Amending the Anthem

 I can fix it: I have the imagination!

Live Service games: The final frontier. Aside from the mastermind of the genre, Destiny itself, it seems that the 'Live Service' style of game is one forever circling the drain ready to swallow up the unwary. A missing link between single player focused personally driven narrative and massively multiplayer bigger-picture gradually unveiling narrative; it never seems able to grasp onto that core audience of people who'll love it for what it is. Probably because so many of these games try to be exactly what Destiny is, not realising that Destiny was a success case of funding, development and novelty that even then had a plethora of growing pains in the beginning. Still, there has to be a way to do one of these games right. Destiny, and I guess the Division, can't live as sole arbiters on what it is to be a healthy live Service.

No, in fact I'm convinced that there is some missing substance that all these games have lost and I'm going to discover what it is as I unravel the method through which we might theoretically reboot some of the saddest failures. Avengers recently shut off all updates, and though I wish I could fix that one up first- I'll be honest it's a difficult conundrum to solve. Superhero's as a genre just doesn't seem to work from a fundamental level with what a Live Service functions on, as we've seen twice already with Avengers and Gotham Knights, (I know Knights was an offline Live Service, but the principal was the same) and we're about to see it a third time when 'Suicide Squad: Kills the Justice League' commits Seppuku. So I want to take look at an easier game to work with, Bioware's supposed opus: Anthem.

Now Anthem was one of those games doomed from the start, with no one quite knowing what the game they were making even was until the E3 trailer team informed them and the audience in the same moment. But what was there appealed at least conceptually. A high fantasy sci-fi world with mech suits and a mysterious power called 'the Anthem' left behind by the old gods. It had this 'Sci Fi channel' vibe to it with a lush and diverse city of people's kept within a massive fortress surrounded by untameable wilds full of wild monsters, bandits and eye-pleasing visual delights. It had all the looks to be a hit, and even it's world seemed functional enough to support this style of modular progression, expedition based gameplay snippets and slow unfurl narrative progression. It could have worked! But it didn't.

Largely I'd say this was because of the 'lack of vision' problem. This game was thrown together at the last minute, the team had no way of creating enough content to keep a new player base happy and had to stretch out what they could make until it was stringy and ugly- but in the world of imagination we can restart development with intention from day one and propose what the game could have focused on instead. And to start with, I think that Anthem should have shifted pace from creating a WOW shrunk down experience (like what Destiny shoots for) and try for a more Runescape style of game with a unique Bioware flavouring sprinkled on top for good measure. Don't understand what I mean by that? Don't worry, I've been brainstorming this for at least a year at this point.

Now from the getgo I think that most Live Service titles, Anthem included, would be vastly improved by going the route of providing 'vertical progression paths' rather than the genre-standard 'Horizontal progression'. Essentially what I mean by this is giving players an incentive to progress down the skills and activities they come to like rather than down some vague universal 'core level' like most RPGs already do. If, instead of focusing on purely getting stronger, the game provided a range of activities that players could level up their proficiency at doing, such as what Runescape offers, you'd have yourselves a fertile field for player constructed storytelling to thrive. For example, let's say that one such activity was being an Escort Javelin for the various merchants travelling the land. Completing basic escort jobs unlock more dangerous routes against complicated land- travelling across sea or in the sky- facing different threats along the way. The endgame version of these escort missions could have you safeguarding a merchant through an active 'Anthem' whilst it rages about, teraforming giant chunks out of the ground, dealing mind-bending effects of one of god's tools gone haywire.

The effect that specifications like this would have is in providing some sense of roleplay without making the entire product a 'hard RP' dystopia like you'll find in some of those 'Sandbox MMO's which never seem to catch on too well. Players will naturally gravitate towards activities that they enjoy and assume those roles within the ecosystem of the world, giving them an intrinsic reason to grow attached to the world of Anthem. Now they won't just be logging on to hit the next level cap, they're checking in to fulfil their duty hunting down the overbearing wildlife, or collecting rare materials from dangerous areas of the map. Of course they'll be players who want to be good at everything, and they'll be welcome to try. All that the developers would need to do from here would be to ensure that each play archetype is catered to as development progresses to tell the larger narrative.

But perhaps the biggest change in my vision of Anthem would be how it handles it's narrative. Bioware famously stepped away from their traditional storytelling methods by reasoning they wouldn't be possible within a live service space. Which meant no meaningful choices, no fleshing out your character with personally driven shifts in perspective, no relationship building or breaking with people around you- everyone had to follow the same static narrative because otherwise there would be narrative inconsistency. Well I've figured out the solution and it's a real special one. Get this: Instancing! But seriously, instanced main story objectives is how RPG MMO's like TOR handles their stories and it allows for everything that Bioware said was impossible. TOR has it's choice based storylines, (although I do critique the worth of those choices in the main narratives of The Old Republic. A more narrowly themed game like Anthem could definitely improve upon that part of the formula) companion relationship building and grouping up with friends whilst playing separate story objectives. This simple approach would have let Bioware play to their strengths whilst trying something new.

And finally, in a sort of wrap up of everything I've said: the world of Anthem needed to be more interactive to make it feel liveable. Even simple things like the ability to sit and have a drink at the bar adds wonders to the immersion factor. Read some in-universe newspaper, wake up in the infirmary after getting KO'd and choosing not to respawn at checkpoint in a mission, spotting key narrative members out and about and sharing a few lines of dialogue: this is the heart of a proper liveable world that Anthem, and games of it's kind, are so often missing. Sure, Anthem's problems ran a lot deeper than the game which was in the planning sheets, but in a perfect world with perfect development and a perfect launch: this was the Anthem I wanted to see. And maybe with a bit of luck it will be the framework of a Live Service we'll see someday in the future.

The Unfinished Menace

 You don't know the power of corporate deadlines!

What if you found yourself trekking through the deep Appalachian wilderness at 11pm at night in search of a tiny wooden cabin like one does on a free weekend. What if you found that edifice, mottled and windbeaten, doors wide open and cracked on their hinges like a broken gaping maw. What if your horror movie reasoning led you into this cabin off the edge of society, and crouched beside the lampshade in the living room, you find a heaving, seething mass in the corner, all bones and taut skin, gurgling something intelligible and bestial. Your heart catches, but the thing hears you anyway. It stretches it's long white neck and slowly turns around to reveal- the face of a stick figure. Two lines for the eyes and one half moon curve for the mouth. Turns out the monster didn't have time to be finished before it was set loose on society. It would kind of kill the mood a bit, wouldn't it? You would have a hard time taking it seriously as a threat, and if you can't even do that then perhaps the entire purpose of this horrific visage has been ruined, has it not? Well, can you see where I'm going with this?

A fashionable trend has emerged in the recent years, one that some of the truly fashion-forward were already lightyears ahead of (Bethesda, you daring trendsetters) but which has now finally caught on with your average QVC watcher; unfinished releases, in all their piece-meal glory. Because why sit down and actually finish the product and clean to an acceptable state to the audience, when you cut a corner in order to squeeze into the end of yearly financial report. Sure you're going to hurt your reputation, your ultimate sales numbers, probably your future sales numbers, the pedigree of talent you're likely to snag in the future, and just the general respect of the entire industry; but, you know, gotta make those black numbers in the ledger look big! That's a... worthy exchange? None of this is new. I'm not blowing your mind with this take and it's something that has been bubbling away for a while, this trend towards the unfinished. But something about these past 2-3 years has been- just egregious. It's getting much worse, and I want to talk about it.

I think a big one that we tend to forget about for some reason is Anthem. (Never forget, ya'll) A game which, honestly, it feels like no one wanted to actually make. Here Bioware spent several years and too much money sitting on their hands trying to figure out what they even wanted to make whilst EA got more and more upset until they forced out a launch. Now Bioware were no slackers here, they immediately jumped on the Todd Howard defence ("It's not about how your game launches-" etc.) but people soon found the game was almost empty at it's core when you peeled away the faux excitement from the developers, honestly there was little driving potential behind it. This is perhaps the gold standard of the Unfinished Menace, because at no point did Bioware manage to convince the world that they had a plan beyond "Get it out and hope everything works out" and how did that end up for them? Well the game's development just got effectively abandoned for a year before EA officially killed off hopes for a do-over. That's right, Bioware literally sat down and asked if they could just make the game again and start from scratch. I ain't no fan of EA, but I genuinely sympathise with the utter gall they had to endure through this game's entire life cycle. Let this be an example of the worst case unfinished scenario.

