>>721127481

Demon Souls paved the way for the grassroots success of Dark Souls.

the zeitgeist of the time was "The West is the future and Japanese games are over". certain cliques tried to solidify the standards of what games 'should' be around the late 00's and games like Bioshock, Mass Effect were held up as "objectively good game design"

it;'s worth now remembering that the Good Game Doctrine™ discourse is an argument that's been had before and the conclusion around 2010 was that the West is the future and Japanese games were over because they weren't doing motherfuggin open world and online games well enough. anything that was weird or experimental or pushing the medium forward like no more heroes, folklore, mgs4, was unknown, hated on, or like for meme reasons.

games were "solved" and "good game design" looked like Bioshock, Gears of War, Uncharted 2. "art games" looked like Journey and Braid (lol) and all the other "indie story book" games where some faggot talks to you about his childhood while you do some menial platforming or collection task and the future according to those who went to game school and knew all the rules is that you just didn't DO certain things and then Dark Souls came along and all of those people lost hard forever.

people think of gamergate as the first big gamer culture pushback but I think a minor preceding incident is how a wannabe clique of cultural leaders tried to solidify the standards of what games were meant to be around the late 00's and it culminated in the Mass Effect 3 launch

it really was a "rejected at the ballot box" moment when Dark Souls blew up virally and "Best Practice" video games slowly lost their relevancy. If it weren't for that stifling environment and the seed of Demon Souls I don't think a mid-budget Japanese game would have become an overnight star like it did

viral phenomenon Dark Souls flipped everything on its head