Conflict and MMOs

 I brought you a gun!

The landscape of the massively multiplayer world is well trodden by just about every single style of game that one can feasibly come up with. We've had MMOs that based themselves on the rigors of colonialism, several set in vast fantasy worlds that span dozens of interwoven cultures, giant sci-fi MMOs that throw players into the cold reaches of space and sets them off to explore its depths, MMOs that take roleplaying as such an integral part of it's systems that it's developers throw themselves into the game and roleplay as high level quest givers, and MMOs based on famous books and movie franchises with giant overarching narratives to explore. But throughout all of the grandiosity of the MMO genre, it's actually quite surprising to find that the core successful  few MMOs all seem to revolve around the same simple ideal: Player driven conflict.

Now you might frown a bit and recount how all stories are driven by conflict in some manner, and you would be pretty much absolutely right- but what I'm taking about here is player driven; and I'm not limiting myself to the scope of the narrative. I'm talking about the games that base their audience in one of several camps, typically at odds with one another, and uses the momentum of that natural competition and conflict between opposing teams to fuel the player base (and retention) beyond and between major content drops. It's a similar heart beating in the chests of some of the biggest MMOs out there, and within that may lie the secret to creating a functioning and sustainable MMO formula that at least has a chance to exist in the very inhospitable space that MMOs inhabit in the modern day.

Of course, whenever I'm thinking of MMOs the first that comes to mind is going to be World of Warcraft. There is a game within which the player base is split between the arbitrary line of 'Alliance' and 'Horde', between those party lines the various playable races are scattered. The narratives of the game were originally heavily driven by the conflict between those two factions, even providing exclusive areas and questlines for each side, as established and built upon by the Warcraft games. Whilst that is always important in the heart of the story, some of the as later expansions have taken a more lax approach and brought those two sides together to battle against common foes more often than not. (Player bases don't like being split down the middle, afterall.) These faction lines decide who's going to facing the other in the arena, as well as in the general struggle for minigame side activities across the world- fuelling some natural space for players to provide their own motives and goals.

We also have Star Wars The Old Republic, which is an MMO built within a world that already had a very workable divide of 'Dark and Light' to split it's players between. Just as with WOW, players of either faction have their own selection of classes and race, which would influence the places that players start, where they explore, and even the majority of the narrative they resolve. And, once again, players would find themselves going against each other in PVP sectors of the game, and coming together for later-on PVE crossover expansions. Again, relying on the conflict for between-content fuel, and subtly ignoring it when it's easier to introduce a wild third NPC faction for everyone to beat on. (It's easier than designing distinct routes for each faction and class within that faction everytime you want to drop some new content, I suppose.)

Perhaps the most recent example of this sort of MMO set-up would be for Amazon's New World, which doesn't explicitly establish battle lines from the moment that the player spawns in, but does build the majority of it's higher gameplay ideals around the movement of factions known as 'companies'. These organisations battle for territory and market supremacy in a dance that can feasibly be entirely ignored by the solitary player if they so choose, but there's no pushing forward to the best gear sets and facing the toughest challenges without getting embroiled in that political hot plate eventually. Still, the conflict of PVP drives the decisions of the endgame content producers, although additional content has been PVE geared for the time being.

And then there's my MMO of choice, The Elder Scrolls Online. From it's very concept this game was based around the three faction war, split between the races of Tamriel and presenting three entirely separate questlines across distinct tacts of land. The centrepiece of the game was even a giant board of 'secure the territory' played across all of Cyrodill in a brutal no-mans-land that was PVP heaven to a lot of the 'killers' in the playerbase. This was a direction that Zenimax even stuck with for a while, with the first official expansion being the Imperial City, through which you could either battle with enemies both player and NPC for the above-ground districts or mount strike teams through monster littered dungeons. Of course, this was only for a time. Eventually one Tamriel released and broke down all barriers allowing any faction to visit any land and leaving the 'war' to PVE only sections.

What we're seeing consistently is the way that MMO's seem to work best when they stoke some interaction between players, typically conflict. And as I've alluded, I think the reason is simply because it allows the player base to keep themselves completely busy whilst actual new content is made behind the scenes. Although, interestingly, most MMOs know that further development is better served veering towards the wider player base of those who don't want to engage with the pressures of PVP, which creates a strange dichotomy wherein for a lot of these games, the PVP landscape doesn't really change as the game around it evolves to complete distinction. But a game that practised what it preached would end up simply backing it's potential for growth up in a corner, so what is there to do?

As it happens there are endless unique ways to handle an MMO that don't get the chance to shine so often. I'm often left in complete awe by the likes of The Matrix MMO wherein the server hosts played 'Roleplay' with the ordinary folk to stir something of a narrative within their world, or 'Star Wars Galaxies' wherein the draw was to literally adopt a role within the Star Wars Universe and simply evolve within that. The sideways progression MMO's are woefully underserved in the modern MMO market, and only the unhinged kickstarter pipe-dreamers seem interested in giving that style of development a shot anymore.(Well... them and JAGEX) Perhaps a game that doesn't rely so heavily on the aura of conflict wouldn't need to betray it's own identity quite so often. But that's just food for thought, I suppose.

I never followed up on New World, now did I?

 Where are things at?

