#writers and general fanbases should work on realizing what makes something genuinely interesting to an audience

[chemicalarospec]

Genuinely Don’t Say Anything Interesting Here But I Like Talking So Thus I’m Posting This

okay I did like nothing productive today but have a ramble on youtube fanbases, specifically the new gen of mcyt. This was two posts and then I made it one so sorry when I repeat myself. I did edit it tho lol. But that means I also inserted more, so this is just all over the place now. 

me from the future: oh god. all over the place. wait wtf this is so long. I don’t even have much to say I just like writing the same sentence three different ways and refusing to cut any of them. I’m sorry; I don’t know how to edit; this is informal AF. (can I use three semicolons? at least one of those is wrong anyways lol.)

edit: I’m so sorry I forgot about having a “read more” last night laksjdflksjad. Also idk if I even agree with myself lmao.

it’s so funny how mcyt is like The Thing now. It’s not cool to like it anymore lol, cuz everybody does. (This is a me thing. I like being special lol. I also self-define “cool” so you should not take it to heart when I say it’s not cool.)

I mean, just thinking about the Dream SMP as something I *do* want to get into, it doesn’t feel like “our thing” -- it’s has the feel of a HUGE fandom. Seriously, I’m in the phandom, which ngl has been dead since 2018, and the fanbase for the SMP has a much different, bigger feel. Idk what i’m getting at, it feels imposing? looking at the Dream SMP fandom seems similar in scope and slightly in atmosphere to pre-2019 phandom, at least to me, and it’s actually making me grateful that I joined now and not all that time ago.

Also I brought up the “our thing” bit because of the mcr post that goes ��funny how MCR seems like our little secret and the biggest thing in the world at the same time” and I kinda thought that was just how all fandoms worked? idk I was going to assert that the truth is different but I thought some more and now I’m not sure.

but yeah I like the “our little secret” feel and somehow the phandom has (re)gained that while technoblade (and the new gen of mcyt as a whole) is loosing it.

I mean, I’ve been watching Technoblade since the bedwars winstreak. He had less than a millions subs but most people I brought him up to actually did know who he was. He was big but he wasn’t *famous* -- we all knew about him and we all cared. Like the only person who knew who he was and didn’t care had a little brother(s?) that loved him (wait why is this all in past tense this is all still true). (Yes AFC this has become a callout post for you mocking techno lol.) (If you’re still reading my miNeCRaFT yOuTuBeR fAnBaSe MEta. cringe culture is dead tho; I don’t have to say it like that.) 

Anyways, I didn’t follow Technoblade’s Dream SMP streams and now I feel like I’d just be tagging along if I did get into it. (also didn’t watch SMP Earth lol.) This is because I’m a gate-keeping jerk. Or hate missing out. One of those two things. 

(awkward transition where I don’t know how to make my tangent meaningful and have to make it back to the original train of thought I violently interrupted)

As a long time Techno fan, I’m really proud of the growth he’s experiencing, but a little sad too as the community is being -- well, I don’t want to say “infiltrated,” as I don’t want to shade anyone who was simply late to the party -- perhaps diluted? overwhelmed? yeah, overwhelmed by newer fans, and becoming “unmanageable” in a sense; it feels like we’ve lost a bit of our sense of community with the influx of new fans -- no shade to any new fans! This is just the way fandoms work. When the crowd is larger, it becomes harder recognize each member as a person, even if everything else is the same. (”The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.”) (look this is how my brain works deal with it)

I just really like this small community feel, and it’s a bit daunting looking at the smp fandom. 

Also the growth Dream experienced this year is genuinely ludicrous. I mean, the wide appeal of shipping is part of it, not going to beat around that bush, but there’s just so much and I wanna read an essay from a long-time fan who saw it on why he’s got so much growth. 

I really hate to shame fans and stuff, but part of it, at least for me, is that most of these new fans probably aren’t “minecrafters” like we were. I doubt the majority of them grew up on Stampy, DanTDM, and whatever the other ones I didn’t watch were. I mean, some of this is because Child. For them, the distinction is really pre-quarantine post-quarantine i guess? Really, whether they played Minecraft or not. Again, I know it’s bad to shame fans, but apparently I’m just a terrible person and I feel like it’s more shallow or disingenuous to get into MCYT when it’s popular without already being into Minecraft. 

WAIT that’s it -- Minecraft community, as a whole, is special. It’s a LARGE umbrella of fandoms in general, but that’s the thing: they’re all more communities than fandoms -- from the casual builders to the pro parkour players to those who watched the og youtubers to those who followed the Great Potato War, there was Minecraft Culture. 

And the expanded fandom that’s sprung up around the Dream SMP and possibly Dream in general (???) is more of fandom. It feels like a fandom. People treat it like a fandom, they talk about it in fandom spaces, it is fandom, a modern fandom. Not a quaint “little” Minecraft community. 

I’m not going to say it’s because of the shipping, but... I have no data but at least I can say that it certainly creates an appeal for Fandom People as opposed to Minecraft People. And then also it’s just a fandom thing so it makes the space more fandom. 

Also I realized this is all based upon a feeling, so where did the feeling come from? I was reading in-fandom texts a lot today, and I think the storyline actually might have something to do with it. Also maybe the “talking behind their backs”? I can’t be bothered to remember what I’m comparing to what at this point but that’s definitely done in a lot of other spaces I’m in, so idk.

OH FRICK I’ve mostly been *in* the fandom spaces for real things lmao. (Read: I’m 100% making up everything at this point.) 

(awkward transition because I inserted the last two paragraphs later on)

And really, I played minecraft today for the first time in months. But it’s still with me, you know? The memories of being introduced to it, growing up with it. Going to the Nether with my cousins, my uncle’s giant survival mode cathedral. Mojang being bought by Microsoft and everybody hating it. (... me, my brother, my two friends, essentially... how did we even know??)

[I had part about the minecraft.net writers here but it was completely unrelated so it became it’s own post. I should do that more.]

(With every sentence the target audience of this post gets smaller.)

What was I saying? I’ll just wrap up. 

TL;DR: Dream SMP fandom feels like a fandom and not a Minecraft community and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, I’ve realized I prefer a community feel, which makes me grateful I joined the phandom now. Also I shouldn’t be allowed to post things past 9:00pm. 

Oh my god I’m so sorry to all my mutrals. My tired loquacious reflex has kicked in. This is essentially a dan and phil stan blog, and though I know a few of you know what I’m going on about, I’m so sorry to the rest of you. 

Well, at least *I* think I’m a fascinating person with interesting things to say hahahahha. 

This is like a diary post. Should I post this? Yeah, other people should share my thoughts lol. OH NO: Late-night Tumblr fandom ramble posts are the new social-justice tirade/generally useless blog-like Goodreads reviews. At least it’s what Tumblr’s made for :P. 

[jcmorgenstern]

@superohclair oh god okay please know these are all just incoherent ramblings so like, idk, please feel free to add on or ignore me if im just wildly off base but this is a bad summary of what ive been thinking about and also my first titans/batman meta?? (also, hi!)

okay so for the disclaimer round: I am not an actual cultural studies major, nor do I have an extensive background in looking at the police/military industrial complex in media. also my comics knowledge is pretty shaky and im a big noob(I recently got into titans, and before that was pretty ignorant of the dceu besides batman) so I’ll kind of focus in on the show and stuff im more familiar with and apologize in advance?. basically im just a semi-educated idiot with Opinions, anyone with more knowledge/expertise please jump in! this is literally just the bullshit I spat out incoherently off the top of my head. did i mention im a comics noob? because im a comics noob.

so on a general level, I think we can all agree that batman as a cultural force is somewhat on the conservative side, if not simply due to its age and commercial positioning in American culture. there are a lot of challenges and nuances to that and it’s definitely expanding and changing as DC tries to position itself in the way that will...make the most money, but all you have to do is take a gander through the different iterations of the stories in the comics and it’ll smack you in the fucking face. like compare the first iteration of Jason keeping kids out of drugs to the titans version and you’ve got to at least chuckle. at the end of the day, this is a story about a (white male) billionaire who fights crime.

to be fair, I’d argue the romanticization of the police isn’t as aggressive as it could be—they are most often presented as corrupt and incompetent. However, considering the main cop characters depicted like Jim Gordon, the guys in Gotham (it’s been a while since I saw it, sorry) are often the romanticized “good few” (and often or almost always white cis/het men), that’s on pretty shaky ground. I don’t have the background in the comics strong enough to make specific arguments, so I’ll cede the point to someone who does and disagrees, but having recently watched a show that deals excellently with police incompetence, racism, and brutality (7 Seconds on Netflix), I feel at the very least something is deeply missing. like, analysis of race wrt police brutality in any aspect at all whatsoever.

