Ubisoft And Guerrilla Developers Ratioed Into Going Private After Complaining That 'Elden Ring' Is So Beloved
It's only been out for 10 days, but FromSoftware's Elden Ring is quite literally shaking up the video game industry. On top of being widely acclaimed as a masterpiece by both fans and critics, it's also drawn the ire of game developers from other companies. Over the weekend, a screenshot featuring a Ubisoft developer, a Sony developer and a Guerrilla Games developer griping about the game's glowing reviews went viral.
The bitter trio in question is Ubisoft's UX director Ahmed Salama, Nixxes Software's Rebecca Fernandez O’Shea and Guerrilla Games' Blake Rebouche, the quest designer for Horizon Forbidden West. Each expressed a gripe via hot take with Elden Ring relevant to their field: Salama said the glowing reviews prove critics "don’t give a flaming poop about Game UX." O'Shea chimed in, "Nor PC graphics, stability and performance, apparently." Rebouche added, "Nor quest design, really."
For gamers, the screenshot was a Chef Kiss of irony. Salama, in particular, drew the brunt of the jokes. Elden Ring has a very bare-bones user interface, as there is oftentimes nothing on the screen except the player and game world. Players will have to press a button to make their items, weapons and health bar appear on the screen. By comparison, Ubisoft games are notorious for having what some call a "cluttered" interface, exemplified by some widely circulated meme demonstrating what Elden Ring might look like if Ubisoft made it.
Rebouche also attracted criticism for complaining about the game's quest design. The quests in Elden Ring, as they are in other FromSoft titles, are very obtuse, and the game does not guide the player into completing sidequests or finishing NPC storylines. By comparison, the Horizon games, such as Zero Dawn, are much more straightforward in instructing the player on what to do and where to go, which is generally the industry standard when it comes to sidequests. Horizon Forbidden West performed very respectfully on Metacritic, netting an 88/100, but few would argue that the game wasn't completely overshadowed by Elden Ring, released one week after.
Hey
Guerrilla</a> I was really excited to play HFW, but after seeing <a href="https://twitter.com/Bigrebo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">Bigrebo's tweet disparagingELDENRING</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/fromsoftware_pr?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">fromsoftware_pr I will never buy or play a game made by this bitter person. It's not From's fault that people stopped talking about HFW. This is classless behavior. pic.twitter.com/wbjBzU4fGm— Joshua Bochicchio (@itheconflict) March 5, 2022
Absolute pure grade copium coming from Horizon Forbidden West's senior quest designer pic.twitter.com/cPVFcfA0Ac
— Triodug (@Tri0dug) March 4, 2022
On top of the pile-ons in the QRTs, many felt that the developers from competing studios throwing potshots at another developer's success were in poor taste.
the sad thing is that the three of them are fellow developers. there were lots of devs in that thread being salty and jealous. https://t.co/I5eZcQImUs
— gg (
kupokweh) <a href="https://twitter.com/kupokweh/status/1500404588637474816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 6, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Devs can also act professionally and not shit on another company's game making themselves look like pissed diapered children; further cementing the rift both communities have. <a href="https://t.co/JduHQb7bGD">https://t.co/JduHQb7bGD</a></p>— DAHADOOSHTUBE (dahadooshtube) March 6, 2022
Ubisoft devs mad bc Elden Ring successful despite having "bad UX design" is the biggest cope I've ever seen
— MaxPoetingway @ post MSQ syndrome (@Max_Poetic) March 6, 2022
Though it's only been out a week and the majority of its players aren't halfway done with the game, it's clear we won't see the end of Elden Ring discourse for a long time.
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Iso
It's almost like people play games to see the game and not a million pieces of useless information around the screen.
MCC1701
I always enjoy watching people stirring the pot when a new FromSoft title comes out. Lots of complaining about Sekiro being too hard, this time with Elden Ring probably being their easiest Soulsborne title it's amusing seeing people struggle to find reasons to hate it. Complaining about the UX just tickles me however, given how Elden Ring does a good job being simple but effective while many open world games boast a bloated UI.