New world; the Amazon wow-killer. I jest, of course, the very idea of a 'wow killer' is fanciful wish making from those desperate to house the next billion dollar MMO franchise in their stable. But New World did certainly have lofty expectations shooting around it's noggin, and high peaks it wanted to top. I wasn't quite so clued up on everything about New World when I last spoke about it because I was never interested in an Amazon-made game and thus I ignored it, but watching it's fascinating trajectory over the past few months has aroused my curiosity as an observer, if not a player. Something about the promise this game once made and the way that has evolved over the years resulted in an initial stamping of greatness that has slowly peeled away and diminished more and more into this meagre state, and I find that just fascinating. How could a game that had the world's ear for a moment fall so spectacularly? And can it ever recover?

First of all I'm going to start by mentioning what New World initially sold itself as, because this is a very important ingredient in what went wrong. New World was a going to be a full loot PVP MMO. If you don't think that sounds ludicrously risky for a budding AAA game studio to slap together as their first blockbuster game, then that's because I haven't explained those terms to you yet. A full loot PVP MMO is a massively multiplayer game built and geared around the action of players fighting one another, rather than AI enemies, dungeons and big raids, with the kicker being that when any player dies, they drop everything they had to be looted by other players. (hence 'full loot'.) The intention of this is obviously to make death punishing and something to be avoided, but it takes a very special type of person to dedicate themselves to a world like that.

Essentially, Amazon were thinking of a world where players would go out and craft, build equipment, resource collect, amass huge towns with their guilds and then gamble it all in warfare against other players. If they die, then they could start all over again from scratch. Sure, maybe the player 's skill level's might have improved, making the resource gathering just a tiny bit quicker, but you're still getting as close to square one as you get upon every death, and that makes failure cost a pretty penny in the most valuable commodity we have as humans: time. Incidentally, it's all of that risk, alongside the typically unfriendly, elitist community that games like this amass, which makes them usually pretty unpopular MMOs. The biggest I can think of at a moment's notice would be Mortal Online. (Although when I google the term I see Albion Online in the list. I don't know if that's a mis-categorisation or if Albion has been doing bank with Full Loot all this time and I've just never noticed.) And anyone who's actually played New World might have noticed; the game isn't that at all. And that's because things changed.

Whether it's from the feedback in their early testing, or maybe someone in the research department actually took the time to go out and check how much MMOs in this genre can typically hope to make, but Amazon made a pretty big heel turn towards leaning back into mass appeal- but needless to say that change in direction came a little too late. They had the bones of a game, they'd created enough to show it off to people, but now the mandate came down that this carefully crafted battlegrounds for PVP clan warfare now had to have AI enemies, and dungeons, and non-PVP progression, and essentially had to be a completely new game slapped onto of this one. Now I know that the Amazon Game Studios team are good, but they aren't wizards, so the fact that they put out a game which scored decently out the gate with critics and newbies alike is great- the subsequent fall off when people realised the content in this game was about as deep as a puddle is predictable. Like Anthem all over again, an insanely ambitious game genre not treated with the oodles of dedicated commitment and planning that it deserves.

The beginning was grand, as befitting a project with the sort of scope that Amazon was shooting for. 100,000 players, people enjoying their time, big name streamers having just been driven from WOW, sizing up the offerings here for their next big full time MMO. But then the cracks started to show. The content provided lacked variety, enemies played exactly the same, content dried up considerably towards the midgame, the main narrative didn't have nearly enough steam to guide the player until they were comfortable with all aspects of the gameplay. The endgame loomed in the far distance, most players didn't want to grind in order to reach it despite the pleas of fans who insisted that was where the real game started, and little by little the player numbers dwindled. Now I didn't think anything of this, because MMO's always have big drop offs as the curious peel off to reveal the dedicated subset. But New World just didn't stop shedding players.

And that might have been because of the seemingly endless bad news that the game has received day in and day out. There was the reporting exploit wherein players could mass report good players in order to get them temp banned and win company wars, only possible because of the automated reporting system. (Which is significant given that New World's staff insisted previously that all report cases were handled manually.) There were the failures in revenue streams that lead to mass deflation to the point where the 'repair' function because useless because it cost precious money so everyone just replaced their gear, an newcomer-unfriendly barter economy was set up by the community to keep resources running somewhat smoothly and faction wars toned down because of how expensive it was to keep territory tax up. And then there was the content creator who New World banned for exposing an exploit for them.

We've seen a drop-off rate of around 90% of the original player base, which isn't quite as bad as it sounds because they had so many players to begin with, but on paper that sounds downright dire. 10,000 active players is more than enough to sustain any middle-of-the-road MMO, provided that Amazon can keep them or win back others to replace those they may lose. Of course, to do that we're going to need Amazon to fix the one big problem that New World had suffered from over these few months: no new content. Not even a hint of new content. For a game as starved for things to do as New World, it's almost more important that new activities are added than it is for the rough patches to be smoothed out, because every month that people come back to the same lean game they bought at launch, those people slowly lose just that bit more faith in the plan of action that live service and MMO style games promise. 

So New World is in a tough state right now, but it's not totally slipped down the pit of irredeemable despair. There is a way out and forward, should the publisher Amazon have the faith to dedicate the resources to make it. New World crossed a huge milestone when it entered the public consciousness, and though I still have no love for the idea of a successful Amazon Game Studios property, I can't just pretend that this one doesn't have a future. But then again, so did Crucible, but Amazon just wasn't prepared to stick through it's problems. At the end of the day the biggest weight on this game's shoulders is a conflict in identity that I don't see getting resolved unless the team falls on one side or the other definitively. Either they retreat back to the original vision of a PVP MMO game, maybe not with Full-loot per se, but definitely with PVE content removed or heavily reduced; or they need to dedicate more to the wider appeal of a PVE MMO by flooding this game with enough content to compete with other PVE MMO's. (The later of which would be a huge undertaking, but would certainly prove the most profitable in the long run.) Which route will Amazon end up taking?

