Am I the only one who was completely blindsided by a game that everybody seems to be talking about? I mean, one day it was all just "Hey, Resident Evil 3's coming out soon" and "Final Fantasy 7's gonna be great! But only if you have a Playstation cause if you don't then you can wait until April next year. Hah hah, screw you."; and then before I know it this Valorant is getting shoved in my face and people are just like "Yeah. What are you, a Boomer?" Now I feel like I can't turn around without hearing about this game and I still have no idea where it came from. I mean, this isn't an 'Apex Legends' situation wherein the game dropped by surprise and caught everyone off guard, this is the kind of title that you get actively shamed for not knowing about, as though everyone's embarrassed to admit that the title is new for them too. And that isn't just me projecting, (it is me projecting, but it's not just that) this game broke the Twitch most streamed games listing pretty much the day the closed beta launched. All this and I still don't even know what this game is, so what gives?
Well, let me be the most unoriginal scum in the world and parrot the initial reaction that practically everyone and their blind elderly Nan has already deduced; it's Counter Strike but Overwatch. I know, I know, description through comparison is like the absolute soul of laziness, but there is no better description. Aesthetically this game is built upon a cartoonish design this is intentionally crafted to make the visual timeless (It works for Kingdom Hearts afterall) whilst also putting enough individuality behind each hero so that they can be told apart from each other from their silhouettes alone. (I mean, they still don't look even nearly as unique as the Overwatch cast, but it's baby steps.) Whilst from a gameplay perspective it simply exudes 'Counter Strike: Global Offensive' with tactical gunplay, fiddly aiming, and a default POV so wide it's designed for the pros.
And that's probably the biggest take away from Valorant; it's a game designed for Pros. More specifically for ESports. It's apparent from the menu-to-gameplay time, the design of the lobby, the construction of the HUD and the light graphical load designed to be able to run on almost anything. Now personally I never really like it when games go out of their way to aim themselves to an Esports crowd without growing that naturally, although that might just be because, as a crappy amateur writer, I'm allergic to contrivance; but this title's picking up quite the crowd already so I may be in the minority. Perhaps this is exactly the sort of hero shooter tactical hybrid that people are looking for right now in this age of heroes. (That's probably the title of a crappy mobile game, isn't it?) Whereas other titles that have tried the same thing ended up pushing too hard, like Evolve, maybe Valorant has slid into just the right number of palms (or maybe just the right palms) to launch strong.
I say that because already we can hear the rumblings of big streamers jumping aboard the bandwagon. Summit, Shroud even Dr Disrespect have either played or spoken about the game on their platforms. (Dr Disrespect was being critical, but just getting the name out there is enough to build audience recognition. Plus it's sort of his brand.) This is the sort of rise that actually somewhat mirrors the dawn of Apex Legends, or even Fortnite (albeit, in a much more streamlined fashion) to the point where certain questions might arise, such as; is any of this forced? Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt the game itself is serviceable and has earned fans from that right, it is made by Riot Games afterall; I just have reason to believe that some sneaky tactics might have been deployed to make this game's debut splash as wide as it currently feels.
On the launch of it's beta, Valorant peaked at an knee-wobbling 1.7 million concurrent viewers on Twitch and on the first day it accumulated 34 million hours watched. (Which is frankly just ludicrous) So you may be wondering how exactly such a huge global gaming event occurred? Bribery, to put it bluntly. Knowing that the allure of a brand new big budget game was going to drum up excitement, Riot partnered with Twitch in order to come up with something to keep people watching, and this ended up materialising as a Twitch drop set-up. Basically, as viewers tuned in to watch Valorant, they would be given the chance to earn a free closed beta key, provided that their Twitch and Riot accounts were linked. This alone drove a great many folk to try and game the system, with unconfirmed claims that some people would set-up 50 Twitch tabs to improve their chances.
Now there isn't anything inherently wrong with what Riot was doing, besides the way that it blatantly inflates the viewership numbers on the promise of access to a unfinished title with one-in-several-million odds. But this is just the way the game is played on any marketing machine. The problem really comes in the amount of success it has warranted the game, because now this title has come from being an relative unknown to a household game practically overnight and that's a lot of pressure to be under. Remember that this is a game that's riding the 'this is a beta, please ignore bugs' stage of it's life-cycle and yet they're playing for marketing points that are equivalent to a AAA multimillon dollar blockbuster. Needless to say, all eyes are on Riot Games right now and if this game launches to the wider audiences with anything less than a flawless landing, that's going to cause quite the early ripple. Already there are some folk, myself included, who are approaching Riot with a raised eyebrow over this 'coerced viewership' situation, and that's not the sort of mistrust you want to cultivate, really ever, let alone before the title's out the door.
But there's another dimension to this whole issue, although it's a little out of my technical wheelhouse so forgive me if I'm not being as concise as I could be. Online PC games all require their very own form of anti-cheat system in order for a healthy ecosystem to be formed, and that's just a universal given due to how easy it is to inject code on a PC. Valorant, however, takes that a step further than is perhaps necessary with their implementation of Vanguard, a system which installs a 24-hour checker that boots with one's computer and runs with Kernel privileges (the highest level of privileges affordable on a traditional computer) Now this could be nothing of any consequence, Riot's head of Anti-cheat seems to insist so, but seeing as how Riot is owned by Tencent who are themselves a corporate stooge for the Chinese Government, that gets some questions being asked. Riot insist that this is a necessary step to stop cheats designed to boot before the Anti-cheat boots, but clearly that's proven ineffectual as cheaters were being banned off of the closed Beta by day four, so why are we still entertaining this system if not for more nefarious purposes. Okay, so maybe neither Riot nor Tencent have anything overtly predatory planned with root access to people's computer (despite Tencent being known meddlers) but what about third party hackers who just happen to notice a root-kit leading into your computer's core systems? Basically, right now the installation of Valorant is the technological equivalent of making oneself immunodeficient, and if this title takes off in the way that Riot is pushing for so desperately, this could be the start of a very worrying precedent for how games are permitted to treat the devices we install them on.
So what is Valorant? A new competitive title with designs of internet immortality through merit of becoming an Esports title, but perhaps also something a little darker. I hear that the game itself is fine and hardcore FPS stans seem to enjoy it, so perhaps it's inevitable for this to be the new Overwatch, but is this perhaps not the future for Esports that gaming deserves? At the end of the day, I don't even really care about Esports and thus Valorant will never land on my radar in a substantial way, but I think it's important to wonder about regardless. But by all means, if keeping ahead of the times is worth all that I've discussed so far than don't let me stop you, just never say that you weren't ever warned.
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