SoT is unconventional by all means. It never sparked this type of discussion about why it didn’t set the world on fire.
What is SoT? Sea of Thieves?
Groups of people have different conventions, so "conventional" has no absolute meaning. For an D&D player (sorry dude) conventions can be broken rather easily. Unconventional doesn't mean that something didn't happened before or is unique (although maybe it's used in this sense? no native speaker here). In my (sub-)culture "conventional" often means boring, because the mainstream is boring, "conventional" here means there is a lingering stability in the mainstream which makes everything similar to each other and frictionless, and this produces an expectation in the mainstream-latching people that stuff follows or has to follow this convention. I welcome everything which is (in good faith) disruptive towards my own personal conventions, because I want to be nonjudgemental, respecting and kind towards others and also games.
I have the feeling the character of the public discussion about something is connected to the size of exposure. I don't really understand what's going on though. e.g.:
You can make an indie game, nobody speaks bad about it, 5 guys like it and it's all mellow. You make a somewhat larger game and things start getting oddish, the fringes of opinions become more fierce (it sux, it's the best whatever). When you make a large game and label AAA on it, then opinion and reviews start to get a character as if someone's life depend on it. Same with Handheld and Hollywood.
So ... getting back to culture ... if you make a small game it's only interesting for a small sub-culture, not much exposure outside of it, nobody bothers. The larger the target demographic of a production is (or unvoluntarily: the larger the demographic of the audience of a reviewer is, never mind you never targeted them), the more sub-cultures and cultures it touches, the more ... fighting over right or wrong?
Sometimes an indie game is pulled into a complete different sphere of mindsets and (unrightfully) demolished on the public market place like in medieval times. Sometimes a really stupid boring buggy high end production is defended to the teeth (Todd, o Todd), and somehow manages to become mythical (it's all a fabrication, in reality it's very different).
So, there seems to be this regular belonging to some group thing in it, the rallying in the group, all the connected irrationality and not giving in etc., basically all the social standard stuff, which is somewhat sad.
Looping this back to DS, maybe the public discussion about the game and the expectations where different in NA and EU and SEA. Maybe cultures react different to a dissens. It seems to me a possibility, that the game and it's contents where not seen from the same level of disconnect from others (other reviewers, other players, expectations of oneself or others ...) in these populations. Maybe it's because of the media culture differences and how the public culture relates to it's own media culture (groupthink etc.).
