Tag: Modding

Starfield is a success: 10 Million players playing this game

Synergy in the Starfield Game

Starfield is one of Xbox’s greatest successes

 It is no surprise that Starfield would be a successful game. Considering the amount of advertising power that placed behind this game, I would say that Bethesda has managed to outdo themselves and release something that will have cultural impact on the video game industry for years to come. It is important remember how important Starfield is to the gaming industry and to Xbox. For the video game industry, Starfield puts confidence back into gamers who were burned after the release of Cyberpunk 2077. It is also important for the Xbox gaming universe as it gives the console an important app that is boosting the sales. Overall, Starfield has been highly successful in more ways than one and that is quite accomplishment by Bethesda, which has been turning out great games year after year. 

Starfield vs Baldur’s Gate III

However, what’s more significant is that 10 million people have decided to take the jump and start playing in a galaxy of possibilities. Considering that Starfield was sold at 69.99 for the regular version and at 99.99 for the premium version. This is one of the reasons for the lower player counts compared to competitors like Baldur’s Gate III and Hogwarts: Legacy. It is important to remember that Starfield is a new IP with very little in the way of previous user experience to drive sales. In mid-July, Bethesda began releasing anime short films of the various characters and factions. These videos generated millions of views, which is amazing considering that these are the only real narrative aspects of Starfield that had been seen other than the release of Starfield Direct in 2023 and the preview that occurred in 2022.  These videos were quite well made and the reception to them by the Starfield community proves that there is interest in the lore of the game. Currently, there is a subreddit called the Starfield Lore and people are discussing the attributes of the universe that Bethesda has created for us to explore. 

Space games are a tough market

Consider that space games are generally not that popular as the gaming community would have us suggest. According to previous posts that I have made on this topic, the space game genre hasn’t sold as well as other genres, such as the fantasy genre. This is one of the reasons that Baldur’s Gate 3 has more players on Steam than Starfield. However, Baldur’s Gate 3, which is amazing achievement in character interaction and graphics, is still a gamer’s game. It appeals to gamers more than the general public, resulting in the game being more popular in the gaming community as whole. Starfield is trying to be a game for everyone, and I call Starfield, the middle-brow game that we saw more in 1990s than today. Starfield can’t really be called a High-Brow game even though it has some of those pretensions. The game is sophisticated enough that it appeals to higher thinking, but it isn’t too sophisticated in that they are unable to hold the great middle that just wants to play a video game. ‘

However, this does not mean that Starfield is a really dumbed down game. This is an incredibly complex game that is easy to learn but hard to master. There are many aspects of Starfield that ensure that this game has longevity long after its release. The ship building aspects and the crafting systems are all important aspects of this game that give it depth and breath at the same time. This is why I believe that Starfield will continue to be successful, and its sales will continue to help uplift Xbox and PC sales.

Starfield is essentially a space game that is trying to appeal to wide audience.

Baldur’s Gate 3 reminds me of the appeal of the classic BioWare games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. They are games made for the gaming community, a particular type of people who are crucial for the industry as they spend alot of their hard-earned money on video games. They are the foundation of what makes the industry turn. Many of the foundational ideas of video games are there in the titles since the 1980s and 70s. Who came up with those ideas? People who were pen and paper gamers, the audience that Baldur’s Gate 3 thrives on.

It also helps that Baldur’s Gate 3 is game that comes from a franchise that already has a great reputation in the industry. The game is legendary among previous generations of video gamers. It has a reputation. That goes a long way in selling copies.

Starfield is a new ip, which means that it is an untested game. Bethesda probably did tons of research on how to make the game marketable to all groups of people, but no really knows how a game is going to do until it released at launch.

Here are the elements of Starfield that are most popular right now.

What makes Starfield a special game

1. Ship Building.

This is an area of the game that largely conformed to how I believed that it would appeal to gamers. Since release, there are online articles in the press that are showcasing the many ships that people are building. This is free advertising for the game and will help Bethesda gain more sales. I bet that there are people who will purchase the game simply because of the ship building aspect of the game.

2. Modding

By far, this is one of the most important elements to the success of Starfield. While Starfield may not have the greatest story or greatest characters, it does have incredible modding support. According to Nexus Mods, only after two weeks, there were 14 million downloads of mods for this game. There are many games out there that would love to have this type of community support for a game. There is already huge interest and the official modding software hasn’t been released yet. It coming out in the coming year.

3. The scope of the game

One of the greatest examples of the success of this game is how there are still many parts of the game that people are not aware of. It is one of the defining aspects of this game. Starfield is game that  is almost inhumanly unable to digested in one afternoon. I know that there are some criticisms that it is too big and that is a symptom of the industry focusing too much on bigger is better, but Starfield’s approach was absolutely needed for a game of this type. While games like the Outer Worlds and Mass Effect can benefit from having smaller focuses, this is the game that is culmination of so many space games over the years. Many space games are big by their very nature and Starfield needed to meet up to those expectations. There is a place for more character focused games, but video games need to continue pushing boundaries, and the only way for a game studio like Bethesda to truly wow audiences is by making a large game. 