And then we have Cyberpunk, at perhaps the other end of the spectrum. I don't like to talk about Cyberpunk much these days because of how badly it hurt me, but seeing them be listed under the potentials for best RPG of the year in Geoff Keighley's game awards just severely triggered me. Best action game and I'd have been fine, but best RPG? What a joke. This is a game that was sold on the premise of 'it'll come out when it's ready', which held true until overconfidence took over and the team at CDPR backed themselves into a corner that they didn't have the resources, staff numbers or time to get out of. What people got was a game utterly unrecognisable to what was promised aside from in visuals, and even then those visuals were what the highest of the high-end consumer could achieve exclusively. The role playing was lacking, the character choice faded away after the prologue, the depth of the city was non-existent, the game just wasn't done; but the game wasn't a total mess either. (at least, not when it was playable.) This has allowed CDPR to quietly pivot the goalposts and pretend that this considerably more vapid 'FPS with extra flairs' style Far Cry game was the goal all along, however seeing as they're up for RPG of the year it seems that the deception did fool some of us, eh Geoff? Consider this the "misdirect ending" for the unfinished game narrative. 

Grand Theft Auto The Definitive version, or whatever the stupid name of this thing was, is the most recent example. (tied with the rest upcoming on this list) A game made by GTA porters who have a history of questionable choices, much of what The Definitive Edition got wrong could be attributed to either laziness or not enough time. (I suspect a little of column A and a lot of column B) Overall the problems sum up like this: AI upscaling, porting inferior mobile version back into PC and consoles and questionable artistic choices. Rockstar have already started tackling a lot of the issues and the latest stupidly big patch shows us that Rockstar-proper doesn't mess around when it comes to their reputation. But it still shows as a rush to finish the polish of a game that they already sold for full price, which isn't the best possible look, now is it? Definitely still ongoing, but I've actually developed a bit of faith that Rockstar might actually make up the difference for Grove Street Games' botched unfinished mess. (An unfinished remaster/remake- how has the industry sunken that low?)

Another big one has been Battlefield 2042, the game to break a thousand fan's hearts. After months of effortless hype built from straight lies, including an interview where they bold-faced claimed that this game was taking the best elements from 3 and 4 and adding new things ontop of that! (Funny, I seem to remember both those games having SCOREBOARDS) The game is a mess, contentless, empty, poorly designed, lacking destruction, you've all heard the spiel. The most sensible reasoning behind this has also been the saddest, people think this game was built to be a battle royale and had to have those systems gutted at the last second for whatever reason. Basically meaning that the mess of a game we now have is due to emergency smashing together of an unfinished product with insides that weren't designed to go with it. A victim of chasing the trends gone horribly, though predictably, wrong.

And finally we have Battlefield's more excitable twin brother, COD Vanguard. A game which is being received much better than it typically would just because the competition is a total dumpster fire this year, although it's still selling the worse than the series has in about 14 years, so you win some you lose a lot. The missing content here comes from the disaster of a mode that has been married with COD games for nearly years now, the Zombie mode, which seems to have been getting worse and worse over the years. Even with that general warning that we weren't exactly heading towards a grand Zombies renaissance, the pathetic lack of grand Easter eggs, strongly themed maps, exotic random weapons or really substantial gimmicks of any kind, was certainly unexpected. Yet another full price game coming this year with a severally wanting package.

These are the games that have flooded the market over the past few years, normalising the belief that products don't need to finished before they're rushed out of the door to an audience, and every consumer out there should find that concerning. Heck, I have no problem with companies like Larian taking the slow approach and releasing their stuff in early access so that they narrow in everything perfectly and learn how to improve the gameplay with the audience, because that's upfront and cooperative, but selling a complete experience as a pipe dream and then spending the next few months trying to patch the leaky ship whilst grumbling about how poorly all your hard work has been received; that's crazy to me. At this rate, the label of 'AAA' should be ripped from the industry entirely, as it no longer indicates a game with polish behind it but just a higher budget potential trainwreck. (In that case; god help the new 'AAAA' Perfect Dark game.)

Anthem DEAD

We are gathered here today to say goodbye...

Alas, poor Anthem. I knew him well, Horatio. Okay that's a barefaced lie; I didn't know Anthem, at least not personally. No, I was the creepy tsundere onlooker from afar with binoculars in one hand and a notebook in another, trying to pretend that I wasn't at least somewhat interest in what Anthem could have been. But even by that first trailer I felt like something was wrong, and so did a lot of folk out there which is likely why, even with the benefit of ignorance, in week one Anthem undersold next to Bioware's previous title. (Though that might be also due to said previous title; considering that game was Andromeda) since then it's been a rocky road for Anthem that has been characterised totally by disappointment and despair, all of which has been rounded off just recently with the announcement that Anthem Next, the overambitious plan to revive the game for a new age, has been killed off. Finite. That's all folks. No more out this little birdie. Goodnight.

And yes, I mourn. I mourn not for a game that was good, nor for a chance it might have become good, but for a game which people liked which is now no more. I mourn for those that feel let down by Bioware and EA, and I mourn for the belief of a world of Javelins and the Anthem of creation. I won't lie, when Casey Hudson got up there and started pitching to the crowd, I sold myself over for a while. Let myself believe in the dream even if it didn't always makes sense. (The Bioware formula in an MMO-lite setting? Sure, why not?) So perhaps I also mourn for the dream I almost fell for. And to be clear, at no point am I blaming EA for making this call, as hard as that is to believe given how I tend to act towards them. This was the right move to make and if anything, it was foolish and unbelievable for Bioware to pretend they could fix this game and just re-release it to a crowd of adoring fans. (All of whom, I suspect, were supposed to just be waiting around, with flowers in their bonnets and candles on their window sills, for the grand return of their favourite game.) People move on, and that goes especially true for when your company has provided nothing but express reasons why they should.

The Anthem Next proposal wanted to take an inherently flawed and unfinished game in an attempt to make something out of it. Think what CDPR are attempting to do with Cyberpunk, only they lacked even the parts of Cyberpunk that CDPR got right, such as the world concept and the story. Recall, that Anthem was a game so buggy that it caused PS4's to hard restart in it's early days. It featured a narrative so unfinished that there were literally missing cutscenes and an entire mission thread built to make players replay content for an extended period of time so that the play time could be buffed up. And had a concept so underdeveloped that it proposes the break down of tools which the gods themselves used to shape the very world and all who reside in it, and then represented it in gameplay solely by making it an endless spawn machine for generic wildlife enemies. Do not forget; nothing about Anthem was redeemable. Nothing, except, for the flight.

Flying is all anyone thinks about when it comes down to this game, because that's all the team were ever really told to do. Famously, Anthem was frostily received by the EA bigwig in charge of Bioware until he saw the flying, then he asked them to focus more on that and thus was born perhaps the only system which the team fully realised. And sure, zooming around the skies in a mech suit looks pretty; but what does it actually mean for the game? Well it was an excuse for the map to be several magnifications bigger than it needed to be, because the team didn't really have the ideas/time to fill it fully, and that's about it. You might argue that the gameplay too was a highpoint, but I see it as a 1.5 upgrade from Mass Effect Andromeda's gameplay, and thus hardly worth the praise. It's fun to play, but so is Andromeda. Just play the Mass Effect game instead.

I'm sure the team of thirty who have been working on Anthem NEXT for the last two years, (give or take some months) will be just that little bit heartbroken by this and thus I feel too for them. But then, for EA's side, that is just another two wasted years of development money into a game which famously wasted several years of development money before even the main game was released, so there are certainly fair reasons for pulling the plug. Honestly, even if Anthem NEXT proposed simply the greatest possible revival for the franchise ever it probably still would be canned for the plain fact that gamers aren't going to be coming back to that game, it just won't happen. That seal of trust was broken and Bioware is going to be in the dog house for at least the next two game launches. (provided they go well) And honestly that's just fair.

However, let it not be said that the death of Anthem was for nothing, because it's demise did have a positive effect on the future of EA/Bioware games and that's a silver lining if ever I've heard one. When news dropped that Dragon Age 4 has been given the blessing of EA to drops it's multiplayer mode and focus on being a fully single-player experience, I honestly instinctively thought it was fake news. But then I saw the writer as Jason Schreier, and he is the only journalist in games journalism, so I guess it's just definitely true now. What a change of tune given that EA, just months before Anthem, tried to affirm to us all how Single player games were dead and live services are the be-all-end-all. (How'd that one turn out for you guys? Poorly, I'd imagine.)

