Malice or incompetence

 

I like to think I'm a levelheaded, sometimes snarky, asshat when it comes to how I comment on situations within this blog- only ever rarely spurred to moments of whitehot rage. But the rage does come, never you doubt that! And when I think back to those delightful diatribes into surly snarling- I think back to times when I went in on Apex Legends for the way that they set up their first major play event- which also marked the last time I played that game because I know all too well the road these companies inevitably all go when they start dipping their toes in the wrong pools. I remember it so well because it was there that I issued an theoretical ultimatum- though the team maintained their innocence that the predatory design of the event was purely accidental- it's existence alone was indicative of one of two realities- malice or incompetence.

Now Apex Legends has reared itself into the news cycle once again and I can't help but reflect on that time all those years ago and think about how still true it remains today. Of course the modern situation is slightly different- changes to the battle pass that will cut down the length of seasons by half and demand more out of the premium battle pass whilst limiting the ability to grind your way to getting the new pass; but that same stink of grind lingers on it all- you know? And the question comes- do we attribute this to malice or just incompetence- and it's a real headscratcher for me, I must admit. Once again we sit on the other side of this debacle- somewhat- and in that I think we have a little elucidation on the topic, but I want to rewind back to the complaint itself for a wee sec.

So seasons would be split in two- one and a half month long each branches, and players would have to pay their way into the premium stage of both passes if they wanted everything or just endure the free track. Of course, there was also the new stage of premium but we'll put that aside for now. What we have here, in my opinion, is a red herring. Starting with the incompetence argument- you would have to be absolutely space-bound, out of this planet and solar system, not to predict a backlash for slapping down a change like that. After months of fan complaining about low effort Battle Passes, this addresses none of their concerns and asks for more of their time and money- you might as well spit on them and call their mother mean names in the process- it was never going to go down well!

But if we approach this from a malice angle- then we get more interesting results. More money is the goal- considering that EA and EA Sports split earlier this year, EA properties just like Apex can no longer rest behind the infinite profits of the sports games and now they have to actually prove they need to exist. Double charging is an old reliable but far too volatile to be accepted by the audience- but increase people's playtime within your universe and that deepens their likelihood of spending money on your crap. Afterall, it's the only thing they'll have time to play anymore, given that they've only got one and a half months to grind through your battle pass- might as well spend that money you would have slipped into the pockets of other similar titles on your one true love, right? Thus I see a red herring.

How does the needle get moved towards the anti-consumer direction in this, highly scrupulous, industry? You set up a patsy pawn that draws the ire of everyone and then sneak in your real goal behind that- soak up the damage with a "we're sorry, we'll listen now" statement and giggle to yourself as people don't realise you encroached just that little bit into their land. EA have pulled back on some of the double-monetisation of the Battle pass. You can still grind enough credits in one pass to pay for the next like it always was... but seasons will still be one and half months long going forward. A genre already criticised for stealing time is now trying to steal even more.

See, I'm rarely a believer in the 'useful idiot' syndrome. I think it is excessively rare to find someone so idiotic that they just stumble into pro-corporate anti-consumer positions totally on accident repeatedly- and if that person is real, they should have a reality show on TV because they sound like a riot to watch. What's much more likely is that lines are being pushed further and further and someone is being set up as a patsy to feign ignorance. And if you're calling me a conspiracy theorist and wondering where the potential cause for such a twist in fortunes lies- let me remind you once again: EA are currently really looking to up their books after losing the safety net that was EA Sports. Apex Legends isn't currently growing, it's player base is getting restless about supposed cheating and poor season passes- so now is the time to dig in the claws.

Where I think the team might have messed up is in the whole 'eyes bigger than your hands' situation when it comes to monetisation. A smart move would have been to revert back to the paid model that things used to reside in so that players can fool themselves into accepting a pyrrhic victory; but EA want to have and eat that cake in the same swoop. Sure, now you can buy Ultimate battle passes with ingame currency like always- but you can't buy the 'Ultimate +' one with ingame currency! (Yes, they literally called it 'Ultimate +', because apparently we live in a South Park skit.) That is a extra tier remaining in the new deal with direct money purchases only and a smattering on unique rewards- not just tier skips! Because they want you to be comfortable with no longer being able to earn your next battle pass. Ain't they just sweethearts?

I had to cover this one again just to smack down the 'we're silly billies who never meant any harm' fallacy. People that stupid would never have made it to the positions that they have, and that they think their audience complacent and dumb enough to buy their drivel should be taken as the highest possible insult. I don't care too much because I jumped out of that pot before they even lit the pilot light- but if those who remain really think they can take the heat I just hope they are prepared as the situation slowly becomes worse and worse. Take the lesson that the inflation of economy was born to teach us all- things never get better, they just deteriorate slightly slower sometimes. 

EA and the AI?

 

Artificial intelligence is not what expected to become the great equaliser for creatives across the world. I did not forsee generative models taking the jobs of artists because numbskulls think it'll save them a quick buck, but I guess when you blow 100+ million on the money laundering scheme known as 'Secret Invasion', you have to make those funds up somehow. And these tools start developing, in the manner that they do, upwards ticks the demand to have them dripped into every single factor of life with horrific gusto. It's becoming expected for you to have 'ChatGPT competency' listed in your CV- I am no joking, I've been told that by job recruiters! People are treating this tech like the new breakthrough innovation on par with the mobile phone and I can't rightfully sit here and tell you that they're wrong with how many people are upending industries to feed into it.

And sure, I've confessed already that there are some positive implementations of AI throughout the world worth commending. Most all are done in conjunction with human art, however. I've already talked about the stellar Glorb SpongeBob music videos, but there's recently been another really heartwarming story. American country folk singing legend Randy Travis, who has spent the last 10 years incapable of singing due to suffering a massive stroke, is now capable of making his voice heard once again through the creation of a new cover using his voice, AI trainers, a human performance and a the tweaking of a sound engineer who worked alongside him for many years. In doing so the man is taking back a part of himself he thought was lost and giving the world a reminder of his talent. Ain't that sweet?

But that's about my tolerance for sweetness, how about you? Wouldn't you much rather hear about the absolute dumpster fire that is modern AI games that are starting to pepper the Steam dumpster heap. It's not quite at the pandemonic levels of Freddy-like games back when that franchise first hit the scene, but we've seen a fair few number of these detective-like games where the NPCs you interact with are all powered by AI. Meaning you have to extract information from these dead-eyed NPCs using Text-to-Speech voices, in order to deduce the truth of some sort of murder. And it is- rough. First of all, it's a bit insulting that so many people out there thought mystery novels so throw away that you can entrust an AI to their careful laying out. Trust me when I say, it ain't that simple. Secondly- the tech just doesn't work.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who just doesn't have a clue what they're talking about but are determined to pretend that they do so they lock you in cursive circles of conversation that conveys nothings, goes nowhere and makes you more and more frustrated the longer you gab? That's every single conversation with AI NPCs. For technology that is proposed to create totally distinct and unique interactions beyond the possibilities of static game development, it is astounding how every one of these AI games ship with a cast of the exact same dull, indirect, bumbling idiot of a conversation partner that keeps it's thoughts about together as a loose sheet of A4 in a rainstorm. It is shocking how none of these games even shows an ounce of workable potential. What are these- Crypto games?

And yet if you peak over at the notes of one Electronic Arts, you can see them confidentially call AI games the 'future' with their chests puffed out and their heads firmly stuffed where the sun don't, and simply can't, shine. EA have announced their intentions to rush towards AI implementation in the game development process- because afterall- most of their games are being lambasted for being bad- so why not just thrown in the towel now? Why not just replace all the hearts and souls that are supposed to be emblematic of the company and their dedication to continued development when you can instead put that effort into a chatbot that spits out recycled globs of code that you plaster everywhere- with a tiny team of code patchers on the other end struggling to make sense of the hallucinated garbage the machine threw in there for good measure?

Of course that's not all, EA also posited interest in researching ways to add advertisements into video games, which has always gone over so well in the past- hasn't it? You know, with the mass complaints, the walk backs and the revisions! People just love having their time wasted inside of products that they've already paid for! And it just makes sense that EA would be the ones hinting about their willingness to jump into such a field despite that being absolutely unhinged to even consider, but since when has that ever stopped a company like EA? But as much as I would like to crucify them for what the company are proposing to bring to our precious little hobby- it's better to take all of these as warnings.

EA didn't offer up any of these considerations unsolicited. Each were broached during an investor call wherein EA are tipped to give their thoughts on directions that their investors want examined to try and shore up their returns. Now you must bare in mind that these investors are below the level of a neanderthal. We're talking genuine pits of evolved lifeform, the sagging pustules of the proto-humanoid sludge that modern producers are formed of. As such, they ain't got no clue what makes money. Of course those idiots are going to think that chucking in ads to games will score them a bit of extra dough, or that AI powered development is going to completely automate games so far we'll be seeing a new Battlefield game every two weeks. We're talking about people who stopped mental development after the age of six.

