watching our gaming news. If you liked it, remember to subscribe and hey, recommend us to a friend the next time you guys have an awkward pause, it'll fill the silence real nice.
Share
16:38
Lovely weather today though. I mean, primo shit.
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Bruce Greene
Lawrence Sonntag
Charlotte Avery