To believe or not

It is said that one of the most imperative tools of any storytelling is the suspension of disbelief. The ability for the Storyteller to present an idea or situation and the listener to sit back, nod along and go with the flow. And it all comes down to the very tepid and ill-shaped thing known as 'believability'. "Can I buy this", "Does the story do enough to suspend by perception of what is real and what isn't." Without that there is always a distance between us and the story, a film behind which we observe ourselves more than we observe the story- and when you're in that state it's near impossible to be driven emotionally, feel the adventure, react to the stakes. It is the death of immersion.

But how does the act of 'believability' translate into gaming? That's actually something more of a nuanced question, because the very nature of a game does not engender itself to 'true to life depictions'. You create a game where the character needs to eat and sleep and go to the toilet in order to function in their day to day and 9 times out of ten you've made a boring gameplay loop that people don't want to engage with. One bullet deaths? An unfun overly brutal game. But there is still a balance to be struck, as evidenced by the philistine spread of that mostly misunderstood concept coined as 'Ludonarrative Dissonance' that bevies of half-educated luddites cite as though proof reading their own dissertations. People can sense when something doesn't feel right, even if they can't quite verbalise why that is. 

The very nature of how most modern games play out means that we can never really create a one-to-one parity. When a gameplay loop is built around shooting bad guys- it makes sense to throw dozens of enemies at the player even though a sensible mind will tell you that one guy in a fight against several bigger dudes is never going to work out for them. At moments like that what is 'believable' shifts in perspective to how we are presented with these scenarios- what little branches are offered to the audience that they can sell themselves into this world. A world were one men armies exist and bullets sting like a wasp poke.

Given that I've been playing through them recently, the Mafia games come to mind when I consider this. Games with their fare share of ridiculous explosive set pieces- but set against fairly comprehensives crime narratives about the nature of organised crime and how the desire to always get more eats away at yourself, those around you and very nature to enjoy the life you thought you wanted. Mafia tempers it's more explosive moments with a relatively sedate pacing for a video game, where the evolving and devolving life of these mafiosos are placed in contrast to the bursts of violence and death. It's a great sobering device to keep us in the frame of mind to 'believe' in this world and the consequence of our brutality. Then Mafia 3 kind of spat on all that, but we're focusing on the positives today.

Tomb Raider, the remakes, are one such game that gets brought up often- largely because of half-heads who can't comprehend what stakes in a narrative are. I always found that new Lara to be very well attuned to realism in the manner of 'consequence'. They went as hard as they could into the explosive set-pieces and insane magical insanity- as long as they could back everything up with grounding consequence on the otherend- and it really worked out! Lara had to kill so many to survive that original island, and watch all her friends die or drift away after the fact- landing her in therapy. She saw supernatural happenings before her very eyes, making her an intellectual outcast after the fact. She learned of a great secret society praying on the hidden world, making her a paranoid recluse. Living in a world where A equals B is a great tool for having that world feel like it matters.

And on the more extreme example side we have the likes of Borderlands. Yes, I know- "Borderlands? How is that a game that can sell a believability to it?" And to that I would like to reiterate- we're talking about the player's ability to buy into this world of belief. It's all about being believable within the space you've created. If there's a wacky world in the ass-end of the universe were bullets are more common than water- then I want to believe in everything that comes with that sort of setting. A dusty and rustic world were civilisation are all but tiny rare pockets against a land gone mad- that sense of prevailing isolation amidst the crazed wackiness of the local power players. When you start softening the edges of a world like that- you lose that carefully crafted image. Suddenly Borderlands no longer feels like Borderlands anymore now that it's just a bad-joke factory. 

Of course this works best with a game like Grand Theft Auto. One that bills itself around capturing, and then mocking, the state of modern life. Rockstar do this immensely well, bringing entire cities to life and extracting just the right slices of culture for mockery- but if we take this to the other degree and talk about immersion than it would probably be the Red Dead Games that take the cake from the catalogue. Lean slices of the mid-to-south west brought to a interactive playspace that feels weighty. Where you track and hunt, pick up bounties, get drunk and start bar fights: Red Dead delights in spicing up the mundane to be just exciting enough- striking this careful balance between the realistic and the playable. A masterclass, some might say.

At the end of the day all this talk about what is and isn't believable amounts to little more than a studying of tools- tools with which artists create entertainment that grabs and moves us. Breaking through the tough skin of the fictional becomes harder as we move into an age of more all consuming entertainment but as artists it will forever be our duty to stay ahead of all of that and sink our teeth into the real next level ways our work can snake into the hearts of the public. Immersion is just another one of those tools that can cut through so much of the doubt and dissention when used right, to the right audience and create the truly unforgettable.  

Avengers Down! Avengers Down!

Do believe I told you so!

I'll admit, it lasted much longer than I expected. Although even with that being said I am totally going to milk the fact that I told you so. I told everyone so. From the exact moment it became clear that Marvel's Avengers was going to be a Live Service I predicted it's colossal fall like clockwork and I was wrong and right. The prophecy was delayed, but it came true eventually. Which isn't to say the game didn't ever have anything resembling a fighting chance in it's inception; rather that, I think, lo and behold, the decision-makers totally undervalued the amount of effort it would take to first launch a Live Service and to break it into the top 3 services that rule the industry. Just like in the age of the MMO where everyone and their mother was launching a WOW clone and trying to just wing the 'post launch support' as they went; amateurish plans have led to amateurish embarrassments for the Live Service crowd time and time again. Which I do believe marks the last of every single one of Square Enix's many Live Service endeavours going the way of the Dodo. And good riddance!

If you've a perceptive mind on you, perhaps you can deduce what my self-righteous bragging is about. Just recently the Marvel's Avengers team announced they were hanging up the shield and killing support on the game from this point onwards. Or rather, they would be killing support after an upcoming update that will make all the cosmetics free for everyone to play around with, which is actually fairly nice of them. Although at this point they might as well make the game itself free as well before the servers shut down and the thing becomes unplayable outside of the singular core story missions. Marking the end of a game that was slated for death pretty much the second it revealed it's true nature to fans in a 'tail between the legs' demonstration presentation that is sure to live on in infamy. Topped perhaps only by the legendary moment when Valve announced Artifact, only to be met with a stadium full of boos when it was revealed to be another online card game. (Incidentally, Artifact is also no longer with us.)

Right from it's first mewling mumbles fresh from the hatchery, Avengers was the lightning rod for all the frustrations of a gaming public sick and tired with strong properties and solid games being irreparably warped in order to fit more 'monetarily promising' models. Titles like Anthem who's back was broken on the knee of corporate monetisation mandates, for a game that could have very well been promising as a single player or limited multiplayer title being forced into a environment it doesn't belong and won't thrive in, because Destiny made a lot of money with their Live Service once. That frustration did, admittedly, result in Avengers perhaps receiving a harder time than it deserved out of the box. The gameplay was decently fun and the visual presentation was somewhat pretty in it's environments and decent character models. And the boss fights, what few they were, proved engaging enough. But even the supremely jumped-up didn't have to poke far to come across genuine faults with the Avengers package that they could crucify the game for.

The lack of gameplay variety was a serious issue, and a major contributing factor for people getting very sick of the combat very fast. Every somewhat interesting unlockable outfit was locked behind purchasable cosmetics, which felt like a crime for a full priced title which just happened to also be a super hero game. Outside of the main quest the team didn't really know what to do with the end game to make it even remotely interesting to play with. The team tried to subtly make the EXP grind heavier in order to pad out player playtime and hopefully also retention. It was just scandal after scandal with this game. Even their good PR moments seemed to be muted or shortlived. Hawkeye was quickly overshadowed by the arrival Kate Bishop, who literally just felt like his 'shadow fighter' and whittled away at player's patience. Black Panther dropped with any big fanfare outside of this game's specific community. No matter what happened, Avengers just couldn't get a break.