Unfortunately, however, these are the people with the money and they are leaning on games companies to pursue these dead-end trips to nowheres-ville. A big company who knows what it's doing like EA can pay lip service that they're doing it, chuck a faux-research team on the topic for a couple of weeks and call it a day, but what an absolute disaster of a company that can't do anything for itself? What about Ubisoft? Do you think Ubisoft will be able to help from soiling itself during the meeting if their investors told them to stick Banner ads in Assassin's Creed Shadow? And if enough companies start feeling the push, how long before one is dumb enough to go for it, and another follows suit, and then the next cancer on the industry is born? What I'm basically saying is- investors need to be institutionalised. 

Dead space is dead- and so is survival horror?

 

There was a name in survival horror that ran supreme among the stars for it's inception. Who's legacy was felt on the genre for console generations to come so keenly is spawned sequels, a spiritual successor and, finally, a remake. That game is also renowned within my head as one of the only survival horror games with a mildly clever title despite the fact they stuck a 'dead' in there. Dead Space. (Not as clever as 'State of Decay', but I don't think there's any real argument about which is the more influential franchise there. Maybe SOD spent all their creative budget in the marketing room.) Who else could inherit the very lofty conceptual of the alien franchise and spin them off in their own direction to create a product very clearly in reverence of, but still entirely distinct to, Ridley Scott's arthouse classic?

Dead Space would actually go on to follow something of the trajectory of the Alien franchise as well, boasting a sequel that leaned more heavily into the action elements and lost the deadly horror somewhere along the way, a threequel that totally undermined the key aspects of the original and fell apart as a result- and that was the entire franchise they never made any more, shut up. (See- perfect fits for one another!) We all kind of hoped that 'Callisto Protocol' would be Dead Space pretty much note-for-note, and the developers kind of leaned into that for their promotion, only for the gameplay to kind of veer in it's own direction that a lot of players weren't prepared for. (Melee combat above ranged combat is a big departure!) Which is probably why the Dead Space Remake was so rushed toward.

We all wanted to see more of this world and if that world just happened to be wrapped up in an excellent revival of the original- who are we to argue? I'll admit to being absolutely wrong about my gut feelings on the Remake when I first provided my impressions. Knowing the studio and sensing the corporate stink on the thing, I expected a sequel to completely lose the heart of the original in a lame attempt to shoot up the graphics and slap a weak remake for everyone to sigh and deal with. But then, I also expected Callisto to be the break-out star survival horror darling- so I guess my reads were on the moon they were so far off course! As it turned out, Dead Space Remake was an absolutely brilliant revival that took what worked in the original and reimagined it to the fullest extent of what the original would have been had it got the same care and love with 2023's resources.

And the Remake managed to win it's fight against the naysayers- wining critical aplomb, award nominations and respect... although, according to third party reports- not sales. I can't exactly claim to be a paragon of the beaten here myself, because I actually didn't buy the game either- I was gifted it by EA for a bit of QA work I did for them but... was everyone else given it too? Surely with all the positive coverage, the endless recommendations- the masses would have come piling through the doors- except they didn't. And now Dead Space has the dreaded mark of 'underperformed' under it's portfolio title- seemingly utterly inexplicably. I will confess to being something in the realm of shocked, with no real logical explanation to offer unless... I dunno, maybe people saw the name and thought they'd already played it? (I'm swinging wild here, I haven't the foggiest!)

Perhaps one of the most grim portents I've seen rise out of this anomaly is the assertion that it reinforces the apparent death of the genre appeal that is Survival Horror- and when you weight it up with the environment that might kind of check out a bit. Survival Horror games were something of a staple around the time of the original Dead Space franchise but now- they pretty much dominate the indie scene, and even then in their lowest common denominator forms. The most notable recent survival horror game was Alone in the Dark, which was an average game by all metrics but nothing to the scale of what Dead Space was going for. So perhaps they were trying to tap into a market that was already somewhat exhausted at the time of release?

Of course, the kneejerk reaction would be to slap me around the chops and remind me of the massive other Survival Horror game that released around about this time last year- Resident Evil 4. But to that I have to ask... is that game really 'Survival Horror'? Part of what made the original such a standout in it's franchise, which the Remake certainly went to ape, was the fact that Resident Evil 4 abandoned a lot of the vulnerability and drawn out tension that makes the Survival Horror genre... well... horrific. Resident Evil 4 leans into the action, with explosive set-pieces, ever changing environments, flashy takedowns and an all around bad-ass protagonist who never really feels like he's at the mercy of the elements around him- he's too cool for that. All of which invoke a different kind of game, and would attract a different kind of audience to the Dead Space crowd.

Whatever the case, this means there really is no reason to continue the Dead Space remake franchise like many expected and definitely hoped for, considering Dead Space 2 is widely considered the franchise's zenith. Reports had been made claiming that Dead Space 2 remake existed in some form of consideration before being cancelled, and others have come out to say that the game never even entered a state of serious consideration whatsoever. Either way Motive, the studio in question, seems to be moving on to their own thing whilst Dead Space has been put back up on the high shelf by the kid in the cowboy hat as he remarks how "I don't want to play with you anymore!"

It is quite in keeping with EA to make decisions that undermine the actual good thing people are praising them for. They couldn't even release two good singleplayer Star Wars games with no microtransactions without making sure the latter title would have a flaming turd of a PC port. But in this regard, I guess there really is no brainer to killing off the potential of what could have been a real bright spark in the single player space. Dead Space is an excellent Remake that proved me, and all the other doubters, horrendously wrong- and yet it wasn't rewarded for it's success like we are told will happen in a quality based industry. Maybe this is an example that Mike Ybarra was right, and we should all be tipping our Game Developers our life savings- (Nope, that's a story for another day...)

The Aveum Annihilation

 

It comes about now and then that a project will drop at the wrong time to the wrong audience and turn out... wrongly. That is to say; not every failure was meant to be so for the pure merit of what it is, and not every success is due solely to the strengths of the pieces involved. Indeed much about the life we lived is based on the peripherals and inconsequentials of the world- who we know, where we are, the events around us. 'Merit' is a lie perpetuated by the fortunate to give the bereft some grim hope to persist in search of a brighter future that doesn't exist. Even the act of giving up is criminalised and blasphemed, because the rich can't stay afloat unless we are kneeling in the gutter for them to stand atop. But I'm sliding a bit away from the point- we're here to talk the Immortals game!

I think there's always a bad sign regarding a game when the name is a headache to say. Sure, there are many games out there with bad and caustic headlines that manage to worm their way onto 'classics' lists- just take 'Dragon Age: Origins' for example- a game with a subtitle that is completely and utterly meaningless outside of the context of referring to this being the start of the franchise. There is no other 'Origin' told throughout the game in any context- it's marketing pure and simple. But we don't ever think of the game's weird name because it's become a household name. But if you don't have a unbridled classic brewing in your little pot, a cleaner title is just better for marketing. Perhaps consider renaming 'Immortals of Aveum' to... well, literally anything else? I still have to look it up and I've done 5 or so articles on the little bugger- that's a problem!

But the name is not what sank Aveum. In a recent candid comment from a former EA developer, a spotlight was shone on the process of what the game was and how in many ways it and the team were set up to fail from the get-go. One of the nearly 50% of Ascendant Studio that were laid off from the team after the game's unfortunate failure called it a "Truly awful idea"; laying the blame of the game on "Trying to make a AAA single-player shooter in today's market." Atop of highlighting the game was a new IP and was filled with the bloat typical of a plus 100 million dollar budget. (including the 40 million for marketing) Again, we come back to the idea of the perhipherals of the situation. Not the talents of the team- but the 'timing' of the game. Let's examine that.

Now I don't need to interview the fellows themselves to figure out what they meant by 'today's market'. As it stands a lot of the top most player games are AAA shooters- but most important they are multiplayer shooters, that all leverage some sort of Live Service functionality. Warzone, Battlefield, Apex, Destiny, Halo. Some have increasingly limited Single Player offerings, but those are just to get players through the door and keep them busy when the servers are down. The multiplayer is the draw that keeps them hooked and buying cosmetics long enough for the investment to hit their return multiplayers that make shareholders salivate. If that is the game that rules the roost, then delivering an experience with no multiplayer portions whatsoever was tantamount to suicide, no?

Yet here's the rub- the cold water- things are never that black and white. If the world really existed in such a state that only things which were already popular could be successful, then innovation wouldn't be a concept; now would it? Do you think Divinity Original Sin dropped into a healthy CRPG market and did gangbusters there? No- it released to a world starved for heavy duty RPGs and thus capitalised on the market gap. Heck, what about DOOM 2016, which released during an equally heavy Multiplayer Shooter trend? (although 'Live Services' were not as industry-standard back then.) Admittedly, that game did have an online component- which died mere seconds after the game launched- but the Single Player portion? Instant classic. Best seller. Earned a sequel. So what is the difference between Aveum and DOOM? Or Wolfenstien? Or any of the other AAA shooters of the modern age that did well?