Anthem's utter failure in every regard is apparently one of the catalysts for this switching of gears; as it demonstrates how a live service might not only fail, but be utterly disgustingly torn down by the community and turned into a symbol of everything that's wrong with the modern world. (Seriously, people were one more bad news story away from burning Javelin effigies in the street. That backlash was biblical.) The other catalyst was that Jedi Fallen Order game which was entirely single player and won awards because it was so beloved. Pretty much securing, in no uncertain terms, that EA weren't just wrong in their predictions, but utterly out of touch with the things that gamers want out of todays games. That they're now giving greater control to their developers in such a significant manner is a huge step in the right direction that I absolutely applaud.

So does this mean we have to start liking EA? First off 'ew', second off; you wash your brain out with soap for even thinking such a detestable thing. Never give Electronic Arts the benefit of the doubt because if there's one thing they've proven it's that they only give an inch when they expect to sneak a mile out from behind your back. Keep a very close eye on the next subtle way they try to trick gamers out of their cash when Dragon Age 4 comes around, because I all but guarantee they'll be a grift of some sort. (Even if it's just the confusing special edition grift; that's one which hasn't exploded in their faces too badly yet.) But what this does mean, is that we can put Anthem to its final rest in the knowledge that, despite everything it was and represented, it's legacy will prove a noble one, and isn't that the most any of us can hope for out of our last departure? Au revoir, Anthem, you shall not be missed. 

Anthem LAST

It's the final countdown

Woah, speak and you shall be heard, am I right? Honestly, I can't even recall the context with which I recently evoked the name of  the holy Anthem disaster, but right now it's returned to the news in a big way to answer that big question everyone has; what the heck's up with that game anyway? I mean seriously, it feels like we were in a whole other phase of existence when first that name cursed our airwaves, and I'm contemplating both what kept them quiet for so long and why it is we should stand to listen now. And as it turns out, I'm not the only one with such a feeling towards this game, nor are the legions of Bioware fans who are similarly curious, but all that is simply the billows before the hurricane, because I think the real question to be asked here is what should be done about Anthem. None of this about what EA might decide but totally irregardless of their decision, thoughts must be on where should this issue ultimately land; because I think that in solving this conundrum we'll have prepared ourselves for an almost identical conflict down the line.

But first, Anthem. Need a refresher? If you don't, sorry but I like doing intros. Anthem was Bioware's (of Kotor, Mass Effect and Dragon Age fame) first foray into a completely multiplayer game wherein everyone would play together to hunt for loot, complete story raids and grind in perpetuity whilst enrichening the studio on the backend through low-effort microtransactions. (The dream of any and all studios, it seems) It shook off the Bioware roots, of creating various acclaimed single player story driven RPG games, and branched out to new horizons for making a game inviting endless play, something that literally couldn't be further away from their bread and butter. (Even their single player RPGs weren't built for endless play the same way that Bethesda's were) So, as you can imagine, the game was a little bit of a mess at launch. Only, it was a bit more than a little mess; it was a lot mess. Buggy, incomplete, lacking in features, poorly optimized; pretty much the only thing the game had going for it was a decent core gameplay structure, but that was mostly nicked from 'Mass Effect Andromeda' so it's not like people couldn't experience it elsewhere. All and all, badtimes for Bioware.

Of course, then came the Schreier articles delving into the backwards work ethics and the way how the initial trailer was completely fake. (And not like the Cyberpunk 'completely Fake'; we're talking about a composite that was shoved together in order to appease some EA exec who thought all the world only likes the same games he does. Huh, kinda sounds like that Ubisoft Exec in hindsight. Wonder if they're related?) Bioware had apparently fluffed around with the Anthem project for years without any real progress until EA called them out on it and thus proceeded a truncated development period in which the absolute mess of a game we received was actually rather remarkable, considering there wasn't enough time to really make anything at all. The main takeaway, however, is that when you're pretentious enough to codename your game after Bob Dylan, (whilst making some odd claims that your game is going to be the 'Bob Dylan of gaming', whatever that means) you're probably overcompensating for something.

So the game bombed, super bombed, to the point where people were doing a Stadia and literally just counting the days until it was to be abandoned by the devs. I mean sure, there was some upcoming support coming in an update but- whoops, that update was a trainwreck too, better abandon it. But then something amazing happened. As it turns out, EA are apparently believers of second chances, as they allowed Bioware to commit to a full renewal of Anthem (which I'm guessing is a full remake at this point) called Anthem NEXT, due to reshape the very flawed foundation of that game. Could they manage it? Would Anthem become the juggernaut that all of 5 people thought it might be? Are Bioware truly not in the firing range for EA like they insist, or is Anthem NEXT their last chance to save their own hide like logic fuelled by precedent would denote?

Well I guess we're going to find out any day now because, according to a leak that absolutely was not supposed to make it to the public by EA's estimations, their fate is soon to be decided. In the two years since Anthem launched, armed with a team of just around thirty, it's unclear exactly what it is that they've all been up to over there. What with everything that's happened over the years with them losing their rally leader who announced NEXT, losing Hudson, the global pandemic, and all that nonsense; has any actual work been done? I can only imagine that they must have been laying out plans for what they would do if only EA got off their asses and funded the damn project, but who can say? Whatever it is, the results of their toils is soon to be presented before an EA tribunal for ultimate judgement, will the project be scrapped or will it receive the necessary funding; and I'm honestly not optimistic for Bioware here.

Firstly, this story involves an extended amount of development time wherein Bioware were operating without the prevue of EA making sure things were getting done, and we know Bioware's history with Anthem in that regard. Secondly, we should think about what they have worked on since then, because it's kind of looking like the Bioware hands might be full. They've announced the new Dragon Age (again), revealed a new mainline Mass Effect and a remaster of the first three, but not a word on Anthem. Makes one wonder if the thirty on the job were really working on Anthem or just treating that at their side gig. (I'm not saying, I'm just saying.) We may be looking at an eventuality where Bioware is forced to break yet another promise they made to their consumers, and cancel Anthem outright, bringing a neat end to that messy saga in a way we don't usually get too often in the gaming world. And as sad as that might be, is it perhaps for the best?

Now I don't want to throw shade on any of the Bioware staff (or at least, not any more than I already have) but they've really got to remember where their talents lie. Just as Bethesda are known for their single player content and floundered when presented to the online masses, Bioware is perhaps better off sticking to what they know and remastering their craft there. It's not as though they reached the peak of their RPG game and could not improve, there very well could still be a single player masterpiece waiting in Bioware's future, but the same cannot be said for their online ventures. They've just proven rather soundly how that world isn't even really in their wheelhouse to create for, either physically or mentally. (As in; a lot of their ideas were dumb and missed the point too.) But by that same merit I don't want to pour cold water on anyone trying something new and outside their established field of talents, so as you can see I'm of several minds right now.

I think this might be an important conversation to have amidst ourselves right now because of another recent addition to the whipping boy lineup- CDPR. Remember, Cyberpunk 2077 was announced to have some sort of seamless multiplayer mode years before the launch of the game, and that's still something we have to live with despite the mess of the base game. Whatever strengths that Cyberpunk might hold, most agree that the world and it's systems is not it, and given how that world is likely to be the focal point of Cyberpunk Online, one has to wonder whether or not that upcoming expansion is still a good idea. Perhaps it's better for single player developers to stick to what they know, or perhaps that's a callous undermining of everyone's abilities. As I said, this is ultimately quite the sticky conundrum with no clear solution. I say we see what EA has to say on things in the very near future.

The role of Streaming in gaming.

It reaches forever

As gaming starts to really develop into more of a mainstream presence, I find myself regarding and assessing the components that make up that community, which leads me to asking a question now and then: just how important is this to gaming. Know that I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but in as clinical a manner as possible; how has streaming and Internet culture influenced the growth of the gaming community? I've never been too far into the whole world of Twitch and streaming, so for me I've always been in the position of an outside observer, but I recognise it's significance. Just as much as YouTube has done wonders for spreading gaming culture further than ever before, Twitch has bought competitive gaming into the limelight in a way that traditional TV could never achieve and that makes it significant in the discussion of gaming in my book.

I think there is a certain 'interactivity' with Twitch that steps just one foot above even YouTube at times when it comes to the building of a community, and that makes it the perfect ground for the spreading of a shared culture. For Twitch, a platform ostensibly primarily focused on gaming, that means the shared love of gaming can enjoy extended proliferation over the globe. The act of being able to sit down, put on a game you love, and broadcast that experience for all the world to see is the sort of heart-to-heart that can really draw eyes. Whatsmore, in the wake of the pandemic and other events that I really don't feel like discussing, Twich has become something of a last bastion for the bored and lonely who lack the creativity and/or drive to sit down and make a YouTube and have the common sense to stay away from Facebook. The amount of folk from all walks of life that have jumped into the land of game streaming over the past few months or so really showcases the breadth and power of such a streaming service for the industry.

