You're out of touch

 I'm out of time

There are many instance within the world of business that indicate a product or producer as being 'out of touch'. In fact, entire massive empires have fallen under this pressure. Blockbuster once held itself as the biggest in the world before falling for the hare-brained belief that Netflix wasn't even worthy of being seen as a serious competitor, which led to them failing to diversify as the viewing world moved away from rentals and collapsing under the pressure of trying to change far too late. But the circumstances are not always as dire, the stakes not always as large as the very reigns of society changing from one age to the next, and the downfall not always as tragic. Sometimes, when we're talking about video game companies, all it ever amounts to is developing a reputation. (Then again, reputations can be killers- depends who believes them.)

The most common example I think we see of this so very often is that of the 'out of date genre'. The game developed for an audience who are no longer there, by a people who were clearly following the trends of yesteryear. There's a real contention with this one because no video game genre is truly ever without it's fans and those that love what they love are terrified of admitting them are suddenly part of the niche when once they were among the majority of the industry. And yet that is exactly the character growth that MMO developers and players had to come to terms to when it became abundantly clear that this was a style of game that was just no longer in step with the ever day gamer, or even just the spirit of gaming as it came to be known.

Designed to be labours of extreme time investment, MMOs grew to a length of almost arbitrary bloat as everyone attempted to reiterate upon the uber-successful World of Warcraft formula. That alone ran up against gamers who had, you know, jobs and other requirements out of life. But even more fundamental than that, most MMOs tried to capture the very same online social meet-up atmosphere they had grown up with back in the days of Ultima Online and EverQuest. These games were as much hang-out spots as they were video games- but as internet communication grew ever more ubiquitous and easily accessible- the MMO became redundant as a social space, just as the physical spaces too did. MMOs that persist today tend to be cognizant of this and intentionally design themselves for other players- but an effort had to be made to get this way and many wasted their efforts on an out-of-touch dream.

Of course, if you were to ask people about game-types that are common but 'out of touch', there is a chance you'll land on 'The Bethesda formula'. Giant roleplaying games that focus more on the world simulation and roleplaying aspect of their games- controls and action can come across as somewhat clunky in even the most fluid of their catalogue. At their best, which would be Starfield, Bethesda titles land just outside that special sweet-spot within which the best shooters of the industry are separated by a hairs-breadth of fine adjustments- but given how elite that club is that might as well be a wide gulch separating lovers of responsive action from the relatively antiquated Bethesda modal. Some even call it tired.

And the blame will forever land on the Creation Engine which the deeply confused insist has been recycled since 2003 despite the fact the modern version of the engine literally boasts an integer signifying a revolution. But a narrative started will spread. At the end of the day those who want Bethesda to jump ship to one of the shinier engines in the market are absolutely delusional if they think that would improve their games. Without the modability of the creation engine Bethesda games would loose the vast majority of their appeal. But not everyone mods. Not everyone knows how to, or is willing to learn. (As has been made apparent by Fallout London and everyone's frank refusal to read basic instructions.) And to those that don't- Bethesda games just feel old-hat to play.

But what is the undisputed king of 'Out of Touch' video game publishers? Why that's an Ubisoft special- the fake voice chat. You know how it is- you're watching a gameplay reveal trailer for an upcoming cooperative multiplayer game and you hear the dreaded sound of voices that belong to no character. That's the game trying to simulate what you and your buddies sound like on the mic playing the game- you know, assuming you and your friends are perfectly cordial twenty-something perpetual-role-players that play games in a manner that literally no one else on the earth does. Calling out the environmental storytelling and treating it like a serious investigation into the serious details of the world, rather than just running around in circles whilst you trade turns reading chapters of 'My Immortal' at each other. (Just me?)

I always like to look at this style of video as a glimpse into what the developers want us to play like. Soaking in the details of the carefully crafted world and reading into the story clues, instead of just scanning around for loot chests and bunny hopping to the next shooting gallery. Calling out when we're reloading? Like serious, who the hell does that? Are we going to lay down covering fire from the AI? The day you make AI that's smart enough to try and flank when your clip runs dry is the day when such a behaviour can ever be considered warranted. Otherwise you are extolling the characteristics of the kind of online weirdoes who typically ward people away.

