I touched on this topic once already in my post about the discourse surrounding Marathon recently, but I couldn’t help be revisit it after seeing how people have been talking about Crimson Desert. As far as I can tell, there’s no reason for discussion about this game be anything but civil. In fact, I’d say sentiment was largely positive right up until release. I’m certain it got overhyped to at least some degree (all big games are) but, even if it was, it’s not as though the result is so absolutely terrible that all those expectations were betrayed. There should be no “culture” angle here either, so seeing this unfold has been very confusing.

Before we start, I think I should state where I stand on Crimson Desert. I wasn’t hyped for it before release, but I was hearing a lot of positive things and everything I saw in the trailers looked good. My plan for it was to check it out eventually after it came down to $30 or so in a sale, perhaps as a fun multiplayer option to enjoy with my friends. I’ve since learned that it’s single-player only, but still I was going to take a look when I was back in the mood for a medieval fantasy game. In other words, I’ve no strong feelings on Crimson Desert other than a desire to try it at a discount someday.

Now that Crimson Desert is out, though, man it’s either an absolutely incredible, once-in-a-generation experience or an utter pile of garbage depending on who you ask. This isn’t a unique situation; it’s the same sort of discourse that’s developed around almost every AAA title over the past couple of years, but I could at least understand where the emotion driving this kind of discourse came from with most previous cases.

Sometimes it had to do with forced monetization in a fully priced game. Other times it was about bad policy (think Sony with Helldivers II) or otherwise great games releasing in utterly broken states (like Cyberpunk 2077 did). You also have the trend-chasing, cookie-cutter games like Highguard and Concord as well as the “culture war” battlefields like Dragon Age: Veilguard. Sometimes the discourse around these got silly other times it was warranted, but it was always understandable why people were fighting about it. I don’t see that with Crimson Desert, though. To me, it’s just an okay game with some technical issues. How does that warrant people getting all up in arms about others’ opinions about it?

Some people are upset that Crimson Desert isn’t everything it was supposed to be, and I get that. It looked story-centric, but isn’t. It looked intuitive to play, but its controls are currently all sorts of jank. It was marketed as a big PlayStation title, but it performs very poorly on PS5. It’s also being sold for $70, so yeah I could see some people being upset about that but not to a review-bombing degree.

At the same time, though, there are those engaging in a radical defense of the game, talking as though everything it does and the experiences you can have it are practically transcendant. I’m not sure how you arrive there either, as much of the questing appears to be pretty standard MMO-style fare. It’s also got alright visuals, but I wouldn’t say they’re anything to write home about. If it weren’t for the lighting issues I’d say it looks like your standard Unreal Engine 5 game but with better framerates and particle effects. There’s nothing wrong with that, but why are we pretending as if it’s the best thing ever?

My pet theory about all this is that we’ve gotten so used to being “all-or-nothing” when it comes to video game opinions that we’ve left very little room for things to just be “okay.” Heck, there’s not even much room anymore to just like/dislike something a little bit or just be apathetic to it entirely. Within the gaming audience, gaming opinions have almost become akin to political ones in that they’re often backed with way too much emotion and have too much of one’s identity injected in.

Not every game you don’t like needs to be assailed and torn down, and not every game you enjoy (or heck even just purchased) needs to be defended to the death. Sometimes, oftentimes, games are neither good nor bad. They’re just okay. There’s no need to turn every release into some big struggle yet here we are acting like Crimson Desert is a hill worth dying on when all it is an okay game that has both issues and interesting ideas in equal measure. It’s all just so…silly, don’t you think?

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How do you feel about Crimson Desert? What about the state fo video game discourse?

Image from the Steam page