I think it can be compellingly read that batman does heavily play into the military/police industrial complex due to its takes on violence—just play the Arkham games for more than an hour and you’ll know what I mean. to be a little less vague, even though batman as a franchise valorizes “psychiatric treatment” and “nonviolence,” the entire game seems pretty aware it characterizes treatment as a madhouse and nonviolence as breaking someone’s back or neck magically without killing them because you’re a “good guy.” while it is definitely subversive that the franchise even considers these elements at all, they don’t always do a fantastic job living up to them.

and then when you consider the fetishization of tools of violence both in canon and in the fandom, it gets worse. same with prisons—if anything it dehumanizes people in prisons even more than like, cop shows in general, which is pretty impressive(ly bad). like there’s just no nuance afforded and arkham is generally glamorized. the fact that one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, I will admit, does not help. im not really sure how to mitigate that when, again, one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, but I think my point still stands. fuck you, killer croc. (im just kidding unfuck him or whatever)

not to take this on a Jason Todd tangent but I was thinking about it this afternoon and again when thinking about that cop scene again and in many ways he does serve as a challenge to both batman’s ideology as well as the ideology of the franchise in general. his depiction is always a bit of a sticking point and it’s always fascinating to me to see how any given adaptation handles it. like Jason’s “”street”” origin has become inseparable from his characterization as an angry, brash, violent kid, and that in itself reflects a whole host of cultural stereotypes that I might argue occasionally/often dip into racialized tropes (like just imagine if he wasn’t white, ok). red hood (a play on robin hood and the outlaws, as I just realized...today) is in my exposure/experience mostly depicted as a villain, but he challenges batman’s no-kill philosophy both on an ethical and practical level. every time the joker escapes he kills a whole score more of innocent people, let alone the other rogues—is it truly ethical to let him live or avoid killing him for the cost of one life and let others die?

moreover, batman’s ““blind”” faith in the justice system (prisons, publicly-funded asylum prisons, courts) is conveniently elided—the story usually ends when he drops bad guy of the day off at arkham or ties up the bad guys and lets the police come etc etc. part of this is obviously bc car chases are more cinematic than dry court procedurals, but there is an alternate universe where bruce wayne never becomes batman and instead advocates for the arkham warden to be replaced with someone competent and the system overhauled, or in programs encouraging a more diverse and educated police force, or even into social welfare programs. (I am vaguely aware this is sometimes/often part of canon, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s the main focus. and again, I get it’s not nearly as cinematic).

overall, I think the most frustrating thing about the batman franchise or at least what I’ve seen or read of it is that while it does attempt to deal with corruption and injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system/government, it does so either by treating it as “just how life is” or having Dick or Jim Gordon or whoever the fuckjust wipe it out by “eliminating the dirty cops,” completely ignoring the non-fantasy ways these problems are dealt with in real life. it just isn’t realistic. instead of putting restrictions on police violence or educating cops on how to use their weapons or putting work into eradicating the culture of racism and prejudice or god basically anything it’s just all cinematized into the “good few” triumphing over the bad...somehow. its always unsatisfying and ultimately feels like lip service to me, personally.

this also dovetails with the very frustrating way mental health/”insanity” or “madness” is dealt with in canon, very typical of mainstream fiction. like for example:“madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.” yikes, if by ‘push’ you mean significant life stressors, genetic load, and environemntal influences,  then sure. challenge any dudebro joker fanboy to explain exactly what combination of DSM disorders the joker has to explain his “””insanity””” and see what happens. (these are, in fact, my plans for this Friday evening. im a hit at parties).

anyway I do really want to wax poetic about that cop scene in 1x06 so im gonna do just that! honestly when I first saw that I immediately sat up like I’d sat on a fucking tack, my cultural studies senses were tingling. the whole “fuck batman” ethos of the show had already been interesting to me, esp in s1, when bruce was basically standing in for the baby boomers and dick being our millennial/GenX hero. I do think dick was explicitly intended to appeal to a millennial audience and embody the millennial ethos. By that logic, the tension between dick and Jason immediately struck me as allegorical (Jason constantly commenting on dick being old, outdated, using slang dick doesn’t understand and generally being full of youthful obnoxious fistbumping energy).