I wave my torch around and cry 'Heresy!' but the truth is I do find something honestly endearing about this delirious attempts to capture the community spirit that only seems to exist in the whimsical fantasies of marketing agents. There's something so adorable to think that these people actually think we play games like that, or look for those sorts of experiences from our gaming sessions. It's like the idealised Norman Rockwell postcard of the games industry that totally paves over the slur ridden, gatekeeper infested, sullen and sulking abaddonian breech that is our cursed little industry. May we forever live that perfect way in their heads, if not in reality.

Virtual Trading

 Rich in Bits.

Games need to end

 The unspoken rule.

Conflict and MMOs

 I brought you a gun!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are new age MMOs unsustainable?

Or are heading towards a crash?

Massively Multiplayer Online games are no small business in this world of gaming we persist in, and they never really were. Pretty much since before adventure games and RPGs took their footing as genres capable of vast, sweeping narrative and spectacle, MMOs were pushing the absolute boundaries on what games even could be. Title like Gemstone IV, Merdian 59 and Ultima all call back to years before the solidification of the role playing genre, and really the entire gaming industry as it was, which may be exactly what allowed them to succeed in pushing the boundaries of connectivity, regular activity and occasionally ground-breaking feats with, for the time, mind-blowing events. Looking back from the precipice of hindsight, we can see the great world-running MMOs of their day as just mewling cubs, big by the standard of their day but only really big in comparison to the lean standards of most other games in the industry. Even the once furious and heated Ultima, Warcraft, Everquest war is now little more than a playground dispute paling when placed next to the wars of millions we see around modern franchises.

That is because we are in a new age of MMOs, one similar to the age where we began but drawn to different ends and effecting a different type of consumer, and we have been in this new space for a very long while now. One where the core values that Massively Multiplayer Games once thrived off have become tired and invigorating, and a new style of MMO, more inline with modern gaming sensibilities but sometimes still shackled to redundant philosophies, has become the norm. None of this is to say that MMO's are not as big as they were, not at all. The landscape and the number of gamers across the world has multiplied by orders of magnitude, and though the big MMOs of today are no longer ubiquitous with the very concept of video game playing like they once were, today's landscape sees more simultaneously, actively competing MMOs then we've ever before had in the brief history of our industry, and the chart curve does not look to be levelling-out any time soon. With this growth in audience and choice, comes the dissolution of that most primal of unspoken MMO rule: 'There can only be 1'.

Back in their day, the heated arguments between the various communities of MMO lovers out there were sparked by a people searching not just for an online game that they liked for the time, but encompassing online experience which would become their game. Singular. In that age it was totally normal, even expected, for players to have one title which would suck up all free gaming time as the player's 'second job', as we now coin it. Not many people jumped around from MMO to MMO, tasting the fruits of each, or even from MMO to other genres, and that was largely because these title were designed, intentionally or not, to foster the development of a particular type of player; an obsessive, hardcore. They were involving affairs of hefty esoteric systems designed to be understood only by the resolute, socially binding with groups of online friends who's only outlet was this particular game, and gameplay systems and roles specifically designed to be experienced by a specific subset of the player bas, because a lot of these games didn't design all the game to be experienced by every player.

Back in this frontier of development, it was totally acceptable to develop a job system wherein a player was expected to travel the online world as a virtual band, playing in bars to the enjoyment of other actual players who would then pay their wage. A true player driven economy, and more of a virtual second life than any 'metaverse' currently in the works can dream of pulling off. And nowadays, games just aren't like that anymore, the zeitgeist has changed, the artform has changed, and the audience has changed. There have been online titles in the modern world that have sparked angry spreadsheets detailing the fact that not all content in the game it tailored to be comfortably experienced and obtained by every player, when once that was the entire point of the game. You would be the small cog churning in the wider world of players, you didn't have to be the centre of the whirlwind: but people just don't have the patience for that sort of experience anymore.

Nor really should they. Not with the plethora of huge, quality rich, games of all genres that test and push at the zenith of the development craft every single year. I can't be spending all my time sitting down in Mortal Online in order to level up my resting so that I can recover from damage quicker; there's a 50 hour campaign of intense action waiting for me in Elden Ring. Even the intensely dedicated players, those who will look up strategy guides and scrawl spreadsheets of gear they need for a certain raid (guilty) usually have their own smaller games on the side, even if this MMO is considered their main. And these MMOs are no longer the soul form of communication with other gamers. Now even if you join a modern active MMO guild, that 'chat' function is used for perfunctory fluff; if you want to talk about serious business you'll be connecting over Discord, or any of the other much better communication tools which exist in our interconnected age. The role of MMOs as a secondary social network reaching across the inky black netspace are gone, the horizon of the undiscovered country has squashed into a thin line on the split between sea and sky, imperceptible to the supposed innovative-figureheads of today's internet.

