Banana game

 

No one is ever truly prepared for what life throws at them. Usually that comes in the negative, where waves of misfortune and bad tides slam into you over and over until it washes you away with the seeping. But every now and then the good will descend, and leave you in just as dire a predicament as you struggle to figure out what exactly to do with it. I have been in both straits and I can say neither which is superior. Too easily are the good poisoned foul unexpectedly. That being said, I cannot say for certain whether the bubbling broil of seemingly impending controversy is a boon or hinderance to the developers of the 2024 smash hit epic game- Banana. (No, it's nothing to do with the Minions- for god's sake leave such thoughts far away from you mind!)

Banana comes across as one of those games that is made as part of a student project to prove programming potential- in both it's simplicity as well as the post-ironic "hah hah, so random!" spirit of the concept. It's a cookie clicker clone where this time it's a banana. It's an idle clicker, meaning just by having the thing open in the background you'll be wracking up the big numbers- and that is the extent of the game. Yep, this isn't one of those slightly more complex clicker games where you have to build up teams in order to take out certain big monsters on a quest of some sort. (I'd recommend 'Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms' for that. Pretty fun game!) This is the absolute bottom of the barrel Steam trash garbage-heap-of-game with little to no creative ingenuity or subversive passion put behind it. So why is it worth talking about?

I mean, Steam is inundated with Unreal Engine powered refuse every other second- it's like the spittoon of the video game publishing world- which I suppose is the price to pay for such an inherently low barrier to entry as Steam naturally possesses. But there is a distinction between the rest and Banana- because you see those other bargain basement games are lucky to score a buy purchases by the curious before the game is lost under the deluge- Banana, on the otherhand, is ranking as one of the most played games on Steam currently. And may I just say how happy I am that this phenom occurred after Summer Games Fest, so we didn't have to see Geoff venerate this embarrassment. (Okay, maybe I'm going a bit too hard on the game. Afterall, it isn't Assassin's Creed!)

But what makes the Banana game so popular? Great question- and I'm afraid the answer is not any hidden inherent creative twist that imbues some otherwise hidden value. Well- actually I guess it could be considered that depending on how you define 'creativity'. I suppose it can be considered somewhat creative to conceive of the idea of turning an idle clicker into a Gacha-esque trading card game using the Steam market place. Oh yeah, every few hours you get 'dropped' a badly made PNG of a Banana- as artistically devoid as NFT trash- with various degrees of rarity that you can sell to others for real money. That's right, it's yet another 'alternative source of money' grift games. Because we haven't had enough of those over the past few years.

At the very least this spits in the face of most of those others by showcasing just how easy a concept like that can be realised without even touching WEB3 infrastructure and avoiding crypto currency like the plague. You don't need to have a special online wallet with a special 36 digit key that needs to be maintained on a separate secure device you keep with you at all times- you just need a Steam account. Sure, that means you can't exactly extract those funds any easy way- but you're exactly going to be making the kind of money to pay for your electricity bill either- just funnel that cash back into buying better games, why not? (Even though the kind of money we're talking about is typically petty cash on the dollar unless you score those millions-to-one drops.)

Of course, nothing has managed to halt the copious levels of discourse the game has generated regarding just who is sitting down and actually running this game- namely what sort of systems the developer is putting in place in order to prevent market manipulation. You see, Banana's are handed out through random lottery, rarities, drop chances, all that important data is handled developer side and considering this is an indie title that dropped out of nowhere- there are absolutely no gaurdrails in place, and no repercussions hanging over them, to engage in a little bit of 'table tilting' so to speak. What if they want to drive up the price of a Banana they have a lot of in order to make a little extra scrip? What if they hand out rare bananas to their friends for free? Who would ever know?

Now to their credit the developers, probably still a little stunned by their joke game which was developed in order to riff on another decidedly less successful joke game from earlier this year, promises that they aren't up to anything untoward behind the scenes. In fact, it's apparently going around that they even let go one of their staff specifically for engaging in that exact form of 'giving friends' bananas, market trickery that people were worried about- which demonstrates both their willingness to try and keep the game clean, as well as the relative ease with which the developers could choose to rip their audience off at any time. Which means that if you choose to engage with this, you might just be grappling onto a ticking timebomb, praying it goes off in someone else's face before it blows up in yours.

This honestly gives me flashbacks of all the endless WEB3 currencies that are still coming out every other day, stuffed full of developers swearing hands down that they never would rug pull their audience and in fact have special tools in place to counter that very issue- who then go on to rug pull within the week. It's inevitable. Everytime. Thankfully this game isn't that deep into people's financial pockets, if they decide to screw with the market- all that will be wasted is people's time and the tiny amount of processing power required to keep this game open in the background. But something tells me people will get bored of this game long before that eventual heel turn will cause anything of a huge uproar. Just my suspicion. 

Scamdivers

 

I've always been a fan of scams and scamming. Wait... no hang on- that came out horribly wrong! What I meant to say was, I've always been a fan of content pertaining to the documentation of other people scamming, particularly how they did it and where it all came crashing down around them and they are fed their just deserts. Coffezilla, Kitboga- the good stuff. Which is why I found myself so totally enthralled when news dropped of the recent scam, the first time something like this really became headline news (though absolutely not the first time this has ever happened.) Helldivers 2. The absolute shameless rip-off scam game that no one should buy, Helldivers 2. Unbelievable scummy and deserving of hatred and condemnation Helldivers 2... Okay, not that Helldivers 2.

No, I'm not coming for the throat of 2024's second smash hit video game in three months, scoring stupidly high and unfortunately reviving everyone's belief in the viability of Live Service games whilst the bugger was literally on his death bed. (I blame those developers for the next four years of pain this Industry is going to suffer as idiots stumble of themselves trying to replicate that success but worse in every conceivable way.) What I am coming for is the video game Helldivers 2, which was totally unrelated to the smash hit game of the exact same name but released under that title, with the exact same banner, for a cheaper price, on Steam. The magnet for all the worst video game developers to be rejected from the endless hole of Ginnungagap.

Yes, it's so very simple- isn't it? Just throw down the application fee, throw up a game with the exact same name and watch as people helplessly fall for the scam like the big dumb idiots that they are. Okay, to be fair I could absolutely see this one slipping past me because honestly- who expects Steam games to be totally fabricated? In hindsight I guess there is nothing that can really be shored up on the backend to prevent this from existing- sad as it is to say. There are genuine behind-the-store development reasons why a game might need to be loaded to the storefront with the exact same name as another, and Steam is certainly too large for human eyes to validate every new game to any reliable degree- and at the very least we know Steam holds onto funds long enough that it's unlikely the scammer got their hands on a single red penny out the hands of the unfortunate.

But it makes you think, doesn't it? What other scams slip by the Steam barriers? I mean just earlier this year we caught the tail end of a momunemental scam of marketing that plateaued exclusively on Steam. The disaster of 'The Day Before', a game that was originally marketed by a duo of numbskulls who greatly overestimated the extent of what they could achieve with the revolving door of contractors they failed to properly pay, but managed to stop just shy of overselling the game poorly enough to be easily spotted by everyone like what Dreamworld did. (Speaking of- just saw a Youtube trailer for that game the other day. It's almost commendable how that man hasn't given up and run yet. True delusion.) The Day Before made it all the way to 24 hours before it collapsed under the weight of it's own false promises- and Steam was there to dance on it's grave as the rivers carried it's mangled corpse off to Hellhiem with the now iconic 'The Day After sale.' Cutting.

Some scams are as simple as declaring themselves straight-up to be some horrendously overpriced waste of your time and rest on the laurels of that fact itself in order to be a viable product. I'm talking about the 300$ bargain-bin twin sticks that do the rounds on social media as "Oh my god, I can't beleive a game is this expensive!" All in the hopes of luri9ng in just a couple curious heads to make a purchase for the memes of it all. Remember that all it takes is one purchase for the team to have tripled their investment, and those that go for the tried and tested excuse of "I'm spending the money so you don't have to" drown themselves in cope to justify the funding of the next two publicity stunts they just fostered in their support, seriously or joking.

And then there are the totally 100% legitimate scams that are just the examples of purposefully obfuscated marketing moves. Maybe the deluxe editions of the game overlap content with the season pass but you have to buy both in order to access anything on offer. Maybe the currency packs are purposefully priced to force players to spend a little bit more than what they need, ensuring they are always somewhere along the path to get something extra and thus have that extra push to spend again at some point. Maybe the scam is just the fact that the game is available on the Early Access system and will never once become a fully viable product because being pushed out the door and the team going straight onto their next product. It really is a whole world out there for scammers!