Honestly, Aveum just wasn't that good. Bloat, is perhaps the right term here as coined by this ex-employee- because the game had nowhere near the amount of content variety to justify the playtime. The whole wrist-based magic concept feels weak too, on a visual scale, which weakens the spectacle of action in a genre that thrives on visual spectacle. The story was over-stuffed, the characters were under-baked, the general art-style looked only a tad less overdesigned than Godfall- but still a total mess. It just felt as though the game lacked a heart, which was attempted to be paved over with style and passionless excess. If Aveum was an excellent game, it would have drawn eyes despite itself. Build it and they will come.

To which I will say that the game was a bad idea from the outset. First-off- it is utterly insane that this game wasn't a VR title. I've scoured the internet searching for some sort of VR release because for the love of god- it seemed made for it. I've even spoken with people who tested the thing, who themselves were baffled that it went to launch in the absolute state it was in! There has to be something said for a product not passing the sniff test from the most important demographic, the makers and the players. If they can't justify the product, then who is going to buy it at the end of the day? Be honest with yourselves! And more than half a year later- what is the game's legacy? It decimated a studio and stained EA's banksheet.

I bring this up to draw a line under what should be an example. Games can never be forced together out of elements that should work. Aveum was constructed by a team of industry vets, given a stupid amount of money, featured a talented cast of stars- but it didn't have a heart. Art will always be the story of people laid out before you- a heart peeled open. Any form of art lacking that heart is going to fail to reach, to impress and to succeed. That's just the basic aspect of creation in a nutshell. That is what is missing from titles like Suicide League. From studios like Ubisoft. And from industries like the music complex. Just have a little heart, will ya?

I need to talk about Immortals of Aveum

If I can even remember it...

Jedi Survivor: "Shouldn't be sold?"

 The dark side is strong in this one

So the follow-up to the ever-anticipated singlular Star Wars game we're getting for the next two years, has finally been released; and given the delay-into-oblivion that KOTOR got- Jedi Survivor could very be all I have to fill the void in my heart for the Galaxy Far Far Away before I'm too old to get excited for this flagging franchise anymore. A sobering thought, but a realistic one given that EA and Disney have, between them, been squeezing this franchise to it's absolute breaking point in two of it's key-most demographics. The shows are been completely scatter-shot in quality, the movies have been announced and cancelled so often they've entered the common life cycle of a Twitter denizen and the games have been run so thin we're lucky to get a release of a new, quality, Star Wars game once every half decade- whereas once upon a time we could expect at least one good release every year. Which is why it's such a pain whenever anything isn't up to snuff with the few Star Wars games we do get.

The last Jedi game featuring Cal Kestis was itself a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one! A souls-like action adventure story driven tale that did not itself attempt to break narrative grounds but provided a very solid story with a likable protagonist and decent combat that felt easy to pick up with some complex nuance to try and master on the flip-side. It was by all accounts a great game and one that I personally felt was scratching on the surface of being a masterpiece with just a few forward steps in innovation and perhaps a step-up in funding and development time. Given the success of the last game I figure that the funding wish definitely got fulfilled, but I can't be the only one who was surprised how quickly this new follow up game was announced and then quickly pushed out.

And that quite ignoble and pedestrian verbiage I've coined there with 'pushed out' might be closer to the bone than the devs want to admit; because by all accounts it seems that Jedi Survivor as it currently exists is not a finished product. That is to say, the content of the game is done and people who can abide by the roughness call it better than good- their accounts imply we may have reached close to that 'masterpiece' standard I dreamt about, but that ideal is weighed down by the ten-ton weights of the somewhat insane degree of technical issues surrounding the way the game actually plays. It's not that the game is somewhat rough around the edges for certain systems, itself a pretty unacceptable standard but shamefully common in modern game development, it's that this game is seemingly unoptimized for all systems. Even console players need to persist with the uglier face of the game if they want to enjoy their time.

Although by all reports, the PC game is where the title really bears its full backside for all to grimace at. It runs poorly, there are consistent freezes at danger points in the game, button prompts sometimes don't function if you plug in a controller, arrow keys can't be used for movement (apparently that's an intentional omission for some reason), the souls-like mechanic of getting back experience doesn't always function, triggers don't function, players get stuck- the game just doesn't seem to run smoothly for anyone of any hardware benchmark. This isn't just a case of 'new game makes old computers cry'- experts on these sort of matter over at Digital Foundry seem convinced that the software itself has deep problems that can only really be avoided with luck- the real responsibility for fixing can only fall on the software providers themselves. EA and Respawn has some patch-work they need to get started on!

Of course, before getting started on that work you might think it something of a public service for Respawn to deliver something to it's customers. You know, like some sort of 'apology' or 'recompense' for delivering a pathetically buggy mess under a full price tag on launch and expecting that to fly? And indeed Respawn did reach out... to down play the whole situation with a painfully underhanded Twitter post. Apparently despite Digital Foundry's very well laid out article detailing the universal problems effecting the performance of this game from a fundamental level- Respawn consider these niche issues effecting a 'percentage of players' specially those with 'high end PCs' or 'Specific settings'. Do you hear that? It's the sound of cowards passing the blame wherever they think it'll stick.

Seriously, it's actually a little bit insulting that they not only refused to apologise for the game, but subtly passed on the excuse to some vague 'specific settings' and 'high end systems'- whilst simultaneously ignoring the issues that console players are having with performance too. The PC is definitely getting the worst end of this crappy stick, but they aren't even an entity in EA's mind right now. Also, I'm pretty sure that those with the 'high end systems' in question are the only people getting even passing frame-rates out of this game, everyone else is getting served low 20's and 10's with repeated freezing as garnish. But I guess we lower end PC owners are, yet again, not real people in the eyes of the developers. Sometimes a simple foot-in-mouth response is more aggravating than total radio silence, all publicity is not, in fact, good publicity. At least some work is being done on the game to make it a fully viable sellable product at some point in the, perhaps distant, future. 

But this is the precedent we've accepted and lauded for ourselves, isn't it? A precedent where a game like this clearly isn't done, but 'polish' wasn't listed down on the scroll of 'Minimum Viable Product'. To the eyes of EA- as long as the executable activated, that was good enough to ship, and the consequence has been the reputation of this title. Like I've said, those who've stuck it out report that this game plays increadibly, surpassing it's predecessor, but only whilst squinting through the fiery mess of performance around it. And that chaos is overshadowing all the hard work from the talented devs and artists who made the content of the game- tainting the entire product's legacy. Heck, I was going to be a week one buyer of this game but now I've thinking I'm better off getting around to Resident Evil 4 whilst Respawn get their patches on straight- I wonder how many other prospective customers they lost in similar fashion.

So here we are, one of the biggest releases of the year is already being sized up as a disappointment-of-the-year for reasons totally unrelated to everything we should be focusing on when it comes to assessing games. But no matter how often these situations arise, and how often people lambast developers for allowing it to happen, there's always another 'Jedi Survivor' around the corner. We can punish these companies again and again but still the EA's of the world will fire half-born abominations and throw up the confused John Travolta meme when the Internet gets upset. Welcome back to the world of AAA gaming everybody, I hope the one or two quality launches we've seen this year didn't fool you into thinking standards were rising. 'Cause they ain't!

Russia's EA?

2023 is wild already.

We talk quite a lot about the sheer amount of money generated by the game's industry because it's quite literally the only inarguable point of impressive supremacy that no bigoted and opinionated entertainment industry elitist can take away from us. You can call video games pale imitations of real art, unworthy of the same levels of reverence and respect as movies and TV shows; but you can't erase the exsistence of the several billion it generates yearly. Even if the vast majority of those billions are generated through the most lowdown and distasteful elements of our industry, the money is real and it is very alluring to entities out there who want an easy route to riches. Be that Hollywood studios with their endless adaptations, investment circles with their wagons of venture capital, or beleaguered warring countries balancing a tightrope across a pit of widespread ecological collapse? Wait a minute, what is that last one referring to-

Oh, Russia. Yeah, that makes sense.

Russia is a country that has had itself a little bit of a 'gaming moment' over the past year, if you're picking up what I'm putting down. They've resembled a little bit of a 'Ubisoft' or a 'Blizzard' if we translate the equivalent of those game companies and appropriately scale up the size and seriousness to a geopolitical scale. (And no, will not apologize for the way that reflects back on those game developers; the insult is meant whole heartedly.) Which is to say, they're kind of in a pickle of their own creation right now. Okay, of their general leadership's creation, but we all bear the blame of the people we have in charge, whether fair or not. That pickle being money. Bad choices and predictable repercussions for those choices have left the Russian economy cut off in various sectors from the rest of the world, which is a problem when you are of the incredible size of Russia. And when you're after money, doesn't it make sense to turn to the most profitable sectors you can?

That's right, Russia is about to launch their very own government backed E-sports team that plans to sweep the world winning various tournaments to bring those winnings back to the Kremlin! Huh? E-sports winnings are so pitiful that even if they won every event they would hardly bring back enough revenue to keep the lights on in Moscow for more than a week? Well nuts, that's my ideas run dry. What else could Russia be considering in order to try and beef up their general revenue? It's not like the government can fund an initiative to create their very own game studio with the intention to serve as 'Russia's EA' in a blatantly desperate bid to try and score some of the billions that EA generates on a yearly basis, right? Huh? That's exactly what they're doing? Well damn, voice in my head; that sounds like a blog which pretty much writes itself!