But speaking of YouTube, the term 'Streaming' isn't exclusive to a live feed that is broadcast to you, no, it also works for VOD. (Yes, I know YouTubers livestream as well, but the community isn't as tight knit so I'm overlooking that.) In terms of hobbies that they cater to, YouTube actually has a much wider net to cast over the world in comparison to the primarily gaming-focused Twitch, but that doesn't mean they've had a lesser effect on the gaming community. Indeed it seems that since the dawn of time, when man first crawled out of that primordial muck, there were 'Let's plays' ready and waiting for them to spend their hours watching, as well as 'jumpscare compilations.' (God, who remember's those abominations?)

Personally, as someone who has paid much more attention to the goings on over at YouTube, it's a lot easier for me to talk about the way that platform has helped shape the future of marketing. (Which isn't to denigrate Twitch's hand in that, I'm just less familiar with the specifics.) One of the most profound examples of this lies in the whole 'influencer' trend that has spawned out of the YouTube format. Seemingly 'ordinary' people with a wide variety of specific hobbies and preferences, all of which draw very specific crowds, makes for an ideal petri-dish for those that look to target their marketing efforts to their target audiences. (That is more cost effective afterall.) Out of this a practise has grown of teams reaching out to YouTubers who's audience fits the demographic of their games in order to slide directly in front of the right eyes. This is arguably what led to the smash success of 2016's DOOM and Mortal Kombat X; thus proving that the streaming platforms can be symbiotic in relationship to the industry given the right circumstances.

However that is not always the case. Streaming, in terms of Twitch and YouTube, is still a form of Social Media, and social media is notoriously difficult to predict and effect the mood of. As such, social media sites can be the perfect breeding grounds for a successful marketing campaign or the staging ground for a burn campaign that can sink you to the ground. Point-in-case; look at Fallout 76. A game which failed to land with practically anyone significant in the online Fallout community in it's initial reveal. (Which may be in part due Bethesda's wanton misleading advertising that people picked up on quickly.) Now of course, the game was a mess at launch and rightly deserved a lot of it's criticism, things were so poor, in fact, that the team spent a great many months desperately scrambling to fix things together.

In the year and a half since, Fallout 76 has been forged into a decent title that perhaps still isn't exactly deserving of it's namesake, but certainly isn't the dumpster fire it started out as. But as a momentum-based construct, the hearts of Social Media aren't ever really interested in changing their minds about a product, once they have an opinion they have it for life. Now you could argue for days about whether or not this is a good or bad thing, whether this is deserved accountability or blind bandwagoning; but the effect is that when a mistake is made on the global stage, the folks of the various streaming platforms will use that leverage to drive your game into the ground. Just look at Fallout, as I've mentioned, and the way that all of that game's good improvements are ignored over any perceived wrongdoings. When Bethesda announced their 'battle pass' systems, the entire Internet latched onto it to call Bethesda greedy and manipulative for throwing yet more monetisation on a game not deserving of it. Only that wasn't the case, as Bethesda then came out and clarified that the Battlepass system would be free for everyone, and how did the community respond? Silence. No apologies, no backtracking, just silence.

This is the same sort of treatment that Battlefront 2 went through during it's lifetime, despite how actually great that title turned out being; or what Anthem will go through when it relaunches after it's hibernation. Changing hearts and minds is one thing but changing the course of Internet chatter is nigh on impossible. Although that doesn't mean that smaller, less popular, communities can't find a home on Streaming sites every now and then. The entire Internet, including myself, practically vomited when The Culling returned with it's laughably asinine business model, and yet that game still has a rotation of Twitch streamers who play it. (Sure, that rotation is of about 4 people, and none are Online as of the time of me writing this, but that still counts for something, right?) Even this small gesture is enough to stir the pot of community and provide some grounds for games to grow from.

And all of that isn't taking into account the games that owe their success to the sharing of streaming and VODs, like Undertale, Doki Doki Literature Club, Surgeon Simulator, I Am Bread, and all games of that ilk. So at it's most basic level, the streaming landscape is a potential wild card ruled by trends and gut emotion and cowboy lawlessness, but at it's best it can be an amplifying beacon that shares itself with the world. Somewhere within that mixture there lies the face of the modern game community, and perhaps a hint of where that industry might head in the future. Of course, this is just a perfunctory glance into such a world and there are plenty more specific branches of this topic that I intend to touch on. But that's for another blog.

Anthem, the state of necrosis

Exhumation on the menu, huh EA?

22nd of Feburary 2019, that date saw the release of Bioware's 'Magum Opus', 'Bob Dylan' of-a-game; (Whatever that means) Anthem. That means that right now we are sitting only a week and some change after the grand anniversary and at the time of writing I can see 7 Twitch steams for anthem with a collective total of 37 viewers, 38 including me. (To be fair, early morning for me is late night for North America, but this still isn't the greatest numbers for a live service that is but a year old) To compare, Destiny 2, a game that is over 2 years old, currently has more Streams than I care to count on it and a combined viewer count of 3,538. (Not including me because I still haven't forgiven Bungie for what they did.) All this paints a dour picture of the Sci-fi 'Epic' that Anthem was sold as, but it is by no means the end of the world, because there is a new hope on the horizon.

I know that I've mentioned it before but that was all the way back when this information was still rumour and speculation, but now we sit in the enlightened state of official confirmation; Anthem will be getting a full re-launch. A full 'hit the breaks and restart' that will scrap the mess that the studio have been trying to make work for the past year and start fresh with something better. (Proof that sometimes the awful cannot get better. Guess there goes any hope for the like of me then, huh?) Whatsmore, this relaunch will be coming 'soon', which translates to "We have no idea when it will launch but we'll tell you 'soon' so you'll get off our backs." We don't even know how much the team intend to change with this relaunch, or what form it will take. (But judging from the wording, we can assume that this won't just be an Anthem 2. Which makes sense.) The only concrete piece of info I can dig up is the fact that the studio will be 'moving away' from the seasonal content that everyone rolled their eyes at when it was first announced. (oh really, Bioware? Only 1 year in and you're listening to fans? The mile long boat starts it's pivot.)

But even when you acknowledge the good, you still have to stop and consider the absolute state that this game is in and wonder how it got there. Go to any reviewer of the game or die-hard fan (all 12 of them) and you'll hear the same praise over and over; "the game is fun!" "The combat and movement is great!" "The attention to detail is insane!" "This game perfectly delivers on the 'Mech Suit' fantasy that we all have!" (I guess that makes me the freak for never really caring about Mech Suits. Or Ninjas, for that matter.) But with such a solid foundation of gameplay that is considered 'decent' to 'Quality', why is this game still a black sheep amidst gaming circles? Well, it's everything else really. Those who remember the launch will recall how much of a buggy broken mess the game was in, the storyline was some of the most pedestrian Sci-fi trite that you could ever hope to stumble into and the actual missions that players were sent on were awful, to put it mildly.

The game just felt like one huge tech demo that was marketed and sold for a full retail price, and people didn't appreciate being scammed so roundly. And when you think about it, that was what Anthem was, a huge pricey scam. For evidence of that just look to that infamous E3 footage which we later learnt was put together in a last ditch attempt to sell the game to the current EA head, before getting haphazardly thrown up for the public in order to get them excited for a game which, crucially, didn't currently exist. (And never really would.) In that trailer we saw diverse bustling crowds, 'dynamic' wildlife and even contextual events that were cinematic and impressive; none of which ever made it to the full game despite being some of the cornerstones of the marketing. So when you realise that Anthem was essentially a scam, it really sorta makes sense that practically no one is still playing, or watching, it today. (Fallout 76 has more viewers, incredibly.)

So there is now an important question to be asked by the community; How acceptable is it to do this with your game? Are we, as a gaming populace, willing to accept a game that was sold upon the premise of a lie, killed with months of ineffectual support and then repacked and resold to us. For the moment, I feel it's necessary to entirely divorce this prospect from the hypothetical scenario of the re-release being excellent, because even if it is that will do nothing to amend the history books. Not so long ago Todd Howard found himself under fire for claiming that "It's not how you launch a game, it's what it becomes", and right now it seems that Anthem is shaping up to be the final boss of that mindset. Should we allow this to happen and reward Bioware and EA for doing so, then aren't we saying that we're happy to be sold broken buggy abortions-of-a-game as long as we're promised that it might get good at some point? How many unscrupulous publishers and developers will take advantage of that to swindle their playerbase? Heck, how many already do?