In some ways I feel for these devs, who are probably told over and over they need to make their games more guided, more tutorials to ensure people always know how to play, try to achieve maximum accessibility, etc and yet are outshined by a game that doesn't seem to take heed to any of that. Granted that sympathy is lost once they start whining on twitter about it.
lecorbak
The only problem I have with Elden Ring is not really the game itself, but how people buy it "because the game is hype", not "because they want to play it".
It reminds me 2 recent games where the same thing happened : Cyberpunk and New World.
I'm not saying that Elden Ring has the same problems as those 2 games, but then you have people complaining about how the game was "not what they expected" because they "never played a dark souls before" and "just bought it because it was hype".
The opposite is also true.
A game such as Genshin Impact was viewed as "just a Breath of the Wild chinese ripoff" without getting any informations about it, so the first week release was not that great, and the game was only successful because of youtubers being paid to make add for this game + the game was actually pretty good (outside of the gacha aspect of it).
people should stop buying a game because of hype, and instead buy games they want to play.
MCC1701
It baffles me how so many people seem to just follow trends rather than personal tastes. Granted, that's what makes them trends but I can't imagine only watching a movie because marketing makes it seem like everyone is going to see it or playing games because streamers hype it up.
In this case I don't begrudge From Soft the extra level of success this brings them and I've seen a ton of people enjoying their first From Soft title, however there's no shame if the games aren't your cup of tea. I think despite their reputation and how the fanbase can act the games are quite accessible, but it's probably the only genre where I see people demand design concessions rather than just move on to other titles.
Venusgate
Counterpoint: I bought Monster Hunter World from the hype alone – it was definitely not my type of game, and I've never really enjoyed Capcom's stuff.
I put over 1k hours into it, and it is in my top 3 favorite games.
I would have missed out of that if I just stayed in my lane and listened to all the bitching about connectivity issues (which were aggressively patched).
Sometimes, you gotta take a chance, and you are entitled to complain if you spent the money. It's just not helpful if you don't come to understand that you don't like a well-executed game, just because the genre ended up not being your cup of tea.
Phhase
Something something L + ratio + touch grace
RaccoonBL
I'll be the first to defend the outrage here then even as someone who doesn't care about Elden Ring. Criticism is aboult analyzing faults using objective knowledge of the game to help illustrate your point. The purpose of which is then help the creator of the content to then improve on their work.
Just saying something sucks is not critism no matter where it comes from. For starters, how does one even improve from this information? Game UX and Quest design are bad? Then give examples, give reasons why they aren't as good as they could be, then suggest how to improve.
Without that, they really do just sound like they are whining about their game not being as popular. And it is especially bad since they are competing developers.
hipnox
Not feeling the 'outrage' here. Being developers does not make their opinions on the game any less valid, and FromSoftware games aren't above criticism.
FromSoft quests ARE shit and have always been. I don't see the problem with someone who makes videogame quests for a living criticizing another games for poor quest designs.
Adam
it's a bit like, say, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper and The Monkees were like "i see critics don't give a hoot about traditional song structure anymore (eye roll)." I also don't like the implied, "But I was told filling the screen with 400 overlays was peak UX!"
Fallenangel700
Like RaccoonBL said, it's not criticism if they just say it sucks and then refuse to elaborate on it. That's just shit talking. The fact that they are game devs, people that should know how to give valid criticism on this topic, only amplifies this.
And like Adam pointed out; there's an implied snobbishness to it. Like they know better than everyone else what good game design is. There is no singular correct way to do game design.
As for the quests, no, they aren't shit. They are in an undocumented, semi-hidden style with miss-able events. There's nothing wrong with doing quests in this style. Just like there's nothing wrong with a hand-holding, quest log style with unmissable events. It's just two different styles of quest design that work well with different styles of games.
Rynjin
What others have said. The issue is that it's not criticism, it's sour grapes. They're salty this game that everyone loves came out and overshadowed their work.
This is understandable. It has to feel bad to work really hard on something, release it, and then have its release kind of subsumed by something else coming out.
But there's a difference between having those feelings and working them out in private, and being a tacky, no-class child about it on a public forum.
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