Because that is the consequence of an industry like ours, as big as it is and resplendent with as many bad actors as it is. With billions flying around it only makes sense that rats are going to try and stand on the backs of actual giants trying to catch their slice of the pot, it's only a question of what is going to be done to try and squash them before they nab some. Nintendo used to be very protective over it's library of games on offer until the pathetic storefront of the Wii U forced them to go in the exact opposite direction and now the Switch has straight softcore hentai on their servers. Steam seems to have it's floodgates totally open and handle their issues on a case by case basis. Surely there has to be a middle ground somewhere in there!

Part of what makes the Games Industry so great is the barrier to entry allowing anyone with the passion and time to sit down and stick something together if they really want to try at it- in any number of tools, run by any number of engines, crossing over any number of genres- but that is it's greatest weakness too. When you can literally download the template for a game, spend $100 on Steam and get a spot on their storefront- you have to start wondering about the nittygritty of what makes and actual game developer on an almost spiritual level- which is a far more thought than really should have to go into a silly passtime. At the end of the day- Don't buy Helldivers 2. Buy Helldivers 2 instead.

Most confused awards of 2023

 

What would you define as 'innovation' in game design? Maybe a game that transcends the very boundaries of what you would consider a game? A game that excites and reminds you of the possibilities of interactive media in a way you haven't felt since you first started discovering video games? A game that challenges you to think in ways you simply haven't before? It's a game that is fundamentally different, distinct to a fault, and pretty much every single thing that the Industry is not mired in currently with our endless remakes, sequels and remasters. You want a product that thinks out of the box. Astounds. Redefines. Amazes. You want a game that isn't Starfield. So why, in the name of all the gods in the sky, does it have the Steam award for 'Most Innovative game'? And what exactly can we learn from this little foray into backwards land?

So Steam has decided that it wants to get into the 'award giving' circuit just like the Game Awards before it- actually this was a crusade they embarked on quite a while ago, we're simply catching up to them now. Because you see, I've never really given two craps what Steam tells me a good game is- Steam is flooded with absolutely unbearable trite every other day, if those wastes of Software are considered good enough for a platform, that platform simply hasn't enough integrity to be an authority on 'quality'. That being said, Steam is the biggest storefront for games that exists, so if anybody was going to do it- it makes sense that it would be Steam. Although I bet Stadia would have tried to slide in on it if they knew that was a possibility back in their days.

Steam's aspirations at respectability are scuppered by one small detail, however; their belief in the video gaming public to be trusted with sole voting authority over the award's gifted. In Geoff Keighley's awards, that duty is gifted first to reviewers who couldn't give less of a toss to pick out the nominees, and then the final decision is made in a joint vote betwixt the public and those journalists, with a heavy skewer to make the journalists vote count for more. Steam, fools that they are, left both the nominations and the award gifting totally up to the whims of the gaming public- which of course led the way for eye-popping results that make more headlines than the actual legitimate winners. (Afterall what else is there to say? Baldur's Gate 3 earnt two more awards? Big whoop, it's already Game of the Year- what else was going to win?)

Starfield being crowned 2023's winner for Most Innovative Gameplay, however, is such a sarcastic plaudit I can't help but giggle about the cruel sardony behind it all. Made all the more potent by the fact that Bethesda's long suffering community team took to Twitter to celebrate the win, not noticing the thorns of the joke twisted inside of the rose of the 'victory'. Of course, this only brought out the attention of how ludicrous the win was to their followers, who let Bethesda's Twitter team know well how they were the butt of a joke. And now we have one of the most head scratching screenshots of the year- with Starfield wearing a badge it has no business existing in the same room as. Oh innovation, how far your concept has fallen!

But Starfield was perhaps the most obvious joke. It was actually such a headline stealer that I didn't notice the even deeper cut that the gaming community had made on another game awarded a similarly as perplexing award. See, when you look at the multiple award winning game 'Red Dead Redemption 2' and see it as a winner of an award, that makes sense at first glance. Perhaps a glimmer of confusion might strike you upon remembering- this is the 2023 game awards and RDR2 released in 2018, but who knows why mad award shows give out the awards they do? What was this one for? Labor of Love? Well that sounds like a fine enough award I guess... until you actually read the description of that particular award.

You see 'Labor of Love' is described as an award gifted to a game that had already launched a while ago, but who's developers 'like good parents' have stuck around to nurture the game's community and growth in the following years. It's an award designed to be given to all those indie darling games that get substantial updates over the years like Terraria or Stardew Valley, and the Live Service games that make perpetual support part of their business model. (Which in my mind would inherent disqualify live service games from being considered 'Labor's of Love', as they are more 'Labors of our wallet', but higher ethics are besides the point here.) Only upon acknowledging all of this does the sarcasm of Red Dead Redemption 2's award really hit home.

Red Dead Redemption 2's after-game support was it's online mode, the same as Grand Theft Auto Online, but Rockstar soon realised that the art of adding content to a western themed game presented more creative challenges than the half-hearted new cars every few months, that GTA Online required. They experimented for a year with job roles, Moonshining, some special bounties and then the team decided it was too hard and gave up. After just over a year. Yes, Grand Theft Auto Online is still supported to this year, yet Rockstar couldn't even keep Red Dead Online alive to see the 2020's. Talk about pathetic attempts at providing post game support and a hilarious poster child for everything you'd avoid in the search for a 'Labor of Love' product.

Some have highlighted the missed opportunities for serious contenders to get recognised thanks to these joke nominations and votes, and cry out for the establishment of proper curation standards. To be fair, Steam is the biggest store front and being recognised there could be more important to an up and coming game than by any other respected award show. But to be honest, the Steam awards have never been taken seriously- and I think one last chance in the year to stick the knife in to the big corporations and twist it a little isn't going to collapse the industry in on itself. Afterall, what's the point if we never take the chance to take a laugh at ourselves. Or at others. Who disappointed us. Greatly.

Valve: The Unicorn game developer

 Shooting stars are more regular

If we were to look at pure numbers, cold and calculating people that we are, then it would be pretty obvious to one and all that Valve, the big boys themselves, are perhaps one of the biggest game companies on the planet for how many people flock to their platform on a daily basis. They're like the solitary sparkling Oasis in the sandy dunes, set in a excruciatingly delicate garden half-weeded to eye-watering perfection, and half totally left to the brambles, weeds and asset-flip dandelions. (I hate Dandelions.) But for all their fame and size, Valve make precious little effort to really assert their position in the games industry to, you know, actually make games. In fact, Valve are pretty much content to let their library ride whilst they get rich off the backs of every other two-bit developer in the world that come scrabbling up to their doors in order to peddle some vial of snake oil. 

And this isn't because Valve themselves are solely a platform-delivery company. Sure, that's what their company has largely pivoted to after decades of supporting Steam, (I can officially say 'Decades' now, it launched on September 13th.) but their company used to make games. In fact, they used to make the best games. Titles that totally rewrote what the industry was working with at the time, the way they utilised new technology in order to craft ever-green works of art has laid the foundations of inspiration for hordes of indie to mid-level studios since. Valve is a company that never lost sight of the 'game' at the start of all gaming, and that ended up making them absolute legends in the industry, which they then utilised to make all the money in the world. At this point I honestly wonder if Steam technically has more purchasing power than even the anarchic cold terror of from the sightless seas- Embracer Group, only perhaps Valve covet the sense not to waste their funds and pointless frivolities swooping up game studios like their trying to complete a Game Dev Pokedex.

So we know how this story goes, don't we? Scrappy studio with a heart of gold struggles and pushes their way to the top of the pack through years of iteration. The devs pat themselves on the back for finally reaching the height of the swing, and then as dissatisfaction with the size of the family starts gnawing at their pride, that dream team starts drifting off into smaller indie companies- addicted to the fight for the top. Management and founders stay with what they built and try to instil the same passions and hungry exuberance from all the sparkly-eyed new developers who signed up in reverence, only to find that the well-fed mouse to lack the same 'do or die' risk-taking drive of the rats fighting for food scraps. And so the unique little spark of creativity fades into a meek settling pattern, and a company once brimming with identity and purpose becomes chained in the prison of trying to match their faded selves. That's what happened to Valve, right?

Oh wait, no. It really seems that Valve just don't want to make games. Because when they are roused from their slumber across their dragon's hoard of market dominance by the shiny new treasure, the burgeoning world of VR, Valve waste no time in getting to work showing the world how it's done. When everybody was using VR to make quaint little experience pieces or port normally non-VR games into a VR format- (which has generally been the only solid type of VR game out there) the team at Valve came back together to blow everyone away with 'Half Life: Alyx'- the undisputed king of VR that made full use of the format, rode the very cusp of the technological wave and set an example that subsequent VR games are still trying to match today! They've still got it. When they want to.

