Elden Ring shows what is currently going wrong in video game development

Elden Rings success is actually quite easy to explain, the game hits a nerve and produces something that many have missed. This concept of industry is well known, as Warzone, Counter-Strike, Minecraft, Dota and many other games show.

• Elden Ring: Junishless, but not joyless
• The greatest strength of the video games is ignored far too much
• Elden Ring as a trend reversal?

I Comment from Daniel Hartmann

Elden Ring: Junishless, but not joyless

The games from From Software have been no longer an insider tip ** for a long time, a real secret is actually only the correct spelling of the studio from Japan. In the previous games, the number of players also climbed from the "niche product" category over time, but from Software has not yet experienced such a sale as with Elden Ring.

Now, of course, this is not because suddenly millions of players discovered the desire to have hundreds of times clap from the same boss. This striking feature is for hardcore fans, even if you may not like to hear it, not the reason for success. A sensible discussion about it often fails due to understanding the difference between level of difficulty and accessibility. The fact is, such options are, whether in relation to one or the other, as the word already suggests, optionally and do not take anything away.

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But I didn't want to open the barrel at all and write myself in rage. So to what Elden Ring does so well. I also do it briefly, hardly anyone can bear how positive about this game is talked about. As a gamer of the world, you finally want to get upset, EA and Blizzard just spoil us. Fortunately, the graphic from Elden Ring is only "quite good" and from software pass a few mistakes for the patches - otherwise it would hardly be endured.

But now finally to the strengths of Elden Ring. On the one hand there would be the coherent design of the world and its characters and monsters. These things reinforce the topic that everyone raves about: The Open World . The intermediate lands feel like an organically emerging world and meet the already mentioned nerve called the thirst for adventure. Instead of working out markings on a card, I explore the game world and look forward to discovering things, not because the game tells me, but because I saw this castle in the distance and just wanted to know what is there. We would also have arrived on the actual topic of this article.

The greatest strength of the video games is ignored far too much

What does that have to do with Warzone, Counter-Strike, Minecraft or Dota? Don't worry, the games are not just for Google in the second set, we will come immediately. What I have just described in the beginning is the biggest difference between video games and all other media. It is the interaction with the medium video game itself. I, the player, am part of the game and influence what happens, how it happens and when it happens. Elden Ring does not take us by the hand, it throws us into his world, lets us do it and do not restrict us. Our scope of action is (almost) the entire game. There is even an increase of players and players.

The games mentioned above are only exemplary for games, genres, companies, whose success is based on the fact that gaming communities were given things like modding tools or map editors and they have been made. The Battle Royale genre goes back to the Minecraft plug-in Hunger Games (inspired by the films of the same name) and then went the well-known path via the Dayz-Mod for ARMA 2 over many stations up to the mainstream genre that is so popular today. Where would Activision be without a Warzone today and would Microsoft still be worth almost $ 70 billion? One could formulate a similar question about Steam. The Half-Life-Mod Counter-Strike is still the first-person shooter par excellence. The entire MOBA genre won as a MAP for Blizzard's Starcraft in popularity and then became the largest e-sports genre through Dota 2 and League of Legends via the Warcraft 3 map. What would the story of the largest digital platform for PC games Steam look like without Counter-Strike and Dota?

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Elden Ring as a trend reversal?

So video game developers have had extremely good experiences with it , giving players freedom, not prescribing everything and doing something independently from a game. At first glance, it may seem somewhat abstract , Elden Ring's game concept with modding and the like in a pot, but behind both there is the same idea and the same recipe for success. There are currently simply too many games that are designed as a straightforward product and give the player the way.

Of course, this does not work with every game or genre, but it just takes more games like Elden Ring. The potential of the medium of video game is simply too great to waste it in too many soulless products, when they could be the most in Imming and limitless works of art. Yes, with all the beautiful idealism it has to pay off anyway. Maybe how Elden Ring? From software has not reinvented the video game and there are various games that also do what Elden Ring does right. Maybe Elden Ring will initiate a trend reversal, I would like it to me.