Yes indeed. According to the journalist integrity of 'GamingBible', and they very much appear to be the genesis of this story so I defer to the weight of their reporting arm if this turns out to be wildly untrue; Russia have plans to create their own equivalent to Electronic Arts with the intention of supplementing their flagging economy. Now there's been talk in the past of the creation of some 'internal game engine' being designed for Russia, so this isn't the first time we've heard word that Russia wants to move big into gaming in the coming years, but this is the first time we've heard of a target and a goal as blatant as how GamingBible puts it. Word is the government there want their "Russian Electronic Arts to help streamline the release of high quality Russian games". Which is just a trip, isn't it?

Now to be fair, this is far from the first time we've heard word of Russia 'going it's own way' ,so to speak, in various industries that they've either shunned or had shunned for them. When McDonalds pulled out of the country, the government leapt up to replace the missing arches with their own alternative before the ravenous fast food cravings of their people could turn in murderous blood lust- as the rest of the western world lives under constant fear of that same thing happening should McDonalds ever forsake us. (Please be merciful on out fragile people: Lord Ronald!) But filling the void of a standardised fast food conglomerate and mimicking the stylings of one of the most successful game publishers in the world are the tiniest bit distinct from one another in terms of skilful execution. Especially with the way that Russia is going about it.

For one, they picked EA for an example; which is questionable. I'm not saying that because of my general dislike for the company, but more because the thing which makes EA so successful is their scale of customers, which Russia simply can't replicate after they callously cut themselves off from the rest of the world. Plus, EA's internal annual billions come from their insanely profitable sports titles; a sector around which EA guards many vicious exclusivity contracts. Russia's EA could very well create their own version of that style of game centred purely around their own home sports team, but their potential consumer base would probably not hit America, or England, or india, or Germany or Brazil. Russia is also one of the biggest portions of EA players, so Russia would literally be fighting for market relevance through it's own citizens too. It'll be a gamble, no doubt. 

And why aren't they focusing on following the example of any of the actual varied video game hit makers of the day? To forge their own creative example in a less crowded market and make their splash there? Why not copy the vastly lauded work the Sony Game studios and publish games of that calibre? Simple, because Sony helped publish 'The Last of Us' one time, and Russia found that game icky because there were gay people in it. I'm not even kidding, the Last of Us was banned in Russia because of it's 'LGBT propaganda'. Imagine their absolute shock when they realised there was an actual whole game around those few seconds of girls kissing each other too! EA seems like a safer bet, but that's only because EA has spent so long and so much money worming itself into a stranglehold over it's position that they won't let anyone else take from them. Neither direct competitor nor foreign country.

What really concerns me is the talk of this mysterious 'Rosgame', the plan launched by the Russian government to fund the 'Future of game development'; because any money starved organisation pimping you the 'future' of anything has the absolute worst intentions in mind, bar none. Even in their attempt we're likely to see some painful corrupting influences for the industry leaking out from the only government in the world eager to actually fund video game creation. (Okay, I guess Poland did fund some of CDPR's efforts; but we saw how Cyberpunk Online turned out, didn't we?) Whatever happens with Russia's EA or their 'Rosgame' initiative, I guess for some insane reason the antics of the Russian government are going to become regular topics of discussion in gaming circles throughout the years to come. What a wild world we live in!

Stuck in an elevator with EA

 Kill me.

The year is 2023. Do you understand that? 2023 and from the very first day of the very first month some incredible how EA still manages to steam into the front of my rage centres with the ferocity of a thousand sounds. To say that I think EA is mismanaged is an understatement, to say that I disagree with their company directions on a great many topics goes without saying for most people out there; but I'm afraid to say that for me it goes even further. Though I try my hardest to avoid them like the plague to not think about it, recently I was confronted again with the how much I bitterly loathe every sinew of their being, every fibre of their fabric weave, every individual particle in their molecules. I hate- hate- hate- hate EA with a passion so fiery and pure not even the block rock mountains of Mordor could contain it. If you took my feeling towards EA and dropped them in that lava, the mountain itself would perish in reverence to it's intensity. And why- because they are consistently, unending, pathetically, inconceivably, irreconcilably, irredeemably and constantly utterly incompetent.

I feel like I haven't stressed that word enough. Incompetent! It just doesn't feel strong enough. But I fear that were I to match the inside of my heart to my outside written words then the Google eye of content moderation would swivel around on me. (I had that before in my Watch_Dogs 1 review; I sure you can probably figure out why.) Let's just say there's a very good, history based, reason why I avoid that company like the pox-struck plague. I remember the days of EA Origin where EA enslaved all of their games on an underserved marketplace to a launcher so pathetically mis designed that there was a regular issue in which the launcher, which force-started itself by default, would lock the bottom right-hand corner of your desktop screen. No matter what program you were using, if you were simply browsing Youtube or in the middle of a Steam game, the bottom corner of the screen would become completely unresponsive for unknowable reasons. Or at least, it would seem to be unknowable. Whereas in truth, it was EA's crappy launcher trying to start and hijacking your computer functions to do so. That is EA operating at it's fullest, most disruptive, functions.

But that was behind me. A lifetime ago. Since then I had moved on, uninstalled Origins and then chucked the computer that was once contaminated with it's stink in the back of the rubbish truck. Since then, Origins has become depreciated entirely, and life was so good that the world could enjoy games like Jedi Fallen Order completely free of the absolute parasitic organism of a company we endow false value to by calling it an 'entity'. Of course, this irked the pustule-ridden gremlins who 'run' EA between bouts of drunken stupors and hazy orgies. "People having fun? Playing our games? Well this absolutely cannot stand!" And so was birthed the unholy successor to EA Origins, the EA app. May god have mercy on our souls.

Now, increadibly, I have to say that the EA app is better than Origins was. But that's literally only because the App hasn't yet hijacked a forth of my computer to faff about doing nothing. (again: "Yet") But don't mistake that miniscule victory for me claiming that the EA app is good! It, moreso than any totally antiquated and unassay launcher I've seen litter the industry of late, is a total trainwreck of a system serving no greater purpose than acting as a roadblock between people who buy games and getting to play the damn things. How do I know this? Because I made the mistake of buying 'Mass Effect; Legendary Edition' and believing I would be able to play it! How utterly moronic of me to assume that my Christmas present would be anything approaching functional! What silliness must have infected my mind to believe that present fallacy? Why am I sweating? Is it hot in here? My head feels dizzy... oh, I'm seeing red...

Step 1 was me clicking play, at which point Steam popped up a warning about how it was going to install the EA app and all the blood drained from my body. Then, predictably, nothing happened. The app was installed and didn't run, which is great. You know, any other third party program that Steam needs to install typically ends with that program running itself after installation so that you can continue your play experience as seamlessly as possible. But not EA; "Mediocrity is our creed!" So I had to click play again. This time an EA window popped up, attempting to connect somewhere, only to come up short. Great, I sighed, these traditional single player RPGs are fitted with online DRM. That's so great. I'm really happy about that. Can you tell? (Apparently this is only necessary on the first launch; after that both programs can happy launch offline. Fantastic.) Oh yeah, and that hand-shake protocol failed. The window popped up, it hovered with a blank, haunted face, and then vanished from reality like the Ghost of Christmas tedium.

So of course, I had to install and run the launcher manually, since the Steam package had made a dog's dinner of that, and then launch the Steam game afterwards. You following me, still? Good, because we're just beginning! Now the Handshake window takes form and it wants me to sign in. I already automatically signed into the launcher when it opened. (I can only assume me and that program had some sort of run-in long ago in the past that was so frustrating that my mind has totally blocked it out to protect itself. The pre-registered account was already linked to my Steam and everything!) The problem here is simple; I don't know the password of the EA account on my launcher- I tried to forget it alongside everything else that terror subjected me too. Which is good, in a way; if I can't remember the password then that's probably a sign that the password been static too long and needs a change. But now I have to start that process.

So I have to navigate my way through the app which is designed with just annoying enough UI that I have trouble bringing up what I need to. There's two 'account' screens that don't appear to actually lead towards anyway to change the actual particulars of, you know, the account. And then I find it, a large widget with the prompt 'Account details'. Great- click it. And it just sends a page to open up on my web browser. So then why pretend like I can do it within the crappy app, EA? Why stick the 'web page' link within a bloody widget to begin with? It just makes me want to- screw it, I'm on the right path! So I go to the account page, hit the 'Security' tab, thumb down and my only option is 'change password'. Wait, what? You didn't put a 'recover password' button on your security page? Or anywhere within the accounts web page? I'm sorry, EA: are you new to what Websites are? Because there's a standard of design shared by literally the entire Internet, but not you!

