Category: Video Games

There’s a moment at the very beginning of El Paso, Elsewhere, where the protagonist James Savage leans over the hood of a car pulled over in the middle of nowhere and makes a plea directly to the player. “I need you to believe…that I’m going to get back into this car, on the count of three, and stop my ex before she destroys us all. I need to know that you believe, so I can too.” He slowly counts to three, and in a blink, he’s in the El Paso hotel where she lies in wait. “Well,” he says, as if pleasantly surprised. “Here’s to believing.”

The parallels between this specific moment of James’ opening monologue and the story told to me by Strange Scaffold studio head Xalavier Nelson Jr. of the game’s development aren’t lost on me. He’s worked on over 80 projects in the past eight years, he tells me over a video call, across video games, comics, and tabletop, AAA and indie, licensed and original IP. His studio, Strange Scaffold, was founded out of a “deep passion for advocating to make games better, faster, cheaper, and healthier because our players deserve it.” As he speaks to me, Nelson walks Aristotelian laps around the brightly-painted living room, kitchen, and hallway of his house. Occasionally, he sprints to the PC to check a fact, then resumes his peripateticism.

I’ve interviewed Nelson before about his move from writing to every other aspect of game development, and his game-making philosophy centered around sustainability, broad collaboration, and deep introspection. When we last spoke on these subjects, it was about An Airport for Aliens Currently Run by Dogs – an extremely different kind of video game. And yet, not at all different. Both games center protagonists who are deeply in love, deeply hurt by it, and who spend a lot of time thinking about those feelings. Both games take place in colorful, almost surreal environments – albeit very different flavors of surreal. And both games are made with a distinct earnestness and sincerity that’s almost overpowering.

Two very different games, yes, but with the same heart. It’s intentional, Nelson says, and reflective across all of Strange Scaffold’s manifold projects. Wildly different swings all, but with the intent of cultivating a community that sticks around for their shared core of sincerity and introspection. That’s the Strange Scaffold portfolio strategy, but it almost destroyed them, for a lack of believing.

“So September 26th is when the game is supposed to come out, and we were going to run out of practically all of the money on October 1st,” he says. “I [started] to interact with the corporate and investment sectors of the games industry and they tell me, ‘You can’t make games like this.’ And I’m like, ‘Well, we’re doing it now. We do it over and over again. We do it profitably. We do it on time and on budget.’ And they say, ‘Yeah, that’s amazing. That’s astounding. You can’t do it like that though.’ And that ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy in that if we don’t receive support, we don’t get to keep making games this way.”

Nelson laments what he sees as a trend from industry publishers and investors to demand that studios like his make their games less risky by effectively risking the physical and mental health of their staff. “The assumption around the process of building games is that it must be harmful on some layer for it to have the chance of being successful,” he says. “Even on this game, again and again, we…were being told [by publishers and investors] that our emphasis on player and team health was a measure of our lack of ambition.”

“People kept asking me in rooms, ‘What game do you really want to make though? What do you really want to make? What’s your big swing?’ And I think it’s a big swing to give people amazing games over and over and over again that each provides something different for their lives. So we stuck by that. Yeah, it is what nearly drove us out of business. We managed to find some like-minded people that we’re no longer on the red line but I’ll be honest, we’re still on the knife’s edge hoping that as we show up for our players, they show up for us too.”

Like James Savage, like Tinkerbell in the Peter Pan stage play, studios like Nelson’s rely on audience belief. Even El Paso’s game over screen reiterates the message: You Keep Going. My own adventure with the game took a bit of a leap of faith, too. I loved the sincerity, silliness, and sadness of An Airport for Aliens Run by Dogs, but I’ve never played the shooters El Paso is inspired by (Max Payne, Hotline Miami) nor am I enthralled by the idea of shooting zombies. But I did exactly what Nelson hoped I’d do: I took a chance on El Paso, Elsewhere. And was rewarded many times over.

El Paso, Elsewhere is beautiful. It’s beautiful to look at, in its dramatic color contrasts of light and shadow and mixture of complex lighting effects against haunting PS1-style models and structures. Retro and modern all at once. It theoretically takes place in a hotel, if the hotel is infinitely deep and leads to hell, and the conceit works to keep the environments not just varied but perpetually and appropriately unsettling.

