"Last of us Remake isn't cash grab" says the cash grabbers

 Do I detect a conflict of interests?

Hardly a week ago the Last of Us Part 1 Remake went gold which means that we can all sit back and enjoy the fruits of what so far looks to be one of the most pointless remakes of recent memory. A touch-up of a game that is hardly a decade old looking only slightly more worked on than the Dishonoured Remaster, and sporting a shiny spanking new price tag in order to suck some fresh schmeckles out of an audience of fans who really don't need to be nickle and dimed right now, of all times. Oh but hark! Old lady Naughty Dog has crawled off her porch to shout obscenities our way for the crime of looking upon the fresh cane mark on our cheeks and questioning whether or not it's fair. "Don't call this a cash grab, I'll take no such insolence from you" she spits, chewing on her gums and something sticky and black between them. "You'll open up and swallow your Remast-, I mean Remake, and you'll like it! After you've handed over your credit card details, of course. These expensive projects that no one asked us to embark on won't pay off themselves, you know? Oh and don't forget the digits on the back, I might need to fleece you for the next Remake our the boys are cooking up."

Now yadda yadda, you're going to want to defend something you're working on, yadda. But have some humility while you're at it, eh? A developer, not the lead but a mind from the process, declared how this game couldn't be a cash grab because of the care they're putting into the project. Which, in all fairness, is a definite boon. As much as I poke, I'll bet there's some increadibly impressive work being done on the Remake in order to make it accurately represents the original in new shiny glory; but good lord if that doesn't totally miss the point of why people are incensed I don't know what does. I wasn't concerned it was going to be a low effort port, and if this is some kind of strange attempt to equate this situation to the GTA Definitive Edition then let's put the kibosh on that right now. You'll earn no merits by comparing yourself next to an absolute horror-show disaster. Just because that crap is crappier than your crap, it doesn't mean your crap is any less crappy. Savvy?

This game is going to be realised in "The way the developer intended", we are being told. Which means that ol' Neil Druckmann, in between sessions of concentrated fart sniffing, dreamt of the exact game they were currently making only with higher resolution models and ray tracing! Get out of here with that 'George Lucas' bull, will you? The Last of Us Part 1 came out in 2013 and was the belle of the ball in that year and for many years following; there hasn't been so much of a seismic shift in technology that a total remake is going to utterly change the face of the product and shoot it into the vastly improved future. This isn't as much of a revolution as the Demon Souls Remake, honestly. And don't even get me started with Final Fantasy 7 Remake comparisons! That whole "The way they intended" garbage is such 'empty marketing drivel', sheesh... 

Oh, but here's a good actual point I've seen bought up in defence of the Remake. And it's a doozy, listen here: "No one's forcing you to buy this." Ah yes, we're taught to call this one the 'EA defence', in sleazy video game scheme school. But in the context there could be half of a warped point to be made here, because he is right; Neil Druckmann has yet to lose his last grip on reality and go door-to-door forcing his products on people at gunpoint. That is accurate. And in fact it's so liberating to know that I can, at any point, abstain from this Remake and hop along to the original version of Last of Us on Steam and buy it at a reasonable price po- oh wait, I can't? The only way for a PC player to play this game is through this upcoming Remake? No exceptions? So if that's the case... then I guess... if we really put this together... I'm kinda, sorta, maybe, actually, being forced to buy this grossly expensive remake if I want to play the Last of Us... aren't I?

 

Ah but I already know the next argument and it's another doozy. (We're doozing it up today!) This is when the grey matter starts leaking out their ears as defenders rush up to regurgitate the half-digested faeces fed to them buy their marketing heads. "Oh the game is £70 at retail? Um, that's actually to take into account the expenses of game development and catch up with inflation, which the games industry is immune to." Okay so number one; that isn't how finance works you absolute Neanderthal. Secondly, yeah games were £60 since the 90's and before; that's because they were all egregiously overpriced! We've coexisted with the sixty pound price tag so long because it's slowly grown into being equitable, but that by no means implies that games have only been £60 for the past two decades. Or are we to just ignore the rise of DLC, seasons passes, microtransactions and all the other ways that companies have carved off small pieces of their game to sell them for extra's on the side? Like Horizon Forbidden West is doing despite having sold at a £70 premium price point. Are we going to willfully ignore the $15,000 average price to complete a single character in Diablo Immortal within a normal human's lifespan? Because I ain't ready to just ignore all that.

