Why games are too big 

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His house’s destruction arc is slowly yet rapidly evolving

The continuity of your cardboard house as it slowly falls into disrepair and ruin is such a nice touch in all of your non-animated videos.

The initial impression I got from this video was that those people were trashing developers for not being able to meet the standards set by Larian Studios, but going back and viewing the videos in full individually now it seems like they were just lamenting the predatory nature of a lot of AAA companies. I'm sure a lot of people would appreciate some sort of follow-up to this video, especially when you straight up insult other creators and talk about how there's much more integrity on your end. I think the discussion those creators were trying to have was that the tweet thread was missing the point of why so many people are dissatisfied with the state of AAA games and why so many are giving BG3 extra praise. Something along the lines of "We're not saying 'Every AAA game should be like this' we just want our games to work and not be predatory!". Not saying there weren't people accusing him of saying things he didn't, just saying the ones you cited weren't those people and it's unfair to paint them as such.

Man I don't know about Y'all but when I initially heard that "setting a new standard" thing my first train of thought was not "yeah other games need to be as big as BG3" my train of thought was just, yeah, this QUALITY of game should be the standard, nothing to do with the size of amount of content, but the quality. The quality of a product that actually felt finished, like it wasn't trying to nickel and dime me, something that was trying to just waste my time, bloated mess. The size and amount of content was nothing to do with it, rather the quality of the content and being something actually worth my money and by that notion I really do feel BG3 sets the standard.

Something crazy about this is that the film industry has been suffering in almost THE EXACT SAME WAY.

It's also worth noting that, even with Baldur's Gate 3 being a huge, huge swing, it's a lot more focused than people give it credit for. Almost all of the systems in the game were built piecemeal over the last three games Larian has built, all three of them in a genre considered by many to be _pretty niche and unprofitable_ up until just very, very recently. All of the money they spent, all of the content they built, that started from a rock solid foundation of already having one of the best CRPG engines and teams in the world, and even THEN they spend so much time and money making it that it was a risky moonshot.

I love that the examples you used for studios shutting down for making games way too big was the studio that made Gollum and the Saints Row Remake.

Noodle we have to know, where did the middle of LegacyKilla's clip go?

Armored Core 6 was great imo. It didn’t promise some big open world or grand things, it just provided a new game in a series I enjoyed. Good gameplay kept me playing for hours.

I remember a comment from an Escapist video that really stuck with me: The main pitfall of voting with your wallet is that there isn't a true 'no' vote; only 'yes' and 'abstain'. It made more sense the more I thought about it. I can't exactly give a company negative money, and me not buying 1 unit of a product does not cancel out someone else buying 1 unit of the same. A company is only realistically going to care about how many people bought their game, not how many conscientious objectors there were. Audiences both casual and enthusiast will eat up whatever slop hits the table (no we can't just go blaming casuals again for stupid monetary decisions, they're not the only complicit party in this mess), and the machine grinds ever forward. Short of a mass exodus of these people who otherwise aren't inclined to stop their purchasing habits, nothing will realistically change. People need to ask what they want out of a game, truly, but it's going to be an uphill battle convincing people to care about it. Anyways, everything will be paradise as soon as we turn Bobby Kotick into a fucking pizza.

no one expects small or medium sized teams to make bg3 level games everyone was talking about AAA teams

You got me until the Mimimi part. Framing that the studio shut down because they made an exceedingly high quality game is very dishonest

Glad you showed Outer Wilds. That is the most gamely feeling game I've played in the last decade. Like, this is what being hooked into a good mystery and actually wanting to discover feels like.

The biggest mistake made is that Destin shifted the conversation to be about AAA studios with a billion scapegoat subsidiares they can kill off if they take a loss and not the AA studios with some actual stakes in the situation, studios and names you're barely if ever going to hear about unless they score big like with Supergiant and even Larian.

I don't need _BIG_ games, I want _GOOD_ games. Most of my favourite games are listed to last between 10 and 30 hours, but that doesn't account for my fond memories or replayability. I can still fire up my PS2 and play Spyro if I want to, and I would because it was a good game then and is still good now! In fact, I played Stardew Valley earlier, and I'll be playing Earthbound some more later! Lariann made a great game, and it was obviously the game they wanted to make, but that's not the game to make for every studio out there. They gave us a shining beacon of possibilities, but behind that they have YEARS of experience and a company morale unlike any other. _We can only hope that big name studios will give their devs enough time and stable jobs to polish their games half as much, but sadly they'll probably take all the wrong lessons from the success of BG3..._

Fun fact: Noodle's house crumbling down is actually a metaphor of his argument and credibility falling down as the video goes on. Truly, an epic gaming poem.