Of course, when probing such lines of thought it's often helpful to remember the other examples of games that pulled off such a re-launch and weigh-up the pros and cons of them. Final Fantasy XIV famously launched to considerable troubles until 'A Realm Reborn' hit and completely changed up the fabric of the game. The Elder Scrolls Online was ugly and shallow to start with, but several renovations later it's one of the most popular MMO's of the time. Even Destiny started out with a fairly empty first title before a packed sequel that has been supported for years now. Every one of these games disappointed the player base initially before coming back with some grand re-envisioning, so why do so many people bawk when they hear of Anthem doing the same? For me, I think it comes down to intent.

Of those three games that I mentioned, they all share a commonality in the sense that there was considerable initial effort put in by the studios involved to create something good, despite what ended up. Perhaps the efforts were misguided or the ideas were lame, (Or you already spent half a billion on the game and had to get it out; Destiny.) whatever the case the end result was trash despite good intentions. One could say that the same is true with Anthem, but it certainly doesn't feel that way. When you look at the product, Anthem feels like several good ideas that were thrown together into a product that no one ever really believed in. Take that 'great combat' that everyone always commends, it's just a reworked version of the 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' combat, likely in the middle of being transformed into the combat of the next Mass Effect title. The flight that people love, a minor aspect that was expanded upon by insistence of the EA head who was in charge of the product. The world that looks so luscious but is criminally empty, conceptualised and designed before the game had a name, let alone a genre or a gameplay loop. At no point in Anthem's life did it ever have a single person with a clear vision of what the game could be, so why should we believe the studio when they say they can retrofit a vision into this lifeless husk? How would that even be possible?

Perhaps the revamping and relaunch of Anthem will be a rags-to-riches story to rival that of 'The Ugly Duckling'. Maybe in a year's time, having 'the relaunch of Anthem' on your resume will be a truly impressive medal of honour. But right now it feels like Bioware is attempting to perform the Hiemlich on a body at the Wake, all out of some misguided attempt to prove their worth to EA. (They've just finished draining the blood out of one studio, Bioware. I'm sure their vampiric thirst has been stated for another 12 months at least.) Personally I think that the most basic requirement to mount a successful revival is a solid foundation, and I've never seen Anthem as anything solid. Fingers crossed that I'm wrong on this one, but I'm willing to put money on the fact that even if Anthem is revived into the greatest looter-shooter ever conceived, the betrayed public won't bite the bait. Fool me once shame on me, fool me twice- you can't get fooled again!

I talk about Event Culture on Christmas day. Yay.

Something different this way comes.

It's Christmas I guess. Rather than spend the day being judged by my extended family (and family friends!) I''ve taken the time to treat myself to doing something that I still inexplicably enjoy; writing these blogs. As such, it should come as little surprise to hear that the topic on my mind today is 'Event Culture' and specifically how that pertains to the video gaming world, be it offline or on. (It's mostly online.) Perhaps this isn't most festive of topics or moods to get oneself in this time of year, but it's the only way that I can alleviate the massive headache that I always get this time of year so that's where I am. (I've always held that cynicism has healing properties.)

First you might ask; what exactly is it that you mean by 'Event Culture' and how does it relate to the world of gaming? Well, in the words of that one eye-gouge-worthy advert that I keep getting off YouTube "Event Culture is dedicated to those willing to invest in experiences rather than material possessions." (And no, actually, I don't remember what that Ad was for making it's entire purpose a failure.) So, in relation to video games; it is those moments in a video game's life cycle whereupon additional elements are added into the game in a temporary fashion for the end of creating valuable memories for the player rather than adding value to the permanent package itself. I suppose, at a stretch, you could relate it to a 'Fight Club'-esque 'Anti-materialism message, but then you'll have to find a spot for the 'nihilism' angle to fit in so I'd personally avoid that particular analogy.

For someone such as myself, who is forever aware of their own mortality and yet finds themselves a struggling slave to it, this is a concept that inherently makes no sense. (At least not in the video game world. Real world: Sure, whatever, I don't care.) Whenever I am dedicated to playing through a title and experiencing everything that game has to offer, the absolute last thing that I want is to be rushed towards certain activities for fear of missing out. This is the tactic that is pushed in many modern online titles such as, ESO, BDO and WOW just to name a few. The commonly accepted theories behind these attempts are two-fold; on one hand they attempt to draw in new folk by assuring people that the game is healthily active and that they'll miss out if they wait for a bit and on the other hand they want to draw existing customers back to the title for re-currency purposes as well as alternative monetisation.

Now that isn't to say that there is anything inherently wrong with the act of celebrating events and holidays in style; afterall there is nothing inherently wrong with either of those two goals. I'll never complain about being given an excuse to go back and play through a title that I love and if a title is deserving enough, I have no issues with spending a bit on microtransactions to celebrate the event, but my irrational fear of the finite plays on my nerves just enough to put me off. What is especially as baffling, are those events in which huge chunks of content are added to the game with a deadline before being taken out. It makes no sense to me; you put in all this effort to put this stuff together only to snatch it away within a manner of weeks, what's the point?

'The point', of course, is to provide value to the holidays. When Runescape would conduct it's yearly Winter questline (I presume they still do that but I don't know) it would serve as a great rallying call to the game whilst putting everyone in the right mood for Christmas. For habitual gamers, these events can be our chance to experience the fun of the holidays without having to actually force ourselves outside in order to physically see people. (Thank god.) My own neuroses about this kind of content is really unwarranted when you consider the value folk get out of events and the aura of 'exculisveness' that is generated from unique rewards of such events. Overwatch would often limit some or their best outfits to the holidays and that often made such events the best time to play those games.

There are times, however, where event culture is sought to the determent of the game. Lets take 'Anthem', for example. There's a game that certainly had a rough launch-year due to the way that it was put together in a year by a team that had no idea what they were making or where they would go with it. The title suffered from many criticisms from those that endured it, most parroted of all being; there's not enough content. Bioware were very lethargic when it came to supplying content too, with players having to wait until close to 6 months later to see a substantial addition to the game in the form of: The Cataclysm. What people weren't aware of initially, however, was that 'The Cataclysm' was conceived as an 'event'; meaning that the name play area and game mode that it offered was snatched away a month or so later. As a result, in the effort of building up and giving the community an event for their trouble, Bioware just ended up wasting their development time on an event that annoyed everyone by ending too soon. (Or at all.)

Perhaps it won't surprise you a great deal to read, but I'm not particularly the most 'event driven person'. I find that 'Events' rarely ever live up to the hype around them and the annual build-up to such moments can easily become nauseating. But then, I understand the place of events in society and do not 'wish them away', so to speak. Out of the monotony of the everyday it can be exciting to escape it all, even for a day, by escaping into a fantasy of 'love and understanding' and 'good will to all men'. I suppose being a 'habitual gamer' has desensitized me to the rush of 'escapsim'.

This blog was probably even more incoherent than my usual drivel. So I'm sorry for that, but I just needed something to catch my attention while I nurse this literal headache that I get every Christmas, so I just threw this together. I hope to tackle at least one big meaty subject before the end of the year, but it depends how I'm feeling over the next few days, might not have the right head space to get into it. Fingers crossed, I guess.

Anthem Overhaul?

Back to the drawing board...

Could there be hope on the horizon for Anthem? Sentiments leaked from the studio appear to believe so, as reports have emerged from Kotaku that plans are being drawn up for a complete overhaul of everything that Anthem got wrong. (So they're remaking the game then?) Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the Bioware studios of late, with key members of staff jumping as if from a sinking ship and preliminary reports detailing a live-service future, Bioware don't quite seem ready to give up on their failures and seem determined to ensure they don't keep one of gaming's biggest duds on their back catalogue. No official announcement has been made to that affect, but given what we have heard about Anthem so far, this seems to be a sensible move.

Folk have been somewhat optimistic when hearing of this news, whilst pondering if this could be a turning of fortunes for the game and studio. One comment I've seen a lot of, is variations of "Well, at least they'll have time to make the game good." Gracious but misinformed, which is part of the reason why I am dubious that a game like Anthem can be saved by a studio who have no idea what to do with it. And so, for my own sanity as much as for yours, I want to quickly skim over the history of Anthem behind the scenes to figure out if there is hope for this 'franchise' yet.

Firstly, lets not make any mistake here; 'Anthem' was not a rushed game. At least not in the traditional sense. Just because EA's ugly mug is slapped on the box doesn't mean those producers ran Bioware ragged with whips to get this game out, at least not initially. You see, Anthem was in pre-production for a while, a long while. Before 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' released (4 years too early, if you ask me.) there were already whispers about this project that the team had labelled, rather pretentiously, the 'Bob Dylan' of games. (Whatever the heck that means.) This 'Project Dylan' would take several forms throughout the years, with it's standout incarnation being of a game wherein the key gameplay loop is the exploration of various alien hostile environments. (Which, paired with a traditional RPG Bioware flair, actually sounds pretty interesting.)