And you know what? It never could have gotten that break. Not even conceptually. And do you know why they couldn't have? Because Live Services just can't function as an industry within gaming. Think of what a Live Service is and what it entails. A consistently maintained and played product providing constant grinding and reward incentives to players that demands excessive time commitments and encourages a little bit of 'on the side' spending to keep the lights on. Hook a couple of whales, milk them for the lionshare of profits; bob's your uncle, you've created an ecosystem exploiting the financially irresponsible for your own end, great! But what's the one heavily spent resource which is essential for all players in order to get the most out of these sorts of games? It isn't money, most every Live Service provides a free path. It's time. The ultimate resource.

Time, as I'm sure you're just so very fond of hearing, is limited. Increadibly so. And if every Live Service you play begs and pleads with you to spend two to three hours each and every day with no end because the game is updated so regularly, then how many such games can a single player feasibly maintain in their daily routine? Two at most? Consider also that there are large swathes of the gaming community who scoff at dedicating that much time and effort to a single game, and you've got a decently niche subsector of gamers being squeezed between dozens of games they cannot possibly juggle with any deftness. Unless you get in on the ground floor and score your lifelong fans back when the idea was novel and the overwhelming negatives of a potential forced addiction wee widely known, you'd have to compete for a table scraps worth of an player base, all the while praying that the small net you can afford to cast netted you a Whale or two. And Avengers was not a spry chicken to this game genre.

Live Services are largely cynical and bankrupt, in a manner that is so very obvious to the public by now. Pursuing such a model in this day and age is tantamount to slapping your audience around the face and telling them how you know that they know the trap your setting but you expect them to tie themselves to it anyway under the vain hope that the enjoyment of the game outweighs the crushing expectation to play incessantly. And it rarely does. Marvel's Avengers was just one of Square Enix's many attempts to secure a cash cow in this drained-dry market and it performed about as well as they deserved. Which is why I cannot but stand baffled at the fact that Square threw away all of it's western companies claiming they don't know how to work a profit out of them, considering they paid literally no attention to the flagging trends of the market and flopped each one of it's franchises on it's face in front of everyone repeatedly. (You reap what you sow, I guess.)

The Avengers game should have been a co-op multiplayer game that followed a single strong main storyline and maybe pursued a traditional DLC structure for some additional adventures; the brand was certainly big enough to score a great swathe of sales with that model and that was all Avengers had the framework to be in the first place. Not every game can become an Online megahit just by throwing some rogue strings of Netcode in the software; just look at Fallout 76- that game has struggled to do anything significant since the Wastelanders Update raised expectations apparently way too high nearly three years ago. There's something to be said for playing to your strengths and not wadding too far from your obvious specialities; and there was a perfect gap in the market for a team-based co-op title just waiting to be filled. Or at least a single-player team-based super hero game. But no, Avengers snoozed and Guardians of the Galaxy took the crown. Alas, poor Avengers... I knew them well, Matsuda-San.

Am I Ludonarrative dissonance?

 No, Brother. We are Ludonarrative- and dissonant!

Never teach a big word to a community of pseudo-intellectuals, you'll just be feeding fuel to their narcissism-engine. Just like with any term or concept, the very second that the term starts to float around the snotty-nosed of the industry it melts into the vernacular of the common tongue, thrown about with as much pretentious gusto as a Latin major loves to regurgitate pithy witticism in a dead tongue. The very term of 'Ludonarrative dissonance' itself is a 2007 coined phrase that just squeezes down a lengthy concept that every one who plays games is already decently familiar with; but of course with simplifications eventually comes the dissolution of the original meaning, tainting the original purpose. Suddenly if you want to critique anything that slightly relates to the idea, you're throwing the shiny word about like a club, killing any potential dialogue with a rambunctious play at intellectual superiority.

So in terms of a laymen, like myself; what the heck is Ludonarrative dissonance? Well it's fairly simple if you break it down. Ludus, Latin for 'Play'- Hideo Kojima traced the same etymology on his 'Ludens' mascot for Kojima Productions. Narrative- relation to the story. And 'Dissonance'; indicating a conflict which prevents the two sides from meeting. 'Ludonarrative dissonance' thus refers to inconsistencies between the gameplay and storytelling of a video game which creates an environment where one aspect doesn't quite compliment or shake hands with the other. The example which is always used is a game wherein you play a snappy wise-cracking happy-go-lucky hero man, like 'Uncharted', only to end up driven to acts of mass murder and gunfights throughout the gameplay which should, if we're being real here, probably have some sort of psychological effect on the witty man. Or at the very least prelude to some sort of latent psychopathy that the game has yet to explore. Hence the dissonance.

It is a common 'problem', if you choose to perceive it as such, but in practise the very ideal of ludonarrative dissonance only drives a wedge into total story immersion in truly egregious circumstances. The cast of Grand Theft Auto V, for example, may be largely level-headed and non-psychotic before the player gets ahold of them; (or rather, 2/3 of them are non-psychotic) but the game itself doesn't force players to act like crazy people, those are choices made by the player in their own free time. This could still be seen as an example of ludonarrative dissonance, of course, but in a more minor fashion and only on a very surface level if you choose not to really examine the characters you play as. Because in general Rockstar are actually very proficient at writing their characters smothered in so many flaws and hypocritical moral compunctions that there's very few of them you can picture accidentally running over a whole side walk and not managing to twist the incident in their heads into not making them the worst person in the world through tortured perspectives. I think John Marston from Red Dead Redemption 1 is perhaps the only character lacking in the hypocritical shield that protects him from potential 'dissonance', because his whole story is designed to be his redemption journey from the thug he was into a reformed avenging angel literally killing his past to make up for it. Yet still the player could go nuts and murder a whole covenant of nuns. (Not that I ever did that. My dad on the otherhand...)

Most of the examples that I do see bought up as poster-children for this concept quite often rub me the wrong way too. The new Tomb Raider games are apparently a beacon for 'Ludonarrative Dissonance' accusations, despite the fact that these games are specifically written to address this side of the storytelling. Lara is put up against hardships that we follow her with throughout the first act, from being shipwrecked on an island, pulling jagged rocks out of her stomach and being forced to kill a deer for sustenance leading up to the first moment she has to actually kill someone in a desperate struggle for self defence. The game does as good of a job as it can, without sacrificing momentum of the plot, to portray the 'hardening' of Lara to justify the intense combat she is thrown up against later, and the writers even touch on the psychological scars of that entire game in the prelude to the next one, which is more than most any other game out there even thinks to do. But perhaps that's just not enough for some critics who waggle their fingers at the fact that Lara doesn't burst down into vomitus tears after every combat encounter, as she tries to weigh up the value of her own life against that of the murderous pirate rapists that she's killing. (Maybe that would be their ideal 'Ludonarrative synch up' game!)

Doing the best to balance the wants of the game and the wants of the narrative is how one deftly combats both sides of this ludonarrative issue; and yes, perhaps the equation does not always line up in a perfectly neat bow where we see a perfect psychological breakdown, medically vetted, detailing how Lara enters the mental state of being ready to kill her way to survival. But the groundwork is laid there, Crystal Dynamics did provide a narrative of the 'hardening' of Lara to justify the lives she takes, and it's a bit galling for one of the only games that really tries to be narratively aware get dragged down and disparaged as the poster child for wanton narrative dissonance. It's as if the attempt itself is what makes them a target of questionable dissemination from the types of people who only kinda get what the concept means and is looking for a example case they don't have to think too hard about. It's screwed up.