So what are new age MMOs about then? Well a lot of them are about securing recurrent monetisation in as brief a window as possible. Typically this leads to the sorts of design fallacies that plague the larger gaming industry such as the 'create problem in order to sell the solution' paradigm; a secret to literally nobody at this point. But there's also a few lingering vestibules of the old way of doing things that were once quirks and have now bloated in tumours. Namely, the desire to be an 'everything game' and the bloating of content to keep the base locked to this game for days upon weeks. Most of the successful professional MMOs of the modern world don't suffer from these issues, recognising they just need to be the best that they can be in their field or/and share their player base with other games. Final Fantasy XIV, Lost Ark, etc. but the various new start-up MMOs fall for this pitfall time and time again.

Stubborn MMOs have a tendency to, in their 'modernisation', recede into their core base of players and insulate against potential new comers or undesirable casuals (who probably can't be twisted in spending as much) with content borne for the hardcore of the hardcore in their audience. Think World of Warcraft and their various stupid difficulty raids which require weeks of grinding to gear for and hours upon days of set-up to prepare for. Or Fallout 76 and the late game content which a lot of is balanced around depreciated broken god weapon and borderline glitch builds, because otherwise these popular playstyles would make a joke of ordinary content. These fortifications eek out any unwilling to sacrifice their every waking moment and make the game scene drab and content-free unless you become a hardcore player, and most people just don't care enough to dedicate themselves like that. So how does this equation of development work out?

Well MMOs are big games that require a regular flow of players to keep the lights on, and if the vast majority of players out there, casuals, don't feel like they're being catered for and end up leaving for a better game, or a more consistent genre altogether; then death is pretty much inevitable. New age MMOs are largely, conceptually, unsustainable; and it's the outliers, those that differ from the norm with their content strategies, who are really making their mark today and who seem to have a future for tomorrow. The novelty of MMO gaming has dissipated and the approach to building the games should shift in kind. These games can't rely on being social hubs anymore, they can't cloister solely to the 1% of the player base and favour them over everyone else just because they make the best cash cows, and they can't expect the entire world to be run my players who flock to these servers like it's their second job. Unless that game is EVE Online, because that is exactly how that game functions, as I understand it. The industry has moved on from MMOs are they used to be, now it's up to the genre to adapt or die.

The WOW exodus

 "Do you hear the people sing-"

So full cards on the table; I haven't played an MMO for nigh on 3 years now and back when I did that MMO was not World of Warcraft. As it just so happens that was my days of playing the Elder Scrolls Onlin, which crucially is not a subscription based MMO and thus many out there wouldn't even consider that a real MMO background. So what I'm trying to say is that I am no great authority on the world of Massively Multiplayer Online games, nor the definition of what constitutes an online ecosystem to be 'massive'. (Always hated the MMO acronym) As such the comings and goings of WOW have been nothing but background noise to me throughout the years, I've peaked a few of their world grade cinematic trailers from time-to-time, but without any context it's pretty much just a fireworks show, and I find fireworks shows deathly boring. (Don't tell Yoimiya I said that.) But if you've been around this blog any length of time at all you'll be fully aware of my addict-like obsession with a 'story'; thus the tale of the WOW exodus has sparked my attention such to the point I want to talk about it today.

But firstly I feel it's important to say, this is the second Blizzard story this week that I've covered without going into their recent allegations, because honestly I don't even want to talk about all that stuff anyway. It's hardly related to gaming for one, and for two it just makes me feel icky to think about. Besides, it's not necessarily related to the exodus, although I think there's a case to be made that it certainly exacerbated the issue. Not to take the thunder out of the winds of the FF team, nor to exonerate the WOW team of any and all misdeeds, but this has been an absolutely awful few months for Blizzard and it's impossible to divorce any of their wrong-doings from one another at this point. Be that as it may, that's exactly what I'm going to do even if I have to purposefully and pointedly adopt a reductive view of the situation in order to do. We all understand? General agreement reached? Good. Now for the story.