Writing is where El Paso especially shines, specifically Savage’s steady narration and interplay with the player. His speech is heavy with the poetry we imagine we think of when we stare out the window, nearly hungover, at 3AM in the wake of some grief. But El Paso is also full of hope and energy, both in its overall story (which I shall not spoil, but it’s good!) and in the relentless total radness of slow-mo dodging a zombie and filling its head with bullets midair while a punchy hip-hop soundtrack thrums in your ears. Yeah, James Savage is righteously sad and on a lot of drugs, but he still looks really freaking cool shooting biblically accurate angels out of the sky. Shooting feels cool too, fast and snappy, and action movie-esque in its momentum. Put it all together? Consider me a believer.

Though he’s the one speaking to me, Nelson’s whole philosophy is against the idea that one person could be the face of the entire project, or even that a faceless Strange Scaffold “brand” could be responsible for it. He wants players to feel the creativity and identity of each individual developer that touched the project, from the music of RJ Lake to Romero Bonickhausen’s cutscenes to Gary Kings’ work on the game’s trailers. And every other name in the credits, too.

“I honestly feel like we have done players a disservice, so earnestly making them focus on studio brands or legacy characters rather than saying, ‘This person told the story that made you cry. This person made the characters who you cosplayed as. This person made the gameplay that when you play every other game in this genre, this person and this group of people designed the mechanics that you miss in your hands years later.’”

Nelson gives a personal example: Binary Domain. It’s a game made by Yakuza and Like a Dragon developers Ryu Ga Gotoku studio, and it’s wildly different from the franchise the developers have become known for. But Nelson loves it, because it has the same heart as the Like a Dragon series that he already loves.

“It’s a little bit like comic books,” he continues. “You probably aren’t a fan of Batman, you’re a fan of how Frank Miller wrote them or Tom King. You’re a fan of how a specific person’s lens of interpretation changes a work. I think if you apply that lens to video games, we’ve seen a lot of things where people are not allowed to just think about making video games and doing their jobs and delivering the experiences that players love. Layoffs, the recent Unity news, there’s a variety of distractions…I have realized the reason that buying games for me is such a roll of the dice is because I’m just looking over and over to see when and where a team is allowed to have that earnestness and that creative spirit and that individual expression is allowed to really speak. Because I believe it is in AAA games, I believe it is in indie games, it’s in AA games and it is one of the first things to be strangled by production decisions that do not acknowledge its existence at all.”

El Paso, Elsewhere was not free of those “distractions” – Nelson is candid about that too. Apart from the funding crisis, he says the game was essentially made entirely in 10 months (though in planning for two years). 50 chapters, a full rap album, over 40 minutes of 3D animated cinematic cutscenes – it was a lot in a short time period, even with Strange Scaffold’s efforts to keep its people from overworking. “Every single time someone does something cool, it creates work for other people if only because they are inspired to do something amazing,” Nelson says. Exhilarating, yes, but exhausting.

“As a leader, I’ve done what I can to mitigate some of the negative effects of that, but the process of pulling this game together and making the best version of it according to our vision and our time and our scope and our budget has been, I think, pretty intensive for the team,” he says. “And while we’ve created periods of rest, we’ve spoken, we communicate really intelligently, there’s one thing I look at with some pain and regret it is that we made a game so big and so cool that the end of its development cycle did not represent the philosophical desires that we have for the development cycle as a whole.”

But Nelson isn’t giving up on his vision. He and Strange Scaffold plan to continue looking for ways to keep the studio’s structure but nix the urgency, speed, and pain that so often comes with deadlines. And perhaps with the critical success of El Paso, Elsewhere, he’ll find more believers willing to support future earnest endeavors, whatever the genre or theme. Like Savage and the player, mutually staring down death and heartbreak and game over screens: You keep going.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

You’re reading the fourth chapter of my eight-day travelog recounting my unbelievable trip to Japan to cover the 2023 Pokémon World Championships.

If you already haven’t, be sure to check out the other chapters:

• Day 1: The Birthplace of Pokémon
• Day 2: Pokémon Sweets and Unbearable Heat
• Day 3: Creature Feature

Day 4 – Psyduck Fan, Unleashed

7:45 am – I wake up actually feeling rested for the first time since we got to Japan. The first stop of the day is to Pokémon Center Shibuya, and then we’ll be set free to explore the area, shop, and eat, so I figure I should have a light breakfast. I go to the buffet and grab a Malasada donut, Spanish omelet, croissant, orange slices, berry pastry, chocolate pastry, coffee, orange juice, thin pancakes with berries, and a piping-hot slice of lasagna.