Another curiosity I saw, rather recently in fact, was the conflation of video-game scaled narrative accomplishment as itself a dinner bell for the 'ludonarrative dissonance' sharks. Specifically I saw the argument that Cal Kestis, protagonist of 'Jedi: Fallen Order', is a posterboy for this sort of dissonant story writing because of the fact that Cal refers to himself as a 'good guy Jedi' despite killing hundreds of Stormtroopers throughout the course of the game. Now, this one I really had to scratch my head at, because as far as I'm aware within the wider lore of every Star Wars film and comic I've ever read, it's never been considered morally dubious or questionable to kill a Stormtrooper. The fascistic military tyrants placing their boot on the throat of the Galaxy? No, they've happily and handily been slain by ordinary people, rebel outfits and Jedi Knights (do try and remember that Jedi serve as actual 'Knights' in the galaxy, not pacifistic 'Air Bender' monks) all the time without the question of if someone is still a 'good person' on the otherend.

Which means the only distinction between how the movies and books depict actions and how the game depicts them, is the scaling of just how many Stormtroopers Cal slays through the natural act of scaling that video games, as a much longer form of entertainment, are beholden to commit to. Cal has probably on-screen murdered more Stormtroopers than any other character in the films or TV aside from, perhaps, Luke Skywalker when he blew up the Death Star. So does that scale in itself invite in questions of moral cracking, enough to summon accusations of 'ludonarrative dissonance'? This speaks again to my prevailing theme of the disintegrating meaning of the term as it's passed from pseudointellectuals making bad examples to causal luddites extrapolating upon misnomers. As the commonly held general belief is that killing is wrong, the umbrella application of that general standard confers wrongdoing into all forms of fiction, regardless of context, twisting all killing into an equal unjustifiable 'murders'. Thus, through the inevitable scale of accomplishment in near all video games, this perspective should turn every video game protagonist into a mass murderer. Thus any game where you don't play as a mass murderer is ludonarratively dissonant, right?

I hope you can start to see the fallacy in this way of characterising what was original coined as a pithy summation of wanting narrative trends in evaluation of Bioshock, one of the most narratively confronting games that had existed in gaming up to that point. Bioshock, a game which went out of it's way to ask you, the player, why is it that you do the things you do. It's fitting then, that a opinion on the game should coin a term about the examination between gameplay and context, but sad that the meaning and relevance of that discussion would become watered down and meaningless over the years. Consider this my application in the 'stop using Ludonarrative Dissonance freely without understanding it's meaning' defence fund. And maybe, if you have a point that only sounds firm if you phrase it with big compound words that sound impressive on their own, maybe your point isn't so firm as you think. Maybe you should analyse the context a little harder- lest you start falling victim to Fabulanarrative Dissonance! 

The New Tomb Raider Retrospective

 My hero

With the displacement of the Tomb Raider IP from the active producers over at Square Enix to the new question marked conglomerate known as 'Embracer Group', it's clear that for this series and its contemporaries, the state of the franchise will shift. Whether that means the games will go back into hibernation after this coming game that is still being worked on is anyone's guess, and I think that from this point forth buck really stops with guys over at Crystal Dynamics and whatever it is that they want to do in order to remain profitable. I mean, for all we know they could deep-six the the Tomb Raider franchise tomorrow and go all in on running Marvel's Avengers back out of the pit they left it in. It would be insane to do so, but it was equally as insane to put together Marvel's Avengers as they did and not expect it to crash and burn. (Maybe we can blame everything that went wrong on the exes, that's usually a sure bet.) But assuming nothing is certain about the future, because it isn't, we can at least smile upon the times we had so far.

This new revitalisation of Tomb Raider, coined 'The Survivor Timeline' has done a fantastic job of establishing Lara Croft as a modern day action game protagonist; such to the extent that new Lara has practically replaced her otherwise iconic older model in the current stretch of gamer knowledge. We recognise the human, battered, ponytailed duchess just as well as we used to recognise her green-topped, cargo pant-wearing, immune to weather, predecessor. (Let it never be forgotten that the very first time we see Lara in her iconic outfit in the very first game, it's at the top of an icy mountain absolutely draped in snow. And she has shorts on. As if.) Which speaks to the talent of Crystal Dynamics for identifying what made Lara a fun character to follow in the past and how that gameplay loop could be improved upon to totally overshadow the series of the past.

Nowadays Lara is spending a lot less time shooting dinosaurs in the face and tackling thousand year old Russian Atlanteans, she's a human woman suffering the wear and tear of surviving in the wild, duelling with the elements and playing the one girl army against a secretive nation of illumanti-esque treasure hunters. The wear-and-tear system wherein Lara's player model will become scratched and bruised as moves through the grand adventure is as much a part of the series now as the actual Tomb Raiding itself. As depicting the fragility of the human at the centre of the action seems to be a key thematic device the team keeps coming back to. Whether struggling with being a lone survivor of a terrible boat crash, coming to terms with the violence she has been forced to commit and continues to pursue in the name of a vengeance that might just take as much as it relieves, or learning to get over the guilt of triggering the end of the world and indirectly wiping out a small South American town- (Not sure if she deserves forgiveness for that last one, honestly.) there's a real heart in the character of these stories for the player to identify and connect to.

The Tomb Raider Remake from 2015 rehabilitated the almost Sonic-fication that the series was beginning to go through after the main line series of games lost their direct number designation. When Lara was beginning to show up in so many disparate projects that she was becoming more of an icon of a character rather than an individual character. (Not that she was ever much of a personality to begin with, 90's video game writing being what it was.) We were given a Lara in her late teens going through her first adventure with the promise that this would be the origin of the hero we'd come to know. It was a backhanded promise, because even then Crystal would have to have known they were actually heading in a much more realistic direction and new Lara wasn't going to suddenly transform into an enigmatic, double pistol-wielding, psychopath trading bullets with mercenaries on skateboards overnight. (People tend to forget just how weird the original Tomb Raider was.)

Perhaps the most impressive new addition to the lore of the character was the inclusion, and utter image assimilation, of the bow; now existing as such an integral part of her new Lara that it's almost jarring to look back on the old box art of the original series and not see the string of a Recurve Bow strapped over her shoulder. The bow serves as a thematic device as much as a practical one, being indicative of a pre-automatic age which is representative of her lack of being prepared and outfitted with the gadgets that would achieve exactly what she'll need for the situation, demonstrating the amateur she currently is. All the while simultaneously being a versatile tool of the resourceful, representing adaptability and rugged, survivalist, tactics requiring ingenuity and rewarding struggle. It's the difference between someone having their dinner packed in their backpack and having to hunt it down and cook it with their hands in order to live; cutting to the heart of who new Lara is in comparison to old Lara.

Rise of the Tomb Raider ushered in some of the more time-honoured Tomb Raider plotpoints, like Lara's battle against the secretive 'Trinity' agency, as well as an embracing of the more globe-trotting elements of the series. Additionally, the games no longer had to pussy-foot around with the concept of mysticism within this new universe because that bottle had already been well and truly uncorked with the finale of the first game. Lara's famous daddy-issues became more prevalent too, with her family history finally entering into the picture, and I think it's around about this time that we got to really settle into this woman as a character rather than just the abstract of her struggle to survive; allowing the player in enough that they could actually come to care about what happens to Lara as her toils take a notable effect on her life. Oh, and Jonah became a main character instead of Samantha like I was initially expecting. (Kind of upset that Sam was totally sidelined given how important she was to the events of the first game.) But I guess this is a fine compromise too; everyone can get behind a bit of Jonah in their lives, I think.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the point at which Lara was supposed to ascend into the character she was in the old games, although as I said before Crystal probably knew well in advance they were heading a totally different direction tonally. Personally I think Shadow has some big pacing issues that offset the progression on the plot with sections of tedium and ill-placed flashback sequences. Also the over-reliance of Trinity as a plot point nestled back into the franchise far too quickly for my liking. Still, the gameplay was good enough that even the elements that had become somewhat stale after 3 decently similar outings didn't grate too heavily. The huge hub spaces of Shadow were a definite standout from anything the franchise had pulled off before. (Although the series had tried such scale before, with 'Angel of Darkness' if I recall rightly.) Visually it was undeniably stunning, and as such Shadow became something of an industry benchmark for graphical fidelity at the tail end of the last generation.