What if I told you that WOW is not the last hope of the MMO world? What if I was to enigmatically turn my little green puppet head to the unknowable stars and mumble "No. There is another..." Because whilst all of these years the subscription MMO of the world was World of Warcraft, another game slowly stirred in the wings, born from a franchise even more beloved than Warcraft. I speak, of course, of the Final Fantasy MMO: Final Fantasy Ni- oh wait not that one. Final Fantasy XIV! (The one they bought out whilst the Kingdom Hearts guy was screwing around with his Versus Thirteen game for 8 years.) There was a MMO which started off as a disappointment to the series name, but then was treated to a total conversion treatment and came out the belle of the ball; like the protagonist of an early 2000's high school movie. In an alternate universe one might call this the 'Anthem 2.0 manoeuvre', but that universe it not this one... for obvious reasons.

In the proceeding years FFXIV has been getting more and more popular as an alternative to WOW, all the while the general lack of competition in the MMO space has slowly drained the player pool thus bringing the gap between these games closer and closer. In retrospect I hear that a lot of WOW players had been decently unsatisfied with the direction of their personality-defining hobby for a while now since the integrity of the game had given way to general team laziness, anaemic updates that seemed to take longer and longer to come out, and, surprise surprise, microtransactions. Oh the microtransactions. I never knew this at the time, but Blizzard have been slowly perfecting their craft as the 'time saver' kings, finding ways to turn literally every single possible thing one can achieve in the game into a service purchasable with real money. Collectibles, gear, levels, progress; give the horned man in the executive suit his blood money and Daddy Blizzard will pretty much play the game for you. So you can get back to... not playing the game, I guess.

Seriously though, when we're talking about MMO's the monetisation model is so important to get right it might as well be considered part of the gameplay balancing. (Well, in the case of WOW it should be, at least.) It's just like the problem approaching Star Citizen whenever that game is actually realised; if you turn everything that could be an achievement into a marketplace item then you rob the satisfaction of the player actually achieving something, and if there's nothing to achieve then why should you play the game? Yes, experiencing something new will get you through the door, but sticking around for months and staying to dropping those subscription bucks; that only happens when your community has viable goals to shoot for. Of course, that is by no means the only problem with WOW of today, (at least not how the haters tell it) but from what I hear it's a big one. But what about this Exodus I'm talking about?

Well, in the early days of July a popular WOW streamer called Asmongold unintentionally proved once again why influencer marketing is some of the most powerful in the entire entertainment industry, when he switched his MMO of choice to Final Fantasy XIV citing dissatisfaction with Blizzard and the direction of WOW. With his departure came a ludicrous amount of attention and coverage which, predictably, encouraged many to follow suit to the point where, for the first time in their careers, Final Fantasy XIV actually overtook WOW in online attention. Now we can't lay this all at the feet of Asmongold, (as much as supposed internal leak documents are trying to do) but it's clear that if so many people were willing to jump ships so expediently, they must have been pushed to the gangplank already. What followed was a Burning Crusade of sorts as fans burnt out of WOW, cancelled their subscriptions and spent the next half day trying to buy FFXIV because that's how long it takes and the FF team really need to rework that. (Oh, that half-hearted reference is about the extent of my WOW knowledge expended by-the-by; don't expect anything else)

Now of course this doesn't mean that World of Warcraft is going to explode overnight due to lack of users, the game can probably run perfectly fine with a fraction of the margins that it has, but this does represent something of a watershed moment for the 17 year old game. Because with Blizzard how it is now, the way they exist and the people they have working for them, they probably won't be coming back from this moment to retake the MMO crown. Now when you think about that, it's incredibly flattering to old school WOW to think that they were on top for over a decade, and a little bit sad to see the landscape of the genre change so much since. Like watching a venerated golden-scaled dragon loss it's last hit point and tumble from the skin, except nowhere near as dramatic as that; where did I even get that visual from? Which isn't to say FFXIV is the new top-dog now, New Worlds is on the way and despite the fact I think that game looks like flaming hot garbage there are a sizable number of MMO starved players out there and new comers to the genre entirely who are willing to give it a shot. Could this be a renaissance for the MMO genre we're looking at, maybe one with a crown shared amidst a handful of titles? Never say never, I'd say.

