You've heard the story, we all have, but I could not rightly live with myself if I didn't get the chance to document this historic day in my blog over here. This is the sort of story that will don the annals of the fact books, that will turn from story to rumour to legend, that will be a mainstay fixture of every gaming-themed pub quiz. This will be the kind of event that future generations will look back upon and say "Wow, things were really bad back then, huh?". Am I talking about the Corona? Of course not, I'm talking about the absolutely insane monetisation scheme that Xaviant have attempted to dump unto the community much to the bewilderment of... pretty much everyone, actually. I'm seen reputable outlets and pundits alike absolutely baffled by these latest goings on as everyone rushes to answer one simple question; are we the stupid ones? 'Cause someone's definitely being stupid here...
But proceeding under the delusion that you have you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me introduce you all to another popular delusion; The Culling: Origins. Have you heard of it? Did you play it back in the day? Perhaps you knew this title back in it's original days as just 'The Culling'. Let me take you back anyway to 2016 just so that everyone's on the same track. That March, after a brief incubation period in Closed Alpha, The Culling was borne to the world as one of the first dedicated Battle Royale games to ever be made. That didn't make it 'the birth of the genre' by any stretch of the imagination, (if anything that would go to 'Minecraft: Hunger Games', which was inspired by Teen movie series 'Hunger Games' which was ripped off of the much-darker-than-you-remember Japanese movie: 'Battle Royale') but it did earn credits for being one of the first products to take that almighty plunge to see if the market was ready for a soley-BR title. In that way, you could call 'The Culling' one of the grandfathers of 'PUBG' and 'Fortnite'. (Quite the progeny to leave behind, wouldn't you say?)
Many indie games start out their life as Steam early access titles, doomed to forever exist as proof-of--concept builds that prospective developers try to cut their teeth on before eventually giving up. It was with this stigma behind it that 'The Culling' entered the 'early access' program, and yet still it managed to amass a following thanks to its unique 'there can only be one' playstyle. It presented a simple premise that we all now know so well, players would be dropped in the middle of nowhere (although I think 'The Culling' just had the player's waking up in lieu of a 'drop sequence', as I recall) where they would scavenge for weapons to beat each other to death with until only was was remaining. And it proved quite popular. In fact, this game amassed such an audience in it's time that even when PUBG landed in March the next year, 'The Culling' still managed to stand out thanks to it's focus on mostly melee weaponry in it's gameplay. Sure there were some ranged weapons for the endgame, but that initial melee scrap is something no Battle Royale has managed to capture since. (Including 'The Culling')
As the months went on the novelty began to fade, and 'The Culling' was subjected to a number of changes that weren't all that well received by the community. But that community was still there, albeit diminished, and they stuck through all the turbulent times until the game finally exited early access on October 5th 2017. Now that is truly a momentous achievement as the vast majority of titles never make it through the murky early access times. Sure, a significant chunk of the player base had been siphoned off in the meanwhile by PUBG, but there was finally time now that the base game was stable, for development to begin in earnest. This was the end of one journey and the beginning of a whole new one as the game can start to evolve and grow at a competitive rate and really shape it's makeup into a title that won't just shine for a single year but perhaps for several, maybe even deca- and then Xaviant ended development on the game two months after the full release. So that they could work on a sequel. Yeah...
This sequel would materialise into the widely loved and adored, 'The Culling 2', proving that despite the apparent recklessness of their shift, Xaviant's gambit paid off- Oh wait, no. 'The Culling 2' was a total disaster of a game that attempted to shirk everything unique about the original title's melee angle and ape the 'heavily armed' approach that had worked for PUBG and it's clones. What resulted was an amateurish-looking PUBG clone that barely functioned, had nothing unique or original going for it, and lacked the player base to last longer than two weeks. In fact, I've heard claims that the title only ever had enough of a player base to launch maybe 8 matches in it's entire lifetime, and that's assuming all those people were in the same server. (So quite the power play by Xaviant, to kill their flagging franchise before natural death could occur.)