Screw it, I'm in too deep: what now? EA directs me towards using their fancy widget directory: fine. The directory sends me right back to the account page which doesn't help me: GREAT. I have to find a direct link leading to account recovery page... and EA servers die: FANTASTIC. Go to sleep, wake up eight hours later, cry a little when I remember how I have to work with EA systems again, go through resetting password. Log into Steam app. Back to Steam, hit launch- nothing happens. There's no Handshake verification launch, no loading game. It starts to run, it stops, and nothing. I click again and again, driven not by hope but a zombie-like fascination in the way the little blue 'loading' wheel spins a bit before sputtering out and turning back into a big  'ol Harlequin Green 'Play' button. I have broken. I wanted to play a game that I loved, reimagined for the modern age, I gave EA my money to buy the damn thing, and I get frustration, and anger, and pain. And nothing else. This is my reward. This is my legacy. This is my legendary edition. You win this day, EA. I give up. You've taken my money and given me nothing for the exchange, your deepest dream as a scum-sucking, waste-spewing, disease upon the industry. But even in defeat- to the last, I grabble with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; for Hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee...

Madden and the future of sports gaming

A step in a direction, maybe

Gaming and sports don't sound like they should mix. In fact, they literally sound like water and oil slipping off each other and never crossing into the same gravitational pull as one another. And then I remember the existence of Esports and my analogy starts to unravel, but I'm going to put that segment of gaming to the side for a bit. (No offence to E-athletes and all the dedication they put into their craft, but I just don't know enough about them to give them a fair shake in this discussion right now.) There seems to be a actualisation of that feeling, that gaming and sports don't mix, in that most every single major sports themed video game is a godawful grift attempt made by soulless businessmen puppeteering a catatonic development team.  

Now first I need to belabour the point that I'm talking about 'major' sports video games; as there are plenty of smaller efforts by actual talented creators that are fun and silly to try out. Heck, I would never dream of besmirching the good name of the Blood Bowl series by including it in the same breath as one of EA's sports franchises, that's about the line in the sand I want to draw as my distinction. When you get to the actual 'simulation games', the licences for which are all jealously guarded by the industry elite, you find yourself in a whirlpool of mediocrity spinning downwards and put with enough flurry and activity that, should you not be paying attention, one might think there's some sort of forward progression in these franchises. Let's collectively dispel that shoddy illusion right now, shall we? There is none, there never will be progression, now whilst the sports game public remain complacent to being fed actual faeces.

But how can I say that? Haven't I see the shiny graphics? The updated models? The extensive in-depth videos of the new Madden's touch-sense, or play sense, or whatever vague marketing gimmick they want to try and wave in your face as a new feature. Like writing a single sentence and parading it around like you've made serious head-way; only doing that for years on a multimillion dollar franchise. These are just spinning wheels. Have you noticed how every year the big standout feature is always something to do with AI or controls? Something esoteric where the team can simply say that the AI is 'better' or the controls are 'tighter' and as long as they feel even the slightest bit different to the last game you have to concede that something was done behind the scenes. But is anything actually being done? Does Madden have an actual fully employed development staff?

Year after year we see evidence to the contrary; and this recent Madden release has been no different. With screenshots of posters for events that happened in the real world more than two years ago, the exact same rotation of selectable heads in the character creator that has been around for more than half a decade now, tons of visually identical assets as have been used for the past 8 or so years during the last generation of consoles; and so many logic bugs it's incredible to think this is a game that has been slightly touched up and tweaked by the staff for all of their professional lives in some cases. In fact, this year's Madden has been so bad that you've got the actual players tweeting about their feelings on the bugginess; and those are the guys that get paid to promote that crap!

So, surprised Pikachu face abounds; this year's Madden is a mess. Although that pill is an especially foul one given that this year's entry was dedicated to the founder of the franchise himself, John Madden, after he passed away. Which actually makes this the second sports game in recent memory to try and take advantage of the death of a celebrity in order to sell their sub-par product more. Seriously, how do people actually defend this with a straight face? Surely there has to come a point where you look around and realise that you are being screwed over; the company is treating you as their Guinea pigs to see what they can get away pulling off on the rest of the industry, and buying the next game without thinking is only ensuring the status quo will remain.

The only thing that surprises me is that Madden had no NFTs- and that... well that's actually something interesting, wouldn't you say? I do not idly claim that Sports games are the testing grounds for what games companies want to pull on the rest of their fans, we've seen that play out before us with season passes, lootboxes and online-only DRM. So isn't it fascinating that amidst all Madden got wrong; they didn't include any NFT functionality at all? Even after saying that the future of Fifa and Madden was in NFTs just about a year before the new Madden's release? What could have possibly happened in the interim to sour such a staunch and headstrong impression- oh right, the worldwide crypto market fell off by actual orders of magnitude...

So if we use the sports gaming industry and it's lack of integrity as a dowsing rod to judge how the waters of the industry are flowing (Is that how dowsing rods work? I've seriously got no clue.) we can ascertain that the NFT future has fallen off dramatically, and that this pull-out happened so abruptly that EA and it's like couldn't implement a replacement scheme; because currently this year's Madden doesn't look to do anything worse than it's predecessor aside from be buggy. And less there's some bubbling scheme from game's developers to make their games intentionally unplayable for... some reason... I supposed we'll just have to take this year as a win of convivence. The needle isn't getting pushed into our face once again. Or, we just won't see the next scheme coming because EA will use it's main industry as test-tube-animals in a dry trial run...

To call the future of Sports gaming a future at is to bury the lead. Many will point out that Sport Games are still going through the agonising process of slowly reading a bunch of the features they had before the great reset of the generation before last. Whereas what I want to tell you is much the opposite; they're adding a feature here and quietly phasing one out there so that they can go around in circles in this neverending game of incremental updates forever more. If any company were so inclined, and they are obviously currently not, they could create a single 'Warzone' style football game that is updates entirely within the provided software and players would enjoy the exact same level of innovation between console generations. If things are moving that slowly, you might want to stay confronting why exactly it is you need the newest sports game at all. Simple, you don't. But if you've read this far then I'm just preaching to the choir.

Skate on down!

 To the refund store

You found him, right here. I'm the one guy who never owned a Tony Hawks game growing up. Yes, marvel at my deformities, my shortcomings, my obvious lack of a childhood. Although bare in mind that didn't mean I never played a Tony Hawks game. I tried them around other people's houses, found them fun enough but never really wanted to buy them. Why would I want to be playing a skating game when I could be convincing the console owner to put on Grand Theft Auto instead? It simply made no sense whatsoever. And so that was my short lived- okay, that's not true. I did actually end up playing and owning one Skating game I liked so much I finished it; The Simpsons Skateboarding! Huh? That's one of the worst skating games ever and I'm a heathen for liking it as a kid? But I just liked the Simpsons... What, are you going to tell me bad things about my other Simpsons childhood game, Simpsons Wrestlin- Huh? That's regarded as even worse? (Damn, kid me had no taste.)

In actuality I did own a more realistic Skating game back during those days, although it ended up being a game for the Wii rather than the Xbox games everyone of my age range went on about. Can you guess what game it was? Yep, it was Skate. Or rather, 'Skate It'; as this Wii derivative was known as. It was actually quite innovative for the time too; featuring an exclusive Wii Balance board control system that was meant to simulate actually skating for oneself but I somehow recall being supremely unresponsive and hard to work with. (And this is a kid who nearly beat Simpsons Wrestling, so I have a resistance to poor controls apparently.) None of which is to belie some sort of intrinsically bound lost love for the Skate franchise, but rather more of a mutual respecting. I recognise a game I thought was pretty cool and would play again given the chance.

Since those days Skateboarding as a hobby obviously fell out of the spotlight, however in certain circles it's really picking back up I'm told. Probably something to do with the rise of a whole new generation trying to make themselves famous on Tiktok were I to guess. But then I only know skating is becoming popular again by proxy so I could be totally of base with that assumption. (It just seems the most logical deduction.) The stage is ripe for the grand return of a Skateboarding game considering the last great entry was a rerelease of an old classic Tony Hawks Skating game. You can't just leave your genre languishing on the heights of a rerelease! Do that and you're no better than the Sonic franchise! And god is that a fate worse than death...

So Skate 4 has long been rumoured ever since 2010 as being the sleeper agent game being worked on by EA whilst they completed their 'worst company in America' tour. Only for such rumours to pan out into nothingness as every skating fan twiddled their thumbs and decided to become productive members of society or some such rot. That was until very recently where it was revealed that a new Skate is a real possibility, and in fact it was actively being worked on in a very rudimentary, but still watchable state. Remember that fans were starved for content; even seeing a video labeled early-early-early Alpha without any backgrounds and some missing character models managed to draw wide spread praise and pages of encouraging messages from hopeless hopefuls with stars in their eyes and tears down their cheeks. What could possibly go- oh it's an EA game; what do you think?

Yes, it's a Live Service. And what is quickly growing into one of the most outdated gimmicks of the industry is being trotted out to the pony show once again. Seriously, when was the last time that 'Live Service' meant anything more than 'disappointing launch product doomed to die a long slow death?' Tell me true because I'm drawing a total blank! What we have here is a dead and flogged horse being beaten ragged by a company who just cannot, and will not, let it go. I swear at this point EA must have lost more money on failed live services than they've gained from successes; but they're still chasing the white whale of that one mega hit which will put their great grandkids through college. In that most puerile and cynical of contexts, I can somewhat bitterly respect the dedication.