This whole topic came to mind this morning when I woke up to the truly startling news that there was going to be a prequel chapter to Portal 2 releasing in the new year. "What a gift!" I thought, "A franchise some twelve years dormant finally getting what it deserves with some love from it's parent! Who could wish for a better way to wake up!" And I, like many others, love the crisp and meticulous puzzler wrapped in the officious style of an explorative mystery game, but without losing itself to metatextual philosophy like so many of the games it would go on to inspire often do. "No offence 'Turing Test' but you seriously diminish replayability rambling on like that." Of course, I was a rube like so many others, Portal 2 is not getting a prequel from Valve and is, in fact, still in process of gathering dust in their vault, right next to Disney's.

As you've likely guessed, this is a fans work to bring more life to the classic genre definer, and in that respect it is impressive in it's own right- but it's no Valve update. Valve actually stepping up to work on their evergreen properties is like spotting a Shiny Legendary Pokemon in a Master Ball with Perfect IVs- naturally spawned. That's what makes them Unicorn developers in my mind, you just never get the chance to see them work more than once a decade, and certain franchise lovers never get to see a follow-up. But then they aren't happy letting things lie, either. They want the mythos of their being to grow hit from longing. Why else would 'Half-Life: Alyx' contribute almost nothing to the overall narrative of 'Half Life' for all of it's runtime until the very last moment of pulling some momentous retcon that set fans ablaze. They feed the cryptid legend, keep people believing in the tooth fairy.

Now one theory I have of this; is that they are a victim of their own reputation. At this point it just really isn't possible for Valve to come out and make a straight sequel to a game like any other developer might. They came from an age of innovation constantly throughout game development, and they just happened to be equipped with a team of some of the most adventurous programmers to take advantage of that explorative developing age. Modern game dev-ing has already pushed all the limits, taking technology and manpower and funding to the very tips of possibility, and technological innovation is sparse. If Valve want to maintain their reputation, as needle pushers, they have to become so much more discerning about when they surface and which needles they want to tip. Hence the mysterious aura of the Unicorn.

So I guess that means one can both never be too sure when we'll ever seen another glimpse of their development talents, and also can't be entirely certainly they'll ever actually see them again with how the world of development stays stubbornly static with only brief stabs of excitement. Maybe once AI development becomes more robust we'll get a Portal 2.5 to warm us on cold nights, but until then we'll have to be our own friends. Of course, this does make Valve probably the worst narrative-based developers of all time- because they care more about all the details around a story rather than the story itself, but it sure does make them unendingly respected in an industry rife with old heroes living long enough to see themselves become the villains. So I guess that's worked out for the team at the very least, huh.

The unspoken potential of Simulator Games

 baa baa black sheep.

There's a disease that travels often around the Steam new releases, and it's the low effort trash titles made by developers who, more often than not, spot a very simple 'make a game' tutorial and then turn around and try to sell that prototype game. It's a dishonest practice that pollutes the ecosystem for actual up and coming developers who have to try and stand out from the deluge with their efforts, which is obviously far easier said than done. The most common of these low effort, stocking filler steam titles are known as 'Simulator Games', a pithy catch-all to encompass a style of game that attempts to emulate some activity, typical a mundane and boring one, with the appropriate sterile specificity that the simulator genre demands of it's ilk. But all too often that description is merely a smokescreen for what turns out to be little more than a grift of a product.

You'll play a flight simulator and expect to come out of it with a basic understanding of the real elements that a pilot must take into consideration, hence earning the title of 'Simulator'. But what about 'grass simulator'? What inner truth about the life and growth of common garden variety grass does such a game possibly have to elucidate it's audience on? Simply nothing, and that is the sad and honest truth about it all. You'll see these games resplendent with #market store' assets and pre-built play areas that offer nothing in the way of unique gameplay opportunities or intuitive fun. They are meant as jokes. But jokes that cost money to take part in do sort of stumble on the landing, more often that not. Yes, I certainly think the spirit of comedy is kind of smothered beneath that avaricious veneer these projects usually display.

But that doesn't have to be the rule, now does it? Of course not; the very genre of 'simulator game', even one made without a serious face or big budget team, can still offer us something of value. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the very idea of making a simulator game as one's virginal development outing can, should you approach it with the correct attitude, be an invaluable exercise in the practices demanded for making a proper engaging product. Because at it's heart, a Simulator game gives us the opportunity to explore a single topic to an exhaustive degree, pushing all systems to imbuing a single experience to the player and teaching us what concepts can be easily gamified and what concepts are best left idle and to our imagination. Treated correctly, there can be solid Simulator game experiences.

And I think the solid one's tend to float above the refuse and last around to give us some small impact, a notable ripple, in the vast sea of Steam new releases. Take 'Thief Simulator' for example, a tongue-in-cheek small game about exactly what it says on the tin, being a window-breaking thief who takes on jobs nicking TVs and beating up toilets for chump change. It's a simple project with a surprising amount of systems at play. Different lockpicking minigames depending on what level of lock you're working on, slight variances in job objective so that you're not always stealing the same stuff from the same houses, and even some vague simulation of 'casing' and performing 'stake outs'; concepts that most big budget stealth focused titles happily swing by for fear of slowing down the gameplay cycle too much. Altogether, Thief simulator is a pretty fairly descent title with a lot more thought put behind it than one might expect with that name; providing a worthwhile experience for the price point asked.

Another title which surprised me with it's effort, was 'Weed Shop', of the eponymous 'Weed Shop' franchise. Now being such a 'complex' concept, it of course took the developers three full tries to get to the real heart of what it's like to run a weed shop empire, but I have to give it to the creators- when the time came they really did nail the end product! Weed Shop is an irreverent simulator title that lays out progression paths from securing customers and growing the storefront, to improving the quality  of the product and establishing supply routes, to crazy minigames fuelled by high stupors and running circles around gang-banging local dealers looking to keep you out of their territory with their guns. It's really a very solid title, even if the late stages get lost in those annoying time gates that I've spoken about recently. What is actually there to play around with is seriously worth commending on it's own. I'm genuinely excited to see what Weed Shop 4 has in store.

Of course, I cannot in good faith cover such a topic without recalling the deadbeat father of this entire movement of development: Goat Simulator. I've never been quiet about my dislike for the franchise and it's 'randomness = funny' mentality when creating jokes, but I'd be a fool to disregard their years of successful development and the impact it's had on the zeitgeist of gamers. Goat Simulator is built on ragdoll mechanics and refence humour from the ground up, revelling less in intricate systems attempting to conjure the spirit of... being a goat, I guess- and more on telling as many slapstick jokes as possible. It is whole hearted in it's efforts, and that's where the appeal comes for those who like that style of humour; which just goes to highlight how commitment is really the key to making these games work. Stick to the theme and heart of the idea and someone is going to appreciate the effort.

But there is a new pretender to the title of 'greatest simulator', and it's certainly an unexpected hero. Largely because this is a simulator in more of a serious sense, attempting to somewhat properly depict the act in question, but I guess it's the process itself which just proved so appealing to the general consumer enough for the game to become an unexpected smash hit and gaming cultural icon. Of course I'm talking about 'Powerwash simulator', the game which took the world by storm with the simple act of washing down dirty building, parks and vehicles with pressurised hoses. It's blown up into something of a phenom, spawning endless updates and collaboration DLCs to the point we're at now where you can finish up cleaning the gutters of the Croft Manor on your way to sparkling up Cloud's bike in Midgar. A totally bizarre success story for a game that simply lived off people's heartfelt desire to make things look clean.

See, Simulator Games can be something of an acquired taste. In premise usually asking you to forgo the usual trappings of a rounded video game, from plot, theme and purpose, and instead find fulfilment in the simple process of completing the listed objective. But when made right, a simulator game can really capitalise on the innate pleasure of developing a chosen vocation, or simply have fun creating exaggerations on an otherwise sterile subject matter. And I argue that Simulator game creation can be a stepping stone on the path to making full fledged and whole hearted games for the experimental developers out there. You just have to go dumpster diving through all the refuse of the rip-off games to find those gems under it all, but when you find that something special it can be just as rewarding as anything else you'll find on the mixed bag which is the Steam marketplace.

Steam and Advertising

 The big man cracks down.

A few weeks ago Steam made a pretty interesting change to the way they allowed advertising to be shown on their platform, which I found a curious sentiment, but decided not to cover on the off chance that this would be one of those rules that Steam speaks about and then never enforces.  If you're curious, there's actually quite a lot of those rules floating around the ether ever waiting for their long-proposed time in the sun. (Such as that 'no NFT games' rule; which is more: "No hosting NFT's on our infrastructure but you very publicly link elsewhere and we don't care from there") I wanted to wait until a few Steam sales went by to see if this is a standard that is going to be held up, and it so far looks like it is. Whether due to actual crackdowns or merely the threat of crackdowns, Steam games are posting store artwork as bland and boring as ever with no eye-popping flavour text, just as papa Steam intended it.