8:25 am – We pile onto the bus and start our journey to Shibuya. It strikes me how this is our fourth day here and the World Championships haven’t even started, yet we’ve seen and done an astounding amount of stuff. We’re getting the full experience, indeed. This feeling continued to strike me for the next two hours.

10:25 am – Two hours later, we arrive at Pokémon Center Shibuya, on the sixth floor of the Shibuya Parco shopping mall in Tokyo. This is the third Pokémon Center of the trip yet there are still new things to be found. The first thing that catches the group’s eye is the newly released Wigglet plushie. As you can see, it looks totally fine and there’s nothing more to say about it.

After a surprise announcement earlier this year, Valve surprised players once again by suddenly releasing Counter-Strike 2 as an update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Wednesday after a long beta period. Along with several new gameplay aspects, Counter-Strike 2 brings a few major changes, like weapon refunds and overhauled graphics, to the model that helped its predecessor become one of the most-played Steam games of all time.

Unfortunately for quite a few players, though, the original Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was completely replaced by Counter-Strike 2 (aside from being playable as an offline “demo”), which seems to be missing quite a few beloved features from the original game. Now, players caught off guard are taking to Reddit and X/Twitter to share their concerns about the game’s current state.

Just hours after CS2’s release, players began taking note of missing features. Reddit user u/cosmictrigger01 compiled a list of larger aspects of CS:GO that have mysteriously disappeared from CS2, which includes several competitive and Wingman maps, workshop maps, and entire game modes like Arms Race, Flying Scoutsman, and Danger Zone. In the replies, and across Twitter and Reddit, other players have now joined in on wondering where these modes went and if they’ll return.

“I played Arms Race so much, usually with the same group of guys who just happened to be on at the same time as me,” Reddit user u/theicarusambition commented. “So many strangers turned friends, and so many good times. It’d be a real shame if CS2 nixes it.”

As GamesRadar pointed out, some Arms Race maps were leaked, hinting at the potential return of the mode in the near future. Still, these players felt concerned that Valve took away these modes without warning.

Aside from removed features, a small chunk of CS2’s playerbase can’t even access the game at all anymore — Valve also removed support for players on Mac, with no word on if it’ll be re-added or not.

Players have also raised issues about other technical features, including commands like the bob animation-changing “cl_bob,” the absence of which sparked outcry during CS2’s beta.

Other players have complained about CS:2’s servers. While Valve upped CS2’s tick rate with a new system, some international players have noted that the game’s servers have led to an “almost unplayable” game in comparison to CS:GO.

“My agent and enemy agent lag very hard, can’t switch weapons sometimes…, can’t jump sometimes when I try to throw a grenade and there a lot of lags like these,” Reddit user u/ykoonab (who mentioned that they’re playing from Central Asia) posted.

For its part, Valve has acknowledged the server issues, having “hit server capacity in different regions.” They said they’re adding more server capacity “as fast as possible.”

Turns out a lot of you want to play Counter-Strike 2!

If you’re having trouble finding a match it’s because we’ve hit server capacity in different regions.

We’re adding more server capacity as fast as possible. Thanks for your patience while this is being addressed.

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) September 28, 2023

As with other Counter-Strike games, quite a few players also have felt like Counter-Strike 2 just hasn’t added enough new features since its beta version (or since the original CS:GO entirely).

They basically released no NEW content with the launch.

And I guess to not divide the audience they completely removed CS:GO, so the only game we’re left with is the seemingly rushed CS2.

Very weird how all of the hype for the last few weeks lead up to… basically nothing.

— Anomaly (@anomalyxd) September 28, 2023

“Very weird how all of the hype for the last few weeks lead up to… basically nothing,” streamer Anomaly said on Twitter.

Of course, the reaction to CS2’s surprise launch hasn’t been all negative. Twitter and Reddit are also filled with players praising the game’s overhauled graphics, discussing new features like responsive smoke grenades, and (of course) sharing some impressive clips.

Still, though, the players that are disappointed have been pretty vocal, and Valve hasn’t yet responded to concerns about the game (other than threatening to ban cheaters and their friends). Now, it’s just a matter of waiting to see if Valve brings these missing features back, or if this is just what Counter-Strike will look like going forward. Valve has not yet responded to IGN’s request for comment.

IGN has reached out to Valve for comment.

Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN who loves all things indie and Nintendo. Outside of IGN, they’ve contributed to sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.