Otherwise I'm at a loss. For what possible reason could a skating game benefit from a Live Service model? I'm not one of those bores who believe that Live Service as a concept is inherently broken; there's a couple of games that wear it really well and have done wonders with it; but it has it's place. We're talking a fertile ecosystem nurtured with content drops and variety that stirs the stable economy of it's players. This is a game about skating around skate parks. What are the content drops going to be? New Cosmetics? A couple new parks? Seriously, what kind of legs does this sort of model have for Skate? What's the 5 year roadmap look like? Because I have a feeling it cuts off after year one, just call it a hunch.

Ask the team director and he'll tell you that this new Skate (It's just called 'Skate' by the way; because modern creativity is dead) was always meant to be a Live Service game and I am going to call that man a bold faced liar. This is my accusation, and a year after launch after they announce the live services are drying up and fans turn around and realise that the amount of support they got is on-par with or less-than what they would have received from a traditional DLC cycle, I'm going to call back to this moment for my proof. I don't have their business plan; I've just seen this play out time and time again, at this point I know the dance better than EA does. Announcing this game is a Live Service is literally just declaring you want it die with a whimper, not a bang.

And can I just say for a moment; no, Live Services is not the next evolution of game design. It's belayed and stretched out design and development which is crowd funded. It's early access without the warning for due diligence. The very few 'Live Services' who live up to their promise of a finished game with extras, tend to end up putting out content in the same manner an indie studio working their way up to full release would. Except the road-map is constantly being stretched out and there's no 1.0 version in sight. You can lie to yourself and call that the 'next paradigm of design' all that you like, but just don't go making a fool out of yourself declaring that in public. You make the whole of the community look bad spouting rubbish like that.

EA's Skate is going for the 'pointless award' and I think it's a shoe-in so far. I would say that I'm happy for the team to prove me wrong, but let's be honest with each other, you and I; they won't. And it's for this reason I'm just going to have to invoke the bogey man word which sets all the heckles rustling whenever it's called out: because this is a obvious cash grab move. They've got a single game's worth of content and they want to make 5 games worth of revenue out of it. At the end of the day that's how the mathematics is going to shape out. I ain't no Nostradamus, I'm speaking from learned experience, and anyone who is legitimately, and sometimes vehemently, defending the EA way of doing things; utterly loses their rights to complain when their Live Service roadmap is a hollow, time wasting, mess. You lose that right, and we gain the 'told you so' right. Deal?

Star Wars Battlefront: A concept for a new Galactic Conquest

 We are the dream havers

Yesterday I talked a bit about the curious case of Star Wars Battlefront's Galactic Conquest mode and the fact that it is utterly missing from modern day EA Battlefront. I detailed how important I thought it was to the main package of the series, and explained the variations of the mode throughout the years. But I drew short on how exactly one would go about implementing some form of a Galactic conquest game mode into the new formula of Battlefront game without compromising the new online-first focus. As a simple 'one-to-one' equation only falls short in such a proposition. As such I thought it only fair I give the topic my full attention here so that we may conjure up a decent conceptual prototype, or the building blocks towards one, so that future diatribes on the topic can be somewhat informed. Savvy?

So the problems are thus; Galactic Conquest is a mode built to be best for solo offline players or local co-op. It's a series of battles with strategic planning tools that locks both sides into prolonged conflict until their campaign is complete. We're talking a couple of hours to complete a campaign in the first game and maybe even longer with some of the later iterations, which isn't exactly a feasible time sync for most online players. Then there's the strategic decisions themselves which is unilaterally decided by the player of that army in the original Battlefronts, but the new games have both sides filled with 30-odd real life players, so who gets to decide on picking bonuses or mounting assaults on what planet, and how do you keep the strategic heart feeling alive, in that position? And then there's the idea of rewards that make such a mode appealing to play in the first place instead of the normal 'Instant action' game mode. A troubling conundrum to be sure.

The big one is picking the structure of such a mode, which I think best makes sense as instanced daily competitions run by servers which players can drop in and out of at will. Of course such a proposition has it's issues; how can you pick active hours for the competition that are fair for anyone, what happens if an instance on a server can't find enough players to play and if you can drop in and out at will, presumably with the game picking what side of the battle you fight for each time, how are you going to assume loyalty to your side of the war? The other, more traditional, method would be an extended match that is hosted by a player that can then be driven by active play, but then the question pops up of what happens to this instance of a campaign when the host drops out? (These are a lot of matches, afterall. I don't think many will be able to find the time to fight throughout the whole thing) Or, again, there falls off too many players to play? Does the campaign just suspend itself in limbo?

I think server hosted campaigns make the most sense as they allow players to feel like this concentrated and consequential war machine continues outside of their direct involvement. Clever time zones will have to be selected in order to ensure players all over the world get the chance to play, even if just for a little bit. (I'm thinking about three campaigns a day to test the waters, with that being increased or decreased as demand sees fit.) Picking sides must be done automatically, for the sake of balance, which means that drop in and drop out players made end up inexplicably switching sides. I would toy with the idea of locking players into their chosen side when they join a campaign, but I know that might lead to imbalances in games. Still, I think faction loyalty is important, so I'd at least try that out. (The extreme solution would be to implement trigger states that refuses to allow people to join if their presence would outbalance the match too much, but I just see that being a source of frustration for a lot of players. And if you get told enough you're not allowed to play something through no fault of your own, you're going to stop trying to play it.)

Making strategy decisions is a big part of the Galactic Conquest experience, whether it's deciding which planet to attack next in order to open up the war theatre or picking which bonus to ride into battle with or how to spend unlock credits on specific units for the campaign. These are decisions that need to made from a central authority which is why it works when you have one person controlling the army and why there's a new dynamic to consider when we bring up online games. Typical match-ups in Battlefield give teams the ability to choose where the next map will take place, but this is a utterly inconsequential decision on it's face as serves no higher strategy or prolonged campaign, and even then it's a choice some make begrudgingly. Some people just want to fight, ask them to make informed decisions and it rubs wrong against their play experience. So what is the solution?

I've selected two. The weaker is the group vote wherein big decisions are made through a selection screen the scrolls through three menus; 'Spend Credits', 'pick bonuses' and 'attack where?' which gives the power to the majority rule. This would obviously force decision making where it isn't wanted and be subject to a 'trend towards the grain' mentality that already infects map selection. Alternatively we grant the choice to the top performing players of a match to decide where the shape of the campaign leads next. Decisions will be made in relative secrecy with other players only being noted on the results so as to prevent people feeling like they're being put on the spot and becoming nervous. Players will have the right to forfeit their choice if they don't want to, which will pass that responsibility onto the next in line. This will mean that the most engaged with the match are more likely to know how to shape the war front, and there's a chance for different strategic heads to take the front throughout the whole campaign. An elegant bridging design if I do so say myself.

Finally there's rewards; what will they be and how will they be rewarded? Well the first is typical; you want credits to spend on customisation and cards, of course. But I think it would be super cool if there were exclusive cosmetics to be unlocked by playing and succeeding in this game mode; and in fact I think that Battlefront could tie in a seasonal reward system to really bring the players coming back to this mode time after time. Rewards would also be set to be granted at the end of a campaign depending on how well you do, which would encourage sound strategy and faction loyalty. And similar to World of Tanks, if you leave mid-campaign it won't be until that match wraps up where you'll be gifted those rewards you're seeking. So it's encouraged to come back later and attack that campaign down the line.

These are broad outlines of the systems surrounding a potential Galactic Conquest mode and where it would fit into thr ecosystem of the new game, because mechanically you're just looking at simple instant-action matches strung back-to-back with one another. Let this be the foundation for any arguments about why DICE have no excuse really going all out for Battlefront 3 and restoring this great franchise to the heights it launched with, because there is ever little excuse for another feature light game from the hugely successful series. And if I'm to throw that ever exciting wild card prediction into the mix; I'd say that we're not getting a new game until a new era can be wound in; and seeing that the High Republic has no significant design differences from the Prequel Era (Because Disney is creatively bankrupt) my recommendation is The Old Republic. Let Aspyr lay out the foundations of the next era of Battlefront play, and then let's make those conquests galactic, baby!

EA's Twitter blunder

 Someone shut EA up, please.

It's been a rough few months for the gaming world. Not in terms of the games themselves, but the people who develop them. There have been more and more stories about unsavoury work environments that either foster unhealthy quotas or are simply largely unpleasant for women due to systemic issues of- oh wait, Activision Blizzard completely exonerated itself from all that, didn't they? Guess that means absolutely none of it actually happened, despite this being an internal investigation and so literally designed from the ground up to be a self-serving con of an investigation. Oh, and Bobby Kotick is being welcomed back into the fold with open arms? Are- are you serious? My god, Activision and Blizzard just need to be wiped from the gaming market altogether, don't they? It's obvious there's too much rot in them to affect any actual lasting impact, so at this point the only disinfectant is complete dissolution. You know what we don't need at a low point like this? EA to get back on their crap again.