As part of a move to "make it as straightforward as possible" for Steam users to sink their life savings into video games, Steam has turned around and declared it against their rules to stray too far from core artwork when it comes to advertising on their storefront. Which is to say, no more ancillary bubble-gum text plastered over the art declaring a percentage off on a sale, or celebrating some vague award win from a publication that no one has ever heard of before in the "Most likely to probably win some awards at a more legitimate outlet" category. No more writing about a big new update, no more slapping half covered breasts on the front of- oh wait... no, actually I think that's accepted, depending on the type of audience you're trying to facilitate. (But no nipples! They'll nuke you from orbit if they see a protrusion of any sort!)

Now I'm all for advertising standards and restrictions where they're needed. Those gaudy lawyer billboards that the American's allow to go up is just one example of what happens when advertising standards are left to slip out of control, and without Nasa's joint 'ownership' of space it would be a literally matter of time before Amazon built itself drones to carve out Jeff Bezos' face on our Moon. Advertising standards stop children's shows from taking advantage of children's underdeveloped brains to sell toys to them during the running of a show. Advertising standards are the bulwark that helps keep ordinary people sane in a world cut up and sold off by executives and ads companies. (Which is one of the reasons I can never take the 'hard work ad executive' trope in animated/real life movies seriously.) But at the same time, I don't really feel there's anything inherently upsettingly wrong with the Steam banner ads sales techniques.

Back in the day you'd get games proudly displaying it anytime a publication so much as looked their way in award season, games that were just super excited to knock off huge bits of their prices that they couldn't wait for you to look down in the by-line to see the adjusted price, (not when you can see it in bright red letters on a yellow background!) and games that just wanted to let you know how excited they were that the game has just gotten an update. In fact, it was the bright shiny letters announcing the Sorcerer update to the Baldur's Gate beta which talked me into buying that game and I'm so very glad that I did. Has that ever also swung me around into buying a game I regret? Not necessarily, but I have been struggling to justify my purchase of Kynseed every time I load it up and get bored after less than an hour in game. (I'm sure the inherent magic of the game will strike me eventually. I've just got to stick with it.)

But yeah, I'd be lying if I didn't say that the text advertisements aren't distracting to a possibly unfair level. Why should everyone else have to rely on the boring same palette of colours printed atop Steam Blue whenever it comes to a summer sale when the eye is drawn much easier by contrasting colours slapped ontop one another? It's eye catching, it's heart racing, and it is a tad exploitative to the eye's attention. Where I an outside regulator I would certainly consider the psychological tactics being put in play to squeeze one out over competitors as a worrying trend. But as someone actually imbedded in the community, I know that the trend is laughable next to the whole 'loot box industry' which literally employs the help of psychologists to tickle the right dopamine triggers in the players head to trigger addiction. Why bother with a firm stance on anything when you just ignore that whole situation?

Well Steam have actually tried to justify their decision, beyond the nebulous assertion that all these graphical packets are just so 'confusing' to the tiny pea brains of their customers. They said that the graphics have become so important to advertisers that game names can be shoved into obscure corners so that players end up not even knowing what the game itself is called! (You know, unless they read the plain text steam title next to, or under, every game on the storefront. But again, remember; pea brains!) They say that some graphics present review scores that are out of date at the time they are seen. (Which is why people have to see the store page, with the real time user reviews, but again. Pea. Brains.) And in addition graphics packages tend to only be in English, which alienates speakers of other languages. I don't have a pithy retort to that one, but I think the alienation of other language speakers on steam runs a bit deeper than a few graphics boards. But I digress.

New rules dictate that review scores, award names, discount bumpers and graphics promoting other games or sequels (wait, were people actually doing that? how is there even that much space on a tiny game billboard window?) must be banished to the shadow realm never to return. Developers are still allowed to celebrate seasonal events, however, which means that Baldur's Gate 3 can get away with their cool new class themed banners with each updates. (Great, I can't wait for the Dragonborn banner!) They've also dictated that the text can only pertain to new content which... uh oh, there we are getting vague again, Valve! What exactly does new mean? New on a cosmic scale? Because I hate to break this to you; in comparison to the big bang that started the universe, 13.8 billion years ago, everything on Steam is brand spanking new, buddy! (>Tutt< >Tutt< >Tutt<, will Gabe Newell never learn?)

As of September the 1st these new rules have been in effect, and if you check out any of the recent steam sales, you'll notice it's a bland ghost town out there. Tumbleweed is just blowing past all these dry banner ads totally lacking in all Pizazz and Pazow, and not a single hint of Kachigga, anywhere to be seen! So if this is the future that you wanted for your storefront Steam, sterile and bland, then I congratulate you in your rousing victory. You must be so very proud of yourselves. I, on the otherhand, will rue the day that ugly and garish banner adds were expunged from the accounts of scrappy indie games anywhere that were just so excited to slap up how they received the 'most likely to not get so much as an honourable mention at any award show ever' award in their meagre product lifespan. If you want to step on the necks of the little man, Steam, go right ahead! Like most Americans, we are self made people. We put ourselves through development hell. Working on Itch.IO as talentless script kiddies, we provide games for those with no money to buy real games with. We believe in entertainment, it's what we build our careers on. But we also have our dreams, a dream that many of us have, a dream to run our own viral marketing campaign for our games. Well we... we scrimp and we save and we finally save up enough to buy a slot on the Steam store, a tiny foray into advertising for our fledgling games companies. We always get told that America is the land of opportunity and, we believed it... until... this... On September 1st Steam cracked down on our marketing, we were confusing their customers and hurting their brand. They're rich, powerful, and we're just indie devs. So who do you think the journalists sided with? So now, our little billboards, come down. But let me tell you something, if they want a fight... well there is none because they've already won... bugger...  

Indonesia Steam ban

Circling the drain

Who would have thought that as the modern age rolls around free and equitable access to video games would become less and less spread across the countries of the world? Like a backwards progression of availability as all of humanity slowly reverts into it's base most form, first China pulls back on the gaming market so hard that Steam might as well not exist in that country, than Russia is heavily restricted for reasons that should be fairly obvious, and now Indonesia has followed suit for reasons not quite nearly as obvious. One might feel warranted in donning the hat of speculation and wondering where exactly all this is going to stop! In this age of conflict and strife, how cruel does one have to be to try and deprive enjoyment from their few citizens who have the time to game? At least China has a, intellectually bankrupt, reason for their banning's; but considering China kinda has a history for making sweeping polices that are utterly uniformed and obviously disastrous, maybe that isn't the model you want to be emulating.

But indeed, over the past week we've seen bans rather suddenly descend upon the likes of Steam, Epic Games, Paypal, Battle.Net, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Origin and Yahoo. (Oh god; not Yahoo! Who will I consult for answers now? I jest, of course; that service is long dead...) At least, it was all rather sudden for the consumers who had no real warning to start backing up their games, or... honestly I don't really know what you do about losing Paypal. (That's more than a kick to the balls, that's a knife to the testes.) For the Indonesian Government this was probably a very drawn out and frustrating affair with a clear deadline laid out ages ago that a big portion of huge online companies just simply ignored. And the companies themselves, well they must have had some inkling that services would be revoked and yet refrained to tell their consumers until the date was upon them. What I'm saying is that this was a communal week of bad choices all around.

As gaming sites are reporting it (I'm referring to PCgamer for their succinct summary of the situation) this comes as the consequence of a law passed two years ago that requires online platforms to summit user data to the government and comply with Indonesian take down requests for unlawful content. Which seems... utterly misguided and shortsighted but at least their heart is in the right pl- oh wait, and content that "disturbs public order"? Yeah, that's some straight dystopian talk right there, no wonder people didn't want to comply. This actually reminds me of a certain law that passed down here in England at one of the many heights of public distress against our government, when an overnight law was passed to prevent 'loud protest' outside the House of Commons. 'Disturbing public order' so easily leads into 'silencing dissenters' that the mere performative action of referring to it as such is a sheer insult. I don't care how 'well intentioned' and 'morally strong' someone claims these orders to be, if the current administration doesn't exploit it, a following one will. It's a game of when, not if; and the only way to win is to not give them the playing pieces.

And this is absolutely a hill worth dying on, when it comes to discourse, at least. (This should never have gone as far as outright bans. Paypal was banned so abruptly that the government had to temporarily unban it to let people get their money out. Clear evidence how horrible of an idea this is.) If there's one thing that co-existing with the terminally greedy has taught me, it's that if you give an inch you'll lose the country side. The second that Indonesia gets away with juggling user data at will and banning 'objectionable content', everyone is going to want in on that band wagon. Which is to say nothing about the very idea of handing out User Data, which is not only a huge personal violation, but also just not in the best sound interests of the companies who manage them.