The Truth about Starfield and Its success

We need to be honest. The only way to really get the mainstream to hear about this game is to make it as big as possible. There is a place for games like Outer Worlds. However, the size of Starfield does not mean there isn’t moments of character development that are what I call the small moments that make a game special. It is important to remember that Bethesda’s games are not entirely about these small moments, but about its big moments. There will always be games that are huge and small and we gamers have to be willing to accept both. Bethesda has at least released a game that had very little bugs and glitches upon launch. Yes, people can complain about the strange NPC eyes and movements, but Starfield overall is a success and will continue to influence the industry at large for years to come. 

Is Starfield essentially too big?

There have been many complaints that have been lobbied against Starfield in the days leading up to the release of the game and also after the release. One of these criticisms is that the game is simply too big for players to have any attachment to the setting or the characters. I disagree with this.

Starfield is a very challenging game to make. It is a game that took thousands of hours to complete and in spite of this, people are still attacking this game. It is easy to criticize but it is much harder to create anything. Todd Howard had always stated that Starfield was a dream project for him and they managed to accomplish it. Unlike Cyberpunk 2077, which was a buggy mess upon launch, Starfield was largely free from any truly memable moments except for some of the NPCS on New Atlantis and other cities in the game. Todd Howard successfully managed his team to create this incredible game, but no game is without its warts.

Starfield size is an important part of the narrative that surrounds the main story of Starfield. You are going out into the cosmos to discover the mysteries of the artifacts in the game. This is really a story of discovery. Of course, players are fully able to choose their own adventure outside of the main quest, but the size of the game is featuring not a misguided attempt to stuff as much content into the game. 

There are limits to having developers work on every aspect of the game. Some of the handcrafted content can be great but it is also limiting the developers in being able to create an environment that is truly epic in scale. Sometimes you have to use the power of the computer to realize these worlds.

Starfield’s great size is what attracts me to the game. Handcrafted content can only go so far in getting a game done on time. Unless you are Rockstar Games, it is clear that you are going to need some procedural generation in order to get the job done.  People have a tendency to think that all that needs to get done is that the developers have handcraft content, and everything will just be ready for launch. However, it just doesn’t work in that way. Bethesda has always been known for the procedural generated content, even in 1994 when it released the first Elder Scrolls game. People should be used to this style at this point. However, even at this point in time, people are still complaining about procedural generation.

There are valid criticisms that can be levied against the creation of environments by AI. We have seen with ChatGPT that there are limitations to what AI is capable of accomplishing. We still do not have a HAL-like intelligence like that was seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The AI that we have today is literally just scraping the internet. AI in video game development is more specific than that of generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Procedural generation was used in the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and people did not complain back then.

However, procedural generation has it limitations when it comes up to scale. It is clear that Bethesda tried very hard to make the planets as interesting as possible. However, with the case with procedural generation, the software still has flaws. Many players have expectations that the game will provide worlds that are on the same level as something done by a human. There is also the issue of repetition in the buildings and landmarks that appear in the game. 

These concerns are valid but one has to consider the great accomplishment that Bethesda has achieved with this game. We are able to land on any planet in the game that is not a gas giant and start exploring. When gamers first started hearing about this game, many were skeptical about the planets. Some thought they would be barren wastelands with nothing on them. Instead, what we got were full-realized worlds that ran the gamut from barren moons to planets teeming with animals and flora. 

Making this game as big as it is was a necessary step towards making the technology better. I wish people would remember that Bethesda has always been about pushing technology. Starfield succeeds at its mission at making wonder about the beauty of the cosmos. 

Starfield and the rise of Indian Aesthetics in Video Gaming

My Character, Helena, wearing a Saree in the game.

Starfield and the Rise of the Indian Science Fiction Aesthetic

According to the quote by Amit Kalantri, an Indian author, you can’t essentially take the family out of the Indian. In a highly individualistic nation such as the United States, such advice should be taken more as we are fraying between too many factions and agendas.

One of the greatest strengths of Starfield is also its biggest weakness. It has a breathtaking amount of detail while some players complain that it lacks intimacy. I can understand this criticism quite well. Many of the Elder Scrolls games were smaller in scale, allowing for greater amounts of time to be put towards characters and the ability to empathize with the characters in the game. This is not to say that the game is shallow as a puddle; Starfield has some deep and sophisticated skills systems. According to one player on YouTube, the player would need to get to somewhere in level 300s in order to get all the skills unlocked. That’s how deep it really is. 

It has flaws but no game is truly without its warts. 

However, that is not really what I want to talk about with regards to this article. What I really want to discuss is the inclusion of the Saree in Starfield and what it means for the future of the inclusion of cultures in video games and internet culture in general more broadly. 

As of right now, most of the internet pretends to be international but in reality, it is divided into several ghettos based on language. The language barrier has not been broken by translation tools. Many people around the world often speak in their own language online and do not interact with the English-speaking world very often. Those that do, tend to be western-oriented people, giving skewed views to Westerners about that particular country. 