And then there's the real kicker. Games have decided that despite being one of the most profitable industries in entertainment, that they deserve this random price hike right on the cusp of a cost of living crisis. Yeah, this hits hard over here in England and in the United States right now, but the current state of the world means hardly anyone out there isn't struggling to meet their daily living standards without shelling out something extra. And games want to take advantage of people who are having difficulties trying to meet their essentials, and then they turn around and wonder why people are buying less games on average than they were last year. That kind of sounds like scum-sucking self sabotage, or at the least a 'money grab', wouldn't you concur?

So by all means, go ahead and publish your Last of Us Remake and dazzle the world with it's impressive graphics and the like but stay off your soap box to start moralising to the rest of the world how far away from a cash grab this game is. As long as it's price gouging it's customers it's going to be a cash grab in some shape, it just so happens that with the fact this is literally a 10 year old game remade faithfully on a slightly prettier engine, this whole project reeks of being particularly schemey. But I shouldn't worry, people will still flock to pick this up and another big game is going to loose out on a potential purchase as the trend of people buying less games with the rising costs starts to dig into the gaming industries bottom line as they continue to callously believe that the general public have an infinite pool of money for luxury expenses.

What surprises me is this defensive nature of treating discourse like this as an 'us versus them' situation, and it does spur from both sides. But at it's core all we really want is an equitable and fair industry that is beneficial to both sides, because once the pendulum starts to swing one way more than it should, it starts to form cracks which, when untreated, break apart the very fabric of the industry. If you're too immature to recognise that, on either side, then perhaps this is a debate you should really sit out just in case you end up doing more harm than good; because this, and the precedent it will set, is a very hotbutton and consequential issue. I just hope that all the companies around Sony and Square Enix are levelheaded enough to be able to see that. (Although knowing EA; I'm betting their next game will launch at a £75 retail mark-up.)

The Last of Us: Highway robbery edition

 Your money or your Remakes

Ah, another day another exciting remake the likes of which  will completely reimagine a game that we hold so dearly to our hearts, not just bringing it up to snuff with those rose-tinted recollections from the backs of our minds, but surpassing even our wildest dreams of what that game once looked like! Who could forget that incredible Resident Evil 2 Remake, or the genre bending Final Fantasy 7 Remake? Even the Demon Souls Remaster-style Remake truly pushed the boundaries of fidelity past their resting point! Truly we're in the age of the increadibly transformative remake! So what's up next? The Last of Us? The Last of Us Part 1? That's... not even an exciting sounding new suffix, it's actually almost insulting in how basic it is. And it's going to... what? Remake a game that was already remastered for the last gen? Why? What can you possibly bring to the game that wasn't already there? Is this another 'technical remake' where everything is functionally the same but they had to create it from scratch on a new engine? I'm feeling like it is.

Not to pour water on the people out there who are obviously going to be excited about this, but this feels kind of lack lustre. I know there will be fans, people would give their first born child to save The Last of Us 1, afterall The Last of Us Part 2 has people who sing it's praises to this day even with the numerous garish and whole-hog-fisted thematic choices that stink of 'look how clever and artistic I'm being!' (Yes Neil, you had a boss fight against two people wielding a Hammer and Sickle, truly your intellectual ingenuity knows no bounds.) Of all the games that really need a remake around about this time in the industry cycle of trends with Resident 4 and Knights of the Old Republic on the docket, does The Last of Us really deserve a place on that list? Is it going to earn a spot? I doubt it, somehow.