I have to be honest, I know nothing about Indonesia and how they run their government, nor would I make any suppositions even if I did; this isn't a blog for that sort of stuff; but I know a fair bit about optics, albeit through the eyes of the entertainment industry, and this ain't good. The Indonesian public are already taking to Twitter to voice their utmost displeasure, as so they should having so many liberties wrest from them in a cynical power move by government officials. But the disgrace spreads even further. To the outside world looking in, this sounds like the beginnings of a twist towards nanny state regulating; and being from England trust me when I say we know all about over regulation. It's a constant struggle to defang overzealous regulators most of the time over here.

But whereas you might think this was some sort of grand standing kick-back statement by these companies, a conclusion I even tried to lead you towards with my own carefully placed rhetoric. (What do you mean I misunderstand the definition of 'careful'? Why I oughta...) I have some sobering news for everyone. Much as I suspected when I first read the details behind this, in truth the problem is that none of the companies got the memo that this was happening, not that they objected to the increadibly questionable stance of these laws and the provisions they force upon website providers. I can say this with confidence because Steam, not too long after their ban, turned around and signed up for the program without kicking up a fuss. As did Paypal and, thank god, Yahoo.

You see, when it's all said and done none of these companies wants to accept any more responsibility than they absolutely have to; and if that means ratifying and justifying increadibly suspect terms just so that they continue business they'll bite each other's arms off for that opportunity. Yes, there's no such thing as moral upstanding; unless you literally declare war because that's just plain bad for business. Fiduciary duties cut above all else. It's just funny to acknowledge the fact that Indonesia published this little questionable snippet into their law books and it would have gone pretty much entirely unnoticed by most people if it hadn't been for this abrupt kerfuffle. One might even suppose that maybe some of these companies intentionally bungled the dates they had to sign up to this law in order to draw attention to it's contents. That's bunk, though; they were just lazy.

There's no such thing as mister good guy business who's there for you and has your back, and there's no shades of grey in this morality tale. It's all muddy brown for the faeces stains the represent all the crap we have passed off onto us because everyone with the wealth and size to do something and make a stand don't give a damn to. Steam is back and functional, which means that will be the end of this conversation in the eyes of the many, and Steam will pretend it never had anything concerning grace their desks and reap all the free publicity. Just like when they 'banned' NFT games but really just banned integration with their API; not caring even slightly for Steam games that use NFTs outside of their API. No one's on your side, that's just the truth of it.

2022 Gabe Newell is just what we need right now.

'We can make it if we try'

You know there are big moves going on within the world of PC gaming when Gabe Newell steps out of his suspended status pod in order to commune with the world and flaunt another step is his very vivid transition into 'Newell the White'. And with everything that's been going on recently, it's an absolute wonder why we're only hearing from him now. (No I- I'm not talking geopolitics.) It's no surprise why he's finally broken his peace now with recent industry events: We have the recent heavy consolidations that the AAA market is currently undergoing with Sony and Microsoft chucking around billions,  the rise of NFTs and the depraved cloud they shroud the future of this pastime with, and then just the general failings of the global supply chain on this generation of consoles and PC parts. There's a lot of ground to cover and Gabe seems to want to try and hit it all before the twenty-three minute sand clock runs dry and it becomes time for Gabe to return to his Beach so that he can continue his endless search for Half Life 3.

When it comes to Gabe, I've never really had a serious opinion of the guy because the worlds of when he was active and when I was a PC gamer just never intersected. I made great use of the storefront he helped pioneer, so there's that, but I didn't experience that soaring age of "this is the guy that makes PC the best platform!" from those halcyon Half-Life and Team Fortress days. (I was even ludicrously late on the whole 'Portal' train) But after even just a snippet of hearing his views of NFTs and Crypto Currency integration into the gaming industry, I'm already starting to understand why this man was jokingly lauded as a deity for so long. And his opinions carry weight because, totally unbeknownst to me, Steam actually integrated with Bitcoin in April 2016 only to end up pulling those features in December 2017. That's well over a year of beta and experience to inform the views of the company, which is typically far more experience then those gibbering Gibbons over at Ubisoft have.

According to PC Gamer's interview with Gabe Newell, the decision to pull back was based on very real evidence that this was not a technology which benefited the industry. Newell recalls how "We had problems when we started excepting Cryptocurrency...50% of these transactions were fraudulent... these were customers we didn't want to have." How galling. For a payment method lauded for it's 'reliability' as well as it's anonymity, there really does seem to be a lot of corruption clinging to the Web 3 name. But Newell shares his understanding of these matters further into areas I'd never even consider; such as lamenting about the nightmare which was the Bitcoin market value, which is notoriously characterised for being jittery. In such an age there could be games that were once $10 going for $100, which turns gaming into a speculative investment market far from the medium of relaxing enjoyment all of this is meant to be part of.

But my favourite part of this little interview snippet is, rather narcissistically, the point at which Gabe Newell  backs up what I've been saying about these NFT and Crypto integration early adopters all along. "There's a lot of really interesting technology in Blockchains and figuring out how to do a distributed ledger" Gabe posits, casually throwing out a term I've never heard of in my life and dread to look up. "I think people haven't figured out why you actually need a distributed ledger." Thank you! These people are totally clueless about the technology they're working with and yet still gallivant around pretending they alone stand at the forefront of modern advancement. They're toddlers playing with particle accelerators, and we're treated as the backwards idiots for trying to establish some sensible limits. He continues "There's a difference between what it should be and what it really is... NFT stuff: so much of it was ripping customers off...that's not what we want to do, we don't want to enable screwing large numbers of our customers over" What a heartfelt and honest sounding take on this whole situation, almost as though it's not driven by greed and lust for market share, but an actual desire to foster positive growth in the industry. I don't know if I've ever gotten that impression from a major player in gaming before. It's a nice reaction to have.

Gabe also touched on these stupidly huge purchases that have rocked the world over the past few years when it comes to unwieldy studio consolidations, and again his insight was invaluable and interesting. He spoke about his own experiences with propositions to 'consolidate' and 'synergise', and how the guiding force behind these choices can be "Really strange" as he puts it. He claims that there have been many "waves of this" sort of market movement over the years and he predicts "some of these acquisitions will get unwound. And some of them will turn out to be successful." To Newell the struggle seems to be in deciding which of these acquisitions were sought out because they would be "Additive" to both parties, and which could be classified as "Empire building", in his words. Some of these decisions are the latter in his experience, and those are the types of business decisions that, he reports, don't seem to last long. Again, truly insightful stuff from someone who is actually a president of a lumbering gaming industry titan himself.

Another topic of discussion was that most annoying of buzzwords, the Metaverse. It's always the Metaverse, isn't it? As though some 'Ready Player One' Megacorporation is going to drop us all into The Oasis overnight without our permission anyday now and we've all got to get ready for it. In truth there's is no more salient an example for modern techno-jargon buzzword gibberish than the phrase 'The Metaverse'. It's a term specifically designed to invoke imagery of omnipresent Matrix-like digital world spaces where everyone is an avatar; a total conversion of the world's running to proxy servers and game-like activities, one, true ultimate hub for social interaction. And the truth is that it's all just a marketing term to justify universal brand integration within pre-existing company boundaries. There's no one 'Metaverse', no brave new ground being broken with this technology, and in large part those that support the ideals of Metaverse are driven solely by their own abstract perceptive of what this should be rather than what it really is. Which is to say; a lot of them are delusional. 

Gabe seems to agree. "Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. And they've apparently never played an MMO. They're like, 'Oh, you'll have this customizable avatar.' And it's like, well... go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy 14 and tell me that this isn't a solved problem from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing that you're, you know, inventing." I didn't even want to paraphrase that quote, or integrate it into the point that I'm making in that way which would make my Secondary School English teacher bounce with excitement. I happen to think that a lot of these supporters are genuinely clueless wave riders colourised by a few prominent shysters trying to grift a small fortune for themselves, whilst Newell seems to imply the ratio ekes in the other direction; but at least we reach a consensus that none of this hype is going to last and this 'Metaverse' terminology is going to blow away leaving the same cultural mark us on all that Fidget Spinners had. Just another cringe-part of recent societal history that we'll all hide our heads and try to forget we ever got excited and called it 'the future'.

Wrapped in such a tangle of thorny nonsense, it's comforting to hear an intelligent industry mainstay like Newell break everything about the current gaming industry down, calmly categorise it, and affirm that we'll get past it together. Like a parent who can key into your most vulnerable moments and say exactly the right thing to patch your shattered peace of mind back together, Newell serves as a fire douser. (At least, I assume parents can do that. I've never experienced it myself and thus have had to instead fashion the ability to hyperventilate until I pass out. It's very useful in practise!) I still hold misgivings that NFTs are going to stick around our more nefarious industry elements, like Ubisoft and Activision, but to hear that the larger industry is going to one day get over itself and return to improving the craft, however that looks in the future, is a warm cloud to rest on. So thank you for your insight, Gabe, it's actually nice to hear from you. Now quick, get back into your simulated environment pod before the Time Wraiths realise you've re-entered the timeline! GO!