Not all peoples who speak English in these countries outside the Western sphere of influence believe in the whole package of what the West offers. There is no country that better represents this than the great country of India, a realm of some 1.4 billion souls and growing stronger, alongside China to replace the West. 

India is a country that has a long history of achievements and glory. Often times seen as playing second fiddle to the Chinese, the Indian people are some of the hardest working and patriotic people I have ever encountered on this planet. The Indian people, while not a perfect people, are ambassadors of a glorious culture that is the envy of many westerners. Many in the West, especially in America and Canada, tend to have their cultures revolve around what corporations make. They lack a genuine culture that isn’t connected to some boardroom with suits making decisions. Indian culture is unique and very diverse. There are tons of languages and dialects in India and there are many cinematic traditions. Unlike in America, where the radio helped to smooth out regional differences between the states, India has retained its cultural identity. This is a remarkable achievement by the Indian people. 

Consider that the Hindu Indians, who have survived many invasions by Muslims and the British, have managed to keep their cultural integrity. The American people in comparison were until recently considered to have been a monoculture and are still strongly considered to be a people whose culture focuses on conformity and an almost McDonaldization of culture. There are some differences, which exist in the states of Texas and California, but the American culture tends to be the same. It is not surprising that Americans, tend to be attracted to the culture of the Indians and other people across Asia. 

Indian Woman wearing a Saree

In spite of Americans and Westerners being attracted to the cultures of other countries, they are often ignorant of other people’s ideologies and philosophies. They think that everything has to follow a Western way of thinking. This is quite a big issue that I see online, especially on video sites.

YouTube is dominated by English-speaking people. Go and look up information about Starfield right now and you’ll see that it is dominated by people that speak English. There are some people who speak European languages but there is very little crossover between those who have differing languages. Many of the English-speaking YouTubers tend to be rather ignorant of the history of other nations on the planet. They often make blanket statements about the course of history without understanding the different societies across the planet. Indian history isn’t the same as that of the American or Western culture. 

India has gone through many phases of its history since the time of the Indus Valley civilization. There is no universal human rights agenda in the history of the human race and the Indian people show that clearly. They have their unique way of doing things and science-fiction fails to represent this properly. 

Video games that are set in the future often have this same problem. Often times they are entirely focused and reliant on a Western view of things. However, Starfield provides us with a tantalizing view of how video games could change things with regards to representation in video games. 

Enter the Saree., which is one of the most beautiful pieces of clothing known to man. 

The Saree is a traditional Indian dress for women. It is generally considered to be the national costume for the Indian woman. While Indians have turned the saree into a symbol of Indian pride and honor, it is only seen in the West as an exotic clothing item. However, Starfield is doing something with the Saree that generally not seen in video games.

Another Indian woman wearing a Saree, this one a bit more ornamental than the previous one.

The idea of the Saree being used as clothing in the 24th Century is a testament to Bethesda making sure that this game was more representative of humanity than other games. Even though humans have been uprooted from their home planet, they are still able to hold onto their tradition and culture. While I am not a person who loves political correctness, Starfield’s depiction of Indian culture is an important step forward towards making this type of genre more appealing to other audiences across the globe.

Indian culture isn’t as politically correct or stuck up as American culture is right now. I love the sight of a Saree on an Indian woman and I believe that the inclusion of this clothing item, while it may seem insignificant represents something important in the design of this game.  The game represents a diverse future, but not just one that is built on western lines. It is multipolar future, one where a variety of cultures are represented in business, art and politics. Science fiction always made the mistake of being too reliant on Western ideology for its depiction of the future. This is a great way to remedy the situation and make science fiction more interesting.

Starfield shows a culturally diverse humanity rather than relying on the old trope of it being one culture throughout the entire universe. India wouldn’t just become American and talk like Americans. They would continue to be their own people. While they may like American culture from time to time, they are still a sovereign people with their own hopes and dreams. They are not going to be just Americans living in India. They will be Indians living in a multipolar world. 

In Starfield, humanity has been uprooted from its home and establishing a presence across the cosmos. The first character you interact with, Supervisor Lin is a Chinese character. There is no Western emphasis in Starfield, every culture is represented, and this is truly a remarkable achievement by Bethesda Softworks. While players may complain about loading screens, Starfield’s diversity is remarkable, and I am not talking about what neo-liberals call it. This is true diversity with all the warts and all. New Atlantis is like the New Rome, a city filled with peoples from across the spectrum of humanity. This is truly a great achievement for science-fiction in the way it depicts humanity.

We have countless examples of how Starfield is expanding the range of science fiction beyond what we have seen. Characters go against stereotypes and the political organizations are not archetypes but realistic depictions of outer space politics. 

Sarees in Starfield don’t really add any gameplay benefit beyond persuasion buffs but they are an important step towards making this game more inclusive of other culture. While science-fiction remains a heavily Caucasian oriented genre, Starfield provides me with hope that Science Fiction will become more diverse in its worldviews that it propagates.