Yeah I simply had to chime in to talk about my favourite story of the year once again. The answer to the question- "Why is it that video game players feel the need to opine on their entertainment?" It seems like such a loaded question to begin with, and one that I find almost grossly dismissive on the rights of a paying consumer to find their product wanting or impressive- not everyone needs to be a nuanced critic, meanwhile anyone can offer their in depth opinion on a product they brought- I have no idea why these are concepts that need to be fought for and against in some circles. But if you want the slam dunk answer as to why it isn't some great imposition on the universe to allow gamers to give their view once and a while about what they like and don't, what they're tired of and what they want more of, maybe it's because the old adage of "you think you know what you want but you don't" more often than not is a 'get out of jail free card' for people who really should know better themselves. Because literally no one wanted Concord, and now it is quite possibly- if the suspected figures behind are indeed as true as people vehemently claim- the biggest flop in entertainment history. Let that sink in.
Brought about from a bunch of industry 'exs', including some folk from the other end of the multiplayer barrel over at Bungie- Sony invested a prohibitively steep wallet in order to not only buy the project and push it over the metaphorical finish line, but also to keep the studio behind it in-house just to keep the machine running. This being just the latest in the 'Live Service push' that gripped the industry in the wake of the one that changed it all- Fortnite. One must remember the breakout success of that story from a relatively niche-studio to producer to a Rockstar level mega-developer in the space of a mere year. Fortnite really is the kind of northstar that executives go to sleep dreaming about and wake up changing underwear over. Recurrent monetisation with no tie to style or vice paid by other advertising arms in order to expand their catalogue- the lazy dream... but not everyone can substainate that.
It seems bizarre that we have to learn the lesson again and again that 'games are hard to make' but it really does seem like this industry legitimately never learns. Back when World of Warcraft was the biggest thing ands god's green earth everyone and their mother wanted to get into the subscription-model for their own competing MMO's that would sweep the market with a grand total of one single conceptual shift away from what WOW was already doing. How'd that work out for them? A plethora of studios learnt that MMOs are stupidly big, stupidly expensive productions to run and the more of them that exist the harder it is to secure a viable user base. Then we did the exact same for survival games, albeit that was mostly a war waged by indie developers and Bethesda, for some reason. Battle Royales squeak in there too as an honourable mention- largely spurred by PUBG and Fortnite until people figured it was actually the Monetisation model which was the lesson to learn from. We're edging into the 'extraction shooter' meta next.
It is apparently so very difficult to comprehend the fact that maybe there is no easy schematic to success within a creative field were ingenuity and uniqueness are championed. When you catch all those doom-and-gloomers, largely in the public coloum of the Metro, whine about how terrible the industry and how hard it must be to get feedback on your work and how everyone is literally on the verge of transferring to the much more profitable general IT industry- they largely miss the point of why anyone desires to make art in the first place- because they want to create. The reason why seasoned developers flake out of big studios is because they long to make a substantive contribution to projects which is only possible in smaller teams. Developers want to make interesting games, and players want to play interesting games- the only sore point in this relationship is the publishers and the producers that insist a level of formulaic nonsense be stuck in there for good measure.
But the good news is this- recent years have shown the industry get absolutely trounced over their live service drive attempts. Suicide Squad, untitled Last of Us game, Hyperscape (bet you forgot that one), Final Fantasy 7: The First Solider, The Culling 2, Anthem, Radical Heights, The Day Before (if we indeed categorise that as even a game), Babylon's Fall (Wow! There's a blast from the past!), Lawbreakers, Marvel's Avengers, Paragon and now Concord- the biggest flop of the lot. Of any lot. A colossal disaster-piece. And I think that bow on top was Sony making the decision not to try and pave over the wreckage with a free-to-play launch that would have inevitably drawn in a crowd of the curious and made the game seem a little better than the worst failure in entertainment history- they cancelled their plans and even dissolved the studio: Sony let this lesson lie in the history books.
And now we've just received word that Warner Bros. has seen the writing on the wall. Their recent best seller was a single player only game- the live Service push has only cost them money. There's even an unspoken surliness towards Multiversus being discussed as though the re-release isn't doing as hot as people might have expected. (Which I personally contribute to terrible marketing that failed to convey that the original release was a beta and that this is supposedly the true launch.) For once the consumer has finally won out with the shear strength of apathy. Leaving the idiots to flounder in their waste and empowered by actual developers out there releasing banger alternative purchasing options in better genres has left it's mark. 'Live Service' is now the scarlet letter.
The only hope now is that the wrong lesson isn't learn from all this- which is not helped by the doomsayers attempting to manifest gloom with their portends all over the shop. The amount of interviews I've seen from previous industry officials condemning the modern games industry as a death spiral is alarming- considering there is seldom a point in all of the games industry history that could be considered 'swimming'. The conversation about the strangling of game budgets is not a unique one, and we'd have to be certifiable idiots not to acknowledge that bigger bets into less risky releases are scoring more failures than wins- but the market appears to be teaching that lesson soundly enough- whispering doom from the rafters is only going to serve to scare off your Warner Bros. or your Disney's who see this entire venture as a side-gig to begin with.
Still, it's good to actually win one for once. At the cost of untold millions lost in waste- unfortunately the case when we're dealing with hairbrained suits so desperate not to do their jobs it's painful, but the hopeful result is that we can move towards a future with a bit more hope where further billions can be saved. Make more games for less, sanitise scope, stretch out the big blockbusters a bit more, throw away the saturated ideas. Make more games for the younger generations so that they get into this industry! Maybe this one stone rolling down the hill can pick up traction and lead to something great. That's how I'm choosing to look at all this.
