The Most Pretentious Video Games Ever Made

In an interview with Adventure Classic Gaming, the developers of The Path stated:

We are not story-tellers in the traditional sense of the word. In the sense that we know a story and we want to share it with you. Our work is more about exploring the narrative potential of a situation. We create only the situation. And the actual story emerges from playing, partially in the game, partially in the player’s mind.

The Path is a modern horror adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood. The player has to walk a straight path to Grandma's house with no consequences. Then the game ends. There is no winning, no losing, just experiencing. This premise defies the purpose of video games, though, assuming that gamers want to be intellectual instead of entertained.

Dear Esther is exclusively an exploration game. Players wander around an island listening to an old man read letters to his deceased beloved, Esther. Nothing ever really gets accomplished. Dear Esther presumes the discovery of the dead woman's fate is enough to make the experience worthwhile, but it's not.

Designer Dan Pinchbeck intentionally left holes in the game for "atmosphere and space and time and that idea of a vacuum that the player could fill with their own thoughts and feelings." That might sound good in an interview, but it ultimately comes across as an unwillingness to come up with compelling gameplay or a fully fleshed out story, as a few critics noted. 

Few games were as over-hyped as 2016's No Man's Sky. Before the game came out, creator Sean Murray told everyone it would be groundbreaking. Sometimes, he'd try to temper expectations, but Murray frequently mentioned the importance of his game technology. Unfortunately, that focus ultimately ruined the game. Developers spent so much time trying to be unique, special, and different, but they fell short. 

Gamers noticed this lack of focus, and No Man's Sky was returned to stores in droves.

Before Omikron: The Nomad Soul was even released, designer David Cage wrote a 200-page analysis of the game. Many people liked his ideas, but almost everybody thought they were far-fetched. This didn't deter Cage. He said: 

I hate when someone tells me something is impossible. I can’t stand that. I never have. I thought, okay, let’s do it and see if it is impossible.

The designer tried to build a program that combined elements of adventure games, fighting games, first-person shooting games, and puzzle games. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that combining multiple genres is incredibly difficult. The game was an abject failure because Cage couldn't settle on just one good premise. He foolishly thought he could do it all.

Braid doesn't seem pretentious at first. Sure, the story is strange and can sometimes feel disjointed, but it's unique and interesting.

Problems begin to crop up, though, whenever Braid's creator, Jonathan Blow, decides to state his opinion on something. He believes Braid is antithetical to all modern games. In fact, he hates everything about modern gaming. Blow even argues with gamers directly when they question his decisions. 

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds was originally nothing more than a collection of modifications to popular games like ARMA 2. Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene eventually made his own thing in March 2017. But he charges $30 for a game that still crashes entirely too often, presuming that consumers will enjoy the overpriced experience.

Beyond that, Greene isn't particularly responsive to fan feedback. He totally discounts the users' experiences. Despite the overwhelming unpopularity of the game's Red Zones that blow players up for virtually no reason, Greene says, "If you're dying at the Red Zone, you're not a very good player."