So what's up with New World then?

Old problems.

I like to think of myself as a fair critic... okay, that's not remotely true, but I at least like to think of myself as the kind of guy who will tell you straight up when I have a prejudice on a subject for any matter not related to the product itself. It's important to me that I'm forward in matters like this because I find it so much more fun to write whilst being myself but from that vein I don't want anyone to feel like they're being subtly manipulated into believing what I do. That being said, I'll come out and say that I do not like Amazon's New World, and that is entirely fuelled by the studio who led it. My concerns with Amazon as a developer doesn't really extend beyond that one time me and by brother found that train wreck 'The Grand Tour' racing game before it was scrubbed from existence, so in that sense they've at least provided me a good hour of laughing and mockery. My concerns are for the people who are benefitting of the game, the company who feeds from that, and the CEO at the top of the pile polishing his bald head to a mirror sheen as he sits perched atop his super villain throne.

I mean how can you really like a guy like Jeff Bezos? It's an impossible task. The man is a walking industrial factory producing nothing but red flags at an alarming rate. If you ignore all the potential human right's violations, the blatant tax dodging and the general lack of empathy, then you at least have to shake your head at that space trip he did. (Correction: Trips) The first one had the man play around with skittles in zero G instead of actually taking in the magnitude of having one of the most exclusive views possible in the entire world right by his stupid head, and the second had him send William Shatner and then perform a single-man show of obnoxious behaviour whilst Captain Kirk was trying to come to terms with a paradigm shift in his whole world view. What I'm trying to establish here, is that Jeff Bezos isn't a normal guy, and I mean that in the worst possible way. I don't like him. I don't like the company policies he defends. And as an extension I guess I don't like New World either.

Which puts me in a bit of a pickle, because New World launched to great initial success and reception, to the point where this does look like it's going to be the new major MMO around to stay; so we're likely going to be hearing a lot more about Amazon and their game development endeavours in the months and years to come. (yay) Still, the launch hasn't been perfect and the audience is on the verge of slipping out of that haze-like honeymoon period, so the stories of growing pains are starting to rise and I've taken a little of bit of sick pleasure in reading them. So with the full context imparted that I'm absolutely being a callous ass when I dig all of these up, I want to take a look at a few of the issues that is stopping New World from being a perfect game for the time being, (If, indeed, that was ever in the books at all) and which is causing the game to haemorrhage approximately 135,000 players a week, according to Paul Tassi over at Forbes. (That probably sounds worse than it is)

Now the first issue I've read about is actually so incredibly interesting because of it's very unique-quality as a problem which infects MMOs. The Amazon team stated very clearly that they wanted New World to be very distinct from its contemporaries, and that is plain to see in the way that the team have handled it's currency. You see, much like with any MMO, the game drags you through it's lack lustre storyline with quests that offers rewards of tools and money to help you through that early game. The intention is for this to be that 'starting off' point, the place from which, once the quests leave, you start mounting on the real MMO content to get the good loot. This was the case in relation to gear, but not so much gold. As it turns out, picking up and retaining gold is actually quite the burdensome task, and it's led to an honest-to-goodness deflation crisis.

As things are right now, people find that after the main quest is done there's no reliable way to make decent amounts of money, but plenty of outlets to spend it on, meaning that the value of that money skyrockets out in the player-to-player economy. The only items fixed in value are the basic resources that can bought at in-game vendors, as well as the taxes that guilds are forced to pay on lands that they own, and obviously that just makes everything else much more valuable in comparison. There's currently a need-to-know basis barter economy in place where resources and services are weighed by perceived usefulness as judged by the notorious fickle eye of the community, creating economical oddities for processes as simple as getting your tools repaired, an act considered inferior to replacing them entirely thanks to the comparative cost. Additionally, fixed taxes makes the cost for PVP unappealing to those not seeped deep into the game's grind, painting a questionable drop-off on interest for one of the biggest draws of an MMO; player to player violence. All this would make one think that there's some serious reward balancing that needs to be coming New World's way, but the team disagree. They like having to do no economy balancing and letting player figure it out between them. (Because creating barriers between newcomers and entering the solid money-gameplay loop is good for retention? Heck, I'm sure these 1st time MMO developers know what they're talking about...)

But that's just the most interesting issue. You also have your classics; the lack of an endgame, a particularly weak narrative that showcases the absolute bare minimum of worldbuilding, and the slog midgame progression that weens out the none-diehards pretty quick. Among all this I've found another favourite conundrum; the ban system. As I understand, New Worlds has (or had when this was an issue at least) a particularly strong report policy that would ban people with enough accusations for an evening or two whilst claims were investigated. (Or, knowing Amazon, weren't.) The thing is, quite a big part of New World's sales pitch relies on this strategic PVP overworld space, so you can bet it wasn't long before people found a way to weaponize this report system. Yep, I'm talking about strategic reports to get top enemy players banned and give one side a temporary advantage in their war, absolutely ruining the spirit of the game, but oh-so-imaginative!

New World is a spectacular success for a company who's previous contributions to the gaming world ranged from forgettable to 'Oh my god, my eyes, it's burning my eyes'; and that does mean they're likely to be bowled over by this rare success. It isn't really all that fair to expect these guys to have their handle on everything right out of the bat; sure, a lot of these developers were poached from established gaming companies, but they're still new to working together and a rough launch or two is going to be inevitable because of that. This coming year, heck maybe even the next one beyond that, is going to be their chance to prove they've got what it takes to come together and endure that these 15 minutes of fame stretches into 15 years, or their opportunity to show they're out of the depth and just got lucky. (Pointing at a clear problem and calling it a 'feature' isn't the best first foot forward.) I'd be lying if I said I was routing for them, but against by own bitter nature I'll wish the ground floor devs, at the very least, good luck. (Here's hoping they still make some interesting slip-ups on the way though; they're super fun to laugh at.)

New World; Old money

He's going over that cliff- ARRGH

Stockholm syndrome has now officially kicked in; we're stuck with 'New World' fast approaching as the only Amazon Game Studios title to be actively out very soon and I'm just at the stage where I want to see the darn thing. At this point it feels like this game is the work of generations of Amazon employees, passing the cradle of development across the bloodline like a treasured heirloom, all sworn to loyalty in the knowledge that this game, their birthright, would one day rise to the challenge to become the savoir this world needs. (So no pressure, right?) But I mean you really reap what you sow in that regard considering all the extended years of hype non-representative CGI trailers, bigging up the invisible game with talk about how unendingly amazing the endgame will be, and delaying it forever in order to get the thing just right. Don't you know how things work in the Game's industry, Amazon? If a game isn't coming quite together yet you just dump it onto the masses with all the wires hanging out and maybe get to fixing some of them over the course of the next two years. (Gah, amateurs...)

But we're past the hyping stage at this point. Well past it, truth be told, we're well onto the time when we can look upon the final finished game and start to judge what it is we're witnessing with our very own eyes. Is this the game we've wanted for the better part of forever ('we' being MMO fans, I'm not personally fussed) or is this just another wet fart that was promising to be a tsunami? (Not the best comparison I've ever made. And yet, somehow, absolutely the best.) The game is practically out there in the laps of consumers right now, and it's gotten to the point where marketing has no choice but to bite the bullet and actually show the thing in action. In fact they have shown the thing in action, there's some playthroughs of content to look at including a PVP siege and a Dungeon walkthrough. And what is the takeaway? Well remembering that everything is subjective and your threshold for amazing may differ from any others around you; I thought it looked boring.

Again, 'personal opinion warning' for all those hopefuls, coupled with a 'these are just previews, the full product could put them to shame." Yada yada, are my bases fully covered yet? Good, because I'm about to go off. That Dungeon, one of the pieces of content designed to be played through again and again in the loop of progression was just about slaying ghosts in an abandoned mineshaft. Is that 2006 calling? How is it that the best you could come up with for one of the staple gameplay sections in this vast fantasy world tinged with the supernatural and colonialism? An abandoned mineshaft with boring looking ghosts? In their defence the team said that there would be different versions of this dungeon to run, some of which might not put you instantly to sleep to walkthrough, but I doubt it's going to be anything like those redux dungeons from other MMO's, where the entire contents and storyline evolves each time you run it. And then there was the PVP fort battle which looked quite fun and was touted for featuring 'massive' 20 on 20 player skirmishes. '20 on 20' is what's considered 'massive' these days? (>Laughs in ESO<) But I'm here laughing at the surface like a superficial jerk, what about the heart and soul underneath?

Of that I'm unsold, but not as dismissive. New World doesn't feature any rigid classes or class abilities, but rather a heavily simplified levelling tree where you latch onto equipment abilities so that you can 'build the class you want'. A.k.a "We couldn't find a way to make the game play significantly different with classes so we made the game in a way where all 'classes' feel the same." You don't need to lie to me, Amazon, I see you. A heavily lauded element is the way combat works, in that it's tooled to play like a single player action game with enemies that don't just run up to you and start spamming abilities. They duck and weave and just make your life hell when you go for them, looking like actual action game enemies. It's something that's more impressive if you're familiar with MMOs than if you're not, and as a familiar myself I guess my only real takeaway is "I better have constantly good ping else this game is going to be impossible to play". Also, visually it's said to be 'the prettiest MMO on the market today', which is already a misnomer as this game is not yet on the market. I don't know, I think attractiveness is a concept utterly divorced from fidelity and comes into the actual design of the world rendered, and New World's world has yet to show me a single inch of it that sticks. The colour palette isn't even striking, I just see bland everywhere. (Hey, maybe I'm not looking hard enough. I don't know.)

But all my raised eyebrows will surely be struck off in an instance when I hear about how the team seeks to handle monetisation right? Hmm? Oh, you bet they went off about how they're looking to make a buck from this game, one which you already have to buy in order to play in the first place, and the outlook is... it's bleak. First off, and this needs to be said, Amazon: if you treat your perspective audience like idiots and lie to their face, we'll spit in yours and cost you in cold hard cash; believe that. I say this because of their very own twitter statements where the team said they're 'trying out' quality of life features for players, just to get to know what sorts of things would be a right fit for their future player base. (Picking out furniture for the big move-in, huh, I get it.) Only the 'QOL' features they landed on somehow all seemed to line up perfectly to chokingly terrible monetisation strategies that have been tried and tested by other bottom feeding greedy publishers out there proving that Amazon Game Studios is so incompetent that they can't even swindle their consumer base in unique ways.

Okay, tell a lie, there was one real uniquely terrible thing they revealed. And remember, this is post launch and something that, in my heart of hearts, I want to believe they fabricated so that they can get free internet Karma points when they 'walk it back'. You really gonna charge me for Fast Travel, bro? In an MMO. Charging MMO players for fast travel is pretty much a hostile declaration of war on everyone's free time, ensuring that whatever cool levelling loop you come up with it'll always be limited to how fast they make your movement speed or how much you're willing to shell out to Amazon's money vault. That's literally super villains level of greedy dumb, to the point where I don't even believe it's real. It can't be. No one is that utterly out-of-touch with their fellow carbon-based lifeforms that they cannot understand why that's a bad idea. Seriously galaxy brained stupidity there, well freakin' done, team, you broke me already.

The next is one that's actually rather believable, because it's a hill that the Internet have been trying to die on quite a lot recently. 'Time savers' and 'Content skippers' are here to liven up your gameplay experience by letting you speed past it so that you can get to the 'good stuff'; just so long as you can cough up some grub for the big man upstairs; "come on, we ain't runnin' no charity!" If you are so insecure about how much value your game is worth that you have to sell a way to skip past it, you have failed to make an intriguing game. You have made- a bad game. Of course the team defended themselves with all the skill of a toddler arguing about way Leonardo is the coolest ninja turtle. "Nuh uh; we're just accommodating for those that don't have the time to play as much as others." Oh, you're thinking about the working man? How very magnanimous of you, Amazon GS. You're looking at the beleaguered everyman and thinking "He can't keep up with the curve so let's use that as a way to exploit some money from him". Geez, how did you get so kind and considerate, Amazon, I really want to know. I mean, the clever way to solve an issue like this would the development of somesort of XP slingshot system which might keep some players who play less levelling at a faster rate. Some might choose to exploit that, but they'd be intentionally limiting their own playtime in order to do so, therefore at the end of the day everyone ends up on the same playing field. However that would take thought and care, two things that I can see the folk over at Amazon are functionally incapable of now that they're mindless automatons programmed to respond only to the word 'profit'.

So as if it needs to be said at all; this isn't really how you go about launching your brand new MMO that's going to set the industry on fire. This is how you set your last bridge with the public on fire before you've set off on it, ensuring that your entire pox-ridden studio goes up in flames in the entirely preventable disaster. There's still time to save some face and put out the fires, some of the more gullible elements of the gaming community have already resigned themselves to this game and will surely try their damnedest to salve any wounds this game might sustain no matter how much they have to debase themselves to do so. But the rest of us just see a lukewarm offering steadily congealing and becoming more and more unappetising as the days go by, setting into a viscous muck that'll be damn near inedible by launch day unless emergency reparations are made now. Coming back to me, I will say that Amazon already lost me as a prospective player, but then their job was to win me over to begin with so they had an uphill struggle, whether you're still willing to give Amazon a chance despite... everything- well that's a decision only you can come down on. (I swear, if this game becomes a success with no amendments after this I'm going to lose so much faith in humanity I'll go hollow on the spot.)

Amazon: WHAT IS WRONG?

The rainforest died for this?

So picture this; you're rich. No, not just rich. I'm talking Rich. I'm talking buying a plot on the moon to stencil your face on it rich. I'm talking chopping down the rainforest for firewood rich. There's no one out there with the resources at their disposal that you have, the ready customer base, the ability to hire talent, and yet you cannot, for the life of you, release a game. Just what in the heck is wrong with you? Now don't get me wrong, I know that the game industry isn't for everyone, the arts in general are a frustrating pursuit for any company to go down. It represents an approach wherein you can't just narrow success down to those specific margins, because ingenuity and the wily whims of imagination are your two most key resources. How do you ration that? How do you summon it? It's a nightmare. So sure, success in building the biggest retailer in the western world that has almost single handily killed highstreets everywhere doesn't necessary translate over to video game success. But you'd figure they'd at least be able to buy success. Or the parameters that would make success attainable. But not Amazon, oh no. They're trapped in a hell of their own creation right now.

Amazon Game Studios (Now Amazon Games) have been around since 2012. Can you believe that? It's almost been a decade since they've been on the scene and they exist as more of a meme than a legitimate video game studio. And I'm spoken about them before, you bet that I have, but it's never been to do more than point at laugh of the failings of a company with literal billions in bloodmoney behind it. So in that sense I don't feel all that bad for the flailing or the floundering, nor do I really feel bad for the developers scooped up by Amazon thinking that they'd get an easy payday before being wasted like scrap because they didn't bother do any research behind the actual credibility of the studio hiring them. Okay, maybe that's not entirely fair; I'm sure some of these devs most have known the reputation and adopted a bit of the ol' messiah complex. "Sure, every other attempt to make this studio work has failed but I'm going to be the one to turn the tide. Of course I am. I'm X developer, I can do anything!" Well in the end the posturing was for naught, Amazon have been a mess and seemingly will continue to be one until further notice.

Starting off making/publishing app titles was never going to be the end game for Amazon Game Studios, but maybe it should have been because back then they at least actually finished titles. I can't exactly speak to the quality of 'Simplz: Zoo', 'To-Fu Fury' or... wait, 'Dragon's Lair'? Why is that- ya'll didn't make that game, Don Bluth did forever ago! They just gonna buy up the rights and pretend that's their game, huh? Talk about disrespectful... But anyway, as questionable as that library is we can conclude that those are real games that were made and could be played at least at some point. From then they wanted to go ahead and make this MOBA type game to capitalize off the league of legends fame, only to end up with a cancelled project codenamed 'Nova'. Then they wanted a cool Battle Royale game because Fortnite just came out and there couldn't possibly be any issues with following that trend, could there? (That project, Intensity, was then cancelled) Then there's the fantasy sports game that actually got a reveal trailer, Breakaway! Which was subsequently cancelled. Oh, and then there's Crucible, a game which actually came out! But that game was hit by so many issues regarding what it wanted to be and what the fans wanted it to be. Eventually it killed it's own player base with ill-devised revisions to core gameplay that destroyed what little unique charm the core game had. Now the game's been officially discontinued, which is sort of like cancelling but even sadder because we all watched it happen.

All those examples were attempts by Amazon to make real games. No offense to their app trash, but real games carry prestige, reputation and monetary commitment with them. You can sell a real game to the public and win a following, gather fans, start a gaming empire! Heck, these are games that might have even made it consoles if cards were played right. Imagine opening themselves up to a whole other demographic of customer! What I'm trying to say; is that this is the real goal of the game studio, what they spent those 5 initial years building up to, but they've screwed the landing every single time. Attempt after attempt to ride the coattails of the popular kid have sent these clowns barrelling onto their asses in spectacular fashion, and it's getting to the point where I'm starting to wonder if the studio's just cursed; because surely at this rate you would have scored one game which is at least released if nothing else! Point in case: These guys couldn't even bring out a game from a brand that they owned and which already has an established fanbase.

That's right, the real reason I'm brining up all of this soiled dirt is because recently Amazon cancelled their plans for a Lord of the Rings MMO, which has probably down wonders for the player count of the Lord of the Rings MMO that already exists... This is LoTR for god's sake; the grandfather of fantasy that has so many legions of fans out there that it transcends fandom and becomes some people's way of life. That was a game that would have sold itself. But it didn't even get the chance to make it to market because of internal machinations. How insane is that? Shouldn't this be the sort of game that Amazon Game Studios reverts all of it's resources to defend? A video game version of a property you wish to capitalize off on your own streaming service in the near future? Wouldn't it be marketing genius to get out a companion video game to that upcoming LoTR series instead of leave the video game LoTR landscape to be dominated by a plethora of games based on the Peter Jackson movies, highlighting them as the definitive adaptation before yours comes out? I mean don't get me wrong, I can't see how Amazon could even entertain recasting Gandalf and cohorts, but if I'm playing devil's advocate there's a way they could go about this which would make marketing sense. But what's driving Amazon today certainly doesn't seem to be logic.

Much has been made of the current head of Amazon Game Studios, Mike Franzzini, particularly since he was accused as being directly responsible for the many failures. Now personally I have to roll my eyes whenever a huge project's death is laid at the floor of one individual, even if we're talking about leadership. Yeah, he takes the fall, but is it really all his fault? But then you look at the number of casualties, and you have to start wondering; what is this Franzzini's dude's deal? Is he the curse put on the studio? Well for one the man has no prior gaming experience before being made head of Amazon game Studios, basically meaning I would have just as good a choice for the role. (Not a good start) Apparently he's hard headed, uneducated to the practices of the field he's working in, lacks creativity in a creatively driven industry, is incapable of even the simplest leadership tasks and is all around just a pathetic waste of effort who probably should have been swallowed by his mother. Huh, I guess you can lay the majority of blame out one person's feet, huh?

But the biggest tragedy in all this, is that the one fully fledged console game that Amazon did manage to put out; (Crucible was Windows only) is a game I stumbled upon years ago when doing my irregular scan of the game store for the worst looking upcoming titles. It was 'The Grand Tour Game', and let me tell you it was disgusting. One of the worst looking racing games I have ever seen, with the only saving grace being the featuring of a four player couch co-op mode in which players could be all members of The Grand Tour team. But wait a second, there are only three members. That's why one lucky individual has the honour, nay the privilege, of being Jeremy Clarkson 2. That's right, instead of just roping in their Stig equivalent (I never watched Grand Tour, I assume they had a Stig) these idiots just recycled Jeremy Clarkson. (Producers for that show better watch out, least they find themselves on the receiving end of a double Clarkson beatdown. Urg, I can just smell the stench of stale beer through the screen)

And so I have to ask the question: What is wrong, Amazon? Or, more appropriately, what isn't wrong? And is this something that can fixed, or is it best for Amazon to pack up their losses and bow out of the gaming market like champs. They've got their Twitch, and that's great for them, but oh-good-lord the development game just isn't working for them. At this point I am absolutely certain that their upcoming 'New World' MMO is going to be a monumental disaster and I'm almost afraid to stand by and watch it. I mean, I will and all, but it won't be with that same anticipatory glee as it might have been before. Because this is just sad now. Stop while you're this far behind, Amazon, no one wants to watch you stumble some more. And whatselse, I don't think anyone really wants you in the Industry anyway, you're sort of a toxic crater of scum that poisons most everything it touches. Kinda like a Stand ability, but a really lazy one that Akari didn't put any effort into coming up with. "Meh, they're gonna be dead in a chapter anyway, who cares?"

Amazon: A death in the family

 And another gone, and another gone

I am a fellow who operates by feeling, first and foremost, and as of so far that has led me right when it comes to the world of gaming. It steered me towards Persona the second that I saw it, which is now already rising to one of my favourite games of all time, it steered me away from Avengers, which is currently dying a painful death because everyone grew bored in less than a month, and it made me repulsed at the proposition of Amazon joining the game market. Okay, maybe that's being a little unfair, I'll admit, but here me out. It's not like Amazon is so far away from the gaming world, they've owned Twitch for a few years now, the premier game-livestreaming platform, and have operated as a digital vendor for gaming and game equipment for even longer. (That's got to count for something, right?) But something about the very idea of them dipping their elongated digits into the gaming pool really makes my skin crawl, thus I find this latest news rather interesting.

