Back when I first heard of DAW I struggled a little with the concept. At the time it seemed fairly solidly focused on companies rather than individuals and I found the notion that paying customers would line up to sing the praises of large companies quite peculiar.
I still do, to an extent, although I've been forced to moderate my disdain somewhat when faced with the evidence of my own blog where, not infrequently, I can be found, doling out compliments to the likes of Daybreak or... well, it's mostly just Daybreak and its component studios, really.
Even that feels a bit weird sometimes. If I'm honest, I prefer to maintain a slightly more passive-aggressive relationship with commercial organizations that sell me goods and services. It feels healthier that way.
It's certainly less cringey, taking ArenaNet to task for their constant and consistent failure to do anything quite the way I wish they'd do it, for example, than to just roll over and accept that, by and large, they've made a pretty good game that's given me a lot of pleasure for a decade.
Even so, it's a lot easier to find something nice to say about a large but familiar company like ANet, among whose hundreds of unknown artists, designers and engineers it is at least possible to identify a handful of names and faces, than it is to come up with heartfelt gratitude for some utterly anonymous, if fancifully-named, corporate entity from a country far away, about whom we know, if not nothing, then very little of meaning.
Let's say I was to raise a glass to the developer behind my latest favorite, Dawnlands, a game with which, it turns out, I'm really smitten. I sat down this morning, after I'd gotten up early just to play the game for an extra couple of hours (And when was the last time I did that?), only to realise almost immediately that, other than the name, Seasun Games, I knew absolutely nothing about them.
A chance to do some research is something to be relished on a damp, August morning, so I set about informing myself so I could say something nice about these people who'd made something to brighten up a less than lovely summer. And in a very few minutes I knew less than when I began.
Alright, that's not strictly true. I knew more. It's just that I also knew that most of what I'd thought I knew before was wrong.
The few mentions of the company behind Dawnlands I'd seen all referred to Seasun Games as a Singaporean company. I was also under the impression, although I could scarcely tell you how I'd acquired it, that they were a plucky little independent, bravely venturing out into the big, wide gaming world for the first time.
I'd seen at least one review on Steam suggesting people calm down, chill out and put the flaming torches and pitchforks away for exactly that reason; they're just a small company, doing their best. Lay off!
It seems some newer reviewers may have taken that advice to heart. Dawnlands' Steam review rating has now climbed from the nadir of "Very Negative", where it began on launch day, to the comparatively dizzy heights of "Mixed". Recent reviews are running around 50-50 Posive vs Negative. Filtered to include only reviews by those who have actually played the game for at least an hour, the ratio shifts to two-thirds for, one-third against.
Most of the hate seems to comes from:
- those who haven't been able to get the game to run at all
- those for whom it runs very badly due to latency issues
- those who've encountered an unacceptable number of bugs
- those who detest mobile ports and/or cash-shops on a matter of principle
and last but certainly not least
- those who take issue with one game dressing up in the clothes of another.
For me, the game runs perfectly, with no lag or latency whatsoever, even though I choose to play on the North American server, rather than take advantage of the much closer European option. I've seen precisely two bugs in over ten hours' play, neither of them serious, both immediately fixed by logging in and out. I have no objections either to mobile ports nor cash shops so those are non-issues for me.
Far from objecting to the porting of mobile games to PC, evidence suggests I might actually prefer it. My favorite new MMORPGs of the last year or two would probably be Chimeraland, Noah's Heart and Dragon Nest 2: Evolution, mobile ports all. As for cash shops, since I almost never use them, I don't find them intrusive and since I'm not remotely competitive I don't care if they sell power or advantage.
When it comes to games copying each other, all I ask is that they do a good job of identifying and replicating the strengths of their role models. It's nicer still if they leave the bad bits behind and make the good bits better. Just because someone did something first doesn't always mean they did it best, after all.
On that basis, I was all set to say some very positive things about the small team that I imagined had made this highly enjoyable game. Although a number of negative reviews refer to a lack of polish, I'd been a little surprised it was as full-featured and finished as I'd found it to be. I was even more surprised by how very lovely it looks.
Thinking about it some more, though, I remembered Valheim, the game on which Dawlands is so closely, almost slavishly, modelled had also been developed by a small team. Given that team had done all the necessary groundwork, perhaps it didn't seem so suprising another small independent had been able to add some visual sheen and a bunch of quests.
Except they didn't. Oh, it happened, alright. It just wasn't done by a small, independent team.
It's confusing, as these things often are, but as far as I can tell from the aggregate information gleaned from half a dozen sources, "Amazing Seasun Games", the company behind Dawnlands, which has only been operating since 2022 and has only three other titles listed on its website, is a subsidiary of the much bigger Chinese game developer "Seasun Games", itself a part of the even bigger Kingsoft Corporation which, almost inevitably, is part-owned by Tencent.
The trail of ownership is confusing and I would rather be playing the game than trying to untangle exactly who owns what. I asked Bard to do it for me and this is what it reported back:
Without descending into the tedious depths of corporate ownership, my point is that Dawnlands, far from being a labor of love, is much more likely to be a purely commercial endeavor. Its similarities to existing games surely owe more to corporate calculations than any innate desire to iterate on a great idea either for reasons of aristic self-expression or just for the sheer joy of it.
And yet I find I care not a jot. When I discovered the true provenance of this game that I'm enjoying so much, far from souring the taste it merely made it fresher. I'd been wondering just how a small studio with no apparent experience in making games like this had managed to come up with something so sleek and shiny. Now I know.
If the point of Creator Appreciation Week is to recognize those who make the things that give us so much pleasure, I don't see why the plaudits shouldn't go equally to the backroom staff; the invisble workers in the cubicles and offices and yes, even in the boardrooms, without whom none of this would happen at all.
Later this week I hope to have a post up, giving thanks to some individual creators whose work has made me happy over the years, but today I'd like to express my unironic appreciation for the myriad, anonymous work-made-for-hire contracters, lifers and laborers, who somehow contrive to turn commercial product into art, time and time again.
Dawnlands has no reason to be as good as it is. It ought to be souless and empty and yet it's anything but. Like most of the games we play, even the bad ones, there are constant reminders that someone must have been having a good time turning the pictures in their head into pictures on a screen.
Now I'm having a good time, too. So thanks, Amazing Seasun and all who work there, for letting me share the visions in your heads and for making me get up an hour earlier this morning than I would have done otherwise. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'll get right back to enjoying your fine work some more.
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You're right about the bicycle shorts and cropped top, but yeah, it could be worse. I mean, I've seen far worse.
ReplyDeleteI'm in a full "Ranger" outfit now, which is much less revealing and a lot more traditional fantasy style, whith a cloak and everything. It seems almost as if covering yourself up is part of the progression!
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