That idea would never be fleshed out into a commercial product, however, as attentions and interest would be shifted elsewhere constantly. By the time the team came back to Project Dylan in a full capacity, they realized they had nothing concrete to build upon. Around about this time the head of EA wanted an update on what is was that he was paying the Bioware team to make, and they had to scrounge about to put together concept demo on the 'idea of the week' at the time. The Demo didn't exactly go down with a bang but Andrew Wilson did comment on how he liked the flying gameplay so the team, naturally, decided to pivot all their efforts to nailing this one aspect. That year at E3, the rest of the gaming world got to take a look at a rough theatrical pretend demo that was designed to disguise the serious identity crisis that this project was having behind the scenes.

At this point, the project was so haphazard and poorly communicated that many Bioware employees had only learnt what kind of game they were making the moment they saw that E3 reel. (I hope they got to see it first during rehearsals, at least.) Instead of being this bold, genre defying game that would be the 'Bob Dylan' of it's peers; (That's still a dumb comparison) Anthem had shaped up to be another looter-shooter that piggybacked off the engine built for 'Mass Effect Andromeda'. (Albeit with considerable reworking implemented towards the facial renders.) This may have been conceptually disappointing, but at least the team had an idea of where they were going and even familiar games from which to reference. Back when they were making a 'revoultionary game' with no idea what that would be and no visionary director to guide their way, things were pretty scary and confusing for the team, but now they had an end goal. There was just one problem, the team had messed about with EA's time for several years now and the head offices were demanding results post haste. What followed was a mad dash to the finish line as Bioware desperately attempted to put together an endlessly monetisable live-service within the space of 1 year.

The consequence of that rush was apparent from the moment anyone booted up the game on day one. Honestly it's difficult to concisely quote all the problems that this game had but I'll do my best to recall a few off the top of my head. Firstly, the story was pathetically vague to such a degree that it made Destiny look good. The story underwent so many cuts that the main narrative was nigh-on incomprehensible at times and the core idea that Anthem hooked in prospective players with (the titular Anthem of creation) will likely gone down in storytelling history as one of the most underused plot devices of all time. The looter-shooter aspects were sorely lacking, with less guns than your average modern Battlefield game, and a serious problem with 'dead' stat rolls similar to the situation which sunk Diablo 3's credibility years previously. Quests weren't fun, enemies were lame, levels and locales were recycled and the game was prone to so many bugs and crashes that some blame the software for bricking their consoles. (I think that may have been debunked, but I'm not sure.)

The situation was only exacerbated by the way that Bioware went quiet as the main team, Bioware Edmonton, handed things over to their B-team, Bioware Austin, and went into hiding as the community started to burn. Reducing the workforce is expected for a live service but it usually happens after the game is finished so that the remnants can work on maintenance and additions, this was literally an example of jumping from a sinking ship. Predictably, Bioware fell behind severely on their promised road-map and dumped their only promising sounding content, The Cataclysm, late and bereft of any creativity and content. Needless to say, the community felt betrayed and ripped off and everyone held their breath waiting for EA to proclaim this game as dead as Google Stadia will be in a couple of weeks.

We're still waiting on that prognosis, but if recent rumors are to be believed then the doctors already know the case and are in the midst of planning some foul necromantic ritual to cover for their mistake. (I'm not sure if that's admirable or cowardly.) As the news goes, some people are saying that this 'overhaul' is so substantial that some people are referring to it as 'Anthem 2.0' or 'Anthem Next'. (Which, word to the wise, are terrible and derivative names. You should leave that to the marketing team, it's literally what they're paid for.) However, at the same time we are hearing talk that the heads are unsure whether this will be a single update, a collection of updates, or a whole new game altogether. And that is a bad miscommunication to kick off with considering that this mess of a game was born from teams who had no idea what they were making for so long.

If there is one silver lining to all this news, however, it would have to be the fact that Edmonton and Austin are apparently working together to get this update off the ground. Originally the teams had gone their separate ways whilst Edmonton tried desperately to cobble together the remains of their recently cancelled: 'Project Joplin' into Dragon Age 4 (That's right, that little E3 teaser was another empty bluff. Bioware never learn their lesson, do they?) But it seems that 'Anthem' has been designated as such a sore point within the gaming community that the entire team have redirected efforts to work towards fixing it. For the sake of their collective reputation if nothing else. Of course, this conflicts with the announcement that Bioware are also working on their next Mass Effect game, but seeing as how that announcement was made on N7 day; (and how full of crap Bioware have been in their public statements recently) I'm assuming that the 'work' that's gone towards this new Mass Effect probably consists of a single piece of concept art and sticking a '2' to the end of the word 'Andromeda'.

All of this sounds promising to read about, but we have yet to see if there is enough of a core team left at Bioware to put together a great game, even with the full team working at their best. When Final Fantasy XIV was undergoing significant hardships, it took a great amount or risk from the team to fix things and turn them to working order. They had to take the entire game off line and relaunch it after a huge amount of maintenance and reworking to get it functional again. That is the sort of dedication that 'Anthem' needs, and even then there is no guarantee that people will come back. Diablo 3 had significant issues at it's launch that the team had to sink effort into fixing but the reputational damage was already done for them. Diablo is still looked upon as the poorest modern example of it's own genre, just as 'Anthem' is considered the worst AAA looter shooter. (with good reason.) Now that the team is essentially starting from scratch with a proven leader at the helm, Casey Hudson, I'd understand the glimmer of hope that is settling into the community today, however I then remember the number of talented individuals who are no longer with Bioware and I can't help but sigh. That company is so unrecognizable that they didn't even get the contract to work on 'Baldur's Gate 3'. (That ended up going to Larian.) Time may prove me wrong, and I sort of hope it does, but I won't hold my breath for no one.

Ubisoft Breakpointing it down.

I've heard about you and your honeyed words!

You know I enjoy these moments. I really do. Those times when a company has done something so bad that they feel the need to address it with a public statement and outline their plans to do better. In one way, it highlights the determination of the development team to not give up, heck, sometimes these posts can be really encouraging to read through. But let's be honest, most of the time they're just PR crap full of misdirections and mis-assumptions as to what they've done wrong. Just look at that 'Apex Legends' debacle earlier this year. (A situation that was eerily similar to Activision's recent controversy with COD Mobile's fixed rate loot boxes.) Expecting a corporate entity to learn from their mistakes and improve is like praying for Christmas snow in England. It already happened once this decade, you ain't getting it again.

I'd like to remind myself for a moment that I do hope for good things to come out of disasters like these. (At least I think I do.) The last thing anyone wants is for the companies in question to go into liquidation and fire all their talented staff and this is especially true in the gaming world. Everytime there is a colossal screw up in gaming, you'll find droves of people detailing exactly how these Devs can go about fixing their issues. Sure, messages tend to be at odd with one another every now and then, but that's why you hire a good Social Media manager to sort out the common points of contention and detail a battle plan for the team. (Huh, looks like I'm doing it now.) But, more often then not, the community's free advice gets wasted and companies are forced to scratch their heads and wonder why people aren't giving them money anymore. (What a mystery.)

With that in mind, let's talk about 'Ghost Recon: Breakpoint'. If you read my last blog on this game, you might remember how this game was a failure in almost every respect. The gameplay was neutered in order to serve a levelling system, the thing was riddled with bugs and every little item that one could find in the game could be purchased at a premium in the 'time savers store'. Due to a mistake from Ubisoft, the team accidentally shipped the review and launch copies of the games with all of the aggressive monetisation tactics that they had intended to ambush players with after launch, and as a result the game was met with considerable backlash from reviewers and enthusiast press. (Although in gaming those two groups tend to be one and the same.) Breakpoint did abysmally in the review department and folks like me now know that it's only a matter of weeks before the game is sub £20 on the shelves. (Although at this point I'm wondering if even that is too much.)

Now, usually this wouldn't be information worthy of a follow up. So the game reviewed badly, big whoop. It's still a AAA game made and published by a company who demands respect from the wider gaming community, (inexplicably) so it's probably not going to be too huge of a flop. Right? Wrong, apparently, as Breakpoint is probably going to go down in the books as Ubisoft's worst financial decision of 2019, costing the company in respect, sales and that all important revenue. In a recent financial report, the big man himself, ol' Yves Guillemot, revealed that "The critical reception and sales during the game's first weeks were disappointing." Now, there are no specific numbers there, but you can bet that things are looking rough for Ubisoft right now, especially with other ancillary news that has come out.

