Company uses ads to attract customers. Outrageous. Did not this ship sail a hundred plus years ago. Is it the medium of ad? Fun fact my kids only want to watch streamers, they have no idea what network “wait until a specific time for your show” television even is. I am not using hyperbole.
Indeed, it is cyberpunk as fuck.
Same for mine, except they are too young to be let loose on YouTube or twitch but Netflix managed to thoroughly spoil them for a la carte tv. They just won’t stand for that shit and consider it cruel and unusual punishment to not be able to choose what they watch.
The fuck off my lawn.
No, he should be Tomsplaining how the game works in the tutorial.
CraigM
1812
Hell my kids are watching PBS right now, but on the PBS Kids app for the Tv, so it is shows on demand.
They can’t stand watching OTA broadcast scheduling.
I would draw a distinction here between journalists and critics. Critics in all fields are influencers. It’s not their job to do investigative journalism (though there is some crossover), it’s their job to offer a well-reasoned opinion on a book/movie/game/album/whatever, and to be a general expert in the field. Even in gameland one would like this work to be done well and honestly.
As for uncovering the next Watergate, yeah, there’s not a lot of that kind of Woodward and Bernstein journalism going on in the game space. Most people who work for these sites are not trained journalists; they’re just gamers who can write well. There’s been a bit of evolution in that sphere, though there could certainly be more.
Games Industry dot biz is on the journalistic side rather than the critic side of things as one example.
Kotaku dig deeper than most on some stuff…
I liked the “New Games Journalism” “school” of writing that flickered, roared, and died during the W Administration. It was passionate and sentimental, and tried to lead the reader into the subjective view of the writer’s head. For explaining the worth of a pastime, this was more effective than an objective “X game sold Y copies and each player collects Z rat skins”.
(This link is updated and was what the first post in this thread was pointing to. Though only two of the original links in that article still point to the articles.)
Edit: though, to Gordon’s point, sure, these critics came down on the Influencer side more than the Journalist side.
You also have stuff like the Jimquisition which, while not exactly Woodward-and-Bernstein, is certainly happy to gadfly the industry with “make the powerful uncomfortable” as a lodestar. That’s more opinionated editorializing than actual reporting, though.
ShivaX
1818
Companies put their big fans in their games sometimes.
Here is the thing. Cohh is a CDPR fan boy and he’ll tell you as much. It’s not some devious mind trap or anything. He’ll openly tell you, several times a day, that he’s a fan boy.
He was also a massive Fallout fan boy, and then he took a massive shit on Fallout 76 and basically declared that Bethesda was dead.
No one freaked out when they made Burke Black a character in Total War Warhammer 2. Because Burke is an unapologetic Total War fan boy and everyone knows it. It’s on the record for years at this point.
Now if CDPR had pulled some random streamer out of their ass? Sure. If they’re like “Ninja is in Cyberpunk!!” everyone would rightly say “why the hell is Ninja in Cyberpunk?” But Cohh? That just makes sense. He loves them, they love him, no one should be surprised by it really.
That’s a fair point – often the fanboys are the ones who critique a game the hardest, because for them it’s personal. You’ll never find more vitriol aimed at Ultimas 8 and 9, for example, than from hardcore fans of the series.
He has been pursuing roles in voice acting for over a year now, with 3 pending credits. I can’t really speak to the full extent of his voice talent, but this isn’t a case of companies sticking a streamer into a game for kicks.
But isn’t Jesse Cox is playing Jesse Cox in Cyberpunk? They don’t exactly seem opposed to putting streamers in the game.
I didn’t say anything about the practice of actually sticking a streamer in the game, or whether CDPR was above/below/whatever the practice. I said the Cohh situation wasn’t a case of a company just sticking a streamer in the game. My understanding is he’s voicing an actual character in the game, not “Cohh Carnage” (he did not do mocap, but he did other stuff so they could make the character resemble him; can’t remember what specifically it was).
I don’t know where exactly it is I draw the line on involving famous fans in projects, but I can tell you that Ed Sheeran in Game of Thrones was definitely too much for me.
I don’t even love that Keanu is in the game looking like himself, and I’m a bit of a fan of his. But whatever, it’s fine. I’m hopeful they will pull it off.
Of course I don’t even know who this streamer is so it isn’t going to be as immersion breaking as just having Adele show up in a nightclub or something singing and giving out quests.
CraigM
1825
See for me, not knowing who Ed Sheeran was, it worked just fine.
Same. Sometimes ignorance is bliss!
Yeah, all these streamers and youtubers are just generic NPCs to me!
ShivaX
1828
Likewise. Maybe we’ll get an Illusive Man out of it, but it doesn’t feel like it. He’s too much Action Hero at the end of the day.
Yeah, if you have no connection to them, then they’re just random NPCs at the end of the day.
Which, honestly, tends to work better, imo.
I also find it odd to be in worlds that are supposedly mostly our own where X celebrity doesn’t exist.
It becomes like Last Action Hero to me.