And it's not the only piece of Last of Us news which fell a bit flat. There's the show which, again, looks like actors in dress-up rather than anything with a heart and soul of it's own. And maybe that's the taint of having endured the abysmal Halo TV series which is making me see things that way; that show could convince me that the Godfather movies were on the same level as The Room which it's mind-addling awfulness; but I'm just completely not sold on this show and why it has to exist at this point. Then again, I have admitted to feeling that way about pretty much every videogame adaptation in production. Metal Gear, why? Mario- okay that casting still makes me chuckle so that might be entertainingly weird at least. Yakuza- wait is that real? Damn it's just talks about prospective production studios right now- that would be amazing, that's the only adaptation I approve of!

At least there's the The Last of Us factions game coming out which is, thank god, new content. It is ancillary universe stuff for a world which I don't necessarily think warrants genuine building beyond the trails of its title characters, but maybe I'm looking too critically at things. (I have a tendency to do that from time to time.) To be fair, The Last of Us was one of those games with a surprisingly decent multiplayer mode, and whilst we'll never get a full game adaptation of Max Payne 3's excellent multiplayer, this makes a decent enough consolation prize. Oh but here's a special bit of news; that Last of Us remake is coming to PC! Hark? Well that's such great news I can overlook the unnecessariness of it's existence. In fact, heck I can even justify it! Yeah, the original game was probably too tightly wound for a decent port, this remake was the only way the rest of the world would see a decent build of the game. Yes, this had completely turned the news around and there's nothing which could now put a damper on- wait, it's how much?

Okay. We need to have a chat about the utter SHENANIGANS that Sony Entertainment Studios is grinding on these days, because it has to stop. You too, Square Enix, don't think you can slink away with your head down and get out of this, you both have some explaining to do! What, in the stinking cursed depths of Merlin's soggiest posing pouch, do you think gives you the right to try and force the gaming industry to up the standard price of new games up an extra $10? Tell me true, because I don't wanna hear any of the lies again. I'm done and tired with the cow waste, now I wanna hear the facts! Because let me tell you, one and all, that there is quite literally no publicly presented excuse for this pathetic attempt at a price hike that can withstand against the slightest scrutiny of a critical eye, and I'm about done with stuffy suited saps telling me otherwise.

What's that they like to tell us? "Oh the price of video games hasn't risen with inflation for decades, it's just about time!" That's bull, plain and simple. If the price of games hasn't gone up in all that time then what the heck are special editions? $100 Collectors Editions? DLC? Microtransactions, subscriptions, lootboxes and all the other litany of extra revenue sources that can make a single game drain three figures worth of income out of some players? Whatsmore, how about a game that just came out, Diablo Immortal, that skewers itself on the pay-to-win spike so far that it turned the acquisition of power into a paid chances game where speculators have estimated it could cost around $100,000 to max out a single character. Don't turn around and tell me there were $100,000 games back in the 90's because there wasn't and you'd be arguing completely in bad faith.

And then there's the big one; oh games are so expensive, woe is us! That sounds a little bit like a *you* problem, not a consumer one. The trend of AAA development is to sink itself into this constant game of one-up-manship that just doesn't work with a qualitative metric such as art. Just take a look at modern movies and the stalemate they've met where pure spectacle films are reaping diminishing returns; this journey isn't sustainable. These games companies build themselves into a money sinking model and then try and punish the consumer for their own problems by charging extra for the games. No- this solution starts at you. As the market becomes more saturated with competition that is not the time to start upping your prices under the delusion that it makes you seem more valuable; it makes you look like an opportunistic arse, which may be truer to the point than we know.