Perhaps you've heard of a little title known as Division 2. It is Ubisoft's follow up to their rough first foray in live services and now exists as their flagship representation of the model they want all their franchises to emulate. Assassin's Creed capitulated to this standard in Origins and even more so with Odyssey, and Breakpoint's biggest letdown was that it too fell to the lures of the live service model. (Those lures being the promise of heavy concurrency and a potentially unlimited revenue source.) So it's safe to say that Division 2 is currently Ubisoft's flagship game. But does that relate to strong sales? Well, it's hard to say definitively as Ubisoft seem unsure themselves. In May they complained that the game had not met sales expectations whilst in July they claimed that it was best selling game of the year. (So just what were your sales expectations, Ubisoft?) Now we have reason to believe that this disappointingly successful title was not enough to save Ubisoft from major markdowns to their annual fiscal expectations.

Originally, the fiscal year of 2019-20 was looking decent for Ubisoft with predicted operating profits reaching to 480 millions euros. Now predictions have been amended to somewhere within the range of 20-50 million euros; which is still more money than Sony Pictures made for the first half of this year, but still 'brown trousers' time for the budgeting team. Things didn't look any brighter when, following this report, Ubisoft's stock price fell 20%. (It has since risen back another 10%) Obviously, these are not the sorts of numbers that anyone wants to be seeing, least of all Investors, so the question on everyone's lips right now is; what went wrong? Well quite simply, everything. Breakpoint's failure of a launch actually translated into poor sales, every major Ubisoft release got delayed until the next fiscal year and public brand trust has taken a noticeable nose dive. So where does this leave Ubisoft? In a position where they need to make amends and start bringing players (And wallets) to Breakpoint whilst they wait for their next slate of AAA products to release. (Providing there are no more surprise delays.)

That brings us to Ubisoft's recent blog post entitled "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint: moving forward". (Hmm, invoking the spirit of 'Anthem' with that blog title probably isn't the best first touch there, Ubi.) In this post Ubisoft sought to reassure the community that they have a plan of action and shouldn't abandon the game in droves for better offers. (Like 'The Outer Worlds'. Which is great, by the by.) Thankfully, the team saw fit to divide the game into sections so it's easy for me to disseminate. (Oh will the wonders of coherent formatting never cease?)

Firstly, the team addressed the one issue that can be freely discussed without admitting to any corrupt influences on their end; technical difficulties. There isn't a great deal here to read into besides the fact that their scheduled title updates appear to be tackling issues in small chunks in order to get out sooner. A decent tactic in reassuring the players that the game is still alive, although it does make it appear like these fixes will be going on for the next few months before the game is decently playable for anyone without a super computer wrapped in ladybugs. (I made that reference off the cuff and now that I've realized why I said it, I'm too tickled to remove it. I pray to god you don't get it and if you do, don't judge me!)

Secondly the team spoke on post launch content, a very interesting topic of contention. When 'Anthem' was undergoing similar growing pains, the post launch was the first thing to get gutted as the team completely reprioritized to bug fixing and rebalancing. Ubisoft have confirmed that they are still right on track with their Raid and 'Terminator: The Dark Fate' cross-over event, so it seems they don't want to fall into the trap of appearing lackadaisical to the player base, however dwindling they may be. Although the quality and appeal of said content will be questionable since many of people's key concerns have been the way that the franchise was bastardized in order to accommodate for things like Raids and timed events.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the blog addressed the In-game economy. And, rather predictably, it is the shortest section here. All the team would commit to saying is that they have "Heard the criticism regarding the in-game economy." Oh, have you guys? Well, congratulations! Someone in the team posses the ability to access Reddit, what an accomplishment! The team explained that they are planning to make 'adjustments' in the next few weeks and then moved swiftly on before anyone could ask anything pertinent like: "What adjustments?" More likely than not the team will just shift some prices down and call it a day, actual change would require the team to admit their initial wrongdoings and have the integrity to try and do better. But gods knows nobody in the AAA landscape cares that much about their games. (At least, nobody with any actual power.)

The rest of the blog is mostly unimportant stuff about their delayed plans to introduce AI teammates (Which should never have been cut out from the game to start with) and their comments on people's reaction to the game design. Now you may think that latter point is of some significant relevance as they discuss the limitations of their current design and a desire in introduce a 'radical and immersive' version of the main game in the coming months. But I've seen enough of Ubisoft's machinations that I recognize them like I would an old friend. (If I actually had any friends, that is) So trust me when I say, nothing that Ubisoft plan to do with this game will fix the fundamental issues with it. It's just too lucrative not to rely on the store. Even if they do rework everything and remove those annoying pointless levels, it'll be in a tacked-on extra mode with enough severe restrictions slapped on that you are forced to return to the main game grind. (My predictions are that they will bar you from Online content and raids in such a mode.)

As dismissive as I have been, and am being, to Ubisoft and their words, I do appreciate that the team took the effort to talk to the community. A lot of other companies in similar positions would simply shut down and ignore any and all criticism, (See: Bethesda.) but at least Ubisoft had the courage to acknowledge and respond. Of course, being a progeny from a long line of career cynics, I don't believe these words will translate to substantial action (That is to say: action that will achieve positive change to the game) but I'll never turn my nose to an opportunity for some inoffensive lip service. I'm not sure if any of this will be enough to bring people back to Ubisoft as they slug it out through this difficult financial time, but I know that the company will still find a way to manage even if it doesn't. That Yves is a fighter, afterall, he wouldn't let the company sink on his watch. (Would he?)

P.s. Of course he wouldn't. Heck, I don't even think the monetary situation is that dire, truth be told. But it makes for fun reading. wait, did I just say that the potential financial downturn of a company is "fun"? Poor choice of words. 'Interesting'? Nah. 'Facinating'? Hmm...

The direction of morality in the future

Not right or wrong. Only consequence.

A while back I did a couple of blogs that floated around the concept of morality in video game storytelling. (A topic I find particularly fascinating.) First I spoke about how morality appeared in old video games, when storytelling was beginning to come into it's own, and then I carried on with the ways in which storytelling is presented nowadays, with choice and consequence. I want to cap this topic off by giving my predictions about how that concept will evolve in the future, both how I'll believe it'll grow and how I wish it will. Of course, that means this blog will contain pure conjecture on my part as I rattle off my hypothesis, but you're likely already use to that by now so I'll just get right to it.

Firstly, I will admit that I am dissatisfied with a lot of portrayals of morality that we see in modern day videogame storytelling, or maybe it's just with the concept in general. I look at it like a restraint upon the kind of stories that could be told and the manner in which we tell them, one that has become sadly commonplace in the AAA gaming market. (Indie games tend to be a lot more free and interesting when they tackle these concepts.) To establish what I mean, let's take 'Assassin's Creed: Rogue' for example. This was a game that was founded on an eye wateringly simple concept; Shay Cormac, the protagonist, used to on the side of the heroes (The Assassins) before he joined the antagonists. (The Templars.) A child could write this and make it somewhat interesting. And yet somehow, as though Hollywood's cowardice is catching, the game fails to go all the way.

Let me elaborate. Assassin's Creed is a series that sets itself in the midst of very important and complicated situations throughout history and dumbs everything down into a fight against good and evil. All the multifaceted and interesting folk of the era are whittled down to either advocates of freedom (Good) or pursuers of control (Evil), and as a result a lot of nuance that these games could represent gets lost. I think it is an exceedingly fantastic idea to jump throughout history and engross oneself into the story of the land, (fun and education, together at last) but Ubisoft often fail spectacularly in this regrade and denigrate their side characters into overblown caricatures. In Rogue, they seemed to have gotten around this by making the vast majority of the characters completely unique, (You still had fellows like William Johnson around, but Ubisoft had already done him justice in AC3 so I'm willing to let that slide) however it just highlighted the team's unwillingness, or inability to tell a tough story. Instead of having Shay turn against his brothers due to a genuine disagreement in personal philosophies or motivations, everything was just a huge stupid misunderstanding.