From an engineer's standpoint, it's actually really wild to see the ways focusing on the bottom line indirectly impacts the end product. Take Halo Infinite, for example. Microsoft and leadership at 343 started running the studio in the same way they would any other software development house: short-term project-focused contract workers provided the lion's share of the technical staff, and the full-time employees were mostly in non- or semi-technical managerial positions. This ended up coming around to bite them in the ass when the overhauled the Blam engine into the Slipspace engine. All of the contract workers who built the engine and understood how it worked, all ended up leaving once their contracts expired, in turn leaving 343 with huge gaps in their institutional knowledge. New devs ended up having to quite literally literally figure out how the engine worked before they could start developing it, which caused massive delays in dev timelines. Now they're switching Halo over to Unreal, which does not require that institutional knowledge that an in-house engine requires; new devs just need to know how to use Unreal in order to hit the ground running, making short-term contract workers a more viable model.

I read a comment somewhere that said that the reason why BG3 level caps at 12 is because at level 13 in D&D, you gain access to the reality-warping spells. The developers wanted to give players the freedom to approach the game from any direction, but with those sets of spells it would have been too crazy and untenable. So even Larian had to limit themselves and the players, and they found a good workaround for it.

the new standard is completed games. the quality required is 'not full of gambling/gacha/fomo garbage.' we want to have fun. i don't care how the chef made the dish - i know he worked hard on some level in my brain, don't get me wrong. and chefs have bad days, i get it. not every single time he makes his signature burger will it be as mind blowing as that first time. but bro. homie. dawg. AT LEAST KILL THE COW BEFORE YOU SELL IT TO ME. Imagine, if you will, if someone forgot to color the newest animated show. just no color. its not an artistic choice. they just didn't pay anybody to shade and color shit. you get line art. AND NOW THEY WANT TO CHARGE YOU FOR EACH FRAME COLORED AFTER YOU'VE ALREADY EXPERIENCED THE INCOMPLETE PIECE. And yes it's done with AI because they'd be damned if they spent their money on actually making a good product for their consumer at the expense of the bottom line. DUDE. IT'S NOT ACCEPTABLE. NOT IN ANIMATION, NOT IN LIVE ACTION, AND SO WHY IN THE NAME OF ANYTHING SHOULD IT BE OKAY IN GAMING? It shouldn't be. That's the answer. And PS: don't shill for AAA. They don't care about you and if you let them pay your bills you'll get shut down by the very corps you tried protecting and working for because you stopped turning a profit for them.

the intentional lying in question:

I think the framing of the conversation is why people are agreeing with the guy in the IGN video and giving these takes. Like this wasn't a thing when Tears of the Kingdom came out or even Elden Ring both having huge scopes that delivered everything while still being polished. Its appealing to everyone's sensibility that these scummy business transactions gotta stop, it's a shame they took it out on devs instead of the executives that forced these features to begin with

The best game I played recently was a game called Freshly Frosted. It was a short, puzzle game about making a donut factory. It wasn't like... a mega factory game, it had levels and themes and a chill background story. I finished it in a few days in-between working. It wasn't big or revolutionary, it was fun. I think that's what we've forgotten, we want to have fun.

Anyone else rewatching this video after the ArchWizard CJ video where he dissects every single fucking thing Noodle has said?

I like when you removed context from what some guy was saying in his video and then you stitched the audio with overlayed footage to make it look unedited, that’s amazing. (Edit: This is the most attention one of my comments or any post online has ever gotten. Honestly, it's a little scary. I never intended for a giant flamewar to happen. I knew some argument was possible but all I usually see is like 3 comments below mine. I know my tone in the original message is snarky, but in my opinion Noodle deserves it. Us? We shouldn't be at each others throats, we should be searching for the truth. (And tbh I think we found it in Killa's video)

I always took it as BG3 delivering on the scope it promised and advertised compared to almost every other AAA game out there. If more companies were realistic about telling us what people should as far as their games scope expect maybe we wouldn’t be in these situations as often

"Cringe cometh before the growth." Wise words to live by.