Even if subconsciously on the part of the writers, jason’s over-aggressive energy can be read as a commentary on genZ—seen by mainstream millennial/GenX audiences as taking things too far. Like, the cops in 1x06 could have been Nick Zucco’s hired men or idk pretty much anyone, yet they explicitly chose cops and even had Jason explain why he deliberately went after them for being cops so dick (cop) could judge him for it. his rationale? he was beaten up by cops on the street, so he’s returning the favor. he doesn’t have the focused “righteous” rage of batman or dick/nightwing towards valid targets, he just has rage at the world and specifically the system—framed here as unacceptable or fanatical. as if like, dressing up like a bat and punching people at night is, um, totally normal and uncontroversial.

on a slightly wider scope, the show seems to internally struggle with its own progressive ethos—on the one hand, they hire the wildly talented chellah man, but on the other hand they will likely kill him off soon. or they cast anna diop, drawing wrath from the loudly racist underbelly of fandom, but sideline her. perhaps it’s a genuine struggle, perhaps they simply don’t want to alienate the bigots in the fanbase, but the issue of cops stuck out to me when I was watching as an social issue where they explicitly came down on one side over the other. jason’s characterization is, I admit and appreciate, still nuanced, but I’d argue that’s literally just bc he’s a white guy and a fan favorite. cast an actor of color as Jason and see how fast fandom and the writer’s room turns on him.

anyway i don’t really have the place to speak about what an explicitly nonwhite!cop!dick grayson would look like, but I do think it would be a fascinating and exciting place to start in exploring and correcting the kind of vague and nebulous complaints i raise above. (edit: i should have made more clear, i mean in the show, which hasn’t dealt with dick’s heritage afaik). also, there’s something to be said about the cop vs detective thing but I don’t really have the brain juice or expertise to say it? anyway if you got this far i hope it was at least interesting and again pls jump in id love to hear other people’s takes!!

tldr i took two (2) cultural studies classes and have Opinions

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

One More Day 10 years later

I know some people might be bummed by the realization that we’ve been living with the burning garbage pile that is post-One More Day Spider-Man for a full decade now.

So I’d like to make this post for people to look on the bright side of this sorry situation.

To begin with, we have Renew Your Vows.

This isn’t just a big deal because it goes some way to filling that big married/family orientated Spider-Man shaped hole we’ve had since December 2007.

There mere existence of this title and its success at the time of this writing is genuinely important contributors to the hopeful reversal of One More Day. In a day and age where some Marvel titles struggle to make it a full year Renew Your Vows has passed that milestone and so far shows no signs of stopping.

Now I preach caution. This is an out of universe title that just shook up it’s status quo, lost big name and popular writer/artist team in exchange for ones of comparatively lesser status, has a new status quo too similar to other more well known/popular characters and represents something Marvel have been shown to be institutionally opposed to.

So as much as we don’t want it to happen, enjoy the ride while it lasts and be prepared for the series to get cancelled sooner or later, probably within the forthcoming year.

But always remember RYV volume 2 and the original 5 issues have when you really grade them fairly been clear cut successes, both financially, critically and creatively.

All three of those things sing in defiance of Marvel’s basic contentions that:

 a)      An older/married/family man Peter Parker wouldn’t sell well

b)      That an older/married/family man Peter Parker limits storytelling opportunities.

 These sentiments are also to a lesser extent echoed in the ASM newspaper strip that has continued to depict a married Spider-Man throughout the post-OMD period, which carried additional weight to it since that has more direct involvement of Stan Lee himself, effectively demonstrating that Spider-Man’s co-creator opposed OMD.

 But that ain’t all. However you feel about how they use her, Marvel have clearly demonstrated an at least basic acknowledgement that Mary Jane is a popular character in her own right which greatly helps the cause of reversing OMD. Just 2 years ago her brief appearances in Invincible Iron Man sent TWO issues of that title into multiple printings.

 Furthermore let’s remember that ever since Amazing #600 at the earliest and Power Play most recently Marvel have teased the possible reversal of OMD or at least reunion of Peter and Mary Jane as a way to spike sales. And it’s usually worked. Equally they know that pouring salt in that wound gets the fanbase riled up, which in their deluded minds is a good thing.

