Trust and Leaks

 Reflecting in the puddles.

Yeah, there was another leak, I'm sorry to say. And this time the target was someone whom I call back to quite often on this blog, as reference to the respect I put upon his work. The man was Hideo Kojima and the task was one of the many projects he's currently spinning around like plates as he teases a spooky future of unknown horror titles and movie projects and probably some sort of AR experience at some point. Kojima wants to do everything, that much is certain. As for the leak in question; it wasn't anything out-of-pocket for what you'd expect from a Kojima game. I won't discuss specifics except to say that if you're hoping for an incredible dump of context, clues and surprises you'll find little save for the surprise reveal of the shirtless man recording all of this on his smart phone once the screen goes black. That scare did give me a few heart palpitations, I will admit. 

What this got me thinking about however is the way that games are being entrusted to people who wantonly deposit them upon a hungry public without any care whatsoever to the integrity of the project being worked on. Games, as with any large entertainment product, are the culmination of massive pools of collaborative talent that work not only to ensure that a the final experience reaches it's objectives, but that the game is correctly nurtured in it's grand reveal to the public stage and carried along to launch and sometimes even beyond. It's a delicate weave that passes through various artesian hands until it all gets frayed and ripped to shreds by a single bad actor. It's a shame really, and dangerous for the project sometimes. Development morales and progress can be badly hurt through leaks and I can think at least of one game that was ultimately cancelled outright following a title accidentally leaked far too early.

What has changed about the general psyche of those that participate within the industry that little leaks like these are becoming more common? Perhaps it's just the general consequence of the growth of the industry; as more faces swarm to fill demanding roles the general pool of people that are likely to lack the moral fibre towards the project widens. Or maybe it's the general lean towards snippets of insider information that commonly gets dissected by commentators or Games journalists convincing the leakers that this is all morally justifiable; even with the differing circumstances of intent and context. And perhaps this comes from the withering of trust between developers and consumers that makes it easy to compartmentalise the act with the people hurt by it because the general public doesn't feel very much human in the eyes of their game developers these days. I cast a wide net when I ponder these situations.

Trust is such an important emotion to foster within an industry, especially as it begins to grow large, as an adversarial attitude eventually degrades both the consumers and the creators. But can you blame the public for not caring about the workload dumped on Rockstar after the GTA VI leak when Rockstar spent the past 8 years dragging out player time and money through mind-numbingly repetitive GTA Online content, and low-effort rereleases; instead of playing towards anything the fans were asking for? You can make excuses "Well this Rockstar isn't that Rockstar" but it's all the same to most people. They have the big R* above their employment letter; they serve the same megacorp. Players have been made to feel like cattle across the entire board with how the big developers mistreat them, it's only seems natural that they feel no comparative sympathy back and thus don't sweat the consequence of distributing and sharing leaks.

Speaking more on 'trust', that seems a stretched commodity by many modern day industry tales; such as the utter insanity of Abandoned and the dev who wantonly tried to capitalise on a woefully misjudged internet fan theory for his own clout. If you haven't heard, that same dev recently came out to subtly blame the theorizers for landing on his door, pretending he didn't invite them in for cookies and send each one of them a false lead to keep them on his trail. We get pulled each and every direction a lot in the industry, testing our ability to trust the next time around; but being absolutely lied to by a man stunned by his sudden platform of fame and instantly seduced by the publicity is just the cherry atop of it all. I know he's an indie dev and his antics should never have reached the platform that they did. But it happened, and it has had a ripple effect on how we can take any indie developer seriously going forward.

Sonic Frontiers recently suffered it's own leak that has frayed the developer-player bond; although the biggest victim here appears to be the unreleased track list because... I mean what else of substance is there to leak in a game as straightforward as Sonic Frontiers? Maybe they could have spoiled how disappointing the ending is going to be? (Okay, I'm getting mean.) It's sad to see the lead composer literally begging fans not to listen to the context-less tracks, just as it's sad to see people totally disregard his pleas and do so anyway. Admittedly I can understand the viewpoint of 'it's just a modern 3d Sonic game, who really cares about the track list'; but there's the whole lack of respect and reverence taking hold again. Also; who leaks less than a week before release? Some people are just vindictive, I guess.

And then there was God of War Ragnarok breaking street date and landing in the hands of fans, probably more of a screw up from a retailer than an actual malicious act of an individual who didn't care, but the result is still damaging. At such a point the game was already done, so development can't be harmed, but you'll still encounter that calibre of people who try desperately to ruin whatever they can for other people by going around posting spoilers and waving their hands. Now it's not just the game creators and providers you can't trust; it's your fellow community members! The same happened with The Last of Us Part 2, and will probably happen with Sony's next big flagship; the more hype the project, that more vultures they seem to attract.

It's a wonder that there's any trust and comradery in the industry left when it feels like everyone is just searching for some leverage with which to screw each other over. And if everyone is out there only looking out for themselves then who's going to look out for them when times are dire? How is the industry going to come together to fix itself when trends are heading in the wrong direction? Already I see objectively awful directions becoming battlegrounds for no other reason than barely concealed animosity; and sometimes it feels like there's an entire generation of very specific, forum dwelling, developers and journalists who actively hate their consumers and villainize them for whatever strange purpose. I may not like to use the word often, but when I do I mean it; because the toxicity of the games industry really can make it a downer to be a gamer sometimes.