Right now we have a next gen Tomb Raider game in the works by Crystal Dynamics which was not initially disclosed when they first imagined their 3-part Tomb Raider narrative, implying that this could be the launching off point for the next part of Lara's life story. Or it could be a one off from Crystal Dynamics to stretch their muscles; the game hasn't even been officially announced yet so we can only speculate. Personally what I want from this new game is exactly how I wanted the last one to end; I want us to meet this universe's version of Natla and start that whole 'Atlantis' questline, only significantly spruced up in order to meet the standards of today's gaming narrative writing. I want it to push the boundaries of the big show stopper set pieces that has make this modern day series so exciting. (Like the plane engine run-away scene from 2015's Tomb Raider or the huge flood in 'Shadow') And last of all, for myself, can we have Lara end off in a slightly better mental space this time around? I shouldn't have to worry about the metal wellbeing of a fictional character so much; you made me care, Crystal, now you have to reap what you sow!

The Intiative and Crystal Dynamics

 And my climbing axe!

I've not exactly been subtle about my feeling towards Microsoft's new hotbutton game studio that they've conjured up, saddled with the mysterious, yet also eye-rolling, name of 'The Initiative'. (Sounds like Nick Fury's personal development studio with a name like that) From the very second I heard it, a single eyebrow rose, and the second followed when with the cringe-worthy follow up claim that this would be the first studio ever to put out 'AAAA games'. A term which is literally meaningless and yet will hang around this studio like a bad stink until, as I've predicted many a time, the group dissolve over many of the complications coming their way that seem inevitable. The premise of a game development studio with a bottomless pool of funds seems like a literal invite to waste money, and if Microsoft think that by doing this they'll unlock some heretofore undiscovered new layer of quality lying dormant inside the bowels of the earth for all these years- I have to admit that I don't share their enthusiasms. But hey, at least Perfect Dark is getting a sequel after most of the world has forgotten about it. Yay.

Things have gone utterly dark (you might say perfectly dark) regarding how this company has been getting along in their mission since their announcement to the world, which is either a very good sign or a very bad one. Mayhaps this team have stuck their nose to the grindstone and are busy pumping out simply delirious quantities of code and content, fuelled by a blank cheque, or maybe they're having troubling at an administration level and haven't conjured up anything worth talking about yet. All we can say for sure on this matter is that the recent Nvidia leak going into all of the 18k titles that have used Nvidia services or wishes to release to Nvidia support in the next 2 years, The Imitative were on the list for an apparently 'untitled game', which feasibly could be Perfect Dark, but maybe it isn't and we're looking at the start of overlapping projects already. So as I said, either they're in charge of their resources enough that they can take on a second game, or bad management is just starting to show as their splitting focus before their first game even has a release window. There really is no in-between with an idea like the Initiative, and Microsoft don't want there to be. It's their 'hail Mary' proposition, their one way to get that leg up over Sony.

In that sense it shouldn't be much of a surprise at all that Crystal Dynamics, creator of the Tomb Raider games and most commonly seen with their paymasters over in Square Enix, have partnered with The Initiative in order to further work on Joanna Dark's return. (Oh great, even more people in the development chain? What could possibly go wrong...) But seriously, this is going to be the first major new project we've heard out of Crystal since their time on The Avengers, which doesn't paint the best possible picture of what this new game might look like. Square Enix's Avengers, a game which notoriously turned people off by playing things too close to the chest, and then lumped a highly questionable (and by that point cliché) business model that bled into poor sales and worse retention. (One speculation claimed that the initial release lost around 60 million for Square Enix.) Yep, sounds like the sort of crack-team I'd want working on the debut to the biggest development team gamble I've ever done!

To be fair, I actually do respect the team over a Crystal Dynamics a whole lot, and though I maintain (and will continue to maintain) that The Avengers was a misbegotten mess of an idea that shot itself squarely in the foot before it ever had a chance to make it in the real world, that doesn't take away from the other projects the group has bought out. Tomb Raider's revival is a prime example of this studio at it's best, and an example that these guys are experienced in taking a pre-established female-led franchise and rewriting it from a modern, grounded and exciting, perspective. And they were also behind the 'Gex: The Gecko' games. So that's got to count for something right? (Right?) I don't hate the idea of these teams joining hands in matrimony, I'm more just sitting in foreboding of what might happen when The Initiative drag Crystal Dynamics down with them for yet another spectacular failure.

But then why am I so pessimistic to this venture? Beyond my usually playful exaggerated tone, I seem to find it genuinely unfeasible that things are going to work out for Microsoft here and I'm struggling to put a finger on why that is. I mean I've actually played the original Perfect Dark (albeit the remastered version) and can therefore insist that it was a heck of a lot of fun for a stagebased first person shooter style game. Sure, personally I happened to enjoy Star Wars Dark Forces a heck of a lot more, but I think there's room enough for a reimagining wormed in this game somewhere. Maybe a turn to how you approach the game which more aligns with the 'spy' elements of this alleged spy game. Heck, I would absolutely flip my lid if the teams went to the natural conclusion and made this upcoming game an incredibly high production immersive sim. But somehow I'm just not that confident.

I think it's because in the back of my mind, beyond the source material and the talents of those on the cutting room floor, I'm thinking of the big entity sitting on a pile of money behind them and thinking "What are you doing?" A bigger example of 'putting all your eggs into one basket', could not exist, as I guess Microsoft want to surpass the 'crack teams' over at Sony. What Playstation have managed to build up over the past generation, a team of talented AAA straight-shooters who put out exclusive banger after banger, is the dream of all console manufactures, but in my head I feel like it works because there are so many studios putting out these games at a rate that is consistent and varied in offering. (Not too varied, mind you. These are all adventure games.) Microsoft dabbled in the same, luring countless small companies under it's banner, but the results in the five years since they started this shift in direction, has been underwhelming. The most they've got is an exclusivity deal with Bethesda, which is big, but those two companies were heading that direction anyway; what else does Microsoft have up it's sleeve?

To be devil's advocate, maybe the exact thing that Microsoft need is someway to be competitive to Sony that hasn't been tried before. Maybe something that only someone with tech billionaire money could pull off. And is that something sticking a bunch of newbies in an office block and then slowly drowning that skyscraper in money? Well that doesn't sound right, but it might be. Mechanically, it tracks that the more resources you give a product the better that final product will be, which is why I understand that some might find my scepticism utterly bewildering. But you try and apply that very same logic to something as intangible as an artform, your results aren't ever quite as consistent. A lot of the best works of art out there, especially in the world of gaming, are made under the pressure of constraints, in tools, time, team and money, and when you go the other end of the spectrum the results can often be muddy and unpolished. (Like Anthem.) Maybe I see The Initiative as the ultimate final boss of art excess, which is why I can't fathom anything worthy coming of it all. Although that doesn't mean I don't want it to.

AAAA games, whatever that means, might just be everything that Xbox and it's supporters have needed to justify the existence of that console. Something with the scope and scale to achieve anything, (and with the right leadership to reign it all in and sharpen a golden vision from that chaos) might just be the future of premium priced games. I'm just not going to hold my breath on it, especially given that the debut title of this venture is a remake. I mean, doesn't that just sound odd? A fresh new venture, trying something that's never been tried before, and they're stuck making a remake to a cult classic Rare game? (Maybe that choice symbolises the team's dedication to grounding limitations, despite infinite resources, in order to focus the team. I don't know.) With any luck everything will work out and I'll come away with some serious egg-on-my-face, and it that happens then that'll be some crow I will happily chow down on.

   

Another Avenger bites the dust

 Speaking of departures

Didn't we just talk about this? Yes I'm pretty sure we just went over the tribulations and confusions that a studio has to put up with whenever a head of a project turns around and goes bye bye to his company, even if it isn't explicitly related to the game in question. Yet here we do have the absolute opposite of the spectrum, I have to admit. A situation where the game and it's performance are so out there, that one almost feels like they're failing to properly analyse the situation unless they factor in the video game in the middle here. You just have to look around at everything that's happening around you, put yourself in those shoes if you need to, and ask "Is this the choice that makes any sense under healthy circumstances, or does it perhaps serve a warning for something deeper?" And I'll just throw in my 2 cents by saying, it's probably the latter. if I had any financial stake in the world of Avengers I would not have just let that game's creative director up and leave with the state of the game right now.

