This morning I found a Dark Souls 2 update in my Facebook feed. It was a behind the scenes sneak peak of the development process in From Software’s own studios. They didn’t show much, just a few people sitting in front of their computers working on some artwork or character models. I was excited at first, ooh Dark Souls 2 snippets! But then I thought it seemed rather strange. I never saw anything like it before with Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls. Discovering Demon’s Souls was like discovering video games all over again for me. Not following it forever on Facebook made it that much more of a surprise. Now Dark Souls 2 seems to be following the path of the next Star Wars movie or the re-re-boot of Batman that will almost assuredly be staring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, fingers crossed with a necklace of four-leaf clovers around my neck, LUV LUV! Over-following something that may not see the light of day for another two years is bound to spoil the surprise. Not that I care about Star Wars or Batman or anything. But the very fact that the development and buzz surrounding Dark Souls 2 reminds me of those two genre kings doesn’t leave me all that enthused or optimistic about the results.
Checking out the pics of the dev studio knowing that the director of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, Hidetaka Miyazaki, is not captaining the ship could be enough to give me a feeling of dread. But I’m not really worried about the overall quality of the game, it won’t become the next Bayonetta, a game you can play with one hand. I’m not worried about the developers, it’s still From Software with mostly the same team. I’m not worried about the publisher, Namco Bandai is not the next Activision or Electronic Arts, at least I hope not. I’m more worried about over-saturation. Not only fanboys, but so called game journos follow a project far too closely these days without taking a step back and working from a distance or on the outside, like a real journalist.
Game journalism leaves a lot to be desired in this era. Games are big business, maybe the biggest in entertainment right now, but they haven’t really hit the mainstream just yet. They’re not art, even though they get free speech protection under the law.  They don’t really influence culture just yet, though some gun nuts think they do. It’s just big bucks, fun and games right now. With sites like IGN or the way reviews are written (Assassin’s Creed 3 gets an 8.5 but everybody hates it) it’s hard to tell where the game journalism ends and the marketing department begins.
Not that the Facebook update came from IGN or anything, probably some fan created Facebook page, and that’s fine. I just really don’t like IGN. And I really don’t like people who endlessly post and comment on Star Wars, Batman, or Dark Souls 2 rumors. I don’t really like the rumorgasms about PS4 or Xbox 720 either, but at least that’s on a shorter time frame and announcements are expected sometime soon. I wish everyone else would just sit down, shut up, and wait two years. Everything else is just marketing.
As for my take on the 6 ways to make Dark Souls 2 more accessible, I would actually add a seventh suggestion on what to change.
1. N      2. O      3. T      4. H    5. I      6. N      7. G