But what does this mean for Blizzard going forward? World of Warcraft was one of their biggest points of self pride for the company, being a game that every MMO fan in the universe was stuck with no matter how much they wanted out, and now the spell is broken and thus so is the '1# MMO' mug on the team's desk. Well with any luck this might be a moment of sell reflection for the company where they see the ways in which they changed from the 'player first' initiative they were founded on and try to rectify that wound, but that's not going to happen. Games companies have this point where they grow so big that the heart becomes clotted and diseased, or simply is cut out entirely. Passion falls to the wayside as those that actually 'play' games are discarded for those that only 'make' them. It's a big difference, and one that can be felt by anyone who plays these games only to feel that the soul behind decisions is not made by someone who wants the game to be better. Do you think an actual player of an MMO would want every single achievement they made to be invalidated with 'time saver purchases'? Do you think they would want to throw in timegates stopping you from playing more than 4 dungeons a day? (I used to have a friend who thought it would be a great idea to throw in a day-long cooldown after character death. We're not friends anymore.) The player-makers have moved on, some from the industry entirely and others to smaller ventures where they're in control, and that which remains are mere doppelgangers; wearing the skin of those that we respected, but sharing none of the inner substance. So WOW isn't coming back, Blizzard isn't getting better, Bioware aren't redeeming themselves, Bethesda has me distinctly worried, CDPR need to pull up their bootstraps and Ubisoft can talk considering the allegations they've been through recently. (That last point wasn't necessarily related, but if I'm not going to write a blog about it I need to vent my frustrations some way)

Addictive tendencies in gaming

I just can't put it down!

The act of gaming is one that has become more widespread in recent years as proliferation has started to stretch over the globe. I've mentioned before how gaming is currently the most profitable form of entertainment (as an industry) and that is a distinction that will only grow as we move into the next decade and the prevailing stigma surrounding the world of gaming starts to die down. As more and more people have begun getting into the world of gaming, it has become more readily apparent that many of the presumed 'ill effects' of gaming. (i.e. increased predilection towards violence and anti-social behaviours) have proven to be mere figments of fiction. However, there is one accusation that has been levelled upon the world of gaming that has not only stuck, but recent received an official classification by the World Health Organization, and that is of it's addictive properties, leading to the establishment of 'Gaming Disorder'.

Much ado was made about this classification when it was first issued, but the principles behind the 'disorder' are simple enough; gaming is a commodity that is capable, in excess, of invoking symptoms similar to non-chemical addiction. That's something that anyone could have told you for free, but I suppose having a label assists the filing process for Doctors and Therapists. Folk were still disgruntled to hear about the establishing of 'Gaming Disorder' and demanded to know what effects this may have on the industry. Since then, however, we've heard little to nothing in realm of notable public blowback towards the perception of gaming and, as the dust settles, we are left with no other distraction from the issue and are now forced to confront the question, 'Is gaming addictive? And if so then how bad is it?'

Now, obviously, I am no expert on the subject of gaming addiction, (in fact, at this point nobody is.) but I have been around the world of gaming and participated with the community enough to offer my own glimpse into these matters. As of how such matters have effected me, I'm not so sure, if clinical objectivity is a necessity for casually diagnosing such a disorder then I am clearly the least qualified person to determine. Regardless, I intend to take a look over some of the anecdotal stories of relevance that I have heard on this topic with some rough approximation of objectivity, and so I hope that we come to something interesting and valid by the end of this.

Before I proceed, I wish to make it readily apparent that I, as of the writing of this article, have intentionally done no more than preliminary readings into this topic for the sole purpose of providing another 'more researched' blog down the line. This blog is intended to an approach from a purely anecdotal angle, (as most of my other entries are, you'll notice) with myself focusing on the ways that game developers feed into addiction. So, in other words, don't expect quotations and heavy research into my following words as I wanted to approach the topic as blind as possible for the good of the topic. That being said, as always I should remind you that I am biased, take that into account at all times.

When someone says 'addiction' in relation to gaming my initial first thought goes to the big boogie man of the gaming world, EA, and the cash-hungry, Games-as-a-service, model of game that they popularized. That is primarily because if we distill the key identifying symptom of an addiction, the dependency on the substance in question, then the main goal of 'Games-as-a-service' is clearly to be as addictive as possible. Whilst there was a time, somewhere between the arcade age and where we are now, where developers and publishers worked together to secure that one-time entry fee to their games, now it much more lucrative for those folk to work all the wily tricks that they can to establish a steady stream of regular payment from their customers. How do they do that? With, what is colloquially know as, hooks. (Or 'recurrancy incentives' if we're being fancy which, judging by my inexplicable verbosity today, I suppose we are.)

We see this concept materialize in our games through the ways in which modern online games ape the actions of Mobile games, MMO's and gambling stations. We see hooks that inspire us to revisit the game as often as possible, (Daily quests and rewards) hooks that make us equate our time with the game as valuable and thus seek to elongate it, (timed challenges, sales in stores, and the mere act of spending money on the game in the first place. The more you've invested into the game, the more valuable it becomes in your subconscious) and Hooks that keep us coming back because we've never seen the end. (New content as often as possible for as long as possible.)

All of these little clever tips and tricks work together in order to create a dependency between the player and the game; which, off the top of my head, is the threshold at which the hobby tips into the beginning of an addiction. Unfortunately, at least for those companies who wish to readily exploit such tactics, non-chemical addictions rarely come accompanied with the 'life threatening' side effects that can tie people into other addictions, but they sure can effect and manipulate one's mood in a way that would encourage them to stick around. 'Exclusivity offers' and 'timed events' can feel exclusive to those that aren't there to participate, and many of these games company literally bank on people fearing the feeling of missing out more than spending their time and money in a non productive way. (I know where I usually land on with such decisions.)

But does any of that make 'Game-as-a-service' addictive, or at least, in a manner voracious enough to encourage labelling by the WHO? Possibly, but I still feel that such would probably be insufficient to justify it on it's own. Afterall, the fact that games are slowly evolving in a way that intends to suck more and more money out of their players is a natural evolution for any profit-based-industry. Which would mean that the driving force behind the label of 'addictive gaming' runs deeper than the greedy machinations of unscrupulous cooperate entities. ('Players gonna play', as they say.)

In that case, why don't we look at one of most addictive common traits of gaming; collectibles. Now don't get me wrong, I'm using the term 'collectable' as more of a catch-all for any type of 'collect them all' type of list. Similar to how collectors will dedicate their free time to the acquisition of every type of a certain specialty item, Like Stamps, Classic cars or rare stuffed Fish, (I've met odd people in my time) some people can feel the allure of completing things just as strongly from the digital world. I suppose a more apt term might be 'compeletionism' as it comes from one's desire to complete everything that the game has to offer, even if it only in a certain regard. And I believe that this has some addictive qualities to it.

Most prominently in the way that people can find themselves coming back to a game that they don't particularly like or enjoy with some desire to 'complete it'. This is something that Online games like 'looter shooters' can take advantage of by constantly updating items and adding new ones so that players never quite get to the end. That desire to 'finish collections' is by no means unique to gaming, but it can be realized in this medium and result in financial trouble or merely excessive quantities of spent time. For my part, I have an issue with playing through series in the middle and feel the need to play every game leading up to the entry that I'm interested in. That led to me pushing my way through such titles like 'Splinter Cell: Double Agent' which I now hate myself for.

Although a better type of game that can be addictive for people is a genre that I'm going to label as hobby games. Those that settle into someone's everyday and become a staple in their life in the way that another hobby might. More specifically, I'm referring to the types of games like 'Second life' or 'World of Warcraft' (Or even 'Minecraft') which are so deep and/or offer so much scope of play that one can dedicate a huge portion of their free time to it on a regular basis without exhausting their possibilities. Ideally, this is what a lot of people want out of their gaming experiences, but driven to excess it can be actually quite destructive on folk's personal and/or social lives.

During the heyday of 'World of Warcraft' there was a lot of chatter about 'gaming addiction' and South Park even did an episode directly targeted at it. That is because this was around the time that we were hearing about people who were falling into disrepair due to prioritizing the game over all else. (You'll often hear Joe Rogan talk about this period when disparaging gaming.) Self neglect, breaking down of relationships and general anti-social consequences actually became a reality around this time, and although these situations were minority instances, people tend to remember the worst moments a lot more than the good ones. Compare such examples with the troubles of junkies and you may find some similarities, albeit to a generally much lesser degree.

