Amazon: A death in the family

 And another gone, and another gone

I am a fellow who operates by feeling, first and foremost, and as of so far that has led me right when it comes to the world of gaming. It steered me towards Persona the second that I saw it, which is now already rising to one of my favourite games of all time, it steered me away from Avengers, which is currently dying a painful death because everyone grew bored in less than a month, and it made me repulsed at the proposition of Amazon joining the game market. Okay, maybe that's being a little unfair, I'll admit, but here me out. It's not like Amazon is so far away from the gaming world, they've owned Twitch for a few years now, the premier game-livestreaming platform, and have operated as a digital vendor for gaming and game equipment for even longer. (That's got to count for something, right?) But something about the very idea of them dipping their elongated digits into the gaming pool really makes my skin crawl, thus I find this latest news rather interesting.

Do you remember Crucible, Amazon's free-to-play third person shooter? No? But- but it came out this year, it had a whole cast of characters, shooting gameplay and pretty much everything you'd expect a game with a genre that dime-a-dozen to entail! Yeah, I tend to forget about the game too if I'm being honest, which is odd considering I think I covered it on this blog. (Don't care enough to check) It's a testament to how oversaturated a market is when a game funded by one of the biggest companies on the Earth can be completely lost under the deluge of similar content. I mean- I wouldn't go so far as to say it's indicative of a institutional lack of creativity within their brand, but I certainly think these guys would have a lot more success penetrating into the game market if they focused their efforts on smaller, high-quality projects instead of shooting for that one big whale. But hey, what do I know? I'm not some multi-billion dollar tax-dodging enterprise, I'm just the target audience.

So this Crucible game, it wasn't particularly panned at launch, nor particularly lauded; it just existed in that painful space of average games that writhe in perpetuity. Full disclosure, though I'd assume this would be obvious, I never played the game and nor would I ever intend to; but from what I heard it's only mostly generic, there were a couple of interesting ideas attempted there. (and then promptly scrapped.) Personally I just couldn't really imagine a game who shared the name of Destiny's, a consistent popular shooter, PVP mode doing well; that's just a marketing disaster that you'd have to be positively blind not to see coming. If I recall correctly, the last time I covered this game you couldn't even find it on google unless you specified the publisher. These issues swelled into problems that resulted in a haemorrhaging player base and the decision to swiftly withdraw the game back into Beta not too long after launch.

That was a few months ago, today the story has evolved into it's inevitable eventuality; Amazon's Crucible has been cancelled. (Not with a bang, but with a whimper) This marks, as far as I'm aware, Amazon's very first toe into the big-budget gaming world as an absolute and irrefutable failure on just about every level. It failed to stand out, failed to be received well, failed to gain a following and probably even failed to make a profit. (Unless there were some very dedicated whales out there) Surely this does not bode well for that upcoming Amazon game that some people are actually excited for, note how I don't include myself in that number, 'New World'. Once again that is a title that is attempting to hit a homerun out the bat, only this is more ambitious, has already made a bigger splash and has so much more to lose. Finger's crossed that one turns out better, eh?

Personally I find it hard to shed a tear for the death of Crucible, nor the struggle that Amazon have had trying to break into the gaming market, because I've been too discontented about what this means in the long run. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's a few heartbroken developers out there who really thought they'd worked on something special, but my gripe isn't with them but their paymasters. You see; I don't like Amazon, for so many of the obvious reasons and for a few of the more esoteric ones; I don't like what they represent. Whenever it comes to creative endeavours, be that books, movies or video games, there is always the chance for corruption when something as unfeeling as a corporate entity enters the equations, and typically the bigger the are the higher that risk. Two of the biggest companies in gaming, EA and Activison, are renowned for their anti-consumerist practises that threaten the eco-system almost constantly, and Amazon have already tackled two of the genre's those companies love to come back to, F2P and MMO, so you can't tell me ol' Bezos isn't following in their footsteps.

Now I know this is an incessantly conspiratorial stance for me to take; Amazon Game Studios as they exist now have only released one fully original game and it wasn't a total anti-consumer nightmare before it's untimely death sentence, but as I said: I am a fellow who operates by feeling. When I think of Amazon Game Studios I don't see someone out there to join the ranks of Bethesda, CDPR, Square Enix and whoever else still actually makes games every now and then, and Crucible was just boring enough not to break that assumption. (I'm really knocking this game but I can't overstate how hard it was to try and watch some twitch footage of this title: I literally fell to sleep in the middle of the day) Now my, along with everyone else's, attention has turned to 'New World' to see what they're made of, and I'm just not feeling what I'm seeing so far. Call me the ESP of gaming, but there's some bad juju coming off of this company.

Though let us play devil's advocate for a bit and pretend that Amazon are looking to enter the gaming ecosystem in order to improve the craft as well as make some money, that could truly be great for the industry! With the amount of money that Amazon have at their disposal, the amount of capital they could flood into gaming projects of all sizes could really shift the focus of power both in the console gaming and the PC markets. Imagine Amazon buying up game studios from all over the world and bringing concepts that otherwise would never see the light of day into the forefront, they could easily become one of the big publishers in no time. (And, seeing as how they don't have a console to cater too, it would good for all gamers.) I, for one, would love to see some of these really niche horror-focused start-up studios find a dedicated publisher to call their own, who can really lend the weight to bring these weird and imaginative demos we see pop up every year to life. But that's just one of the many ways in which Amazon could, if they were so inclined, positively impact gaming. I just don't believe that they are, or will ever be, so inclined

So there we have it, in an environment that is practically booming for the video game landscape, Amazon tripped and faltered, make of that whatever you will. All I have to conclude on it is thus; maybe it's not in every big company's wheelhouse to become big Video Game developers. I mean; Disney could even cut it back in the day. Freakin' Disney; one of the biggest dragons in the corporate world. It's takes a special blend of corporate tact, talent and empathy to make head-way in gaming, at least by my estimation, so let that be your definer. Or at the very least just hire a bunch of smarter studios to make games in your stead. What I'm trying to say is that there are multiple options, Amazon, maybe it's time to start considering them.

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