This video essay will be on what I believe to be a topic of great significance, the state of video games and more specifically, why the industry has constantly produced fairly mediocre games in the past decade and have still managed to attract fans. The topic came to the forefront of my mind on the Sunday before Memorial Day, I was playing State of Decay 2 and hanging out with my friends. My friend then asks me, “is State of Decay 2 any good?”, usually to this question I would simply reply “Yes”, but this time I felt incentivized to say “It’s decent.” On the surface, it seems like nothing, just a different response than normal, but this response never left my mind, and then I realized what I was actually saying. That State of Decay 2 is a good game from a gameplay standpoint and can provide hours of fun, but it is certainly rough around the edges and thus cannot be considered a great game like those independent developers have spoiled us in recent years (Hades, anyone?)
SCRIPT:
When my friend saw me wasting away my weekend on State of Decay 2, he asked if it was any good, I replied “It’s decent.” Not something all that peculiar, but after hanging out with him I gave this response some thought and realized what I was saying, that State of Decay 2, albeit, fun for hours with an addicting gameplay loop and a boatload of content, is very rough around the edges, and thus made me ultimately think of it as mediocre. I then thought about this more and realized the same can and should be said for the majority of video games being played right now. The recent Call of Duty games are a great example, Borderlands 3, Dead by Daylight, Fortnite, and many other games also help prove my point. So the question is, why are gamers, myself included, hooked on objectively average games, especially when we could be playing something better, and for a fraction of the price in most cases? To answer this question, this video essay will have two parts to it, in part one I will briefly analyze State of Decay 2, revealing what makes the game nothing but average, in part two I will use the information in part one to conceive possible answers to this question.
PART I: State of Decay 2 Analysis
Part II: Why The Average Caught The Eyes Of Many
VIDEO ESSAY: