The Wake of Team Fortress 2

 Hope you prepared a speech.

When we think about what we come to know as the Legends of the video game industry, few games out there who have lived as long as Team Fortress 2 has. Team Fortress 1? Never heard of it, couldn't pick it out from a line up? Mario? The guy has some staying power, but people go back to his games out of nostalgia, not to be routinely challenged. (That's what Kaizo and Cat Mario reimaginings are for) Counter-Strike? Well that is a game with some hefty legs on it but even then, TF2 beats it in the long stride by a clear stretch of 5 or so years. We're talking an online multiplayer shooter that has remained active and played throughout the entire lifespan of some newer online games in recent years. Elder Scrolls Legends lived and died, Anthem came and went, every Call of Duty since Modern Warfare has expended countless online lifecycles (with obvious exception to Warzone), and all the while Team Fortress 2 has remained open for business, run by the enigmatic purview of what I can only assume is an obsessive yet detached online AI operating system who lives to watch humans whittle away their lives killing themselves again and again in an online infrastructure that never significantly shifts.

It seems that TF2's lifespan is a spit in the face towards all the grounding core principals that modern gaming has established to determine what makes a long lasting online game stick. Especially in recent years with the whole 'live service' movement, everyone has been brainwashed into thinking that the only way a fanbase will put up for the long haul is if the game is inundated with new content every few months so that the game they play tomorrow is not the same as the one they own today. It is the philosophy of a huge sector of the industry, with entire studios now taking it as part-and-parcel that they'll have to shave off an active part of their operating structure to nobly warden over released Live Services whilst the rest of the team move on to newer shores. A genre that began being mocked as 'MMO light' in it's inception is now one of the core tenets of the industry.

But is that all a lie? I mean, Team Fortress 2 beats out the longest spawned Live Service style game ever, and that game is practically static and has been for large chunks of it's life. Sure it enjoys a few evergreen properties, from the subject of the gameplay (competitive team deathmatch never gets old) to the ageless cartoony visuals of the characters themselves. (No amount of Unreal Engine 5 power is going to render these models any better than they already are rendered.) 'Halo: Infinite' is sputtering and dying over the fact it's team can't squeeze out new comprehensive content within a 'reasonable' time frame, Overwatch, a game fashioned off of TF2 and thus sporting a similar but better realised visual style, has lost popularity so much that a proposed sequel is meeting with unimpressed scepticism following every review event. What made Team Fortress such a timeless franchise?

I think a lot of that comes from it's time and place in history, because it would be straight disingenuous to divorce nostalgia entirely from this equation. When Team Fortress 2 first launched it was at the height of Valve's popularity as a video game developer and everything they put out was destined to earn a legendary status. Remember this is a game that launched with the legendary Orange Box, a game collection that also featured 'Half Life 2: Episode Two' and 'Portal'; you could have shoved 'Ride To Hell: Retribution' into that package and it would have come away with fond well wishers all these years later. Back then Valve was the 'Rockstar' developer, the industry movers and shakers who's games were coveted by the vast majority of active gamers for the time, easily. Sure, the game industry and consumer base was a mere fraction of what it is today, but that just made it easier for a hit to bleed out of it's niche into the headlights of everyone who played games. TF2 was a legend before it ever had serious competition to fight for that title.

Which is what makes it all the sadder that after all this time, that game is dying. Remember when I hypothesised that Team Fortress 2 was overseen by an apathetic AI? Well just like another AI from popular culture, GLaDOS, this is a caretaker who has happily and uncaring watched the ecosystem and viability of Team Fortress 2 rot from the inside out with a detached professionalism and utter lack of interjection. Because you see, Team Fortress 2 isn't dying because the world has moved on from it, as is is destined one day, for sure. Team Fortress 2 is dying because it is a garden without any gardeners, with pervasive weeds that have spread and embedded themselves in every nook and cranny, sucking the life out of the expected crop and strangling the remaining community until they leave. Team Fortress 2 is another one of Valve's dirty little after thoughts.

Bots have overrun the Team Fortress 2 ecosystem with a vengeance, to a point where most people literally cannot find a game free of virtual robot players hunting around the map, killing for orders long gone cold. They fill every public lobby, litter every public match, and make it impossible for players without a big enough gang to run their own matches, to have some casual fun with the game they love. And whatsmore, although Team Fortress 2 never enjoyed the breadth of regular new content that modern Live Service's demand in order to establish themselves, it did get the odd bit of small scale updates here and there, just to let the player base know that the team still cared. Maybe it would be a new set of hats for the public to hunt for and trade with, maybe it was a thematically tipped event, and if you were exceptionally lucky it might even be a rare new character, Just enough so that the game wasn't a completely forgotten liability. Until those updates dried up.

But TF2 is a monolith in the industry, and unlike many other titles who have sunk under such pressures, this is a game with community willing to band together and fight for their game. Fans of the beloved mainstay reached out to one another across the wide maw of the internet, on Twitter, Reddit and- well, mainly just those two platforms. (They're great for that whole 'reaching out' business afterall.) And they established between themselves a peaceful protest to ask Valve to return to the game they forgot and the fans they left behind. No angry picket fences, no overly verbal diatribes into the failings of the gaming giant; just a demonstrative coming together of fans across the Internet to show everyone exactly what they're missing by letting the TF2 community be drowned in this deluge of inequity. And you know what; they actually got themselves a response!

I mean it was a pitiful and non-committal sliver of a response. Valve's lazy equivalent of 'we see your feedback'; but that's better than nothing at all! And how could they not respond when a surge of another 10 000 players logged onto the game at the same time to... just stand around in the lobby, I suppose? Nah, they could probably organise some private games between them, right? Have some fun?  Regardless, the community proved that they cared about the game and Valve can see that. "We love this game and know you do, too" says the official TF2 Twitter. "We see how large this issue has become and are working to improve things." So that's... well it's lip service but that's a milestone and a half. Given that this is a game that averages about 70,000 players a month according to Steam Charts, it really is quite amazing the problem was allowed to get this bad to begin with. And if this influx of interest inspires Valve to start treating TF2 as an active franchise again, then maybe there's hope for any game out there. Maybe even for Anthem! (Hah- I'm kidding of course. Anthem will always be a lost cause.)

Skill Based Match Making

Who's the most skillful of them all?

When we look at the spectrum of online games, there is a certain common expectation of 'competitive purity' that tends to transcend games and genres. Whenever we get to the point of pitting one human against another is a match-up of, what is predominately considered to be, skill, players engage with these matches whilst putting their trust in the developers behind the game to ensure that match-up is as fair as humanely possible to aid the most objective result. This is a responsibility that is very important for any online game developer to take seriously, lest they risk ruffling their core fan base, and it is the driving force behind many of the chief concerns that run in game developers minds to this day. However, there are times when the pursuit of objective fairness clashes with ideals that some consider to be healthy to the community, and I want to explore that today. More specifically, I want to discuss the benefits and ramifications of 'Skill Based Match Making'. (SBMM.)

Maintaining a healthy online ecosystem has always been important for online developers, but with the recent rise of 'live services' it has become even more integral than ever before. Developers are expected to keep on top the latest cheats and exploits that threaten to ravage their game as well as prevent the homogenization of particular 'Meta strategys' that could prove threatening to the concept of gameplay variety. This sort of management it what allows games like 'Overwatch', 'Team Fortress 2' and 'Counter Strike: Global Offensive', to continue to dominate online play times despite being years old. To this end, teams often deploy a variety of different methods to stay ontop of things, ranging from hands-off endeavours such as the development of 'Anti-cheat' algorithms, hands-on methods such as investigations into reported system abuse and banning, and community efforts such as Public Test Servers. (PTS.) All these systems serve towards endorsing a fair environment where as many people as possible get to enjoy themselves, benefiting recurrent player numbers and, hopefully,  provide strong feed for your monetisation mulcher. (Gotta pay for those servers somehow, right?)

Recurrency is a very important figure when it comes to any game's statistics, but it is incredibly omniscient in the 'online gaming' sphere. That is because 'recurrancy' is a figure often consulted when judging the 'health' of a game and, therefore, the viability of continued investment. Basically, if people enjoy the game enough to keep coming back then Publishers are more interested in supporting further development of that game in hopes of turning those players into profits down the line. This relationship incentivises developers to go out of their way to keep players happy as it benefits them financially: A perfectly symbiotic relationship with absolutely no downsides, right? Well, it actually depends who you are. For it is in the pursuit of 'making as many people as possible happy' that some peculiar systems have been created and endorsed by gaming companies in the past.

Perhaps you've heard of the concept of 'beginner's luck'? An interesting phenomena that is certainly worth some philosophical debate as to it's validity, but there is an observable result on the individual effect of it which is more relevant to the matter at hand. When the person in question, whom we shall call 'Individual A', (Like this is a freakin' legal document) tries their hand at a new skill, they can often do so in a probationary capacity in order to determine whether or not they'll enjoy the activity that they are attempting. The question of whether or not they will continue to try their hand at that activity can often be dependant on those initial few attempts. (You're likely familiar with the commonly recognized importance of 'First impressions') Therefore, if 'Individual A' has a positive experience in their introductory step into this new activity, they'll be encouraged enough to stick around and see where it takes them. This kind of reaction also applies to Online games, and as such it is very attractive in the eyes of developers and publishers.