 Marvel KNOW there is a very large and very vocal group of Spider-Man fans out there who WANT the marriage back and they KNOW they can make money off of that. In fact they know that group constitutes the majority, hence why we never got a Peter Parker married to Gwen Stacy or Black Cat Secret Wars mini-series or continuation. And literally every poll ever conducted since 2007 (regardless of their legitimacy) has shown clear cut preference for OMD to be reversed/for Spider-Man to be married to Mary Jane.

 That’s only a good thing for the cause.

  We can even see some glimmer of hope in unlikely places. As controversial as Michelle was in Spider-Man: Homecoming if she is indeed (as many interpret her to be) a take on Mary Jane Marvel Studios is on some level feeding a mass pop culture incentive for people to know, like and indeed EXPECT Mary Jane in their Spidey media.

  The 5 year long Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon, despite it’s poor quality, did much the same thing. Even if these also push a teenage Spider-Man they also push a Spider-Man for whom Mary Jane is clearly a part of his life. This goes even moreso for the much anticipated Spider-Man Playstation 4 video game where (to my understanding) Mary Jane is even a playable character!

 Want some more good news? It seems two of the biggest and most influential detractors of the Spider Marriage are leaving positions of power. Dan Slott will end a 10 year run on Amazing Spider-Man and hopefully forever leave Spider-Man work behind him. His work was in fact the very first to mean spiritedly rub salt in the wound of Spider Marriage lovers and he has been strongly outspoken against the marriage’s existence and in favour of the need for One More Day. Losing his can only be a good thing for anyone who wants OMD reversed. We are also losing Axel Alonso who is also an opponent of the marriage and has been since his days editing the Spider books. Replacing his as EIC of Marvel is Cebulski who, based upon his work, is at least not actively opposed to the marriage.

 Finally some food for thought.

 Consider that sales of Amazing Spider-Man whilst better than the rest of Marvel are still lower than they were during Straczynski’s run when the market place technically was worse off, when there were not as many gimmicks and events artificially inflating sales and the Spider Marriage was both in place and promoted heavily/positively.

 Consider that it is inevitable that the powers that be at Marvel comics will someday be replaced by those who are from a generation when the marriage existed and was promoted positively. It is also highly likely that these new people in power will be Spider-Man fans (and therefore likely proponents of the marriage) due to Spider-Man’s perennial popularity which (thanks to films, TV shows, video games, merchandise and a guy named Venom) reached new heights during the years he was married. During this period merchandise and wider media also promoted Mary Jane as Spidey’s key love interest (and even depicted her married to him).

 As the current regime has so aptly demonstrated, there is a tendency for better or for worse (usually for worse) for a creative team to try and on some level recreate their childhoods with whatever characters they are working on. This more than anything was the most powerful motivator for OMD, not the nonsense about ‘creative limitations’. Joe Quesada and others within Marvel grew up on an unmarried Spider-Man and never liked the fact that that changed, and so resolved to change it back.

 They felt this way in response to, at worst, a C grade Spider-Man story that (to them) upended the Spider-Man they knew and loved. Putting aside how mass Spider-Man fandom at that time felt very differently and were supportive of the marriage, it stands to reason that future generations who grew up with the marriage will feel the same way about what One More Day did to Spider-Man.

 Only tenfold because One More Day not only retconned their childhoods, changed the status quo they knew and loved but also led to stories that actively took a piss on what they knew and loved. Oh and isn’t merely a C grade story but widely recognized as one of the absolute WORST Marvel stories of all time and unquestionably THE worst Spider-Man story across his 55 year history.

 One way or another, sooner or later, that WILL be erased I promise you.

 Want some proof?

 Well for starters way back in 2008 former Spider-Man editor Stephen Wacker outright SAID that in 20 years time (the same time period the marriage lasted) One More Day will probably be undone.

 But if you want something more substantial than that look at DC Comics’ history.

 Acclaimed comics writer Goeff Johns and former DC EIC Dan Didio have made practically made their careers from taking DC’s characters in directions that reconstruct the status quos of their own childhoods.

 But even more significantly than that DC have demonstrated multiple times an ability to course correct their characters even YEARS after they have been taken in controversial directions.