This actually reflects the way that morality is presented in a great many big budget Hollywood movies. There can never be any grey spaces, just absolute right and absolute wrong. Just look at Warner Bros' 'Batman V Superman'. The encounter that the movie was named after was based after a famous Batman comic known as 'The Dark Knight Returns'. It's a brilliant tale about an older Batman who has become obsolete due to his age and back injury, he retreated into his isolation and allowed the world to move on without him and America to turn into a totalitarian state. As events drag him back into the limelight, he ends up drawing the attention of the government as his brand of vigilantism undermines their authority. The last remaining active superhero, Superman, is dispatched in order to force Bruce back into retirement and the two decide to settle things with a battle. This story was so fondly remembered because it wasn't afraid to have it's hero's be anything less than absolutely right. Superman was still a hero that saved lives and represented America, but the country he stood up for had become bastardized and corrupt. Batman was still an anti-hero who's presence caused as much harm as good, but he became a symbol of hope to the people of Gotham who had resigned themselves to living under the thumb of local gangs. Neither side was ever completely right or wrong, making their conflict all the more dramatic. (I won't say that you ever had trouble deciding which side to route for because we all know who was more right. It's obvious. I don't even need to say it. You know who I mean. Batman. I meant Batman. You were thinking him too, right?)

In the movie, Batman is introduced as a bad tempered psychopath who's happy to kill in order to get the job done. His entire issue with Superman is based upon a baseless risk assessment that spawned the iconically stupid line "If we believe there is even a 1% chance that he is our enemy we have to take it as an absolute certainty." They even took advantage of 'Man of Steel's destruction fetish to fuel this idea of Superman being a threat to humanity and give Bruce the justification to go ham on his ass. Lex Luthor then pulled some shenanigans and managed to set off a battle between the Last Son of Krypton and the Caped Crusader with little more than a tad of smoke and mirrors. And threats. Those too. As as result the entire movie rings hollow and feels like a vehicle to stage geekdoms most storied showdown. A showdown, I might add, which wasn't even that impressive. All these concessions and changes were made to the base material so that everyone could be in the moral right by the end of it. They could just pat each other on the back say it was a misunderstanding and it'll all be forgotten by the next movie. (Just like the rest of the DCEU.)

Unfortunately, this style of inoffensive storytelling has ruled the roost in the mainstream for a great many years now and it leaves us with a bevy of one-note leading characters. I'm not saying that every story should have the potential for an indepth character study, but a little bit depth would certainly help flesh out characters. I believe that this ambiguity is the key to pushing forward morality in the future of videogame narrative storytelling and, luckily for me, I have some evidence that might be the way things are going in the future.

In my last blog on this topic, I mentioned how the narrative storytelling for a lot of modern AAA games were leaning into the action-consequence model. (Although I would hesitate to call the model a modern construction) I find this preferable to the simple 'good guy- bad guy' layout as it forces the storytellers to expand their horizons beyond the obvious and into the world of the morally grey. Games that have pulled this off well, like 'Fallout: New Vegas', The Telltale games and the Dishonoured games, have managed to elevate their stories by removing preconceived notions of right and wrong and leaving that choice in the hands of the player. (Yes, 'New Vegas' still featured a Karma system but anyone can tell that was just a holdover from using Bethesda's engine. Obsidian clearly preferred going the morally grey route with the main story.)

The outlook does look positive that the mainstream may be picking up on this trend going forward. Later this month the hotly anticipated Western RPG 'The Outer Worlds' will drop, which Devs promise will be a darkly humorous game without restrictive moral paths. Last year's Red Dead Redemption 2 featured action/consequence prominently in it's story. (Although there was a rigid 'good/bad' system from face value, the maturity with which the story handled it means that I'll let it slide.) And the most anticipated game of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077, practically lauds it's amorality in it's very fibre. These are the kind of big games that start trends and I think it is fair to assume that various big games studios may be looking into this kind of storytelling in the years to come. (If they ever let the 'live-service' idea take a break...)

That being said, this isn't the only way for video game companies to deliver a powerful morally grey narrative. Just look at 2013's 'The Last of Us' and the way it used the background of an apocalypse to tell us a story about the extremes of human emotions. (A lot more succinctly than The Walking Dead is doing, too.) I won't spoil the events of the game, this isn't the right kind of blog for that, but needless to say that there are times that make the player question whether or not they are playing the good guy. (And from the looks of it, 'The Last of Us Part 2' plans to double down on that aspect.) We can even go back to games like Max Payne 2 and see glimmers of morality vs immorality baked into the core story. I think it's a lot harder to write a narratively linear story that challenges your perception of right and wrong like this, but the reward has been a generally more positive reception. (People liked 'The Last of Us' so much that most everyone ignored the iffy gameplay. Except for me because I'm a stickler.)

In my opinion, in order for the future of video game storytelling to grow stronger, it is essential that we abandon the concept of rigid morality altogether and delve deeper into the ambiguous, let the audience decide for themselves. Perhaps it's a little cliche to say, but some of the most memorable characters in my mind have been those that made choices that I wouldn't necessarily do. Those that act on whim or emotion and not always out of rationality or heroic compulsion. Those are the kind of characters ring with the authenticity that I find myself craving nowadays. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy an enjoyable jaunt about killing demons in which you don't have to think too hard (oh DOOM: Eternal, why must you be delayed?) but I feel that there is room for more challenging content in the future. (And I'm not just talking about the next From Software game. Although 'Elden Ring' does have me hook-line-and-sinker right now.)

I do worry, however, that in the years to come we may encounter a little more issues in progressing storytelling than we really ought to, for no other reason than that of abject greed. With that I am of course referring to the rising interest growing for 'Live service' style games due to the potential for substantial financial return that they represent. Just like MMO's, 'live service' games are built to facilitate recurrent gameplay rather than great stories with diverse characters. Think of them like TV series' that keep getting drawn out with season after season with no plan to end things. Perhaps there was a uncorrupted idea in there once upon a time, but it all gets sacrificed and thrown aside in the pursuit of ensuring that the story can perpetuate itself indefinitely. This usually means that the stakes start to shrivel and the characters grow increasingly shallow and/or repetitive. (I just realized that I described the Arrowverse. I didn't mean it Grant Gustin, I still love you!)

For an example of this just look at the poster boys for the do's and don'ts of live services: Destiny and Anthem. Both are games that are characterized by bland world's and lifeless protagonists who embark on so many tireless good versus evil crusades that the terms start losing all meaning. The Destiny team scrapped their early ideas of splitting their player base by revealing a cold truth about the godlike-entity know as 'The Traveller' and seeing which players picked which side. Instead they chose a 'villian-of-the-week' model which is easily forgettable and fails to engage the critical thinking of their consumers beyond the thought "Which gun should I kill this Hive drone with?". Anthem, on the otherhand, was so directionless that the team has completely abandoned their story plans, leaving the barebones of a narrative without any idea of whether of not an actual narrative will ever pick up. (Not to mention that the story that was there amounted to another 'destory the ultimate evil' plot.)

This is especially distressing because Anthem's developer, Bioware, should really be leading the charge when it comes to revolutionary storytelling in games. Once upon a time, Bioware were the crafters of choice based narratives that pushed the rest of the RPG industry to catch-up. Now they've lost their special spark and become a vending machine for boring storytelling. And if you're thinking 'Hey, that's just one game. Maybe they'll get their groove back someday.' First of all you're wrong, 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' was a similarly badly written game. Secondly, you're still wrong, leaks tell us that Bioware's next game, Dragon Age 4, has been retooled into being a 'live service' too.

Bethesda have gone the route of live services as well with Fallout 76, following hotly off the heels of the narratively disappointing Fallout 4. (Although, in their defence, Bethesda have never exactly been exceptional in the storytelling department.) And the long promised 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' has been revealed to be a live service before we've even had a chance to learn anything about the gameplay. It seems that there is a trend picking up for jumping on this bandwagon and, giving how potentially profitable this is, I fear it could otherthrow the positive example being set by studios like Rockstar and CD Projekt Red. (However, it must be noted, that the 'Live service' model was perpetuated by Rockstar in the first place. They are our saviors and our condemners.)

Given the evidence, I feel it's safe to say that live service games are certain to have poor narratives that refuse to take risks. (Just like Hollywood.) So the direction of morality in storytelling could be grim as we slowly slink back into the dark ages of good versus evil plots only this time with but a modicum of the passion thrown in. Although I suppose this is more of a critique of the industry rather than the storytellers themselves.

Morality has the potential to become really ascendant in the future or really basic, and that may seem very middle-of-the-road for me to say but I genuinely mean that we could be straddling between those two extremes. However if I make the bold assumption that the future of video game storytelling will be placed in the hands of the storytellers, then I can certainly hold some hope for the future. Directors like Neil Druckmann, Cain & Boyarsky and those Polish guys who's names I couldn't hope to spell behind Cyperpunk, all seem dedicated to evolving traditional morality into something subversive and transcendent, and that is something that I crave to see more of in my games. Whether we will be lucky enough to see this play out in the future of our games, is a matter of fate. And maybe a little bit of Karma.