Of course, in the world of creating live services, one must familiarise themselves with the idea that there are two stages of development; the traditional stage wherein the game is conceived, constructed and polished (Even though sometimes it feels that latter step is dodged entirely) and the next stage where the main team is pulled back so a side team can set into keeping the game's lights on for as long as possible. The Main team simply can't be wrapped up on something like that otherwise they'd be sacrificing their ability to work on other projects and make new games. Maybe Bungie can, and has to, make that sacrifice given that Destiny is a series they've happy sunk more than 1 billion into; but Crystal Dynamics has places to go, series' to maintain, they can't be wrapped up like that. So in that light, months after launch, a creative director saying his goodbyes and returning to his old company isn't exactly world changing. But, again, in the illogical world of 'optics' you have to admit that this looks bad.

Because love it or hate it, and I have seen people sit on just about every vertex of this fence, Square Enix's Avengers is not the mega hit that it should have been and arguably isn't even in a stable position right now. Now truthfully that is a very bold claim to make for someone who doesn't have access to any of Square's internal figures, but speaking as someone who has intently watched these sort of industries and communities ebb and flow everyday as my passtime; nothing I'm seeing represents this game is going anyway in the right direction. Player figures are currently the highest they've been in weeks right now, and that means they just broken the 4 figure mark, (that's on Steam chart tracker) which is simply fantastic numbers for a single player indie game, and decent figures for an indie multiplayer game; but the game we're talking about is neither. I have to wonder at this point how much of a return on investment this game even was if these are the numbers it's pulling in during the return of Marvel to the entertainment screen. (Small screen, but still) You just know that Marvel must have fleeced Square Enix on the licencing agreement, so those are some sales figures I'd really want to see leaked some day soon. (I only turn on my voyeur when we're talking corporate machinations)

For our Creative Director to up and leave right now, likely opening the slot for someone else, it just says one clear message to the community; we have no more creative ideas with this project. Okay I'm joking, but there is a real fear of leadership change during moments of creative crisis and I'd argue that Avengers has pretty much been in something of a crisis-state since launch. Getting a revolving door of executive is how a game enters development hell, or for a live service such as this one, it's how a game can find itself being overwhelmed and eventually abandoned; first by fans, next by the investors and finally by the developers. (Because lets be honest, all 15 Anthem fans out there, that game's fate was very much decided by the gaming public first.) Avengers needs to turn things around in a big and public manner if they want to become the market contender that you'd imagine an Avengers video game to be, and watching key team members dust in front of us isn't going to make that journey any more feasible.

But that doesn't mean everything is shaping up terrible for Avengers right now. There are still some slight good things going the game's way nowadays. For example, I just said how the user base is up, well that's because of the new Tachyon anomaly event which solves one of Avenger's biggest issues: the fact that you can only play when every player picks a different Hero. With this event, you can play multiples of whatever hero you want to because of Tachyons and timetravel or something, don't think about it too hard. Unfortunately this is only a limited event and so it going to get reversed imminently, but it still managed to bring a few people back and I bet this will be an event they come back to often. (it would be silly not to) Additionally, leaks and sly comments have painted the impression that the game is soon going to receive MCU based outfits; so now you can make your team of generic nobodies look like high quality cosplayers. (The new costumes do look good, I will say)

However I've just got to step back and look at the big picture to get the sense that something is off with this game, not just with what it currently is, but with what it hopes to be down the line. Because even looking at this in the long haul I'm not seeing that one dream for the fanbase to latch onto and defend to their dying breath. The usual way that these live services works out is that the launch is weak, (almost always) but then the dev team pulls some bull out of their closet about '2.0' or some magic fiction fix-all juice for the fans to slap each other on the back and say "Hey, it's not all bad." Avengers doesn't have that, the biggest upcoming event is Black Panther, and if the 'Future Imperfect' content is any indication of what to expect, that will last fans maybe a week of play before it gets boring at the most. (Even Fallout 76 Wastelanders at least lasted me a month and a bit) 

In fact, I'm not even sure what an Avengers 2.0 will look like, as it seems just the basic concept of this game is incompatible with the idea of substantial content drops without insane amounts of work going behind it. Could the team work on an amazing campaign to supplement the base game, complete with cleverly rendered side-mission locations that don't feel generic, new enemy archetypes that encourage new modes of play and a roster of team members that actually have to cooperate to win fights? I don't see why not, except for that they'd need a team the size of the development staff and about another 2 years to cook said-game. Both of which Avengers probably doesn't have to hand. So then what will become the moby dick of Avengers? I've honestly no idea,

In the perfect world, with the perfect amount of resource and time, Avengers would have made for a great dedicated action adventure video game, maybe with co-op, but definitely with a kick-ass and complete campaign. Instead it feels like the game has been roughly dragged and stuffed into an ill fitting formula that's doomed to slowly wither as everyone moves to the countless alternatives that make more sense. As much as I bemoan it, I can't rag on this Creative Director for going back to working for Naughty Dog, because they at least know how to execute a game that feels comfortable in it's own skin. But, as I always say, the Avengers name is strong; and if those guys can survive alien invasions, reality manipulations and, most impressively of all, franchise fatigue; who's to say they can't overcome this shoddy launch/support/future? Actually, when I put it like that I get even less confident; still, hope I'm wrong.

Does Avengers have a future?

Step up, Crystal Dynamics.

Woah, wait a second. There was a Square Enix event the other day? What- but I wasn't even prepared. This is all too sudden, how do I behave myself? I've waited so long for the day when Deus Ex came back to us and now, five years after the last entry, three after we were promised the series would return, we're finally going to get a- they didn't say a thing. Not a damn word. Once again Deus Ex gets discarded for favour of half-hearted brand starters and DLC. (You called an event to talk about DLC? Shame on you.) Square can't even talk about the Final Fantasy series in their own events because they've practically sold her out wholesale to Playstation. (At this point I'm genuinely starting to believe we're not going to see a PC port of FF7R.) God what a terrible time to be a Square fan... at least we have, what else did they talk about... Marvel's Avengers? Oh god, why is fate so cruel? You know what- Fine. If Avengers is the game we have to live with now that Deus Ex is retired, or petrified, or cryogenically frozen, then that's what I'm going to talk about. I'm going to talk about the future of Avengers and the ways in which this team are determined not to throw in the towel despite everything.

So... I guess that means I have to be positive? >Sigh<. (Be strong for Jensen. It's what Adam would want.) I guess Avengers is a game that's not utterly terrible. Those with the spare time and wherewithal to dedicate to it's elongated levelling grind have insisted that it's a half decent romp at the end of the road. For my part, I'll say that I did have a glimmer of excitement during one of the bigger battles when every Avenger was doing their part and our eyes locked with that indomitable glimmer of a group untie- and then the game crashed. (I kid you not, that's a true story.) But months of delays, an unfriendly opening 20 hours of grind, a lackluster story, plain bad character writing, uninspired enemy types, lazy monetisation strategies, separate levelling trees for each character, anaemic multiplayer lobby pools- (actually, I'm going to cut myself off) after everything; a lot of people have already given up on the game. Coffins are being picked out, tailors are crafting the funeral suits and everyone is ready to plot this game's spot in the cemetery right between Anthem and- Artifact. (I literally had to look up that game's name because it was so forgettable and it only died this month) It would even fit the pattern, all games that start with the letter 'A'. (Guess superstitious developers out there know what to avoid in the future.) But Crystal Dynamics, bless their Deus Ex smothering hearts, want everyone to know that's exactly what's not going to happen to them.