Oh, guess what! EA's back on their crap again!

As if summoned from the depth of Tartarus to pour brimstone and bile on the open dumpster fire which is the wider gaming industry right now, the EA social media team decided to make it their utmost mission to see how far in their own mouth they could fit their own foot without choking, and somehow made it to the back of the Eustachian tube! Although this was a Twitter diatribe, so I suppose that should really go without saying, shouldn't it? Whenever anyone willingly goes on Twitter they've already lost themselves before the word 'go', anyway they further debase themselves is just pilling ontop of that already gargantuan ignominy. Still, even then it takes a galaxy-sized illness of the brain to make a slip-up like EA's social media team did, with the history of EA that such a team should really be briefed and up to date with. But then they wouldn't have gone viral with such a terrible take, now would they?

To be explicit, the Tweet in question comes in response to a meme trend over the social media platform, which is already a recipe for disaster whenever corporations get involved in movements inherently not designed for them. No one needs Wendy to be a sassy lass on Twitter, no one cares about Radio Shacks desperate attempt to be hip and edgy whilst it flogs NFTs and no one wanted to read EA to write "They're a 10 but they only like single player games." I can't even- why would- this has to be self sabotage, right? Wanton and knowing. Because the punchline is so obvious and the backlash so predicable, so this has to be the same sort of situation as the 'bear' Tweet on Blizzard's Chinese social media account, right? Someone wanted to stir some chaos and that has to be where this came from, because otherwise I have no idea what literally anyone was thinking. I have to believe this was intentional, the alternative is that this Social Media team is deeply stupid. And no one wants to write someone else off entirely like that!

But for the sake of context, as if it's needed; EA and their opinion on Single player games has followed a bit of a... rough history; shall we say? A while back there was a boon period of Live Service games entering the mainstream so hard that every big AAA product was mandating some perfunctory online infrastructure just to try and take some cynical advantage of the Live Service model down the road, and fully single player games were being phased out almost entirely. It got to the point where EA were convincing themselves that people didn't want to play single player games anymore, and asserted that stance themselves in a much-maligned statement. Bethesda launched a whole campaign in support of single player games, (which was literally just one year before they announced their own Live Service Multiplayer game, so I guess that was for nothing) and people pushed back hard on EA's assertations. The seemingly nail in the coffin to the theory that 'Single player games are dead' came when EA's own studio, Respawn, launched a single player Star Wars game with no microtransactions or DLC called 'Jedi: Fallen Order', to sweeping success and acclaim. Which makes me a little disquiet about the whole thing, EA ran their mouth and got rewarded for being wrong, but it's a happy ending nonetheless. EA learned their lesson, single player gamers like myself got their vindication, and everyone clapped. Until EA had to come in and stick their fingers in old wounds.

Of course this went down about as well as you can imagine, with the world throwing up in disgust at one of the unabashedly worst takes EA could have mustered. It wasn't even a case of defending single player games this time around, because it's pretty much obvious to everyone with eyes that there are games that single player lovers like and games that multiplayer lovers like and you're never going to force one demographic to assimilate fully into the other. Instead it was a round-the-clock clown show with EA in the centre of well-earned clap backs from every corner of the industry. Not least of which where EA's own developers! Oh yes, those that make single player games using EA's money and return upon that investment with successes, such as Vince Zampella, head of Respawn and best bet to be the new director of Battlefield after DICE's all-but-formal resignation from the 'quality developers' club. People clowned on the Tweet, they clowned on the repeated failed multiplayer ventures that seem to be littering our store shelves recently, (some of which were published by EA, of course) and they clowned on the fact that EA had just announced a new single player game not 1 month previously!

Yes, 'Jedi: Survivor', the game that follows the break away success of their last single player outing, has been announced and is garnering significant hype from those that loved the original. I'm lukewarm on it, having enjoyed the original enough but knowing there's a big chasm of potential this series could hit if it plays it's card rights, but it's literally the only EA game that I have interest in. It's not that 'multiplayer equals bad' or anything like that, it's just that these sorts of audiences seek totally different styles of games to one another and what I seek in a action adventure game, a cohesive narrative with a strong arc and great memories on the flip side, is totally different from the constant churn of meaningless competition I want from my competitive multiplayer games. And that's not even mentioning where MMO's and Lootershooter style games fit into the equation. They can't be compared and it's idiotic to attempt to.

Now to EA's social media team's small credit they did recognise their mistake and offer a pitiful, attempted tongue-in-cheek, apology. "Actually, that makes them an Eleven!" or something to that end, but it makes for a sad conclusion to a dumb tale. Here's an idea, and I aim this at every company out there; don't have a social media team. Or at least, not a social media team who pride themselves on acting like real people to try and connect with their audience. It has never been beneficial to the point of outweighing the cringe bad marketing it drums up in the off days, and for most companies it's like a good will vacuum. Just let your official social media accounts be announcement machines and let blogs or forums be the place that personality seeps across the written screen, where it's expected and welcomed. And for the love of everyone and thing; someone shut EA the heck up!

EA isn't *really* about to sell itself off... right?

 Prelude to pain

Ambivalence is the equivalent of room temperature when it comes to laymen interpretations of the mysteries of brain chemistry. I myself often throw up my hands and go "I don't really know how I feel about this, I guess I'm on every side", as you'll observe often on this blog unless I'm pushed into establishing a definitive on a review or some such. And it is an embarrassing state of affairs to admit to, because we do so hate a fence sitter; one who can't fall one way or the other and merely squats the high-ground as if with some self-aggrandised moral superiority. Damn them and damn the every crafty little shadow of such quandaries, called 'Nuance'. And why am I waxing poetic about ambiguity? Because for every star in the sky and twisted molten rock in Vesuvius, I cannot decide how I feel about the, currently rumour, that Electronic Arts is in the market looking to make a sale of itself.

I mean wow. Even in the stage of plausible deniability where the proposition is just floating above the surface as a dangling 'maybe', I can't help but tent my fingers and muse at the possibilities, Mr Burns style. It's as though a culmination of outrage and righteous indignation which was largely thought wasted had really boiled up into a scalding finisher we never saw coming, whilst at the same time it feels like a cop-out escape from a much grander humiliation that the sworn-enemy-of-consumers was scheduled to taste. A buyout? After everything they've done? All the ways they hurt the community, bought to life some of gaming's worst practices and then twisted and bent their audience to bray like submissive imminent lamb-chops? It doesn't feel right, and whatsmore than even that, it doesn't really feel all that real.

What are we supposed to believe, that one of the biggest games studios in the world is just throwing away the total autonomy they've lavished in (to the detriment of everybody else) for the past decade or so because, what, they grew bored? Well, we actually don't know the reason yet, and isn't that just the worst of it? Not knowing what tortures such a prevalent and pervasive antagonistic force. Seeing evidence that they're in pain and suffering, but not knowing why or how I could possibly step in to make it worse for my own sick amusement. Gah, the secrets drives me crazy! All I ask is to know why a greedy and proud beast such as EA feels the need to pawn itself, or bits of itself, off to bigger entities looking to get into gaming. I've heard the reports of how it's to 'capitalize on bigger interests' but we all know exactly how much it'll bite at those marauders over at EA to be told their schemes need to go through another layer of approval. Oh, I'll bet it'll just eat them up from the inside out!

It seems like there's a trend, one birthed from regular large movements across the business world that lie far out of my areas of expertise and so I can't really speculate on to any seriously insightful degree, wherein gaming companies are falling over themselves to be constricted into huge super groups. At least when you have herding forces like Sony and Microsoft going around doing their whole Pokemon Trainer 'gotta catch 'em all' routine, we can see the hands of competition turning. That's simple business, same as it always has been. To shore up fiefdoms that cultivate quality content and keep the starving masses satiated and position adjutants to organise directed exclusivity strikes that hit out directly at their enemy's value proposition with the sword of FOMO. It's an idiot's game of action/reaction, played out on the stage of industry economics and bathed in the burnt billions of an over funded entertainment sector. But what's happening with EA isn't that.

Reports indicate that this alleged merger is aiming itself at some of the biggest players in the entertainment industry as a whole, although obviously not Microsoft because the upset of balance can't possibly be tipped that much. You've got preliminary talks apparently being opened up between EA's head office and Disney, Apple and Amazon; which tells me at least that the interest must have spawned from EA itself and not the idle speculation of curious bit-part players in these various huge companies. Afterall, Disney used to own its own game studio and shut the thing down because they were so absorbed with their work in traditional media that they couldn't devote themselves to building a functioning and competitive game studio. Though they've actually worked quite a bit with EA to put out their properties in the time since, and it would naturally make sense for the two to seek an arrangement if, indeed, EA were looking to 'get out of the limelight'; but a merger would put Disney right back in the position of having to manage a studio whilst they're wrapped up in their biggest 'TV-cross-movie' initiative that they've ever worked on. I just don't see such an idea spawning from those very busy people.

