The brewing controversy over the five-hour speedrun of the single-player steampunk The Order: 1866, which releases exclusively on PS4 this Friday, has simmered over at developer Ready at Dawn.
In an interview with Develop, game director Dana Jan and technology director Garret Foster were asked about their thoughts on the complaints about the game's length, with Jan responding with the following:
It's really the strange dilemma of video games right now, but I don't think you can have a discussion of quantity without quality…I guess I think about it like this. If you go and you eat a steak, if you pay $100 for a steak that tastes like the best steak you've ever had in your life but it's only 200 grams versus paying the same price for the worst steak you could want — but it's all-you-can-eat. There's an argument to be made that one is better than the other depending on who you are. If you just want to be full all the time then all-you-can-eat terrible steak, maybe that's for you?
I'm not saying it has to be that polarising, I'm just asking why do we feel like we have to always measure things first and foremost in terms of quantity. Which is why for our game we targeted a very good length for the game, but it wasn't our priority. It's not something people are going to think is short. A lot of what we're hearing about is a case of it either being irresponsibly or inaccurately reported or putting the game on easy and skipping through and speed-running the game.
Dana Jan was particularly fired up in his response to the "uncanny haterade" on the internet against the game:
We have this uncanny 'haterade' for our game no matter what. People are looking for something to throw at our game, some reason to hate it. I'm excited to hear what people who have actually played the game think about it, how do they feel about the quality and the quantity? I think by and large that most people are going to be satisfied…
It's more just shocking that for a game that isn't out yet, for a franchise that is brand new, the amount of negativity is just… we have a joke where someone will post on the website NeoGAF something like "Sony released new screenshots of The Order" and we place bets on what post number we think is going to be the first one where someone says something unfoundedly negative. Like 'oh looks like it's going to be failboat' or something like that, and we'll guess 'maybe it's going to be post 20' and we'll see how close we are.
I just feel like these days it's so easy to be negative and I think the internet is the new playground for bullies. Who goes out of their way to really go and say something positive, right?
Do you think the negative criticism against The Order: 1886 is unwarranted for a game that hasn't been officially released yet?
