Thread 719104461

>“Modern science fiction games trade inquiry for spectacle. They mimic old visions without depth, offering distraction instead of discovery.”
>Prokhor Zakharov, For I Have Tasted The Fruit

Why are modern Sci fi games so bad?

>>719104461 (OP)
>Hey anon, why dont you join us in this new utopian socie-
>*gets nerve stapled*

>>719104461 (OP)
they have no lore
they have nothing
everything is just bare fucking bones

take once human for example
heres a universe where they open a gate to another universe and things come out of it with dust that gets on people and converts them
also some creatures and the creatures have powers
annnnnndd
thats all the lore
hope you had fun k bai :3
please buy our lootbox

>>719104461 (OP)
>Why are modern Sci fi games so bad?
Indie devs don't have the resources/knowledge to create interesting sci-fi settings.
AAA devs don't give a shit. In fact they might steer away from anything that they think is too complicated.
You need some talent to create an interesting setting.

Instead of exploring ideas, concepts, and possibilities, science fiction is viewed as an aesthetic overlay.
>take game
>add "science fiction", so, robots, spaceships, lasers, etc
There, that's a science fiction game. Cyberpunk, add neon, side parted hair, and chrome. And so on.

>>719104925
>what was our most successful game of shadowrun? ah an rpg and an rpg freeroam in over the top 3rd person?

well lets make a dogshit chess game thats 85% a poorly written book

>>719104461 (OP)
Modern devs don't read. This also explains half the problems with most modern game writing, not just sci-fi.
Old sci-fi games were made in an era when nerds still had to read, so sci-fi was still a type of speculative fiction that explored humanity's possible futures. Nowadays, it's just a visual aesthetic.

>>719104461 (OP)
>>719104770
>>719104925
interesting thread. what do you consider good sci-fi media? ender's game? dune? neuromancer? blade runner? stargate? asimov? jules verne?

>>719105995
Star Wars

>>719105995
The SF Masterworks series is a great introduction.
>what do you consider good sci-fi media?
Something that takes what could be possible with technology, via extrapolation or guesswork, and manages to build with that a story that explores the human condition and the impact of said technology on life. Hard, soft, so long as the ideas are engaging and the setting crafted with care, I'll like it.

Science fantasy I think is where any rules at all just go out the window and it might as well just be magic with the veneer of tech. Soft science fiction can use outdated models of understanding, cruder knowledge of the universe, and so on, but still has recognisable rules of reality.

>>719105971
They've also never suffered or wanted for anything. They live in insular cities and blue states huffing each other's farts. None of them have walked away from war seeing the inhumane things modern military technology does to people that makes them question the nature of war, nor have they seen how military technology develops in response to live conditions to make them question the nature of mankind's development or of technology itself. It's banal, performative crap written by people with soft hands.

>>719105995
All this but think bigger too, there are volumes and volumes of well-written short stories which are arguably better for conveying sci-fi ideas since they don’t have the burden of filling out stacks of pages with extra details
Add Vonnegut to that list, and if you want to branch out from popular media that you’re probably already somewhat familiar with, Eight O Clock in the Morning is what they based They Live off of

>>719105995
recently... the first episode of alien earth did a good job

in contrast watch alien covenant or Prometheus which are both immense garbage

good id recommend: The thing, district 9, artificial intelligence, most of black mirror, Vivarium, V for Vendetta, the mist, starship troopers, cube 2, the fifth element, intersteller (if you can get over the god awful volume differences), the tomorrow war, edge of tomorrow, terminator 2, 2001 a space odyssey, the matrix, predator, signs, pitch black,no one will save you, 10 cloverfield lane, i am legend, the faculty, bird box, the girl with all the gifts,

>>719106610
thanks! Makes sense, it's more about living in this sci-fi world and what changes for the subjects than it's about the glorp grop alien race or the super-blaster 8000

>>719107280
also interesting. I read about Tom Clancy once that he got questions by men in black because he wrote about some US submarine. He told them that he reads everything there is public about it and had his contacts. Deep research in my opinion

>>719107280
It took almost an hour for an American to show up bitching about leftists and Commiefornia. Standards are slipping.

>>719104461 (OP)
What the fuck are you talking about

>>719104461 (OP)
Science fiction is an actually serious genre that can explore serious subjects concerning human life, culture and society. However, most of modern retards treat it like fantasy except futuristic, so this is what you get.

>>719107949
It's unfortunate but necessary for the truth to upset you.

>>719107363
I can only agree with you. There are tons of short-stories that made very good sci-fi adoptions. Spontaneously, I have no mouth but must scream comes to mind for a straight short story-to-game adoption.
I believe that most games would do well if they would just adopt stories written by competent authors (and it's probably cheaper, too if you don't work with the high-profile authors)

>>719107901
thanks

>>719107280
>>719107949
>be in the most fascist police state of all time where ai is run against you, your president is a mentally retarded child rapist, people are being arrested that havent even committed crimes by random masked men, constitutional laws are no longer respected, people just make things up or believe random cult beliefs, if you look too much like a boy or a girl someone will now randomly scream to see your genitals while you poop and armed guards will come to arrest you to inspect your genitals because someone else might be trans even if you arent, dollar has collapsed in value by like 40%, government openly ordered intel to sell their shares of their company to the government, other companies are specifically targeted with taxes, entire government is literally a mafia shakedown operation, rent is like 150% of your monthly take home when its supposed to be like 40%, scientific research is being defunded entirely, our medical systems have resorted to prayers to gods and horse dewormers, people will actively vote to remove weather scientists from office and cheer as their children drown and then blame some minority for not warning them, etc etc etc

>They've also never suffered or wanted for anything.
>None of them have walked away from seeing the inhumane things modern technology does to people
>in response to live conditions to make them question the nature of mankind's development or of technology itself
>my own thoughts are banal, performative crap written by a soft indoctrinated cultist's brain.

>>719107363
I dunno anon, most of the famous sci-fi writers of the 20th century were just intelligent nerds who lead fairly normal lives. But please name some of these great war hero writers.

>>719104582
Why is the solar punk movement so fucking gay
serious question

>>719108439
oh to be specific watch the like 1980s The Thing not the 2010 one or whatever

Sci-fi was always just fantasy with a technological aesthetic and modern scifi is bad for the same reason modern fantasy is bad, i.e. most creators are tasteless, talentless, and want to shove in banal political messaging. I'd go far as to say Western """hard sci-fi""" was the prefigurement of this trend.

>>719108824
It has the punk suffix without any justified reason for it except to leech off other genres by association.
Who does the punk resist or bounce off in solar"punk"? It looks utopian almost, where is the reason for social tension, the wealth gap, the haves and have nots?
Solarpunk comes across as a hippy ecofuture with shiny toys overlaid, if the name matched the content, it wouldn't be so bad.

>>719109048
>Who does the punk resist or bounce off in solar"punk"?
The elites that want to reduce earth's population to 500 million so that these meme energy sources can supply them.

I will >:)

>>719108824
usually it very quickly devolves into i am mother or the matrix when its not gay

>>719108824
its a redditor movement
all aesthetics no substance

coincidentially it's also pushed by people who want to control and organize everyone and then call it "communalism"

>>719109835
mostly this or like I said the robots resist and depopulate the earth to use the sunshine and you get nice pretty planet with a bunch of corpses on it basking in the sunshine