You see after watching both ArchWizard's video and this back to back, I feel like there was a big misconception here with what general people meant as the new """"standard"""" (and some people probably meant it even more differently than what I'm about to say. Thats how the internet works. Its impossible to generalize because there will always be a sizeable group of people who feel differently.) Noodle and Nelson thought the "standard" meant to a video game's scope and size and features, when people actually meant as a "standard" of quality, stability, and completeness. If there were more people arguing that AAA studios should make their games bigger in size and features (and I'm sure there are people who do, this is the internet) then Noodle and Nelson have a point. Its honestly the whole argument this video is based on. But there were people who were aruging that AAA studios should make their games stable, complete, and to a pleasant quality of not just Baldur's Gate 3, but great games of the past we look back on. Two completely different argument context. I'm sure there were people out there argued the points Noodle was debating (although he used youtuber footage that was discussing the different context so take that what you will) but thats not EVERYONE'S mindset on the debate of industry standard. Its like two groups of very loud people debating each other but they're not in the same room. tl;dr Arguing over the internet is a fools errand unless you can get an immediate 1 on 1 level to provide as needed context and clarification. Save your time and mental space.

Can you at least make a response video Edit: Shit nevermind I was wrong perhaps noodle did little wrong.

“Tragically, the subject is nuanced.” “Knowing is half the battle, and battle is half the Royale.” No idea which one is my favorite

I've worked on multiple titles where scale and pressure to make something too big absolutely killed the studios involved. One of the largest and most successful titles I ever worked on succumbed to this. At the time, we had a massive fanbase and loads of hype. What started as a rewrite of the core killed the project and led to the studio more or less dissolving into nothing because of the sheer number of times it was remade, expanded in scope, and had new next gen features/tools added to it. We had everything we needed including developers, hype, funding, and drive, and STILL failed. The game that was just a week from releasing fully now won't ever be played.

The problem with constantly watching videos like these is when your brain mistakenly thinks the idea that popped into your head is an original one. I (re)watch your and Hbomberguy’s videos enough to have ideas seared into my brain. This time I though, “hmm I don’t agree.” I looked at Mimimi Game’s statement, read and watched Nelson’s thread, with the intent to do a, “I disagree and here’s why.” Except the “disagreement” is just me restating everything that came after the ad break. It’s subconscious plagiarism which is interesting and concerning, maybe. Every time it happens I’m like, “oh, so that good idea wasn’t original.”

I think this is an issue of two sets of people talking past each other. Game devs don't like the idea of gamers using what is basically an Olympic gold medalist for every studio with publisher backing. Players are getting tired of living in an era where a lot of their favorite franchises keep disappointing. Both sides are trying to communicate this point, some more successfully than others. And a lot of people, whether intentionally or unintentionally keep missing the point and twisting words. Leaving us once again in a discussion about games where taking part just makes most parties miserable and mad.

It's really weird how everyone "wants" bigger games but everyone only plays the main story and the people that complete it fully are like 2% (trust me getting 100% in some games takes too much time when I want to play other games)

Hey why did you alter that Legacy Killer vid at around 9 mins? Really odd to do that.

“Don’t tax businesses, you’re going to hurt small businesses” is essentially the incorrect argument being made

You've reiterated that none of these things guarantee a good game, but I feel like another important point is that a good game doesn't guarantee financial success. So even if you COULD guarantee the game would be good, it STILL wouldn't be worth taking the risk.

I remember being on that whole "vote with your wallets" mentality in the past because I felt very overwhelmed by the constant use of techniques that are used to either maximize profit or artificially increase player retention, trying to convince others that they should stop buying skins or ignore these kind of second job challenges most life service games have now a days. It took me some time (and several good RU-vid videos similar to this one) to realize that I can't really do anything about it, so instead I just decided to stop playing these games outright since microtransactions, tedious tasks and other things corporations do to "make arrow go up" just heavily depreciated my experience as a player. And ever since I have never been happier playing videogames: Had a blast with Armored Core 6 and For Answer since I have never ever played a proper mech game, Pseudoregalia managed to make me not suck at 3D exploration, Friends vs Friends solved my question of what would happen if everyone had a gun playing UNO and BattleBit Remastered made me feel like I was in an actually war somehow. When I see people saying "there's no good games anymore", it kinda looks like they either have a hard time finding games that suit their preferences or can't get themselves to try other things, and I kinda wish I could help those people change their mind so they could have more fun too (or at least less frustration).