 Hal Jordan became a mass murdering villain in the infamous Emerald Twilight storyline of the 1990s before around 10 years later Johns redeemed the character, brought him back to life and manoeuvred him into the role of the main Green Lantern in an acclaimed storyline.

 In 2016 DC started to course correct their entire universe after rebooting it in 2011.

 After making Wonder Woman unrecognizable DC hired her former writer Greg Rucka to return to the title and reinstate much of the continuity and philosophy that defined her character.

 Johns worked his old tricks to have Barry Allan redeemed for causing the reboot in the first place.

 But no example should give Spider Marriage fans more hope than Superman’s situation.

 In 2011 DC took Superman from a married man in his 30s who staunchly regarded himself as human in spite of his alien heritage and made him a man in his 20s, who’d never been married and felt himself an isolated alien God amongst men. Lois Lane, his iconic lover, was demonized and pushed aside in favour of him dating fellow heroine Wonder Woman thus fulfilling the fanfiction shipper desires of many within DC editorial.

 But in 2015 DC RE-introduced the old married Superman and even made him a father. Then they went a step further and had him live in the shadows within the main DC universe, watching his younger counterpart. Then in 2016 they took the bold move of killing off their new 2011 reboot Superman and replacing him with the old Superman. The Superman who now was approaching his 40s, who’d been married for years, had a young pre-teen son and came with a history that had (give or take) lasted between 1986 to 2011.

 THAT was who DC made their main Superman, complete with old and beloved Superman scribe Dan Jurgens at the helm.

 And it WORKED.

 Sales and critical acclaim greatly increased on the Superman titles.

 Then DC went one step further in a 2017 storyline where they outright ERASED the 2011 rebooted version of Superman and essentially within their newly rebooted universe reinstated most of Superman’s history dating back to 1986, effectively RE-canonizing it.

 And again...sales and critical acclaim were in a healthier place than before. In fact many Superman fans have declared the past 2 years or so a true renaissance for the character.

 DC’s decisions with Superman and it’s success bode incredibly well for the hopes and ambitions most Spider-Man fans have for the eventual reversal of One More Day and the restoration of the Spider-Marriage.

 As bad as the past 10 years have been try to bear some of this stuff in mind going into the future.

[aion-rsa]

How Elden Ring Hype Recalls Cyberpunk 2077

https://ift.tt/3r6VbpP

In case you haven’t heard, the internet is wild about Elden Ring: an upcoming FromSoftware open-world title that sees Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki team up with Game of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin. Even though we haven’t seen much of the game since it was revealed in 2019 with a simple teaser trailer, the mere suggestion of what the title “could be” has been enough to spawn a rapidly growing and increasingly obsessed fanbase.

However, as we saw most recently with Cyberpunk 2077 (a game that fell victim to its hype in both avoidable and unavoidable ways), this kind of prolonged period of fan-driven marketing combined with a lack of official information can turn a once-beloved project into the source of scorn for fans who are left wondering what happened. Elden Ring could indeed be a truly unique and special game, but its pre-release hype period is starting to become far too familiar.

Here are just some of the ways that the Elden Ring pre-release period has so far recalled the infamous Cyberpunk 2077 hype:

Elden Ring is an Ambitious New Title From a “Can’t-Miss” Studio

FromSoftware is not CD Projekt Red. Rather than go over the numerous points that prove that’s the case, I’ll instead focus on the fact that red flags started to surface regarding CD Projekt Red’s work culture and visions long before Cyberpunk 2077‘s release. To date, I have not heard anybody raise similar concerns about FromSoftware.

Having said that, it’s important to remember that Cyberpunk 2077‘s hype was based, in part, on the popular idea that CD Projekt Red could essentially do no worse than make something that was at least roughly on par with their previous effort. A variety of factors were not accounted for (or simply ignored) in that assumption, but the most important was an understanding of what CD Projekt Red was working on relative to their previous efforts.

In the same way that Cyberpunk 2077 proved to be a distinct departure for CD Projekt Red relative to their earlier works, Elden Ring has already been described as FromSoftware’s most ambitious title yet. It’s not that they don’t have the talent to realize their ambitions (they do), but the studio’s reputation has been defined in recent years by their mastery of a certain kind of game. Elden Ring is poised to be something different. It doesn’t mean that it can’t be as good or better than what came before, but this is another case where we can’t assume that success will automatically carry over.