"We are committed to the future... for years to come" No, that's not the exact statement which Bioware made in regards to Anthem less than a year before they stopped supporting it, nor is it the words which I can only assume Valve appropriated in regards to Artifact. It's the 100% original promise made by the Avengers team to let everyone know that 'we mean business and this is a game that's going to be here for the long haul so please buy it we need the validation for our investors.' And, in the manner of all these live service disasters, the team want us to know they have a map to fix this game's longevity, showing us the road that development is poised to travel. A 'Roadmap', if you will. If this is starting to sound eerily like the death cries you've heard from so many other games so many times, well done, you have a rational mind in your noggin, but then no one ever accused Marvel's superheroes of acting too rationally before, now have they? 

No, Marvel Heroes are know for defying the odds, reality, even death at times, so why can't Crystal Dynamics do their same in the fight to save their game? It starts with a grand renewal, a gift granted to this game through merit of good timing; a fresh re-release on the new consoles. How novel. Were it only that we all got granted the opportunity of a second chance in a new skin, free of the warts of the old world, with decent frame rates and less critical crashes. Yes, it seems Avengers will be available to a brand new crowd of- except there's the fact that the new consoles are still prohibitive to the wider community... hmm, that's a problem Square can do literally nothing about... But perhaps it won't matter. Those who do get to have a console will surely be enough for decent player figures. But then there's also the bad press around certain decisions that are being implemented, specifically the XP reworking which sort of reveals how out-of-touch the development team is from the community. But if we erase the mountains in their way, then Avengers might, perhaps, conceivably, possibly, knock-on-wood, perchance, maybe, conditionally have a future.

And that would be a future written in new content, because that's what they'll need to weather this storm. The two Hawkeyes event took it's sweet time, but now that it's out we can finally begin looking forward to brand new horiz- oh wait, there's still the other pre-launch promises that the team promised. Yeah, they have yet to deliver on the promised Spiderman DLC that Square sold to Sony, so that's in the works. Then there's the Antman DLC which- huh? Wait, sorry my bad there is no Antman DLC, just supremely confusing marketing. So it's just Spiderman then. And when he finally makes it we can all breath a sigh of relief and start looking towards the future of for what Crystal has in store, and in fact they've already deigned to tease us during this event. See- they're not all talk, there's a tiny bit of bite too.

In a move that seems either honorary or ill-timed, Avengers is going to spend their next DLC slot in Wakanda reintroducing us all to Black Panther, making for a lot of emotions that I wasn't expecting to feel. On one hand I always liked Black Panther and find the idea of playing him pretty cool, (He was a favourite back in Marvel Ultimate Alliance) I even like his ingame outfit a lot, and on the other hand it kind of feels like stepping on the shoes of Chadwick Boseman. Now, I recognise that's an entirely personal gripe that you, ideally, do not share. Heck, I even feel weird about them going and making a Black Panther 2 movie, so obviously the video game version was going to rub me strangely. I shouldn't be affronted, Square's Avengers is hardly related to the MCU anyway. Besides, Wakanda certainly will make for a welcome and familiar visual to offset the tired skyline of 'nowhere' from the base game. (Between this DLC and the Hawkeye's 'Fallen Earth' environments, this game's almost in danger of looking varied!)

But that's just a stepping stone, a means to an end, because no amount of small time character piece is going to win fans over, make them sure that there's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. You need something for them to hold onto, something they can share rumours and theories about, something that can whip their expectations up all into a frenzy so that ultimately you can disappoint them, but by then they'll be invested in your game and you can take that money to the bank. What you need, is an Endgame. (See what I did there?) And, would you believe it, but Square's Avengers actually has that. I mean, it's nothing as grand and secretive, and desperation has decreed that the team already shared it with us in hopes of sparking the imagination, but it's a plan nonetheless. It's the Kree invasion, and you know what? That's not too bad of a plan. It's a ballsy promise that is almost certainly going to crash and burn- but what if it doesn't? (And that is where the addiction lies.)

When this started I remember noting about how amazing it was for Square to squander the Marvel licence, and whilst that holds true, some part of me can't help but wonder if the Marvel name alone is powerful enough to sustain itself. Because to be honest, no one really saw a future in Anthem, Artifact died the day it was announced and booed off the stage, (that's still the most wild announcement I've ever seen) but Avengers has that name, and with that there's promise. I won't lie and tell you that Avengers is definitely going to blow up and become the game that shakes the world, but I can genuinely see a reality where it reaches a point of sustainability, albeit with a lot of changes from where it's at today. It all really just depends on how much lifeforce they want to suck out of the Deus Ex fanbase in order to support it, and seeing as how they just put my favourite Cyberpunk series on ice to sit out another year, I guess that gives at least another year of appropriated lifeforce. Who knows, if everything goes to plan they might not even need to go F2P. (Though I suspect that's a foregone conclusion at this point.) So does Avengers have a future? For Deus Ex's sake, it better.

Marvel's Avengers is spiralling

 It's 8:15; that's the time that it's always been.

Marvel really has been on something of a successful revival for it's brand lately, after their self-imposed hiatus following 'Endgame'. (Well, after 'Far From Home' to be fair, but we all pretend the cut-off was Endgame because that's just more neat) I remember noting it smart on their part to take such a break, before people grew too bored of the traditional Marvel formula, but coming back was always going to be an issue. How would they do it? Would it be a chance to edge their toes into new frontiers, put Marvel on new platforms? And then we got the Avengers video game, which lacked so much that the movies had in terms of continuity, charm, writing, and even actor's licenses that it might as well have been an rouge unlicensed title. And then Marvel just moved to try and conquer TV through Wandavision somewhat successfully, and I completely forgot that game ever happened. As did a lot of folk. So the Avengers game has no more draw to it as the 'grand return of Marvel'. (Quite liked Wandavision by-the-by. The last episode was pretty weak but the others were stellar) Yet I am forever interested in the gaming world, and so I do think back to that game with it's weak launch, weak content and weak playerbase in order to wonder; what's up with them?

Because as Todd Howard once famously said "Don't hate the player, baby, hate the ga-" wait a second... no, he actually said "It's not about how you launch it's about what you become." And what a concise and insightful thing ol' Todd uttered that fateful day, no really. I mean just look at Anthem. It launched as a premature mess with weak foundation propped on a decent, but ultimately lacking, combat system and just look where that game is now- dead because EA took the smart decision for once and absolutely refused to keep pursuing a pipe dream. But think of all the friends we made along the way! To be fair, Avengers might not be quite as precariously placed as Anthem right now, in fact some of the 12 active users are forever caught in a desperate loop of insisting to players that "it get's good eventually! Several hours after you've run out of content and grinded to max level, then the combat gets it's depth." Which, honestly, I've heard some informed sources actually back up, I just find it rather galling that a game literally needs to be beaten to death in order for it to become good. It makes me think: 'Or I could play another game that starts good'

Crystal Dynamics has taken this one victory of theirs, however, (in their supposedly anaemic yet solid endgame) and arguably gone to shoot themselves in the foot right before the conclusion of their first major new content update arc. For you see, the Two Hawkeye's event that feels like it has been going for the past 5 years is finally wrapping up with Clint Barton's return to the roster he should have started in. Avengers players will get this on the same day as it's next-gen release; signifying a brand new start for the game to really strut it's stuff now that it's hitting systems that might be able to actually play it at a consistent framerate. This is a genuine chance for Square Enix's Avengers to strike out at a new audience, softly reset the disaster drop-off from the launch, and maybe have a go at this 'maintaining a successful live service' thing that seems to be every single studio head's wet dream nowadays despite sounding like a total nightmare for even the top of the pack.