We've heard stories similar to those days popping up again, recently, due to another rising habit: addictive gameplay loops. The Battle Royale genre in particular has been blowing up in the past couple of years due to it's accessibility and quick match turnover, both of which is just enough to draw players in and encourage them to stay. Fortnite specifically, has seemingly been a hotbed for stories of general personal woe at the hands of unfortunate self neglect. We've heard about children who's grades have suffered considerably since they started prioritizing gaming over their personal lives and even those who avoid school altogether. (Although that could just be a personal choice) Could these destructive habits be serious enough for the hobby to be considered dangerously addictive? Well it all comes down to how wide spread these issues are, or more appropriately, how wide spread the perceived issue is.

I have no doubt that the vast majority of folk who partake in regular sessions of Fortnite and other Battle Royales do so in some sort of moderation, afterall the damn things are frustrating, however if enough of a fuss is raised about such games then institutions who manage such situations are inclined to act. Personally, I don't find myself sold on the accusations that gaming itself is a hobby the encourages and inspires addiction, but I will concede that there are certain addictive aspects to it. Perhaps my opinion on that will change once I sink more hard research into the topic for my next blog on it, but I won't hold my breath. (We'll see what we see.)

76 Problems with subcription services

Oh shut up, Todd.

Has it even been a week? Honestly, I'm too scared to look back and find out. Already those- people at Bethesda feel it's right to test the patience of it's loyal fandom once again and I'm not sure I, personally, can take it anymore. It's tugging at my heartstings to read about these stories time and time again and wonder what happened to the studio that was once my favourite game developer. If we weren't a breath away from the release of The Outer Worlds I don't know what I would do. At least Obsidian can provide us action-RPG fans with some vague semblance of hope now that our heroes have died and been rebuilt as a sacrilegious parodies of themselves. (It just sickens me.)

If you hadn't heard or were just plain lucky enough to avoid Bethesda news altogether, Fallout 76 has found a way to get on everybody's lips once again for all the wrong reasons. Not a week after we hear news about Bethesda's attempt to squeeze the last drops of blood out of their rapidly diminishing fanbase, another blog post drops on Bethesda.Net with a chilling ultimatum. Fallout 76 will be receiving one of it's most requested (and promised) features after all this time, private servers. (with mod support at a later date.)  What's the catch? A 100$ a year subscription service, obviously. (Someone pinch me. I hope I'm dreaming.)

There is so much wrong with this announcement and what it means for the future of Fallout 76, that to attempt to cover it all without any mind bleach might just prove fatal, so I'll use this blog to compare other subscription offers with this one. (I need some positivity today, else I might just explode.) Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing this on the off-chance that some Bethesda employee happens across this post by some nobody and takes inspiration, this is purely for my own catharsis. This is the way I intend to process this tragedy and I'd appreciate you sticking around and bearing with me through this one. (It's going to get rant-ey.)

First of all, let me start of by saying that I do not like subscription services. I understand why they exist and hold nothing against those who partake (which is a lot more than I can say for Lootbox consumers) but my inherent stinginess physically repulses at the idea of opting into a monthly fee. On a more practical note, I'm a huge nostalgia nut who likes to find his way back to stories that I love years down the line; Therefore I'd rather own something definitively rather than rent it for the moment only to realize that I've lost it due to having dropped my subscription years ago. (It literally took me a decade to rediscover 'Devil May Cry 2' after renting it for a week. I don't want to go through that headache again.) Yet even with that inherent distaste on my part, I can recognize when a subscription deal is too good to pass up. A good deal is a good deal no matter what the asking price is; Fallout 76's Fallout 1st program is not a good deal.

The launch period of Fallout 76 has already gone down in the books as one of the most disastrous of all times, and it wasn't just because of connection woes. (Although we did have a lot of them.) There were problems with rampant glitches, lack of progression incentives, no endgame, unbalanced world bosses, unbalanced perk cards, and a sorely empty and forgettable world space. All of this should have signalled red flags for Bethesda but they all subscribed to the belief that the game would get better, sentiments that Todd Howard shared in a candid interview. (For which he was relentlessly blasted online.) So it wasn't the end of the world that the game launched as a hollow mess, for it was a platform that would start to improve.