$70 for a game is just too much, plain and simple. This industry makes literal billions and it sure doesn't sink all of those funds into development, not even close; so Sony and Square can get out of here with their silly excuses and justifications. And to try this on a remake- again! I can't believe I'm saying this, but these companies have somehow overtaken NINTENDO for the company that exploits it's legacy properties the most, because at least the big N only charges normal full price for twenty year old games. If you let them have this, give up and slap down a purchase, make no mistake that they will take a mile. What they want to establish is a sliding scale where games become steadily more expensive and we have the opportunity to buy less of them. I don't even want to get into the general world economy and wage stagnancy because I'm no economical professional and clearly neither are these games companies with the utter nonsense they're spewing! Nice try, Sony; but I think I'll look elsewhere for my fix. 

Sony's tree vs Gaming's forest

How the turns table

One of the more fun aspects of following the gaming world is discovering new ways in which the worlds of information and perspectives can open up to you, with results that you never might have conceived of before. I don't pretend to be some grizzled well-travelled professional pundit who knows the ins and outs of how every business decision across the industry is made, so times come when I'm completely thrown off-guard by a story that makes me go "Oh yeah, I guess that would be a problem, huh." Point in case, this whole sudden backlash that has been thrown Sony's way, a company who recently could do no wrong in the eyes of the average gamer through sheer merit of being the only game manufacturer with any confidence nowadays. (If 'confidence' is what we're labelling callous pig-headedness, but I'm getting ahead of myself) At first all I heard about this story was the news that Sony would be remaking The Last of Us Part 1, (go-go gadget eyeroll) but suddenly those stories ballooned into damning indictments of Sony's entire corporate structure and it seems like the whole world is screaming about how Sony have 'lost their touch' and are 'getting drunk on their own success.'

All of this stems from the accusation that Sony devs are becoming upset with the main company's growing obsession with creating blockbuster titles and how they're slowly shaping their entire company towards only that pursuit. This started with news of Sony folding one of their longest running Japanese studios into another, ending a 27 year long run with one swift consolidating wave. (And losing several employees who were none too pleased about it in the process.) Now this is great news for Microsoft who have been desperate to stick their toes in as many pies as possible; if Sony wants to step away from their home market (a strategy which Sony vehemently denies, by-the-by, regardless of prime evidence to the differ) then that just opens the field for Xbox to secure some of that Japanese audience which they've callously ignored up until now. But, why would Sony be stepping back from Japan to begin with, that is where they're from afterall. (Allegedly stepping back, I should say) Well, indicators suggest it's to move toward the western market and to devote themselves fully to growing the next great blockbuster franchise.

Honestly, this really shouldn't be all that much of a surprise to anyone; Sony have been rather transparent about their business model for a while now. Ever since Uncharted 2 it seems they've been seeking out ways to homogenise the games they publish into a few blockbuster series that cost the GDP of several small countries to make and become must-owns in everyone's library due to their sheer quality. (Thus ensuring a profit) Uncharted, Last of Us, Infamous, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Ghost of Tsushima, Death Stranding, Final Fantasy 7, Spiderman, your mileage might vary on some of those titles but there's no turning around and calling any of them small-fry or time-killer games. These are fully fledged AAA adventures that are designed to rule your summer in the same way that Hollywood does with their latest star-studded superhero movie. These are the games you're going to see printed on billboards, plastered on the side of busses, slid into every TV ad spot, woven into every banner ad, sequestered into every conversation and ultimately stamped onto both eyelids when you try to go to sleep at night. Sony have built themselves into an engine for producing 'Too big to fail' games, and it's only really recently that anyone outside the development studios have had a problem with that.

That's because they make, and seemingly have always made, great games. These aren't just titles that are big for the sake of being big; they typically fill that space with gusto, are technologically innovative and, frankly, are just plain impressive. So what's there to complain about? Well, when you put all your chips into one basket there's bound to be some bad eggs in the bunch. (Mixed metaphors much?) Making all of their games a horrendously bloated mega product makes the economics stand front and centre, influencing decisions astray from what's best for the industry or the artform and angling it more towards, 'what's going to allow us to keep this up for as long as possible?' Point in case- Xbox game pass. Now I don't care about no console loyalty or any of that malarkey; the Game Pass model is the future of game accessibility that more and more studios should be getting in on. (Heck, even Apple have their own version of it!) But stubborn ol' Sony doesn't want to play. Why? Because they invest so much money into each of their exclusives that it just plain wouldn't be finically wise to start sticking them on an affordable subscription service. So there goes Sony's chance to be ahead of the industry trend for game accessibility. And now you're starting to see how stifling this mindset can be.