My favorite thing about this video is how it stitches together clips to change their context while gaslighting and insulting me with the intent of trying defend big Corpo's right to sell me a 70$ game with 10,000$ of microtransactions that isn't even functional. I'm glad there are creators out there who have the rich corporate overlords interests in mind and seek to protect them and their right to rip me off with their crappy, unfinished, over-monetized products. Thank you, Noodle!

This take that fundamentally misunderstood and intentionally mischaracterized the arguments of people Noodle disagreed with genuinely makes me retroactively look back on Noodle videos and see them in a worse context than before. Nothing about this video isn’t embarrassing

Nelson's thread is like water. When added to nicely steaming vegetables it's nice, welcome even. When added to soup - it's barely noticeable. What he didn't predict was that the gaming industry has been cooking up some deep fried chicken with EXTRA dip. And the whole thing just exploded.

I just want to add that I personally tend to enjoy shorter games much more than longer games, because they are short. I like a good ending, and playing more short games means more chances for strong endings, I know many short games how have been able to write really meaningful stories with meaningful endings. I also tend to game in waves, sometimes I have a lot of time available, sometimes I do not. I often find it much harder getting back into the vibe of a longer game than a shorter one, so I end up letting a lot of long games sit on the shelf telling myself that I need to take the time to get into it again, but never really doing so. Also it is much less of a risk for me as a buyer, if a game ends up not being my thing (which has happened with some highly acclaimed games for me) it is much less of a loss of investment of time and money. It is also much easier to buy smaller cheaper games as gift, or recommend them to people not as invested (jet) in gaming.

Damn, imagine fabricating an entire argument with cherry picked information.

Hey, maybe the next time you use some of LegacyKilla's footage you should use the whole footage instead of cutting out the middle of the sentence you're quoting?

You hit me too hard with that “could kill an entire GROUP of studios” part. Rip Pandemic & Lionhead Studios. You were legends. 🍺

When I realized people were searching "hours of playtime" to decide the games they buy, I knew we went wrong somewhere

me when I lie and make and present a 23 minute and 51 second long strawman argument

"Cringe cometh before the growth" is one of the wisest things ever uttered on this platform. I will use this phrase frequently, thank you!

I love how Noodle is continually like "I'm not engaging in the conversation because the conversation is stupid, here's why and here's the conversation we should be having". It's really enlightening.

oh boy, I sure wish there were sources in the description to see the full context for the clips you've provided. :)

This video makes me sad. Not only were people taken out of context to reduce a genuinely compelling critique of AAA gaming’s poor treatment of developers and consumers into “gamers are petulant children who hate developers being able to see their families”, but that it’s bland. This video just asks for things to stay exactly as they are. The video on Crunch Culture, on the other hand, was subversive, interesting, accurately represented the toll that the gaming community has on developers, and (most importantly) asked for change/improvement in the system. This video, comparatively, doesn’t try to say anything beyond: “Don’t rock the boat.” - which is exactly the kind of thinking that allows for exploitative systems (like releasing games half-finished AND crunch culture) to spread and become AAA standard. It feels like a step back. I really hope that Noodle continues to make things, I really like his stuff, but it’s just depressing to see someone who I thought was an advocate for better practice in the industry shut down productive conversation.

I think you're right that not every new game should try to be huge, however that doesn't excuse AAA games gross negligences in other aspects 💀

For me, what I appreciated most about Baldurs Gate 3 was that it was finished and there weren’t any micro transactions or a battle pass being forcefully shoved up my ass. Idrc about “scale” as long as the game I spent 60 bucks on isn’t broken or trying to rob me I’m chill. It’s kinda dumb that ppl expect every game in existence to have a million hours of gameplay when most games don’t need it

the lies are strong with this one.

In which Noodle makes a video warning the gaming community to stop cannibalizing eachother over rage-bait formed from a misunderstanding, then gets hounded by the gaming community because of rage-bait formed from someone misunderstanding his video.

I'm glad someone is finally being reasonable about this. Games have fallen to the same trap as movies where budgets and scale has gone crazy, increasing the risk drastically, and encouraging low risk iterative sequels and cash grabs to compensate. BG3 is a fantastic lesson in quality and unapologetically niche gameplay actually succeeding, and devs should take note. But the sheer scale is simply unfeasible and even Larian is unlikely to take such a risk again. If BG3 had failed, I doubt Larian would even exist anymore, and such a constant risk as standard would be unhealthy for the industry Seriously. The replies under Nelsons thread read like replies to a completely different post

The biggest problem with voting with your wallet is that some get a LOT more votes than others.

