Apparently, dying in your sleep is bad game design now. This morning, I got into a discussion with a player on the Retreat to Enen server. The other gamer ended up leaving a negative review for the game, which I checked out, and at first, that led me to the following question: When did genre stop being a warning — and an informative one?
Of course, that was swiftly followed by the ever-present reminder that this is kinda my whole issue with survival games and everything being labeled survival, but I digress. Let’s break this down, piece by piece.
Good survival games, to me, place the burden and consequences of your actions/decisions directly on you. Whether it’s a lack of water or food due to poor planning, having to trek miles because you settled far from a required resource, or dying because you didn’t take steps to safeguard yourself — it’s all fair game.
I’m also a huge fan of permadeath — specifically in Green Hell and The Long Dark, less so in other titles where the mechanics have shit balance or are plain broken.
( [pointing at Subsistence] )
So, at this point, the other player went ahead and left a review for the game. Before I share it, I want to point out that I’m personally not a fan of the game. I haven’t played it since it went into paid Early Access, but I did a lot of playtesting (and a short review) way back when. It was very much not my speed — heavily reliant on fancy tech and, to me, just very non-gritty ways of doing things.
Also, the meditation thing was really dumb. (Again, my opinion.)
So here’s the question:
Do players need to allow for genre-specific inclusions or mechanics and not consider them a mark against the game?
Or, to phrase it another way:
Can we take reviews seriously that complain about the inclusion of a genre-specific mechanic, not the execution of the mechanic itself?
Can FPS (first person shooter) players be upset at the inclusion of guns/weapons?
Can fans of a racing game be upset that someone has to lose — or that you have to earn prizes?
Can we not laugh when people complain that Subnautica has too much... ocean?
Or when Amazon reviews give a product five stars while ranting that it didn’t do the one thing it was LITERALLY built for? (Fuck you, Vine Free Reviews.)
Phew, slightly off topic.
If we’re forced (I consider myself forced!) to accept the sprawling ocean that survival games have become — as more and more titles slap on the tag whether it fits or not (it’s a losing battle, believe me, I’ve tried) — and if we’re watching these “survival” games lean into the same hand-holding and spoon-feeding long embraced by other genres…
Shouldn’t survival game fans also understand that sometimes survival actually means figuring shit out?
Sometimes it makes more sense that you survived that plane crash without a compass, a pot, a handgun and knife, a backpack, and a clean change of clothes. (Or a car in your pocket.)
Maybe — just maybe — survival means being responsible for your own ass.
So…I dunno.
At the end of the day, don’t be surprised if your survival game lets you die. That’s kinda the point.
(It’s a feature, not a bug.)
That person wants easy mode vs actual survival. they played 18 hrs and only when they died did they pay attention to oh sleeping does not save.
Also they lost the perspective and would of bitched when had sleeping saved game the grizzly would of put them in a death loop since they failed to protect themselves prior to sleeping. that game not really my thing and meditation was not a mechanic that fits in games i play for survival
At one point in the convo, they relayed that TLD was owned but in their backlog. I wanted to go “well definitely don’t fucking play that game if you hate things with no handholding or teaching.”