In Morrowind, one of the absolute nerdiest games in existence, there’s an Easter egg where if you have the sword Goldbrand, you can convert it into a new item called “Elton Brand” the name of a Duke basketball star, as long as your character has 11171 gold, 111-71 being the final score of Duke’s greatest victory.
Mark Nelson put a reference to Duke basketball in Morrowind, and that will never not be weird to me.
I think about it a lot; it’s a weird kind of dissonance that shows that the people who made a game with the some of the most autistic fantasy writing in existence were still fundamentally part of the normal culture.
That kind of developer doesn’t exist anymore, at least not in the west. Game writers who bridge that gap between the normal and the fantastical don’t exist anymore. The people making games, and honestly most media, are not drawing from life experiences; they're drawing from their own warped relationship with media and their place in a society that’s increasingly disconnected from reality.
The suits will say make whatever the fuck will milk people for the most money.
The artists will cram as much of their idiotic worldview in as possible.
The industry needs more Mark Nelsons who’ll say “Ken, the Ashlanders are a really creative concept, but people are going to going to be wondering what the fuck a Netch is, so we have to do this right”.
Not directly E3 related, but something that’s been on my mind and the discussion in this thread reminded me of it.