But they're determined, okay? They want that infinite stress with added pressure and are ready to change some fundamentals to achieve it; thus comes the reworking to the experience system which is coming to the game on that very same day. Now listen up and see if you can see why this changelog has come to be so vehemently reviled by the public, even a laymen like myself managed to spot the little oddity. So they're changing up the levelling system in order to 'fix' the amount of EXP it takes to level up. Before it was apparently a straight shot where every level required the same amount of experience in order to ding to the next level, which is usually offset by modifiers applied to enemies so that the experience they dole out is relative to your level, but I won't tell Crystal how to make their game. Instead, the team are looking to scale EXP requirements after a certain level so that it'll take longer to reach the top level. (Bare in mind, also, that in this game each character is levelled separately, including the new one which will be added by this update) Do you see the problem yet?

As they note in the blog, many RPGs have their levelling system set up in such a way that it elongates levels in late game, but this doesn't mean that they all have to subscribe to this. Square's Avengers, in particular, apparently hides most of it's impactful and playstyle defining levelling choices until the end of the road; so wouldn't it make sense to expedite that process in favour of elongating it? The general public seem to think so, and that might be why Avengers is currently getting roasted on it's own subreddit in their transparent attempt at trying to lock players into playing Hawkeye more so that they can turn around and tell their money-men about how successful their DLC has been. Folks have demanded explanations, retractions, subjugations; and through it all Biowa- I mean Activ- I mean Electroni- I mean Crystal Dynamic thought carefully and decided "Nah, you're all wrong. We're right."

In the typical way that these company's do, Avenger's team put out a note that essentially called the entire community morons for misunderstanding the simple premise they were explaining, and then proceeded to elaborate the exact same premise with easily refutable excuses. For one they did they 'Well other games have a curve' Argument which I already responded to. "Doesn't mean you have to have one". But the really funny excuse was where they claimed that people might sometimes level up twice during one mission, and all those extra level-up points might be overwhelming for their little tiny peabrains. So let's play devil's advocate and assume this is the case; some people might look at the level-up points and become overwhelmed as though they're playing 'Pillars of Eternity' or something. New players might be like that, I understand the assumption; but then why are you implementing this system which only comes into effect at later levels? That's right, an adaptive curve won't effect new players at all, which not only makes this excuse highly presumptive but just fundamentally wrong. Either the balancing team is so incompetent that they've conjured the wrong solution to the problem or they've lied and assume their audience to be so dense as to not see through it. Pick your poison.

Whatsmore, even if this does in some way benefit the newcomers to the game, it's at the cost of alienating those that have stuck out the game. The non-casual hardcore players already know where the value in the game lies, and may have gone through upto 5 consecutive levelling chains in order to scry what little enjoyment they can out of the combat. Now they're being told they've got to do that even more, for even longer, in order to play some of the new characters? It reminds me of Genshin Impact's world level issue, only that's something which MiHoYo have acknowledged as an issue and are brainstorming towards fixing. Crystal, on the otherhand, have dug their hooves into the ground and raised their horns; they wanna fight. I just cannot comprehend what for, why are these Devs so insistent on playing to their own game's weaknesses?

Of course, this is all coming from second hand accounts of those who play these games and those who make them; so maybe the general public is wrong and this game actually has a great early levelling experience and everyone's wrong. I want to try and see this from Crystal Dynamics angle, because I genuinely do love their games but here's the plain facts; we're currently in a year where two big games have been killed off for trying to launch bare-bones and fix everything later, that should be a wake-up call to this game that it needs to start thinking harder about it's decisions going forward. I actually do want Marvel's Avengers to become a good game at some point, and as unlikely as that seems; stranger things have happened. But those steps will only come if the player base and the development team can reach an accord on what these game needs to be in order to lure in new comers, otherwise it just leads to endless friction that prospective buyers see and go. "Ew, don't want none of that." Believe that, because right now I'm literally one of those bystanders scrunching his nose and turning away.

Avengers is now officially a loss

 Avengers disassemble!

'The Avengers' is a multibillion dollar property in the entertainment medium, and that is a mathematical fact. Say anything you want about Super hero movies, but the past 30 odd Marvel movies have proven that audiences are looking for the sorts of stories that they can become invested in for long periods of time over those one shot stories here and there. In some ways I guess you could say that people are going to the cinemas to watch TV shows nowadays, but I wouldn't want to start a debate about something like that with the movie lovers out there. Such is the power of the Avengers name that the two most recent movies baring it, which released one after the other, grossed 2 and 2.7 billion dollars each; that's almost 5 billion raised by only two movies, think about how many executives straight passed out when they heard about those sorts of figures! Kevin Feige, mastermind behind this movie series, has ridden the wave so well that he used it to clamber up from his position as head of Marvel films to head of Marvel altogether and one can only imagine the number of companies just gnawing at his feet like rats to get a chunk of those profits. And yet, with all that sheer power behind the name, Avengers the videogame by popular publisher Square Enix and the talented folk at Crystal Dynamics is now, officially, a financial loss.

Whilst the player numbers that we were seeing for the game, which are still sub 1000, were not promising, there was still no indication that the game itself underperformed. It was announced to be the best selling game of it's month and the second best selling Super hero game of all time, (trailing just behind Sony's Spiderman) but I suppose many of us failed to take into account that this game, as well as Sony's Spiderman, were unique amongst superhero titles as these were very much primed to be blockbusters, which means that normal success wouldn't be enough to break even. Such was proven during Square Enix's earnings call for this quarter whereupon they revealed that the game sold to just over half of what they needed to break even, basically meaning that the venture has cost they somewhere near to 60 million or 40 million US dollars depending on which sources you pull from. (Certainly not the sort of rainfall one would expect.)

To their credit Square appear to be taken it to the chin whilst promising an impending switching of fortunes. They remain stalwart in the fact that players will soon 'return' to the game given all they have planned in events and expansions, because as a famous game director once said "It's not about what you launch, it about what it becomes." (Or something to that effect, I try to forget the drivel out of Todd's mouth sometimes.) But I and many more wonder honestly about the proof behind that assertation, especially when the sorts of events that they are referring to seem absent from their original launch dates. The 'Two Hawkeyes' event has been delayed (Which is a shame because all of 5 people were looking forward to that) and basic game fixing seems to have taken a priority due to the rampant bugs and frame drops which hit basically all platforms. (Although as I understand it, PC got the worst deal) In many ways this whole saga is reminiscent of another 'promising' live service.

Yeah, I'm invoking the name of Anthem once more, but can you blame me? Both games were hyped before launch based on questionable grounds, both presented decent gameplay that buckled under the weight of the systems meant to support it and both titles since abandoned their roadmaps in desperate attempts to fix the mess they shot out the gate. Although in Anthem's case I believe the gameplay itself was slightly better received, whilst in Avengers I've heard serious doubts about whether or not this game has the ability to secure repeat play even if there were solid loot incentives to keep up the play cycle. Anthem has the potential to turn things around, but they've had to retire to a year long (at least) restructuring project to even be in the running for that sort of comeback, whereas Avengers may not even that have that prospect. (Things are grim, to say the least.)

The question must be asked, at the end of the day; what is the cause of this distinct lack of interest in a game baring the biggest name in entertainment? And yes, I've asked this before, but it is a fascinating topic to discuss, is it not? 'Avengers' should be one of those names that qualify under the 'too big to fail' category of brands but that doesn't seem to be the case and it could spell interesting revelations about the way we look at entertainment. If we take this at it's face-most value, perhaps this could be another concrete example of the way that movies and videogames just do not fix in any fundamental fashion. We already know that the process behind telling a videogame story and a movie story is very different, but this has the potential to prove how even beyond that they the very psyche and public zeitgeist differs; which I suppose makes sense given the sort of investment that each medium demands. Watching a movie is decently inexpensive (provided you're careful with concession stands and don't have a family) and takes merely a couple of hours out of your day, games are roughly six times that cost and demand 10s of hours stretched over months from you; maybe that's the sort of equation that these companies should be taking into account more often.