To put it another way, Elden Ring is being treated as a sequel to an established experience when we really don’t know quite what the game truly is yet.

Elden Ring’s Hype Has Taken on Life of its Own

There’s a degree to which a level of hype for any major upcoming Triple-A game is inevitable. You can’t exactly ask people to not be excited about a big upcoming video game. Where’s the joy in that?

However, Elden Ring is already at this tipping point where the hype around the game is starting to become as much a part of the experience as the game itself. You usually see this during any prolonged development cycle, and it’s especially common at a time when teaser trailers can debut years ahead of the release of the game itself. With every new showcase that comes and goes without more substantial information about the game being revealed, though, the problem gets a little worse.

It’s easy to say that this kind of “meme” hype is just a fun part of the modern internet experience, and there’s certainly a degree to which that’s true. However, it’s surprisingly easy to let talking and joking about an upcoming game define the experience more than the game itself. Again, it’s that much more common when details about the actual game are few and far between.

Elden Ring’s Teaser Footage is Being Stretched Into Assumptions

One of the most lasting impacts of a developer’s decision to reveal a game so far ahead of its release date is the fact that what little footage is out there tends to be endlessly examined as part of an ongoing attempt to answer lingering questions.

It’s an almost inevitable consequence of a lack of information, and it’s not long before fans start turning trailer and screenshot analysis into genuine assumptions. While this process generally isn’t that harmful when you’re talking about something like WandaVision fan theories, it can be noticeably more detrimental when entire gameplay concepts enter a fanbase’s conscious on the basis of little more than an assumption.

We absolutely saw this happen with Cyberpunk 2077 as the discussions regarding that project soon turned the game into a kind of wishlist of fan-requested features that was never going to be fulfilled. Even as CD Projekt Red tried to clarify that certain features would not be in the final game, you still saw fans ask where those features were in the final product.

Read more

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Cyberpunk 2077 Roadmap Proves the Game Should Have Been Delayed to 2021

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Elden Ring Will Feature Dark Souls Storytelling

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Elden Ring Has “Celebrity” and Property Expectations

Associating an upcoming project with an existing property has long been a double-edged sword. While that association can help increase interest in a project or even help get it made, it also means that the project must often carry the weight of expectations associated with the property itself. We saw this happen in a couple of ways with Cyberpunk 2077 as the game not only suddenly needed to be a dream game for fans of the Cyberpunk franchise but even needed to match the often undefined expectations of the game’s association with a celebrity as beloved as Keanu Reeves.

Elden Ring is in a similar situation that is honestly even stranger and, in some ways, worse. In 2019, the idea that George R.R. Martin was contributing to Elden Ring‘s lore was a fun and surprising detail that left most of us wondering what such a thing would look like. As time goes on, though, I’m already seeing more and more people who are curious whether George R.R. Martin has still “got it” invest some of their Winds of Winter expectations into Elden Ring.

The fact of the matter is that we don’t know how prominent Martin’s contributions will be in Elden Ring. We know that he’s helped construct the backstory and lore, but given how storytelling is handled in previous FromSoftware titles, there’s a fair chance that Martin’s work will not dominate the game as stories sometimes do in other titles. It’s going to be interesting to see whether or not players go into Elden Ring expecting what is essentially an unreleased Martin novel.

Elden Ring is Being Finished in the Midst of a Pandemic

It feels morbid to discuss whether or not Cyberpunk 2077 would have had as many launch issues as it had if the game wasn’t being finished in the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there’s little doubt that remote working conditions did impact the final days of Cyberpunk 2077‘s development in some ways.

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Based on what we know, Elden Ring isn’t under the same constraints as Cyberpunk 2077 and CD Projekt Red’s developers. That being said, we’re already seeing games and announcements be delayed as a result of remote working conditions and other factors related to the pandemic. Many of those delays have raised the temperatures of fanbases everywhere as even understanding and patience start to bend against the relentless force of the times we currently live in.

Elden Ring fans are going to have to accept that even if the final product isn’t impacted by the pandemic in the same ways that Cyberpunk 2077 was, its release date and the timing of its reveals almost certainly will be. This is one of those elements that are absolutely out of FromSoftware’s control and is now in the hands of eager fans who will need to handle this situation appropriately.

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