Do you remember Crucible, Amazon's free-to-play third person shooter? No? But- but it came out this year, it had a whole cast of characters, shooting gameplay and pretty much everything you'd expect a game with a genre that dime-a-dozen to entail! Yeah, I tend to forget about the game too if I'm being honest, which is odd considering I think I covered it on this blog. (Don't care enough to check) It's a testament to how oversaturated a market is when a game funded by one of the biggest companies on the Earth can be completely lost under the deluge of similar content. I mean- I wouldn't go so far as to say it's indicative of a institutional lack of creativity within their brand, but I certainly think these guys would have a lot more success penetrating into the game market if they focused their efforts on smaller, high-quality projects instead of shooting for that one big whale. But hey, what do I know? I'm not some multi-billion dollar tax-dodging enterprise, I'm just the target audience.

So this Crucible game, it wasn't particularly panned at launch, nor particularly lauded; it just existed in that painful space of average games that writhe in perpetuity. Full disclosure, though I'd assume this would be obvious, I never played the game and nor would I ever intend to; but from what I heard it's only mostly generic, there were a couple of interesting ideas attempted there. (and then promptly scrapped.) Personally I just couldn't really imagine a game who shared the name of Destiny's, a consistent popular shooter, PVP mode doing well; that's just a marketing disaster that you'd have to be positively blind not to see coming. If I recall correctly, the last time I covered this game you couldn't even find it on google unless you specified the publisher. These issues swelled into problems that resulted in a haemorrhaging player base and the decision to swiftly withdraw the game back into Beta not too long after launch.

That was a few months ago, today the story has evolved into it's inevitable eventuality; Amazon's Crucible has been cancelled. (Not with a bang, but with a whimper) This marks, as far as I'm aware, Amazon's very first toe into the big-budget gaming world as an absolute and irrefutable failure on just about every level. It failed to stand out, failed to be received well, failed to gain a following and probably even failed to make a profit. (Unless there were some very dedicated whales out there) Surely this does not bode well for that upcoming Amazon game that some people are actually excited for, note how I don't include myself in that number, 'New World'. Once again that is a title that is attempting to hit a homerun out the bat, only this is more ambitious, has already made a bigger splash and has so much more to lose. Finger's crossed that one turns out better, eh?

Personally I find it hard to shed a tear for the death of Crucible, nor the struggle that Amazon have had trying to break into the gaming market, because I've been too discontented about what this means in the long run. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's a few heartbroken developers out there who really thought they'd worked on something special, but my gripe isn't with them but their paymasters. You see; I don't like Amazon, for so many of the obvious reasons and for a few of the more esoteric ones; I don't like what they represent. Whenever it comes to creative endeavours, be that books, movies or video games, there is always the chance for corruption when something as unfeeling as a corporate entity enters the equations, and typically the bigger the are the higher that risk. Two of the biggest companies in gaming, EA and Activison, are renowned for their anti-consumerist practises that threaten the eco-system almost constantly, and Amazon have already tackled two of the genre's those companies love to come back to, F2P and MMO, so you can't tell me ol' Bezos isn't following in their footsteps.

Now I know this is an incessantly conspiratorial stance for me to take; Amazon Game Studios as they exist now have only released one fully original game and it wasn't a total anti-consumer nightmare before it's untimely death sentence, but as I said: I am a fellow who operates by feeling. When I think of Amazon Game Studios I don't see someone out there to join the ranks of Bethesda, CDPR, Square Enix and whoever else still actually makes games every now and then, and Crucible was just boring enough not to break that assumption. (I'm really knocking this game but I can't overstate how hard it was to try and watch some twitch footage of this title: I literally fell to sleep in the middle of the day) Now my, along with everyone else's, attention has turned to 'New World' to see what they're made of, and I'm just not feeling what I'm seeing so far. Call me the ESP of gaming, but there's some bad juju coming off of this company.

Though let us play devil's advocate for a bit and pretend that Amazon are looking to enter the gaming ecosystem in order to improve the craft as well as make some money, that could truly be great for the industry! With the amount of money that Amazon have at their disposal, the amount of capital they could flood into gaming projects of all sizes could really shift the focus of power both in the console gaming and the PC markets. Imagine Amazon buying up game studios from all over the world and bringing concepts that otherwise would never see the light of day into the forefront, they could easily become one of the big publishers in no time. (And, seeing as how they don't have a console to cater too, it would good for all gamers.) I, for one, would love to see some of these really niche horror-focused start-up studios find a dedicated publisher to call their own, who can really lend the weight to bring these weird and imaginative demos we see pop up every year to life. But that's just one of the many ways in which Amazon could, if they were so inclined, positively impact gaming. I just don't believe that they are, or will ever be, so inclined

So there we have it, in an environment that is practically booming for the video game landscape, Amazon tripped and faltered, make of that whatever you will. All I have to conclude on it is thus; maybe it's not in every big company's wheelhouse to become big Video Game developers. I mean; Disney could even cut it back in the day. Freakin' Disney; one of the biggest dragons in the corporate world. It's takes a special blend of corporate tact, talent and empathy to make head-way in gaming, at least by my estimation, so let that be your definer. Or at the very least just hire a bunch of smarter studios to make games in your stead. What I'm trying to say is that there are multiple options, Amazon, maybe it's time to start considering them.

. 

Amazon: our 'New World' order?

Hang on, I'm getting a little bit of Deja Vu...

