Thought this was funny. Seems like Gaf is falling out of love quickly, how's it holding up after a few weeks?
I’ve seen some of your other off cuff comments in other threads, so don’t mind me if I make some assumptions about your post here. Your contempt is showing, and it’s pretty unwarranted. Can you imagine a world where you didn’t have to do this? And just enjoy the games you play instead of having to come here and try to rile folks up to prove a point that has no correct answer?
If you could indulge me for a moment,I’d like for you to look at video games in a different light. To do that, I want to tell you about the board games scene, a scene that largely died when video games came out and have completely exploded since the 2000s.
Board games used to be all Risk, Monopoly, battleship, Life, trouble, connect four, etc your typical board games we grew up with. Then came one day, Settlers of Catan. A game that was quite a bit different, A Euro board game. And it became a gateway to more hardcore board games and board games completely moved from these shallow family games to these crazy long decision making sessions.
Agricola, Puerto Rico, etc you’ve probably heard of these games as being the best board games ranked by all board game players in the world. And i would be among that group as well. But an interesting thing happened during this time of hardcore board game domination, the crowd while thrilled, the barrier to entry was too high. So the reverse started happening, more board games, less pieces, less cards, less rules to the point where the games are entirely talking and bluffing. There are board games where the only marker is the score board.
And so board gamers would buy all these games from casual, to gateway and all the games in between to hardcore. There is so much innovation in the board game space, each 3 months you always here about the next amazing board game that is already sold out before the print is done.
But the interesting bit is that despite being hardcore and still playing the top games, we would still buy shallower, easier and simpler games too. And the reasoning was simple. When we play board games we bring “all” the games we have to someone’s house and see who shows up to play. And we look st how much time we have, and we choose a game that the entire audience would be happy playing.
So instead of just 4-6 hardcore guys playing, we have games that support 12 people and now the wives and girlfriends are playing.
What I’m trying to say is that, the key for boardgaming is that different boardgames target different purposes and are supposed to do different things.
In the same light video games could be that. And sea of Thieves is very much a gateway type game. Shallow yes, for now, but I’ve seen all sorts of people playing it, wives included. And to be able to just play together and have fun, or to choose different games in which other people can compete with you at equal ground is fun for everyone. Like BadTB25 gets bored of me stomping him in Halo 5, so we switched to Destiny and since we are doing co-op I don’t need to stomp him anymore.
So I don’t look at SoT as this game where I need to play 24/7 and have these deep moments of artistic shit like I’m watching a movie. It’s not that I don’t enjoy watching a movie with others or myself, but I don’t want that to be my only form of entertainment. Just like playing a sport or esport shouldn’t be my only form of entertainment.
So is the game shallow? Sure. Is the game fun? Sure, it absolutely can be both.
There’s no game like SoT on the market today, and so I think it’s worthy of being in anyone’s library even if you don’t intend don’t to play it all the time.
You might think it’s sad that people might defend a game that has shitty reviews. I think it’s sad that the only games you think are worthy of praise are games that encourage players to play alone and discuss with only like minded people.
Try to open to more experiences, And go with the flow. To often people are trying to make games into something they think they want to play instead of playing the game for what it is.