'The Culling' would then be gone for a good long while until much later when Xaviant would come out with a complete Free-to-play re-branding of their original game entitled; 'The Culling: Origins'. (Ain't that beautiful? They spent a year of faffing to get back to the same place they started) 'Origins' was a tail-between-legs attempt to garner back the same loyal fanbase that the original Culling earned, and it worked; for a few minutes. The Battle Royale genre had moved on so significantly in the last two years that it was no surprise that most of the Culling's old playerbase had moved on, whatsmore, Fortnite was out by now, so everyone was busy migrating to the biggest video game of the age. Every single popular Battle Royale had gone the Free-to-play model and were battling to stay relevant against each other, so a title all the back from 2016 which entirely failed to stay competitive in this market and boasted only name recognition was an entirely foreseeable flop. Severs for 'The Culling: Origins' closed on the 15th May, 2019.
That should have been the end of it, but as you well know it absolutely was not. As recently as this week that ol' fox known as Xaviant was up to it's old tricks once more as the Twitter account blared awake like a senile old man in the middle of the night. 'The Culling is back!' it proudly announced, only to regale the confused audience who likely entirely forgot that they were even subscribed to this account with the laundry list of stipulations they would have to abide by in order to partake in this glorious revival. Firstly, the game would be out this week, (actually, by the time of writing it's been out for two days) it would be an Xbox exclusive for now and come to PC later (so Xaviant are already showing their acute business acumen by ignoring their original client base. Darn, how do you get this good?) It would cost 5.99, but if you played it before you'd get it for free. (Wait... it's not going free-to-play?) That right there would be enough to put a nail in the coffin of this plan; it was coming out to no fanfare, on a console that the original game didn't pop-off on, as a premium title in a decidedly F2P market. (Who were these guys kidding?) But, unbelievably, it actually get's worse!
I know you already know what I'm about to write but it honestly does bare repeating; Xaviant now expects it's fanbase to pay by the match! Essentially players will start off each day with a single token for a free match which they can then use how they wish (by that I mean: play a match) after which they have a bevy of terrible options. If they won they can go again because they'll have earned another token, if they lost they'll have to wait until tomorrow to earn another token,or they can buy more tokens at a premium or they can buy an unlimited pass for around about the same price as the tokens. That's right, this is monetised playtime in perhaps it's most purest form. And I cannot, nay will not, accept that this was done completely oblivious of the consequences.
Of course, this news has blown up with the entire gaming world simultaneously face-palming at perhaps the dumbest monetisation scheme of all time. Once again this game is being based upon a 2016 product that is vastly outdated and crappy-looking, once again they are entering a market that is over saturated and ruled by F2P titles, and once again they are restricting their own player base like idiots. What is the number one problem that 'The Culling' has faced as a franchise? The inability to secure a long-term fanbase; so how is the solution to that issue the adding of several layers of paywalls and limitations about how long a single person can play daily? I want to call this the height of hubris but I think they've surpassed that. As I said at the beginning, this is purely delusional on the behalf of everyone involved.
At the end of the day the literal only feasible explanation is thus; this is the world's most ballsy publicity stunt. That's all there is to it, that has to be the answer! They want to drum up the absolute dregs of negative press in the vain hope that when they reverse it the decision will create enough buzz to secure a player base, but even then you have to be stupid to not know that gamer's hold a grudge like no other consumers out there. Xaviant could start paying it's players to jump on servers and their numbers wouldn't reach half capacity after this stunt, they've literally played themselves to death. Years from now I'll suspect they'll be some crazy in-depth dive documentary into the psyche of a studio that risked it all and I just know it'll be one hell of a watch, but right now it's like watching the Titanic 2.0 in realtime (or I suppose it's 3.0 at this point) and, personally, I hoping that this time the thing sinks for good.
No comments:
Post a Comment