Amazon and Apple, on the otherhand, are ambitious men. The type not only willing, but desperate to identify their own Rubicon so they can happily skip across the river on their death march directly into the heart of the gaming industry. Amazon have their own studio trucking away at scoring their first big sustainable hit, which has resulted in misses (such as the hilarious terrible Grand Tour Racing game) and meteoric hits that have then quickly faded into just moderate successes (Which would refer to 'New World' as of right now. They did about as well as you could hope for from a new untested MMO, I guess.) Would Amazon take the shortcut to glory by buying up EA? In a heartbeat. And Apple? They're trying to break into anything outside their typical purview. Streaming, gaming, probably space travel at some point in the future. They've already got MAC, but any gamer with a Macintosh PC will tell you that their computer of choice is typically a hinderance to conducting their favourite hobby, not a boon. Whereas the Apple Arcade on the phone is a rather interesting and promising initiative to scrounge indie diamonds out of the mobile market rough, with results that already have me scratching with the longing of being left out. (I still wanna play that Fantasian.) I think any developer could wiggle their way into an Apple acquisition with a strong enough sales pitch.  

But is all of this in the best interest of EA as an entity, I hasten to propose; because although I cannot speculate on the shifting nature of the large lumbering beasts of big business, I can hardly live with myself without a bit of fruitless speculation. Well I believe such a measure could, should current EA management care for such a thing, work to circumvent the seemingly inescapable aura of rightfully earned condemnation that the pariahs over at EA have earned over the years. Remember these guys were voted the worst company in America for several years running, and that was an opinion spouting from employees, customers and contemporaries; the holy trinity. People tend not to like or trust EA, and maybe it's starting to build into a problem that management want to head-off by placing themselves under a bigger company to shoulder some of the blame for their regularly-scheduled monetary incidents, so their viability as an employer doesn't suffer. That is complete supposition on my part though, as I've no evidence, either observed or incidental, to imply that EA's reputation has cost them significant sales or talent acquisition opportunities. (I'm sure some outlying examples exist, though. I'd love to see them.)

At the end of the day it's important to remind ourselves that these are vague leaked reports of preliminary discussions; meaning even if there is a kernel of truth to these stories, it could easily end up fizzling out into nothing. Recent movements in the industry has trained us all, Pavlov style, to be on guard for the next large gaming acquisition, as with the currently still fresh tens of billions pouring out of recent buy-out wounds it certainly doesn't look like anyone is safe from the sweeping scythe of consolidation. But that doesn't mean such measures are an inevitability, and I wouldn't be surprised if all this sizzles out into nothing but hot water. But what if it doesn't? What if some day soon we'll see the sudden disappearance of the industries favourite common enemy, would we celebrate the fall of titan or turn our hostilities on each other? And which ending do the sadists over at EA want to see more?

Is Battlefield 2042 even a real game anymore?

 Are we real?

If a tree falls down in the middle of the deep woods with no one around to here it, did it really fall at all? An asinine and feebleminded thought experiment digging at some nascent shadow of solipsism and determinism; besides I've got a better one. If you release an online focused live service designed to last several years full of regular players, content update drops and consistent community, but the game falls far enough of the map to have no more than 1 player at a point in time, then is there really anything live about the service you're providing? That example I just gave wasn't any hypothetical, although it wasn't actually about Battlefield 2042 either. In actuality that was a distant cousin of Battlefield called Babylon's Fall, another game that evacuated in the bedsheets and will never live it down, but we can definitely predict 2042 is going that direction given EA's apparent desire to just sweep this new mistake under the rug and forget about it.

But before we look at what's up with the biggest embarrassment of 2021, I want to talk about the biggest embarrassment of 2022, Babylon's Fall. All because of some wildly firing neurons that have convinced me that this  Battlefield and Babylon's Fall  futures are linked in a downwards spiral of destruction. That 'Single player' thing? Didn't last for very long. And it was also tracked through Steam tracking charts, which means there was probably another console player someone who's activity went invisible and unnoticed, ruining the poetry of the moment. Still, even with those stipulations this is a horrifying achievement for any game to hit so soon after launch. And do you know what the game's creators are doing about it? (Aside from looking about nervously at the all the recently cleared office space within the Square Enix HQ.) They're trucking along making future chapters of content for the game. 'The spice must flow', sure; but into the machines of an average of 20 to 30 computers a day? I mean I suppose those players have to feel pretty special having an entire game studio tirelessly making content solely for their exclusive group; but I can't imagine the Platinum Games account is going to be having fun book keeping come the end of the quarter.

Things aren't that bad for Battlefield yet, Steam charts even have it's numbers seeing average daily users of around 1,800 people! (That's four whole digits!) Although that's pretty shameful against Battlefield V's 4500 and Battlefield 1's 3800. In it's 'hey day' this would be the sort of series that would average tens of thousands for it's active title, compete with the likes of Call of Duty for series activity and remain forever on the front of the public stage for the robust quality of it's gameplay. But this year even COD, which was considerably better, turned out to be a mess and all the normies got forcibly displaced into the new lands of a game that didn't care or babysit for them. They ended up refugees for Elden Ring instead. So in that sense I guess I can say that Battlefield's failure did provide some positivity for the world: it made casuals play a game absolutely not made for them and make a lot of them realise that they liked it. And it even made one certain TV reviewer out himself as a total weirdo! (It's seems like Battlefield is good at everything except being a game.)

And DICE haven't jumped ship or anything either. (Nor have they entered hibernation in order rustle together tiny 6-month long hiatuses like 343 have been trying out recently in Halo Infinite.) We've had promises from the team ensuring that they know they done goofed and are 'pretty please' hoping the audience can make enough suggestions to fix it. Of course, writing the check is one thing, but actually cashing it when we're talking about an online game that some self-respect-free people are actively playing, is another. DICE had to start adding in revamps to the map one badly placed ship-container at a time rather than just taking the whole game offline for a day and going to town. And that's probably because DICE wisely knows that the second people are reminded that there are literally any other games in the world right now, just by having Battlefield not load up for even a single day, DICE will likely have lost that active number forever. This game has no retention value. (Damn tiny gamer attention spans, the bane of enterprising grifters everywhere!)

Recently we got a great example of how little EA consider Battlefield 2042 a viable avenue for their business during a communication with investors where the game was not only completely absent from the topic list, but was also mysteriously absent from EA's list of active titles. (In it's place, they stuck 2018's Battlefield V, which makes a little sense given the numbers.) Reports say that the game is considered a 'miss' and despite lip service that the team are devoted to bringing back the "core Experience", (that was literally the sales pitch for 2042 during marketing, don't pretend you even know what that means!) it's clear that the company is really moving to just wipe that game from their memory and put their hopes on the next one. The next couple of years are just casualties of this launch, Battlefield as a franchise is hitting the mattresses. 

So what future is there for Battlefield 2042 on it's own? How is it going to serve as the apparently not-featured, non-active, face of the franchise until 2024 at the earliest? Cyberpunk 2077 is another game that fell like a comet on launch and even after all that time fans are still splitting hairs about whether the patched and improved current game worth their time right now, or if it ever will be, considering the grand unachievable dreams that we all were sold on. The question is whether the game is even ready for new content yet, and think 2042 is in much the same state. It's clear that the community have outright rejected the direction that DICE took for the game, and the company have responded by actively trying to rewrite their mistakes as quickly as they can. But in haphazardly rewiring this Battle Royale wannabe into a traditional tactical multiplayer shooter, they're burning up the precious honey moon months of a live service where the player base are smothered with enough content to reassure them that this will be their home for next two years or so.

If I were to purpose a 'worst case sceanrio' supposition: we might have to ask ourselves if its in DICE's best interests to continue with Battlefield at all. I say this because despite the growth in talents, software capabilities and player hardware, the Battlefield games of the last 7 years have been several steps down from what Battlefield 3 and 4 offered. Of course, the games themselves look prettier; but what is that worth when there's no core progression angles to encourage me to grind, no plethora of viable gunplay options to keep match-ups exciting and no distinct level-to-level gimmicks even on the same stratosphere as Battlefield 4's Leveloutions? Know that these criticisms aren't at all exclusive to Battlefield 2042, which was such a mess it hardly functioned as a game at all. Even the finished iterations of Battlefield 1 and V don't hold a candle to DICE's heyday, and I think there's enough precedent to challenge the wisdom of leaving DICE in charge of a franchise they seem increasingly incapable of keeping on top of.

Now of course I'm not suggesting scrapping Battlefield or anything. Despite recent attempts to kill it off, I think the multiplayer gaming landscape would be worse of if COD became the undisputed champions of their field. Turbulence in contested waters always leads to rising tides. But I wouldn't be distraught if EA bought someone else on board to just change up what this worn and tired series has been doing recently. I don't know exactly who that someone could be per se, but if insider reports are to be believed than Vince Zampella is a name going around a lot in the offices right now. The mind behind Respawn Entertainment's recent success with Apex Legends (Still haven't forgiven them) and Jedi: Fallen Order. Maybe Respawn can bring their Titanfall talents into Battlefield and make the franchise great again. And where exactly would that leave DICE? Well Star Wars Battlefront 2 could do with some more content...