Not too long ago, in the prime of online games, there was a bit of hubbub around a system implemented by developers with the intention of securing that early retention, which would then hopefully lead to regular recurrancy. This was a practice wherein new players would receive a 'beginner's bluff' when they started playing an online game that would subtly make that player more powerful, thus increasing the chances of them winning their inaugural matches and getting that early positive feedback loop started. This buff would typically only last for the first few matches, or until the subject secured their first win, but it still tilted the balance of 'fair play' in a direction that was unfair to those who put their time and effort into the game in order to become 'skilled'. Whatsmore, the practise came across as deceitful due to the fact that it was never disclosed explicitly by the company's who did it, despite the fact that a lot of them did. (I believe even Call of Duty got on board with this trend at one point.)

In their defence, however, the practice could be looked on as something mostly harmless in the grand scheme of gaming. Skewering a few matches in hopes of securing some more fans to the game might seem a bit dishonest, but it's certainly a lesser evil when compared to the methods that some of these companies use nowadays. Pro and Hardcore players have complained that this practice sullys the 'purity' of the game systems and well as decidedly striking against the core demographic of online gamers, (A.K.A. Them) but it is difficult to calculate what effect this practise actually had on the retention figures of veterans who were directly impacted from this system, and so such concerns typically went brushed off. Game developers who were outed for this practise hid behind the "You don't think you want it but you do" excuse that they so often do with clandestine systems like this. It is unclear whether or not that practice is still commonly used by online Devs, (I bet it is) but there is another practice which has drawn ire from the 'hardcore' community of gamers and that is 'mandatory SBMM'.

Skill Based Match Making is a system wherein the developers encode a series of AI algorithms to asses the 'skill' of players (often derived from stats such as 'Number of wins', 'Kill/death ratio' and 'Weapon Accuracy') and skewers the 'match making' systems in order to place players with others who are similar to them in 'Skill'. The intended consequence of this is to cut back on the amount of times that less-experienced players find themselves getting pummeled by those who are infinitely more skilled. In turn, this would promote the 'positive feedback loop' of players who feel more fairly matched against their opponents, thus encouraging recurrency and roping in a few more fans who can be monetized down the road. Once again, this feeds the old symbiotic relationship between players and developers so there can't be anything wrong with it, right? Well, this time there are some unforeseen consequences which actually effect more than just the few.

Most obviously, there is the accusation that this 'sullies the purity of the compeititon', which may sound 'whiney' but there is some truth to that accusation. Competitions, by their very nature, inspire a number of individuals from all levels of skill to compete against each other to secure some sort of victory. Developers who endorse SBMM, operate under the assumption that those who find themselves hopelessly outmatched will be then disincentivised to continue improving, but often the opposite can be true. Some folk, who find themselves eager in the face of challenge, can look upon the most powerful opponent of the game as a goal to strive towards. if they find themselves being constantly outwitted, they'll take it as indication to improve and these are the kind of folks most likely to become dedicated regulars to the game. But if these folk never come across anyone who truly challenges them, then they have no incentive to push themselves as they never come across an example of someone who is that much more skilled then them.

Of course, there is also an argument to be made for SBMM when it comes to 'high level play' scenarios too. Players who enter the upper echelons of competitive play are often left dissatisfied with picking off the bones of less skilled players, so it would be better for them to try their hand against players of equal footing to really challenge themselves. Of course, the method to make the best of both worlds in this scenario would be to allow a choice, and that is something that a lot of game's companies recognize, hence the creation of 'Ranked Matches'. Ranked matches typically use SBMM for those times when you want a blood pumping match up, whilst casual matches exist for those who appreciate the random luck of potentially being paired with a master or a novice. The key here is player choice, something that not all developers have been on board with all the time.

Apex Legends recently cam under fire for the way they implemented SBMM into their core, and only, match making function. It was stealthily added to the game in season 2, and folk are just starting to get sick of it and the way they've been given no choice but to play along. One of the key issues that has been pointed out with this set-up is the way that SBMM often overrides proximity based connections and thus can result in iffy Internet connections. Traditionally it is the top priority of any match maker to ensure that latency and lag is under control, but that all goes out the window with SBMM and Apex fans felt that the integrity of their experience had been sacrificed in the name of feeding the 'casul' market.

I find the debate surrounding SBMM to be a particularly interesting and intriguing one as it lacks a clear cut 'right' answer. One on hand I applaud the efforts of any studio that seeks to make their games more accessible, whilst on the other I don't feel that necessarily has to come at the cost of the core gaming experience. I'll be particularly interested to see how this issue plays out with Apex, given that they just won the Multiplayer game of the year award. For better or for worse, eyes will be on them to set an example going forward, and seeing as how I doubt this SBMM issue is going anywhere, theirs is an example that will prove very enlightening.