The Steam Deck

 The library in your hand

The history of handheld gaming is a long and perilous tale of false starts, shooting flares and almost total dominance from the Nintendo end of the market. Pretty much from the very second that Nintendo dips even the slightest foot into the handheld market they instantly become the undisputed champions of all they survey and everyone else who wants even a slice of that pie can just go wither. And a lot of that comes from Nintendo's size and market power, because creating a handheld device will always come with setbacks and limitations that require ports of games built specifically for these handhelds. Unless you're swinging the sort of income that Nintendo is, it's more likely that prospective handheld developers are going to cater to the team with the most spare revenue and audience, thus no one really had a chance in this market. The PS Vita had the staying power to hold on for a while, but distinct lack of support from Sony themselves killed off that dream. So if you want to compete on the handheld market you're going to need a console capable of securing as many ports as possible, to draw in a crowd, or simply make a machine powerful enough to play even more games than the Switch. Steam Deck, it seems, is heading the latter way.

That's right, like a Wrestling Heel in the twilight hours of that tournament bout he was eliminated from in the first round, the arbiters of PC are back around once again with a proposition that they know, this time, is going to just blow the market away. It has to, because the fact they haven't already is inexplicable. Valve have owned the PC gaming market for yonks, they know what gamers look for, putting out their own hardware shouldn't be this much of a hassle. And yet you've got the Steam Machine, a little box with limited support that, in hindsight, feels like an expensive beta test. The Steam controller, which seemed like it was poised to change the world, until it wasn't. And then there's the Valve Index, by all reports an absolute premium option to the VR world that works fantastically, but is prohibitively expensive and so will never win the common man over like the executives would want. What Valve needed was a middle ground, an affordable console with a great value proposition. And that seems to be where they're aiming right now.

Though I'm not a hardware enthusiast who can rattle on for ages and ages about 'console specs' and just how powerful my mean-bean machine is under the hood, I can at least follow along when Valve tell us that their inhouse technology has been constructed to play more than 8,000 titles. Wait, I even wrote that and I don't believe it. 8,000? Valve seems to be shooting for big AAA titles, which of course leaves room for all the smaller independent titles which, should the guys in the high tower wish it, this platform could become an absolute champion for. To their word it will run Doom Eternal, Control, Jedi Fallen Order, freakin' Death Stranding; and run these games in a screen decently bigger than the switches at a 720p resolution. The only downside being that there's no way for the footage to be instantly sent to a 1080p screen through  a dock. There is a dock, however, to which keyboards and alternate screens can be attached. (But it won't be instant and smooth, Valve wants us to 'take the initiative' or some such rot.)

That, honestly, is pretty impressive given that a lot of the games we see hit the Switch takes herculean efforts to port something that'll actually run on the piddly little thing. CD Projekt still insist their porting partners conversed with black devils in order to conjure up the Witcher 3 Switch port, yet apparently Valve can rock that game up to their machine with nary an effort. So how is it working? My first guess was game streaming, but that's apparently not the case; all these games are said to be native. (Which certainly speaks of a severe memory cap headed for excited future users) It's just a kickass machine built to run better than my gaming machine. (which isn't saying a great deal, considering my machine is held together by rubberbands and toothsticks.) And with that heft comes a hefty price, Newton laws dictate such, thus you're looking at 350 to 550 if you want PC gaming in the palm of your hands.

But in honesty, that isn't really all that bad at all. I mean, I couldn't source a PC for that money which could run all the games that this is said to be capable of, so something tells me that Steam is really taking a hit in the gut to be able to offer these prices and that makes them sort-of onpar with the recent next gen. (At least price wise. Again, not here to talk specs.) Oh, and if you're wondering why the price gap is so large, that 350 model only comes with 64 gig storage and not SSD. Basically meaning they'll be some AAA games that you just won't be able to play on it. (It's actually a little criminal that the base model doesn't have 256 gigs, anyone can see the way that game sizes have been ballooning in the past few years, this model could be practically nullified in less than two years time.) The big spenders get everything they could want, from 512 GB (still kinda skinny, I wonder if the Deck takes add-ons?) SSD, and a carry case. (As well as the longest wait, given how that version of the console is slated for late 2022)

And do you want to hear the best part of this console, at least to me? The fact that Valve are aware of potential scalpers and are making active attempts to cut them off at the pass. Can you believe that? When the big two companies are still doing nothing amid a wake of low stock numbers, Valve have done the bare minimum and made it so that brand new accounts can't mass pre-reserve copies for Ebay. I mean, that's happening anyway for whatever reason, but it's not an apocalyptic wave of resellers literally threatening to drown the market with scarcity. Now part of the reason this is possible is because Valve is handling purchases in house, but that's just more reason why it was stupid for the console developers to stop doing that. Shame on you Series X and PS5, you've been out-consoled by a PC store handler, shame on you.

Of course, for others the best part of the console will be getting the chance to play their massive steam libraries in a much more comfortable setting as they take their game with them, and these games are coming off of existing libraries, so you won't be forced to deal with insane handheld prices that dragon's like Nintendo force over their ecosystems. If only something could have been done about the design to make it less... objectively boring. Maybe add some colours, a little pattern on the back, some ergonomic handels, a maliciously sentient AI personality; I don't know, just give me some reason to put this on my desk with pride next to my Switch, instead of hiding it in my beside table alongside all those classic books I'm totally going to read one day. (I'm trying Tolkien, but you put in so many darn songs!) But if you've half a mind more than me and don't care about appearance, this does seem like the handheld solution that all those third party defenders have wanted to be for so very long. I wonder how the launch will inevitably bungle the whole thing up. (it's the way of things. It is- inevitable.)

Many will tell you that the reason why the Steam Deck is going to absolutely win this time around is because it's not competing with the Nintendo Switch, and whilst I don't think that's objectively untrue, I can see the argument. Nintendo have developed their niche and Steam is welcome to seek out theirs on the same platform, so long as they don't steer to closer to the plumber man's turf. I do see competition in the Steam Deck, but beyond all that I see potential, more than has ever existed for previous failed Valve ventures and more than Google Stadia ever had. I think it ties into the response, people seem eager to embrace this new handheld, excited for a new toy to play with, and that spirit of anticipation is just infectious even to lil ol' me who wouldn't pick up one of these if they were last weirdly affordable, undeniably powerful, proposedly comfortable Valve-branded boxes on the market. At least not yet, my vote is we give the things room to market to us before we start making advanced dinner plans and go picking out the bunting. But until then, quality first moves, Valve, lets see if they can keep their good string of press up until next year and the actual launch,

My Manuscript on the Monetisation of Modular Modifications

Take a little, give a little

Not too long ago I wrote a little piece about my opinion on mods; that practise wherein extra game content is made and played by members of the community without the involvement of the developers. In my years of active modding, I have found the experience to be involving and rewarding in providing scenarios that I could never have expected out of my favourite go-tos. Some games build entire communities around modding and others are maintained exclusively through the hard work of modders. All this perpetuates the spirit of sharing that dominated the philosophy behind, and the early life, of the Internet; wide spread sharing.

But it was not so long ago that the balance between creator and player was put in peril through the implementation of 'paid mods'. It has been a great many years since this incident and it feels as though the community's scars have mostly healed, the idea still lives on through a highly-curated storefront and most everyone has moved on. But as someone with far too much time on their hands, I find myself coming back to this time, now and again, tossing over this debate in my head. On one hand, some of these creators put in considerable amount of personal effort into creating fantastic content that sometimes surpasses the original creators; whilst on the other hand, the relationship fundamentally changes once money is involved. I find myself torn to this day. But let's ensure everyone is up to speed.

When I use the term 'Paid mods', I am specifically referring to the short-lived feature on Steam's personal mod hoster; Steam workshop. Valve wanted to try their hands at evolving this part of their service by including a paid mod feature, for which the platform would earn commission. In order to launch this in the strongest possible manner, Valve partnered with Bethesda in order to beta test this idea on, perhaps the single most modded game of all time, Skyrim. People have bought everything imaginable to Skyrim including, and I swear I'm making none of these up; Skyships, working wings, magic carpets, walking talking mushrooms, guns, a Super Mario land and a working train system. If any game was going to provide the perfect petridish of consumers to try out paid mods, it was going to be Skyrim.