Fast forward one year later and many of those problems that I've mentioned still persist. In fact, some of the stability issues were relived only to be re-introduced during the Raids update. Another, just as unbalanced, world boss was added and progression has been relegated entirely to the marketplace. Higher levels are just for show at this point. All this was supposed to fixed by now due to the Wastelanders update that was recently delayed, and instead the community who have stuck by this game have been sidelined and told that future incremental updates to player's quality of life will be exclusive to either the in-game store or an embarrassingly overpriced subscription service.

I'm sure that Bethesda 'diehards' (see: sunk cost fallacy) will march to Bethesda's defence and claim that none of the items on offer are necessities, but, once again, Bethesda are playing a game of attrition. The more small nicks of annoyance that they poke you with, the weaker you become to their attempts to sell the big items to you. This is simple marketing strategy, you don't need to be genius to see it. This time, Bethesda are offering an ingame camp system as an exclusive subscription item (Which allows players to create a fast-travel beacon without moving their entire base) and a free Desert Ranger outfit. Which makes no sense canonically as that organization was born on the West coast and were famously exclusive to the area of the Mojave until they encountered the NCR (Which wouldn't be formed yet for a good hundred years.), but it's nice to see that Bethesda are profiteering off of Obsidian's work on New Vegas. Real classy, guys.

The paltry offering isn't even the biggest rub here, nor is the fact that Bethesda want to attach another paywall to their sinking ship. For me, it's that ludicrous price tag. $11.99 a month? Will Todd Howard personally come around my house to give me a foot massage? If not then I expect a damn good explanation as to why I should fork out three times the cost of one month of Xbox game pass in order to play the worst Fallout game ever made. (And I'm including 'Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel' in that comparison) Game pass, may I remind you, is a service that allows buyers to play over 100 high-quality games for a paltry monthly sum, sometimes on the day of release! (And I'm not even paid to say that. I just hate Fallout 1st so much that I'll sing the praises of a serial killer if he offered a subscription for his crimes.)

But Microsoft aren't the only ones who offer a superior 'paid subscription'. Perhaps the closest direct comparison I can make off the top of my head is that of WoW Classic. (Seeing as how Bethesda fancy this game as their very own MMO) WoW was the game the defined the MMO genre and spawned a thousand failure copy cats. (Ranks that Bethesda seem eager to join.) I'm not sure how subscription works today, but back in it's prime WoW operated on a nominal fee that could be purchased directly or earnt through playing the game religiously, meaning that you theoretically only had to buy a subscription once. (Wait... is this how Battlepasses were born too? This game really was ahead of it's time!)

How about Nintendo's online service that they offer with the Switch. Initially it seemed like something of a raw deal. (Especially with the way they robbed previously online games of their connectivity.) But the deal has become a whole of a lot sweeter since the 'virtual' consoles were introduced. Just like with game pass, you can play through Nintendo's legendary library of classic games (albeit, drip fed from the big N) for no extra charge then the purchase of the online itself. "How much does it cost?" you ask? £15 for a year. (Bethesda best be taking some serious notes right now.)

If you're looking for a more traditional one-on-one comparison with a modern MMO, look no further than the best MMO on the market right now; Final Fantasy XIV. This is a game that nails every aspect of it's required agenda as an MMO and does so with absolute style. There are countless activities, events, vocations, end-game grinds, and top-tier raids to take part in. Not only that, but many of the DLC story add ons have been hailed as some of the best Final Fantasy stories ever told. (And that's coming from the franchise that practically wrote the book on epic storytelling.) How much is this game's subscription? Well for the first 35 levels it's free, after that you are hit with a $12 monthly fee. (That's kinda deceptive, honestly.) So this is a price that is closer to Fallout 76's proposition, but what's the difference? Hmm, how about the fact that you are paying for the best MMO on the market right now that is renowned for inundating it's player base with premium quality content. Not exactly a one-to-one comparison to Bethesda's game, and yet they seem to think their worth it. (Some folk are easily deluded.)

I didn't think I'd have to write another blog about abject stupidity on Bethesda's front. I hoped I wouldn't have to. But when you are met by a studio that are so adamant on throttling their loyal consumer base to their last penny, it's hard not to point and stare. At this point, I can't imagine anyone taking this game seriously unless they do a 'Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn' style overhaul, but honestly, I doubt modern Bethesda have enough passion and ingenuity to pull something like that off. Well, the blog has done the trick. I'm no longer seething with rage and have settled into my natural state of despair. So I guess I'm going to end this here. See you the next time Bethesda do something dumb, I guess.