Elden Wins

 Writhe in success, time and time again.

The gaming world is learning a lesson, and thankfully it's one of those lessons stamped in through positive reinforcement rather than another example of crashing and burning in failure. It can seem esoteric sometimes, to always be insisting that what Shigeru Miyamoto attested to the speed of game development is a rule to success. You know the quote, we all do: "A delayed game is eventually good; a rushed game is forever bad." There have been some challenges to the second part of that, insistence from Live Service supporters that if you just hold on for another year, keep buying a healthy amount of Microtransactions in order to fully support post-launch development, maybe totally revamp the whole game with a casual 2.0 update, then the game will be good. But after enough examples of that just not really working out, and now another stellar example of what taking your time in the first place can actually achieve; I think we can put that rumour to bed. Elden Ring has proven that a delayed game is eventually good; and good games get what they deserve.

It has been touch and go over the past few years, about what actually constitutes success in game development. Not from the angle of critical reception, that's pretty self explanatory, just keep the audience happy typically with quality. I'm talking about raw, unforgiving, sales and profit numbers; because unfortunately it's not always the case that 'good game equals money'. If there's something that industry gods like FIFA and COD have taught us over the past decade or more; it's that if you scream loud and long enough you can make a fortune selling anything. Even low-effort re-releases of last year's title with a few minor rooster tweaks and many a mechanic from over ten years ago rolled back into rotation as some brand new boon, meanwhile some other mechanic is slowly rolled out so that this song and dance can continue on in ten years time. But recently the stability of that corrupt pantheon has been tested! Not by FIFA, that series is still an inexplicable hit, unfortunately.

Call of Duty has essentially flopped, big time. I mean, they're not seeing numbers that are dire by the standards of most other developer's in the industry, granted; but by Call of Duty standards, Vanguard has been a disaster. And considering that COD answers to Activision, a drop in sales to a low the series hasn't seen in ten years is a cause for utmost panic, given the sort of investors that type of publisher attracts. Vanguard was rushed, that much is obvious, and the crappy storymode, awful zombie mode and just alright multiplayer are all testaments to how the yearly COD cycle isn't cutting it anymore. (Either that or World War 2 has utterly lost it's appeal for FPS games, might be a bit of both.) And, amazingly, Activision are listening, The next COD is going to be delayed a year, giving a little bit of genuine hope for something at least a little bit inspired. Of course, the failure of Vanguard is probably only partially influential for this decision, and the recent stability from the Microsoft purchase most likely plays as the deciding factor there.

Meanwhile the biggest launch of the past four years, Cyberpunk 2077, has lingered in the charts as an annoying reminder of the success of image over substance. Yes, Cyberpunk is not the worst game ever made by any stretch of the imagination, and if you've only ever played Ubisoft titles all your life you'd probably think that Cyberpunk 2077 is a masterpiece; but we all know it fell well short of advertised image and no amount of patches is ever going to change that or bring the game up to the illusion they sold it on. And worst of all, CDPR were rewarded for that: setting an awful precedent. Their game sold gangbusters, the whole 'refund' situation was a much bigger hit to reputation than actual profits, and Cyberpunk has consistently clung to top 10 charts over the past year- the message that sends has been quite galling. Only now, with the coming of the Tarnished, has that order been shattered.

Elden Ring has taken the world by storm, and I couldn't be happier getting the opportunity to relay that. A flagship in the typically demure Souls-like subgenre, Elden Ring was always going to attract an audience of  masochistic genre fans ready and eager for their next does of torment. But the fervour and excitement building up to this release, alongside the strategy of launching at the beginning of the year rather than just saying you're going to do that before delaying until winter with every other launch; (It is surprising how often big games do exactly that) seems to have attracted the normie crowd too. That's the only way you can really explain a launch that is seeing a concurrent player peak on Steam that eclipses Dark Souls 3 by almost six times. Nearly 900,000 people were playing the steam version at the same time around launch, and that's said to be the worst version due to performance issues, so who can say what those numbers look like across the gaming board. Needless to say, Elden Ring is a hit.

It's swept the board with critical acclaim, and fans can't seem to get enough of journeying into The Lands Between and falling for an adventure that doesn't throw constant torment at them. By it's very design, being open world, Elden Ring feels more approachable and slower paced, allowing for greater staying power with the public. And that has translated great in sales, where for listings that we can actually check (as most sales listings are jealously guarded as secrets) we can see that Elden Ring has placed higher than Cyberpunk for launch week sales. In Britain, at least. That is an incredible achievement for any FromSoftware game, let alone for proving a point to the industry that being straight-up and not misleading your consumers can lead to mouth-watering sales numbers. And if there's a list of accolades I absolutely did not have ready-to-tick on my Elden Ring bingo card; being a an example to the industry is up there.

It's a victory for Souls fans everywhere, as their typically niche genre characterised by fair-but-punishing challenge, a concept itself regularly under attack by bored Games Journalists whenever there's a slow news week, has finally struck mainstream appeal. Sure, Dark Souls has a permanent place in modern gaming vernacular, but mark that against the number of people who actually bought the thing, and you'd probably find most who evoke it's name in comparison aren't even fans. But now, well I don't want to jinx it, but this might become one of those main-stay games that action adventure fans adopt whole sale. Which they might as well because that genre isn't exactly choice-rich in this day and age. You've got Elden Ring and Horizon, but Horizon only if you've got a Playstation. It's about time epic dark fantasy got it's time in the sun.

And so Elden Ring wins, George RR Martin is happy and all the industry has a shining, begrudging, example of what a finished product can achieve over a stupidly hyped one. Some are calling this the biggest launch since Red Dead Redemption 2, which sounds impressive until you check the numbers and realise that Elden Ring actually isn't anywhere close to what Red Dead 2 was rocking. It's entirely possible that RDR 2 will only be topped by Rockstar themselves in the future. But still, having company that esteemed ain't no thing to be shaking a stick at. I think we'd all love to be compared favourably against a phenom like that. And who knows, maybe if we wish upon a star and eat all of our greens, this all will rub-off on the industry and create a solid model for future games to follow. Fingers crossed.