Upon the first announcement, the reaction from the community was the very soul of conflicted. People spent their time discussing much of the same issues that I raised earlier; Some mods are so good that they deserve money but others simply don't. A lot of mod authors work on mods out of the love of the act, throwing money in there muddies the equation. And then there is the plain fact that when you try to throw a price tag on something that has always been free you'll get a lot of proud 'freeloaders' who don't want to hear about it. Few topics have wrought me to such a point where I find it impossible to pick a side, even just for myself. Valve and Bethesda watched all this discourse and then made the decision to go with it anyway. Afterall, this was a beta test, what was the worst that could happen?

In 2015, from April 25th to April 27th, (Right through my Birthday. Yay!) the paid mod service was up and running through Steam before being unceremoniously shut down. During that time, only 19 mods were made available to the public, with two being removed early due to copyright complaints, until the entire system was scrapped due to insurmountable backlash. We can still look back at the range of content available in order to get an idea for what we could have expected if they stuck with it. Chesko's Arissa was one the mods that I have actually played (when it was free.) Arissa is a well made, if short, companion mod that never got ported to Special Edition for some reason. Then there are some weapon mods, a few based of Valve properties (Dota 2 and Half life), a new location mod, a location redesign mod and a fishing overhaul.

As you can see there was nothing truly earth shattering in this initial rollout and as such we saw base prices fluctuate from $0.25 (For a sword) to $4.99 (For the companion). But the base price wasn't the be-all-end-all, because Valve introduced a pay-what-want system in order to allow purchasers to tip handsomely if they felt the content demanded it. This led to a slew misinformation campaigns, wherein people attempted to buy the fishing overhaul for $199, and then posted a screenshot of that price, pretending that is was the base. Efforts like this caused strain between the community and mod developers as unscrupulous elements tried to drum up false outrage. Valve and Bethesda likely saw the seeds of this behaviour and decided to pull out of the race quickly, in order to avoid causing lasting damage.

That doesn't mean that the practise went away, merely that they changed direction. (Here is were I start to get iffy about the whole scene.) Bethesda, independent of Valve, decided that they still wanted to try their hands at monetising mods, under creative supervision and protected through their storefront. In August, 2017, Bethesda introduced the 'Creation Club' into Fallout 4; a platform wherein minute pieces of content would be developed my Bethesda and certain partnered modders and then be sold for a small fixed fee. (Hello microtransactions.) The system was also included in their re-release of Skyrim; Skyrim: Special edition, at launch. At the time Bethesda sold this as a way to 'prepetuate your favourite games' but the general consensus is that this is an attempt to monetise an 8 year old game.

The Creation Club was created in order to ensure that all the content included in this new 'paid mod' initiative was entirely original and not pulled from being previously free. (Like a few of the original 19 were) This hasn't stopped accusations of plagiarism, like when they released 'Chinese stealth armour' and 'Enclave Hellfire Armour' for Fallout 4, not too long after an independent mod author had done so for free, but given that the assets do belong to Bethesda that argument didn't really hold much water. Since then the Creation Club has expanded on it's own to offer mods ranging from something as small as a collection of new alchemical ingredients, to something as elaborate as an indepth survival mode for Skyrim (That was a whole lot more fun than Fallout 4's free survival mode.) and a high-quality dungeon mod headed by some of the most imaginative minds in modding.

As you have likely picked up, I find myself at odds with myself over the Creation Club. On one hand it seems like a great way to prolong the life of these games with little pieces on inexpensive content that even supports modders. (Not directly, they are hired on commission.) On the otherhand, this may set a precedent for future Bethesda titles. I think part of the reason that the Creation Club's backlash has been fairly muted is because it was applied to titles that had already been released and came out in an acceptable fashion. What happens when new Bethesda games lack several small mainstays (Like the famous Daedric Artifacts)  in order to hawk them to us down the line? You may think that it would be insanely incendiary for Bethesda to do that, (not to mention short-sighted) but Bethesda have been on a roll of making bad decisions lately, what if that starts to seep into the main game's development?

I will always be on two minds about the topic of paid mods. I love the idea of being able to support modders and would appreciate it if more tools were implemented that made it easier to do so; but make it an obligation and things become questionable. Part of the fun of modding is scouring the web, looking for things you never though possible and then trying them out for yourself. It's an exploratory process with absolutely no strings attached. The Creation Clubs seems to be purpose-built not to challenge that, for the time being, but I find myself worried about how the future might manifest. But then, I am a habitual worrier, so I may being seeing smoke where there is none.

G2A and the 'Grey Market'

Looking a little grey, today.

Forgive me for speaking about the PC marketplace again so soon, but I've had another topic come to mind in this department. I want to talk about a spot of bother that has alighted within the discourse surrounding the 'grey market' online retailer: G2A. Now, full disclosure, I'm actually a bit of a square when it comes to online PC marketplaces. Although I have about 4 launchers installed, I've only ever purchased games from Steam. As such, I've never taken any risks with some of these less-than-kosher transaction sites like the one I'm speaking of today. However, G2A seems to be the poster children for shady retail business practises so I feel I'd be remiss not to write at least blog on them.

Recently, you may have heard about that tweet from Mike Rose wherein he urges consumers to consider pirating games over buying them off of G2A. It's a very alarming statement, indeed. It makes one wonder 'what does a service have to do to someone that would make them send out a damning message like that'. And then you look into it and you begin to understand. See, I referred to G2A as a 'Grey Marketplace' earlier and I did so intentionally. You see G2A are not, themselves, a launcher. They can provide games but not support access to those games in the way the Epic, Steam, Uplay and Origin does. As such, G2A operates by selling activation keys for those other retailers through their storefront for heavy discounts. This sort of second-hand marketplace may seem like a inevitable growth from a capitalist economy from the surface, but as with anything in life, it ain't all that simple. 

G2A accepts Steam Keys sourced from the public and wantonly distributes them for a slice of profits. The problem is that they often find themselves being enablers of some particularly shady sales scams. Most prominently mentioned is the scam with stolen credit cards. Steam keys are bought with stolen credentials then quickly turned over through G2A; once the victims discovers the charge and cancels the card, the credit card charge-back goes straight to the developer. Steam likely ends up cancelling the key too, leaving the developer and customer out of pocket. This wouldn't be so harmful if we weren't also talking about Indie companies suffering from this scam. You know, the one's who lack the backing of a big publisher and have to devote potential development time to chasing down credit card transactions and paying bank charges in their own time.

Another grift, brought to light by Mike Rose in his tweet chain is the 'steam gift' scam. This one isn't so familiar to me, but from what I can tell it involves selling a link instead of a key. When the customer clicks on the link they are promised to be gifted the game over the 'Steam gift' function. Much like you would expect from trusting strangers over the Internet, nothing comes of the promise. The seller makes their money, the retailer makes their commission and the customer gets diddly squat. At least that's how I had it described to me.

G2A doesn't engage in this unknowingly, either. G2A has more than enough information at their disposal to be able to flag any suspicious activity immediately. The fact that they don't is indicative of either gross incompetence or willful negligence. Neither of which paints G2A is a particularly flattering light. They even made a point to, in an official statement, label this controversy as 'attention grabbing', which is stereotypical bad-guy talk. I don't mean to invoke an irreverent spirit in this matter or anything but you really just can't make up how bad the G2A team is at PR. Genuinely awe-inspiringly terrible.

That isn't even the only way the G2A has actively worked against the best interests of developers, either. When Mike Rose was starting to bring all this to light; G2A, in their infinite wisdom, decided to take out a google preferred Ad on his game 'Decenders'. This means that when you search for his game on google, their listing comes up first, eclipsing his own. You seriously couldn't make up a more perfect pantomime villain at this point.

In all seriousness the effect that 'flea market' sites like G2A have on the games industry is worrying. When they make a mistake it has a very serious impact on the indie community. Their bad practises have the potential to cripple small developers in ways that those developers cannot fight against. Unless we begin holding these people to higher standards we may see some of these studios get killed off through no wrongdoing of their own. Companies like G2A will, and have, argue that if they
disappear than someone else will pop up and do exactly what they do within a week. I hope that you see how stupid of a statement that is too, dear reader.

So what is the solution? Well nothing cut and dry, I'm afraid. As asinine as their statement was, G2A are correct. Scammers will always scam, there's no changing that. But there has to be a better way to police the online marketplace from these kinds of practises. Mike Rose, as previously mentioned, advocates for pirating games over buying them from G2A; but that's more a spiteful gesture then a plausible solution. In time, some organising body will undoubtedly take over and slap down regulations, but this will likely end up in blow back for legitimate traders too. Perhaps it is appropriate, then, for some of these legitimate retailers (Such as Steam and Epic) to utilise some of their profits to work towards fixing the problem before someone comes along and fixes it for them. Until then, we can simply wait and see how this all plays out. It's out of our hands.

Store Wars

Attack of the Epic.