Then, of course, there are the failings of Square Enix's 'Avengers' itself; and those are plenty fold. First is the plain and widely reported fact that the game is buggy; a pretty big turn off nowadays that folk are wise enough to look out for given how many high profile messes have fallen to that trap. (Fallout 76, Anthem, etc.) Then there is the fact that Square couldn't even be bothered to secure the licenses for the Avengers actors' faces, and maybe that was never on the pitching table, but if so then that is a huge missed opportunity on everyone's part. Avengers is more than just a name, it's a brand that is supported by the talent and investment of the actors and actresses in the roles. There's a reason that securing a Marvel movie is so sought after and that's because it can be a career defining role. (And whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you) Thus is it any wonder why people are more than a little turned off by the prospect of an Avengers game which feigns a realistic aesthetic yet fails to mimic these famous faces of those heroes? Heck, to be honest the character design is so bad that these don't even look like main characters half the time, how are we supposed to get behind them?

The other problems with Avengers are much more mechanical but equally as difficult to solve. Being a live service, there needs to be some base incentive to return day in and day out, usually to acquire the best possible loot to fit your build, unfortunately there's both not a great enough challenge demanding this gear and not enough cool loot to fuel such a search, leaving most people stuck in those categories. Then there is the gameplay which is fairly mindless and difficult to take advantage of with the limited scope of the enemies in the game. The base story is rather dull, there's not enough bosses to run through over and over again, missions are visually repetitive, objectives are embarrassingly rudimentary; the entire game is just weak in all the most important and basic ways.

And so we're left with a few queries, chief of which being what can be done and is there any hope for the Avengers game? Well I believe there is, though I suspect that Square won't really want to hear it... With the apparent lack of content offered in this game it simply doesn't earn it's premium pricing, however the name and brand is interesting enough to rope in a decent player base if this title were to go free-to-play. And yes, I know that a decently strong monetisation effort would need to be launched to make that worth it, but that's seriously the one way a game as dry as Avengers has a chance in the modern age. Genshin Impact has changed the dynamic for games like these and it's time for Square to shift with the times. But hey, what do I know; I'm only your target demographic...

"Earth's Mightiest Heroes" indeed...

Reality is often disappointing

Success is never guaranteed in life. It can't be, else the moment would never be sought after nor appreciated. Though there are those times when success is so tipped in your favour that perhaps the more impressive feat would be finding some way not to sink that basket in the manner that seems inevitable; a sort of "Wow, you messed up so spectacularly that it's kinda impressive" sort of stance. Personally, I would consider the later to be personified in the sort of example where you, as a huge corporate entity with resources pouring out of your ears and a bevy of well respected studios at your beck and call, are granted exclusive rights to the single most sought-after and profitable licence in the entertainment world, only to somehow manage to twist things on their head and make an ass of yourself. (Maybe that's more indicative of the way that even sure-fire success is never as easy as it seems.) As you can likely deduce right now, the stand-ins for this example are 'Square Enix' and 'Marvel'. (I'll let you figure out which goes where.)

So with the rights to make an Avengers game there was little doubt that this would be the sort of game to sell gangbusters. I mean sure, we had no idea what the game even was for several months, the only footage which existed had to be literally smuggled out of the amphitheatre and Square kept teasing live-service elements before their gameplay showcase; but none of that mattered because this was 'Avengers'! The Marvel brand is a total juggernaut built by the blood, sweat and tears of countless over the past decade, surely there was absolutely nothing Square could do which would sully such a brand in the eyes of fans. And I'd argue that they still haven't. Even after everything that Square's Avengers turned out to be, and all the ways it severely let down just about everyone who shelled out for it, Marvel are so untouchable at this point that the blame seems to have landed squarely on Square's doorsteps. (And can you really blame the masses for picking such a scapegoat?)

I think that right from the moment go there were concerns about exactly what it was this game was going to turn out to be, stemming from the base that no one was quite sure what a perfect Avengers game would be. I mean it was going to have to be multiplayer of course, that was a given, but should this be a narrative based game? Perhaps a more loose open world one? A beat 'em up? An RPG? What would best allow the player to step into the shoes of Earth's Mightiest Heroes? Square basically had complete creative control over what this title could end up shaping up as, and to the chagrin of many they travelled the path that so many others had stumbled on; they decided to make a live service. But before I go on I should say something; there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a 'live service'. I think the concept of a game that you can come back to time and time again as it keeps getting updated has been alive and well since the days of early Minecraft; but the big companies have a habit of taking something charming and community building before turning it cold and uncaring. Thus was the case with Avengers.

Like practically every big-budget live service before it, Avengers launched as a mess of bugs and frame losses that one would be embarrassed to present to their audience if one had any self respect. The game just frankly did not hit consistent frames on console, full on crashed often, suffered visual and audio bugs all over the place and had trouble with networking out the gate. And those were just the unintended drawbacks. People soon found the gameplay loop to be overly repetitive, the gear system to be uninspired, the RPG elements to be undercooked and the story to be so short that they only managed to fit 3 supervillains into the game. (All three of whom they had revealed in promotion.) Behind that all was a game that at least felt fun to mess around in for a bit, I still feel that smashing the odd head together as hulk or pining people to walls as Thor still holds it's appeal; but enough appeal to cost £50 and to come to back day after day? Nah, I'll be fine without, thanks.

Of course, like many predicted the Marvel name was enough to trump many of those criticisms and bring people to the game, but it wouldn't be enough to get people to buy into the gameplay loop. Sure, everyone wants to be an Avenger when they see the logo, but actually sit them down and tell them to work this game into their weekly schedule and you'll find people move on quickly. The game was just simply lacking in spectacle, excitement, oh- and decent loot to fuel the looter aspects of the game which were meant to be the main selling point. (Have you people learned nothing from Anthem?) But how can I just sit here and tell you that people moved on from the game so quickly? Do I have insider information in the Square's play charts? Of course not, but I do have a web browser and can easily look at Steam Charts to see that the game had but 750 players in the last hour. (The game launched about a month ago, remember)

Now 750 ain't dead by any stretch of the imagination, that's about 750 more people than are playing 'Fast and Furious: Crossroads' right now, but for a multiplayer co-op title with a huge license attached to it in the middle of the day; that ain't too healthy either. When you bear in mind that this is a game that requires a full four-team of people, who pick different characters out of a roster of 6, in order to be played as intended, suddenly that 750-1000 daily player roster starts to feel a little more constricting. In that vein, reports have claimed genuine trouble landing a multiplayer session with randoms in the game, this time not due to poor networking but a poor player pool, and even the PS4 version of the game seems to mimic these issues. So what does this tell us? That people have moved onto one of the numerous free or cheaper online games that are infinitely better conceived and just plain more fun. 

For their part, Crystal Dynamic and Square have kept on a confident face throughout this all and claimed that they're not at all worried by the shrinking numbers. Afterall, they have two events incoming that will introduce the new characters to the universe; both of whom are Hawkeye. (Huh?) Yeah, in order to 'change up the roster' they're going to introduce two different characters that both use bows and, given their track record, will probably play almost identical to one another. (Yep, that'll revive the game for sure.) I'm sure this event will bring back some players, events usually do, but I have no idea why Crystal will think they'll stick around before any of the core issues are solved. What's the point of adding new heroes when the gameplay loop is still boring and tedious? This is textbook 'horse before the cart' stuff right here.

Quite honestly, I wanted Avengers to be good. I really did. I've always held an affinity to Marvel over the years and have been disappointed with the way in which quality games under their brand have been far and few between. With so much source material out there you'd think it'd be easy, but I suppose Square have come by to prove how that isn't the case. (Then again, they hardly pulled from any source material whatsoever, so maybe some of the blame does land on them) Yet it seems that the moment has come and gone and Avengers is destined to be another forgotten live service by the end of the year, providing more evidence at how this game design model isn't sustainable. (Evidence that the industry is sure to promptly ignore) I just hope this downfall doesn't hurt future prospects for Marvel games, because I'm still waiting for another great X-men title. It's been far too long.