But so far I've only discussed this from an outsider's angle, because that's where my personal viewpoint lies, however the real interesting elements which sparked my fascination in this matter to begin with actually spreads to the inner workings of this enigmatic gaming giant. One such element being the story of Sony Corp's Visual Arts Service Group, a nameless studio who have been assisting many of these large titles that I've bought up, making them probably some of the most qualified developers in the entire industry right now. (Good lord, those resumes must be gold lamented) But despite their several years worth of hardwork (successful hard work, I might add) the Sony blockbuster machine has kept churning and they've been trapped making other people's products for an age now, lacking autonomy of their own. (The dang studio hasn't even got a name yet! That's just neglectful...) The problem is that Visual Arts Service Group isn't nearly big enough to helm their own AAA blockbuster title, and Sony seems to be interested in nothing less nowadays.

Their story over the past few years has been one of hope getting swiftly crushed, as the Studio hoped to score the right to do their own product by kowtowing to Sony's ravenous hunger and helming a remake. (A much more doable prospect for this studio) They proposed Uncharted 1, which would have been too difficult because of it's age, and instead they settled on a The Last of Us remake. (See, we went full circle) This pleased the great feeding machine, because a remake could be bundled alongside The Last of Us 2's PS5 upgrade, and so the project was approved. Unfortunately, then The Last of Us 2 started to hit development snags and SCVASG (My god, I thought that acronym would read better before I typed it! These guys need a name) was drafted back into a support roll for Naughty Dog. The exact thing they wanted to move away from doing. And then, as if to rub salt into their eyes, upon The Last of Us 2's completion, Sony moved ownership of the The Last of Us Remake project over to Naughty Dog, essential stealing Visual Arts Service Group's idea and robbing them of credits and an identity. The group had been fearing for a while that they were destined to be consolidated into Naughty Dog, and now that seems like a forgone conclusion.

The gaming industry isn't run on the back of tentpole franchises, but a sea of smaller and imaginative titles that fill the gap between these huge event releases. But it seems more and more apparent that Sony is loosing sight of those lily pads in favour of the whole pond. Honestly, I never really thought of this as a bad thing until hearing of these stories, Visuals Art Service Group's and Bend Studio's. (Who got their 'Days Gone' sequel concept tossed out of the window because the first game, despite being profitable, was not a blockbuster success) They paint the picture of a distinctly unsustainable company ethos obsessed with topping itself each and every release; bigger budgets, bigger studios, bigger games and bigger success. And some think this makes them blissfully unaware of what they're setting themselves up for; a major fall. What happens when it all runs out of steam? What will Sony do when these series and studios, as these things do, start to change as old faces leave looking for something new? Will Sony have enough of a bedrock around them to raise another blockbuster studio and keep the train running?  I honestly have no earthly idea.

Sony are a giant of a company who have been on the top of the gaming industry for a while now, so I'm not surprised to learn that their leadership is pretty bullheaded and dismissive. I am surprised, however, to hear the effect it's having to their own talent, and I wonder if this news coming out will spark enough of a response to change their course at all. Because, as much as we may grimace at a studio of talented developers getting crunched up by the Goliathan content creator that is Sony, at the end of the day they're still on the top of their game. Putting out hit after hit, crushing sales figures, raking in awards; what's a little internal discontent against unadulterated success? I may have come around to the accusation that Sony is missing the forest for the trees; but I honestly can't see the Sony of today actually doing something about it. (Maybe the Sony of tomorrow. We'll see.)