Yeahh sorry man but I feel like this video is really geared in a direction of "gamers are too stupid to understand" Baldur's Gate 3 isn't being praised because its a giant game in pure scale. Its praised because in a one time purchase, highly immersive, fantastic RPG experience that can be player solo or with friends, and it doesnt have any microtransations, battle passes, or anything. Larian set out to make a great game for the people who wanted to play it and it just really shows through in their work. It was a breathe of fresh air when every game now is asking me to make some sort of account to play, is trying to sell me a million things, or wont function without the internet. It's just a fantastic high-quality game with passionate and transparent devs that does what it says on the tin. I bought and played the game for 60 dollars and I feel like I ROBBED the developers. We just dont get games like that anymore, theres always a catch or a publisher that intervened that will fuck SOMETHING up with the final product or hold it back

BG3 didn't RAISE any kind of standard, it simply MET the standard. The standard was set back in the 7th gen of consoles by games like Halo 3, the original MW2 and World At War CoD games, Skyrim, Fallout NV, Last of Us 1, Portal 2, Half Life 2, Red Dead Redemption, Dead Space, etc. Nobody is saying all games need to be huge open-worlds RPGs. That's not the standard. What all games SHOULD be is functional at launch & not constantly pleading with me to take out my wallet after I've already bought the game. That's the standard BG3 met. These days fewer and fewer AAA games meet THAT standard. BG3 does. Most stuff coming from Nintendo and From Software does.

I also think No Man’s Sky is a bad precedent too. It was broken at launch but they took years to fix and support it with free new content. I think it’s awesome that they did that, but it shouldn’t be expected. I could see this sort of thing killing a studio that might have otherwise cut their losses and made a new better game with more achievable scale

people kept telling me there were tons of devs complaining about BG3, but anytime I asked for a source, they could only point to the 3 (very tame) tweets/threads in the ign video, so the vast majority of this was people making up something to be mad about, which should be surprising, but is not.

Reminder: he cut and edited videos falsley to support his argument. Hes a liar.

Bro. My dude. If your entire argument was already solid, why did you have to remove the context and splice LegacyKillaHD's video? You literally forged the actual line to fit your narrative. He literally said that it wasn't valid for smaller studios and indie, which was your entire point. Why did you remove that line to fit the narrative that all content creators were above their heads? That's straight up lying regardless of reason. You literally lied to put yourself on a pedestal, nice one.

Oh and about the new standards and too big of sizes. BG3 isnt a new standard, its simply a return to the old standard the companies worked for 20 years to erode into nothing.

The strangest thing is that we have unknowingly cultivated the perfect environment for developers to shine thanks to the Internet, social media and worldwide releases. Before, when a lower-budget title was put out, it wasn't even guaranteed to break even unless it was from a popular franchise. But now, there's enough intrinsic publicity that a game with a small budget, small scope, but sincere quality should be able to do well if it comes from a AA or AAA studio, without having to jump through the hurdles of overpromise and crunch culture. What I'm saying is that if Gravity Rush came out today, even with the same level of marketing it had back then, it would have sold a lot more. The same could be said for basically any PS2 horror game.

I think the saddest part is that the Gamers™ are SO close to hitting the nail on the head. Holding studios accountable for shitty practices or lazy design choices is definitely important and understandable for a hobby you (probably) spend hundreds of dollars a year in. The problem is there's a collective misconception in how game development actually *works* and people just assume that these problems boil down to "LOL DEVS JUST LAZY. LOOK AT BALDUR GATES". Meanwhile the shareholders and executives are counting their big golden dubloons in the corner. BG3 was lightning in a bottle, they had the planets align and it's great that the world got to see it. Expecting every RPG moving forward to be the same without taking to account the circumstances in which they are made is supremely small-brained. (Nelson also explained this and people were still like "GIVE ME ONEEE GOOD REASON") If you want more games like Baldur's Gate, urge the suits at the top to funnel exponentially more time, more staff and a lot more money into their products. Don't harass individual developers like an asshole.

"One could make the argument... that one should do more research before spreading misinformation to millions of people... but not me." Well, yes, of course, you did a lot of research into different RU-vidrs talking about this debacle to make your misinformation sound smarter. Very cool and good! I do enjoy a well researched shifting of the goalposts complete with clip splicing and context removal.