I'm no fan of Amazon. Not The Amazon, that rainforest has yet to aggrieve me in any significant manner, but the monopolistic online retailer created by, mid-construction love doll, Jeff Bezos. As a fellow all too familiar with how it feels like to work under the thumb of a waste-sniffing megalomaniac, I can't help but scoff everytime I hear of a new scandal from the Amazon store house. And don't get me started on the fact that Amazon has next to no competition on this half of the globe, allowing them to practically set the online retail standard on their storefront. (I thought there was supposed to be tradelaws established to curtail this level of market manipulation.) What I'm trying to say is, whenever I see the 'Amazon games' tag on the side of a product, my initial reaction is of hostile skepticism.

What essential corner have they cut in the founding of this game, how many coders did they slave over this piece of software to get it out and how awful will the, inevitably overbearing, microtransactions be. I'm enough of a bitter, cynical sod to expect the worst from every studio I see, a prejudice that will take a decent amount of good decisions to shake. With Amazon's track record, I wouldn't count on this game being the 'best it can be', in fact, I'm fully expecting Amazon game studios to make a good shot a dethroning EA as the 'Queens of mean'. These aren't the sorts of thoughts that one wants to be courting when approaching a potential brand new IP, but here we are.

Divorcing this game from it's developer for a moment, we get a title that sounds both different and familiar in a rather curious manner. Set in the 1600's, 'New World', quite predictably, sets players up with the task of colonizing a new fictional continent loosely modeled on British America but swarming with supernatural beasties. That's right, this game is quite literally a note-for-note copy of the premise of Greedfall. In Amazon's defence, I do not believe that any of this was intentional, two separate studios just happened to dream up the exact same concept at around about the same time, only Greedfall was an RPG and so came out sooner whilst 'New World' is set to be an MMO and so is a lot more demanding. It does suck for the team, though, that every effort of theirs already has a comparative counterpart before they've even put out a beta; they were already fighting an uphill battle with making a fresh-IP that is also an MMO in today's world, now that task has become damn near vertical.

Taking a look at the Game Awards trailer alone, we get the image of a historic fiction setting that does, admittedly, hold some vague promise. Despite squatting itself firmly in an alternate version of the 17th Century, we do get to see some ancient civilizations pop up such a legion of Romans who seemingly become cursed to haunt this land as undead. (Move over, Nazi Zombies.) Although the logistics of that does seem a tad suspect. (Apparently these Romans managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean somehow. Sure.) This does open up what one can expect to see in this alternate history world. We also get a vague preface of a battle between the forces of 'Life' and 'Death' which summons to mind the whole 'Raava/ Vaatu' conflict from 'The Legend of Korra'. (Although that just makes me wish this was an 'Avatar' video game instead, so maybe that's a negative association.)

We are not completely in the lurch when it comes to what we can expect from this game, as one would imagine, for all the way back in February Amazon teased us all with a gameplay overview that offers a brief idea of what the final product might entail. (Or at least what they were aiming for last year.) The immediate takeaway from that gameplay establishes a huge concern for someone like me, namely that this title seems intent on aiming for a 'survival' experience. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with the survival genre, (If you don't count the fact that 99% of dedicated survival games being frustrating snore fests as an 'inherent problem') but I feel that gameplay style significantly clashes with the whole 'epic story of light versus darkness' angle that the MMO is going for.

'Surival' is an ultimately grounding topic in gaming. It asks players to balance all their fun adventuring with the everyday tasks of eating, sleeping and drinking. It is an ideal that works in situations where everyday survival should be thematically appropriate, such as in post apocalyptic scenarios, but can prove quite distracting when improperly implemented. From a customary glance we can see that 'New World' intends to profit off of the 'epic adventure' crowd that typically excites the crowds of titles like 'The Elder Scrolls: Online' and 'Black Desert Online'. The type of story wherein the players become fonts of buzzing magical potential with the power to battle gods, and wherein the key worry for any player should be managing their buffs and set bonuses. Fallout 76 has taught us that this type of high level MMO strategy gameplay doesn't gel with a dedicated Survival experience and actually has the potential of sundering that careful balance between challenge and fun. (By that I mean, no one wants to give-up on a hard boss because they've run out of chicken legs to munch on. It's demeaning and boring.)

In terms of combat, Amazon game studios have gone for the 'Action = response' combat model that emulates the movement of traditional RPG's much in the way that ESO does. However, I've yet to see the kind of real-time agility that BDO provides, but then there's surprisingly little combat to sift through at all. (Which is an odd omission in a 30-minute gameplay run through.) We also see the hints of a faction system that may offer the same sort of territorial bouts that Cyrodiil does for ESO, but I shudder to imagine how much actual balancing has gone into a system like this. What's to stop one faction taking over the entire map and making it unbearable for everyone else to live through? These are the sorts of fundamental structural questions that Amazon need to be answering before slapping down another highly-curated CGI trailer.

To say that I'm highly dubious about 'New World' would be an extreme understatement. I don't trust in the marketing, I don't trust in the concept and I don't trust the studio making the big decisions. Amazon is an untested development studio, and the fact that they're opted to cut their teeth on an MMO is both applaud-worthy and eye-rolling. Personally, I expect this title to be a colossal flop, but that is just my initial inclination. Honestly, there isn't nearly enough out there about this title to get a strong idea of what to expect, which is a fairly big problem considering this is meant to launch a new franchise. At the end of the day, Amazon game studios have to decide between drumming up marketing and fleshing out tangible details, and there's no inbetween.