Competition is good, isn't it? Healthy they say. But what would you say exactly defines 'Healthy' competition. If you ask Epic games they would say "Any and all competition. There's no such thing as predatory, malignant and consumer-punishing competition. Not at all!" Afterall, Steam deserves a little kick up the backside, don't they? They've been complacent too long, it's made them indolent and greedy, hasn't it? Well, that may be true; but if my quasi-religious childhood taught me anything, it's that fighting fire with a flamethrower just makes a big mess. (That was what 'Cain and Abel' was about, right?)

First, let my preface this post by explaining that I am a multi-platform gamer. I am a console gamer, PC gamer, Switch Gamer (Not sure if that counts as handheld or not) and, on the weekends, a little bit of a mobile gamer too. So I'm intimately familiar with crappy business practises held by each medium. The pathetic sales that you get on Console, the perpetual premium pricing from Nintendo's switch, every little thing about mobile gaming; and then there is PC. From a consumer standpoint, Steam is the ideal retail platform for a gamer. A feature complete store front loaded with quality-of-life touches, a non invasive interface that boots and runs almost entirely in the background and actual worthwhile sales discount. The real problem with Steam comes in their commission, wherein they take between 30-40% of a game's sales made on that platform. This used to just be the cost of selling a game on PC; as Steam was, and still is, the biggest gaming store on computer. However, Everything changed when the Epic nation attacked.

In July 2017, a little dud-of-a-game called Fortnite dropped. Not the Fortnite you know, but a cooperative tower-defence-esque third person shooter with touches of Minecraft in its building mechanics. Epic tried to sell the game on the creative freedom offered by their rudimentary creation tools, but few took the bait, and Fortnite was forgotten shortly before its release. I'm not saying that Fortnite was a failure or anything, it just wasn't the major success that Epic had it tipped as. In pops,  Player Unknown's Battlegrounds with its 'Battle Royale' gameplay and the huge success that followed. PUBG was nothing sort of a global phenomena when Fortnite first released. Epic saw this success, looked at their own game and, (I'd imagine), a cartoon light bulb popped over their heads. In a couple of months, Fortnite: Battle Royal had released and the rest is history. Ongoing history, actually.

It is important to stress just how popular Fortnite is. Like 'Minecraft' for the new age, Fortnite has reached the level of proliferation into pop culture where even non gamers instantly recognise the name. Arguably the biggest movies of all time, 'Avengers: Infinity War' and 'Avengers: Endgame', both did crossover events with Fortnite. Heck, Fortnite even had a brief cameo in 'Endgame'. Seriously. Last year, Fortnite wowed the industry with a revenue of $2.4 billion for their 'free-to-play' game. That's the biggest annual revenue that any video game has received ever. So basically, Fortnite made all of the money in the world and then some, leaving Epic games in quite the predicament. They had more money then they knew what to do with. (seriously, it was all over the floors and everything.) So, here's an idea: why not launch a competitor to Steam?

Okay, so the Epic game launcher already existed and had done for a while now, but this was very much the genesis moment for a new age of Epic, as store providers. Out the gate, Epic offers a better deal for developers then Steam, 12% commission off every sale and even less if you developed that game on Unreal engine. (Epic's in house game engine.) So that right there is one huge positive. Pat yourself on the back, Epic, you did it. Now every other transgression against the gaming world is completely justified. Now, I don't want to discredit Epic too much on this fact. The 12% commission is a much more reasonable ask then Steam's 30%, and the more profits that go straight from the consumer to the developer, the better. If only this positivity spread to every decision the folks over at Epic make.

One of the minor points of contention is the way how, despite making all the money in the world with the aforementioned: Fortnite, Epic seem deadset on investing none of that capital into improving their launcher. Now, The Epic Launcher isn't terrible by any means. It isn't great either, but anything that isn't the Origin launcher is heavenly in my book. However, Epic offers none of the quality-of-life features that steam implemented years ago, like; achievements, streaming support, multiple controller support, regional pricing, automatic refunds, user reviews, installation relocation, version rollback, mod support and VR support. But hey, at least the UI is nice to look at. It's as if Epic made a bet with Steam that they could maintain close competition with an inherently inferior service. Kudos to them, if true. Again, it is a minor point but it speaks volumes to Epic's approach and attitude to store development that even the basic amenities are neither offered nor promised.

So where does all that money go, I hear you ask. Well, after the CEO takes his cut and then the Board, the managers, the staff, catering, secretaries, golf memberships , yacht club and new age guru's all get their share. Oh, and the cursed term 'Epic exclusivity' gets uttered. Now, I don't have a huge problem with store exclusivity. Not when the exclusive game was made or funded by the store owner. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 being exclusive to Origin. Makes sense. Fallout 76 being available only on Bethesda.net. I'm sure many people prefer it that way. Borderlands 3 being an Epic exclusive. 'scuse me, what? Epic are flaunting their money left and right, buying over gaming companies and winning exclusivity of their games for up to a year. In this way, Epic doesn't win over an audience by offering them a better deal but rather strong arms them by making sure that the only place we can buy anticipated games is through them.

Of course, Epic claims that this is all in the pursuit of the strict curation of their store; which is their little dig at Steam. Epic wants to gather all these games together in order to make their store front the bastion of quality gaming content on the PC. Bold words. Bull; but they do touch on a good point. That point being, Steam's content moderation sucks. For years now, Steam seems to have no standards when it comes to what can or cannot go up on their store. And I don't mean to say that they should be going around judging what game is good enough to grace their digital shelves but it doesn't hurt to be a little proactive. The amount of cash-grab crap on Steam is nauseating, like that feeling you get when you wonder into that thrift store in the crummy part of town and you can just smell the mothballed sweaters and soggy Y-fronts from the window. And don't even get be started when it comes to the moderation Steam actually does do, all completely reactionary of course. So Epic does have a legitimate argument there, however then you remember that the Epic store features 'Dangerous Driving' and you realise that Epic are sort of standing in a glass house on that front.

Recently, one of the more insidious ways that Epic is drawing ire is by robbing players of their remaster discounts. Okay, that's more the consequence then the goal, but results are the same. Not long after TellTale's demise, its games were pulled from a lot of active store fronts, likely because there was no one around to pay for upkeep. Now that a remaster is on the way for The Walking Dead, however, Epic has revealed their trap card: They were the one's who bought up the TellTale games to sell on their store. Common practise would usually dictate that remasters and re-releases come along with some sort of benefit to owners of the original; discounts in the case of 'Dark Souls Remastered' or just being a wholly free upgrade in the case of 'Skyrim: Special Edition'. But now, Steam owners of the original Walking Dead will miss out on the remaster and the new 'monochromatic mode' unless they want to fork out full price for a game they already own on a different store front. It's confusing stuff like this that makes people hate the PC marketplace.

Finally there is the Kickstarter conundrum, wherein a slew of crowd funded games that originally promised backers Steam releases are being snapped up by Epic. In this instance it is hard to blame the developers for taking the deal. If they are desperate enough to ask the public for funding then they aren't going to turn down an offer from a big studio; even if it does mean selling out their fans, to some extent. This is a much more nuanced issue then the other Epic controversies, worthy of it's own blog, but the consequences are very much black and white for all to see. PR suicide for everyone but Epic. Although it's hard to say whether these exclusive deals has cost any of these developers dearly in sales (And if the Epic cash infusion offset that) but the damage to their reputation is readily apparent. Shenmue 3, Phoenix point and Outer Wilds have all found themselves at the brunt public backlash that is sure to haunt those studios beyond their immediate products. Who knows how much damage this will ultimately cause.

Epic have positioned themselves at the 'underdog' spot in the war against Steam, but they come across more like the antagonists. Forcing users to flock to them with exclusivity deals whilst giving interviews and telling everyone how good they are for the industry. This kind of greedy, petty, squabbling is an example of some of worst tendencies of the gaming industry and likely an omen of potentially worse practises down the line. Just imagine what might happen when actually malicious companies start getting in on the gaming marketplace world; like Google or Amazon. Or >Shudder< the house of mouse!

I don't hate Epic. I just think that they could do better, and I think they know that too. With the amount of mistakes that Steam had made, one doesn't need to stoop to low brow tactics in order to win over fans. Epic could just have easily built up their service, offered studios their competitive percentage, and helped fund indie studios. Those alone would have ingratiated them to the community and set them apart from the greedy tendencies of the gaming industry. Instead Epic have just proved themselves to be another product of that greed and, most annoyingly of all, have the audacity to keep reminding us all of how grateful we should be that they exist. The last thing I ever wanted to do was stand up for Steam, so I won't. But neither will I stand for Epic. They are both poor reflections of each other, and the weight of their feud will bring down the bar for the whole industry with them. Maybe I'm being an alarmist or pessimistic with this post, or maybe this time, the pessimist is the optimist's realist.