Honestly, who is arguing that games need to be as big as BG3? All the discourse I've seen is saying that AAA games should be held to a certain level of quality that BG3 was able to achieve and scale does not equal quality. The scale of BG3 is definitely impressive and there is a focus on scale in the industry right now but that's more an issue of corporate game companies still chasing Breath of the Wild's success. I especially don't see the point that people expect indie games to be that big; I haven't heard that once as a legitimate argument outside of a few dumb twitter people running rage engagement accounts. The main concern is AAA studios imposing crunch on staff, maximizing profit rather than allocating budgets effectively, and the company heads bloating their own scale with the open world format and feature creep. BG3 is great not because of how big it is but how tight and fun the game is while being in a workable state at launch that justifies a 70 dollar price tag. That's what people mean when they say "this should be the standard". We don't want every game to come out of every studio to be these 100GB+ epic open world RPGs with tons of dialogue, environment interactions, combat scenarios, etc. We want fun games that are not half baked concepts or buggy messes out the door as fast as possible in order to turn profit for giant studios. Hell that's the reason indie games are getting so huge and have been for a while. Look at shit like Cult of the Lamb, Hollow Knight, Tunic, Undertale, Cassette Beasts, A Short Hike, Night in the Woods, these games aren't massive but they're fun, polished, and heartfelt. People cared and were given time to refine what they wanted to a point where people could enjoy their story fresh out of the box and I don't see anyone going up to these games and saying "why isn't this as big as BG3?" So yeah, Noodle, I like your stuff but this critique was definitely misguided in my opinion. I don't believe the anger or harassment at Nelson was at all justified and I think anyone saying games NEED to be 50+ hours to be good are dumb. Those are the two things I agreed with. However it's hard to even go after anything in this video because I've legitimately never heard any of these criticisms you're going after made in good conscience. They're arguments made at someone who either isn't there or such a minority in this discussion that it's hardly even worth discussion. Edited Addition: Also, uh, having watched the "discourse" section again, I have to say I'm disappointed. The sheer amount of cherry picking and context removal for the explicit purpose of attacking people for an argument they never made is honestly shocking to me. The IGN video was about how corporate greed is compromising gaming experiences, Charlie and the Official Podcast crew were saying that BG3 is good because it works at launch and is fun directly comparing to other massive titles like Cyberpunk 2077, Act Man was talking about worker exploitation and crunch in the AAA gaming space making a product's quality secondary to profit, and ENDYMIONtv was talking about exploitative business practices like battle passes and DLC and unfinished products being rushed out compared to quality full games on release like Elden Ring or FF16. Nowhere, even in the videos you didn't decide to discuss from Asmon and Spell&Shield, in those videos did anyone say that scale is a mandate for quality. It's honestly insulting to the people who you went after to pin them as irrational while also removing the entire context of what they're saying to paint a picture of them being mad that "game isn't big enough". And to patronize them by saying that they're not journalists, they're "misguided consumers conditioned in a way you and the "proper people" are experienced enough not to be" is genuinely scummy and insulting. It's an attempt to discredit these people without even hearing their actual point so you can stand on a soap box. I'm also sick of people throwing insults and blatant disrespect around for 20 minutes just to try and band-aid the issue with "this isn't meant to insult people". I understand taking the piss and playful jabs when it comes to making this stuff entertaining to watch but when you spend an entire video calling people immature ignorant selfish assholes you can't just say "this is for productive conversation" and magically the way you've been characterizing the opposing side becomes balanced and respectable. Same thing using MiMiMi as an example even though they were an indie studio (not AAA) who disbanded due to work/life balance concerns and not overloading their scope and going bankrupt. Not to mention the companies you showed as examples of "scope killing studios" did not die due to scope. Some failed due to making bad quality games like Forspoken and Gollum: Lord of Ring, and the rest were assimilated into companies like Microsoft and EA and promptly shut down when they wore out their usefulness to them. (This bit I originally found in ArchWizard CJ's video on the topic but upon further research, yeah, scope was never an issue for these studios). That's the entire argument, big corporations are shitting the bed with quality and it's time to expect more out of these big budget studios. We're not talking about baby gamer rage, we're talking about shit like Diablo 4, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Cyberpunk 2077 (on release), Forspoken, the Saints Row Reboot, and so many more. It hurts to see someone who I respect and have sourced in the past do stuff like this and I hope that some growth happens. Until that point I'm going to be very cautious of any serious points you make going forward Noodle.

Scott the Woz is the perfect example of a "wisepilled" gamer

My main take away from the entire situation is that, in a perfect world, games would be made, published, and funded by people who love games. Who love the stories they’re making. That’s what gave Larian the time and funding for Baldur gate to be great (in the first 2 acts). Except that’s not reality. Corporate capitalism rules all. All hail the mouse.

