We live in a time where video games are put under more scrutiny than ever before. The irony is that this is for justified reasons. As recent events have proven, you can work on a game for a long time and then have it shut down after 11 days due to no one playing it. Just as important, AAA companies have felt it’s “okay” to release broken titles at launch because they’ll “fix it later,” which infuriates gamers even further. Then, there were titles like Starfield, which were long in production, hyped up into oblivion, and then when it launched, it just seemed like any other game.
The discourse around the Bethesda RPG continues to this day, as many defend it and look forward to the DLC, while others are fine with never touching it again because of how “boring” it is in their minds. One person who is in the former camp is creative producer Tim Lamb. He did an interview with The Gamer where he noted that, in the minds’ of Bethesda, the game was a success and a “great release” for the team:
“We were really proud of Starfield. It’s been a great release for us”.
What that exactly means, though is up for debate. Xbox was quick to note that millions of players played the game, but we never got the exact number of copies sold, especially since the game was a Day One entry on Xbox Game Pass. Naturally, the discourse from fans did reach Lamb’s ears and the others within Bethesda:
“We listen to the community, we hear the feedback. There’s justification to that. But for us, we’re our own toughest critics. So, we hear what the community says, we’re looking at what we’re interested in, and we have plans going forward.”
Whether those plans will “save” the game going forward is debatable. For example, while writing this article, we checked to see how the game was doing on Steam, and it was under 10K, with the peak of the last month being about 15K. That’s in contrast to the 330K peak it had during its launch period. Sure, the DLC might bring those numbers up, but that doesn’t mean it’ll “solve all the problems.”
The truth is that while Bethesda may still love the game, as they proved at The Game Awards last year, the community isn’t behind the title like other RPGs the developer has made, and they’ll need to keep that in mind going forward.