Gonna be honest I saw the title and thought this would be a video about why game size is bloated nowadays and why some games are over a hundred gigs in size.

I agree, sonic inflation is insane these days

In game jams, you want to make entries really short and sweet not just for ease of development, but also for the ratings. A big and ambitious game is a good way to make people feel confused or overwhelmed, and they'll have a lot of other games to get through if they're rating submissions. Most jam games I've played or made get to the point quickly and can be beaten in no more than an hour.

The only thing i've heard that we want from AAA games is that they are better games not bigger, i have not heard a AAA game to be too small. If they can't make good games that size, then scale it down and not prize it at 70$

4:25 none of these studios got shut down for making w mega game.

"The Crunch Culture Conundrum" plays into this video EXTREMELY fucking well. You are single-handedly giving people the tools to educate themselves.

"Cringe cometh before the growth, we're only gamers" hardest quote ever

Me when I post a strawman argument and give videos and statements with missing context and post it on RU-vid specifically to make people think that BG3 is too big for the gaming industry when in reality, Gamers want the triple A industry to change, not the indie games:

Noodle lies spread the world

Games don't need to be big, they need to be good. At the very least, games need to be games. I have not played a single AAA game in the last 5 years, and I don't think I've missed much

I think the main issue is just the fact that big icons in the gaming industry misunderstood what the initial argument was and when sharing their thoughts just create echo chambers on tweeter. I dont have a tweeter account but when i heard about this issue from the actman i believe that the argument was that game companies simply saw how many players enjoyed a complete, high quality game that can be played at launch and started to get worried that consumers would hold companies more responsable for their deceptive monitization practices, their practically unplayable games at launch with a perfectly working store. BG 3 was marketed as a full game with no in game store to spend money on and thats what people want.

i am not a big brain gamer, so maybe i don't understand but wouldnt BG3 just being a good game on release be a good thing in general? like, so many great games took years of work and lots of funding, and so did a lot of shitty games. i don't think it's the scope of a game that affects its release outcome, it's the artistic integrity, good workplace practices (not crunching) and genuine passion a studio has for their project. to say that a good, big game existing upon release will harm smaller game studios with greater expectations seems inaccurate - so many indie projects done by small teams release every year to critical acclaim, some of them very small in terms of scope. i mean look at stray, that game is literally just pressing W as a cat and people loved it. Not to mention giant, successful masterful triple A releases have existed for years and have not prevented the indie genre from flourishing? I agree that game studios shouldn't mistreat employees to strive for some ground breaking game, but they were going to do that regardless of how big baldur's gate 3 is yk. who out here is actually saying that game studios should absolutely crunch and make ALL games bigger and better than baldur's gate 3? imagine if when elden ring released the entire gamer community lost its mind and said that every game has to be as big as elden ring now. seems silly. If BG3 was actually an anomaly the gaming industry would have crumbled under its own weight years ago. Every year there are great triple A releases that took lots of time and money that release and are good and were developed sustainably, and every year there is the common ubisoft trash that hurts the industry as a whole. Granted, the latter is the majority, and it's important to talk about why games seem to suck more and more every year coming from massive triple A dev teams. I don't think the answer is that games are getting too fun and too big, so now EVERY gamer expects games that are gigantic. That does a disservice to the entire indie game genre- which is BASED on the idea that games don't have to be gigantic in scope or have tons of funding to still be masterpieces. Good Triple A games are not a symptom of an overworked studio - they're an antithesis to them. Is it really that bad that a big studio made a big game that worked and was also fun? I really can't wrap my head around this. Larian made a functioning game that was also large in scope, a feat that seems harder to accomplish by other triple A studios every year. The reason triple A releases are dipping in quality are because of predatory monetization, and poor treatment of employees (valuing a deadline over quality or health). Larian took their time and used the large amount of resources they had to their advantage and made a great game, as opposed to putting microtransactions in the game and rushing it to release three years too early. So many other good Triple A releases have done the same, Red Dead 2, Tears of the Kingdom, Elden Ring, to name a few. The writing's on the fucking wall! How are we blaming scope when so many other fucking issues are present????

What about the so called "fake editing" allegations you received from ArchWizard recently, Noodle?

This video definitely highlights what I deem to be the biggest issue in gaming right now. Gamers have unknowingly become very addicted to the reward cycles instead of the actual quality moments. I'm probably even guilty of it myself, and at this point so many people are hooked on these quick cash-grab loops that they continue to fund them and make them profitable. Buying a new COD game is a bit like eating junk food. You know it isn't that great, but it hits a certain spot and it's almost like a guilty pleasure. You know you will have something to just hop on and play for a bit if you ever get bored, you still have 20 tiers left in your battlepass after all.

Gamers not understanding the media they “love” is always holding the medium back.

*A mysterious arch wizard approaches you*

So you'd rather have money than respect. But did you know you could have both!

brooo overlaying clips goes harddd

this is why i loved Hi Fi Rush and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, it was a extremely polished short experience and it was super fun to 100% one of the best game i ever played

Bruh you did not fucking put Pandemic and Lionshead on the same tier as 343 Industries and the creators of the fucking Gollum game.

you know, i always got a pretension vibe from the way you spoke

I never understood why people blamed devs instead of, I don't know THE PEOPLE ACTUALITY IN CHARGE!

I remember hearing a line by Yahtzee from "The Escapists" website comparing issues with video games to the "epic film" style that saw a sharp decline around the 1960's. Basically the idea was to make a film about a historical event with mass public appeal, and then spend millions on extras, set pieces, and filming locations. Eventually a movie came out called "The Fall of the Roman Empire" came out, and flopped massively. I wouldn't put much stock into this idea panning out long term. A big failure could even leave to the same thing that happened afterwards, smaller productions receiving adequate funding and time with more creative control. I am cynical about listing smaller projects with niche appeal such as Hypospace Outlaw as an example for the industry as a whole to follow. Additionally while I understand the frustration of the situation, I don't think its a great idea to turn to solely creatives as the solution. From the same source as before, when talking about "Bob's game", a single developer RPG, Yahtzee made a similar statement about how refusing to work (at least in some part) in established systems can be as big of a problem as death by committee. For every success story about a brave vision and dedicated team, there are four about a foolish idea and the toll it took on everyone involved. I feel that these two statements aren't related and can co-exist with each other, there's very few absolutes when it comes to this sort of thing...

He stitched the fucking audio in the middle of Legacy's argument and kept the video to make the illusion it wasn't spliced, what the fuck

most of the clips and info in this video where taking out of context to the point he had to stitch audio for one of them

As a guy that is a little bit of an old school gamer I agree bigger isn't always better. Open world, expansive rpgs, and most battle royales have huge areas where you explore and fight for hours. I don't really get into these and I honestly like more linear objective/mission based games some examples are the monster hunter series, deep rock galatic, devil may cry series, and the earth defense force series. These games offer me a compact and enjoyable experience with plenty of liberty in how I excute said objectives without being as overwhelming as some of the more newer genre's that are out there. Games can feel big without being a massive labor/monetary sync. Roguelites are a great example of some tricks developers can use to make there game feel bigger than what it is. Sorry if I was all over the place with this I might be a little tired.

My GotY this year is genuinely HiFi Rush. As much as I love Baldur's Gate 3 as a D&D nerd, HFR was so unique, charming, focused, and fun that I can't get it out of my head. I'm very grateful that Tango was able to work on this game, and I dread to think about the internal struggle to get the game as polished as it is.

In this video, at 9:29, Noodle plays a clip until 9:40 [10 seconds of audio]. The title of the video cited, is shown on screen. I simply copied the title into YT, found the original video, and at 7:19 the audio taken plays until 7:39 [20... seconds]. You can see, for yourself, right now, 10 seconds of audio missing from this Noodle vid's 9:29 clip quoted directly as "-maybe to the indie and AA developers, which probably Larion could be considered that. But i just dont think thats at all -" . You can hear this section right now, in the original video, that Noodle shows on screen himself. That section, factually, does not appear at 9:29 in this Noodle Video. (Comment from Gecklo). Man, just watched the ArchWizard CJ video. I really think you are a great youtuber but the malicious editing of intentionally taking the gamers opinion out of context is too much, I hope you address this because I really like your content and I want to keep watching you.

This video makes me believe the creator has a word document with hundreds of thousands of words detailing the smell of his farts

I feel like this issue is very much prevalent in the film industry as well, these media products are getting to big to be economically viable, too the point that making half a billion dollars in purchases/box office is considered a financial failure. I think that friendly space ninja's video on 2023 blockbusters works really well as a companion piece/expansion to this topic.