When I first played Armored Core 6 I nearly fainted from how sluggish and janky the controls felt. I failed my first attempt to get on the tutorial platform designated for teaching you how to gain elevation. Oh no, everyone was going to make fun of me like that Cuphead guy that couldn’t get through the tutorial. It doesn’t matter if he was a hardware reviewer– the internet never forgets to misremember. I tried mouse and keyboard, and I wasn’t really feeling it. I tried controller. I was really feeling the carpal tunnel then, even though I was primarily raised as a console kiddie. I settled on mouse and keyboard and committed to learning the controls. I completed the tutorial perhaps five times before moving on to the main missions. It wasn’t so much an obsession with gitting gud as it was a desire to git comfortable. I learned enough from culinary and sports that the first thing you need to do is get your stance and form down. Progress will follow. So yes, to a certain extent you do need to git gud before judging a game.

But here’s the kicker, none of my opinions about the design for the tutorial changed after I mastered it. There’s too many unexplained mechanics that you learn in the actual training mode, which you unlock after you progress the story. I know it’s a Japanese studio and you’re supposed to read manga from right to left, but I don’t think the player fending for themselves first and then being taught helps the accessibility. That’s what it is, poor accessibility, and the FromSoftwareus Sapiens encourage it, chanting their new favorite phrase “Get Filtered.” Getting Filtered is a phrase used to denote the point where a player quits. It is similar to “git gud” in that it frames all of the failings on the player. It’s not that the tutorial does a poor job of teaching you how to play the game, putting bots in front of you and telling you to shoot them while downplaying the importance of mastering mobility, it’s that you weren’t good enough so you quit. You are the impurities in the water being removed by the game’s Brita filter leaving only the purest of gamers. 

I did get good enough, and I didn’t like it. That is also my fault. Of course you got sick of it, Frost, you played it too much. Honestly, you sound deranged. Who obsesses this much over a tutorial? Fine, I’ll let that go. I continued playing, and the game started to hit a pattern. It alternated incredibly simple missions, where you fly from one area to another while beating up robobros, and also simple missions, but this time it was just a boss fight. I was using the mech you get from the start and I hadn’t customized a single nut or bolt. If I thought it was simple and straightforward, I can’t imagine what the game felt like to someone who indulged in their Neon Evangelion self-insert fanfic. There were some crazy builds floating around on the internet completely trivializing Balteus, the boss I had set my sights on. Word on the street was he was the game’s first real filter that separated the hardcore gamers from the casuals. He was the reason my mech remained untouched and uncustomized. I was saving myself for him. Also worth noting, this was before the patch that nerfed him and made him easier.

Our battle was legendary. Balteus is, without a doubt, one of my favorite boss fights of all time. And the reason why, is because it holds up at all skill levels. Your first time fighting him, when you have no idea what’s about to hit you, it’s like driving through a freak lightning storm. The missiles are streaming out in every direction. He moves around the entire arena with mobility you haven’t seen before. You aren’t obliterated. You’re undone. I couldn’t ask for better funeral music. Even as you’re figuring him out, he never loses his elegance. He makes you use the entire arena and all the buttons and motions in your arsenal. This isn’t one of those boss fights where you lock on and spin around in circles until one of you spanks the other’s exposed derriere. It was a majestic dance, and with each attempt I was getting further into the score until it came down to a few hits left on both of our health bars. But I didn’t want it to end. I powered off and let him kill me. I went again. I experimented with different openers and timings while I improved my overall driving. I didn’t leave when I won. I left when I had my fill, and it was well after the first time I beat him. Balteus was more than just an obstacle to overcome, another box in the checklist to mark off and say “yeah I beat him.’ He gave legitimacy to Armored Core. This is what makes fans.

I can’t say that for the rest of the game. The levels stayed simple and the other bosses were more tedious and one dimensional. Clearly the focus of the game was to customize your mech to overcome the problems that arose, but the only problems that ever made me consider breaking my vow of mech celibacy was the ever increasing amount of armor or my lack thereof. The bosses didn’t get more interesting, they just got tankier, and I was painstakingly aware of it at all stages of the git gud graph. But I was also aware that at this point in the game my skill level had overshot the average demographic. How many people had made it this far, let alone without upgrading their starting character? It’s not that my points of criticism are invalid, it’s that they’re not relevant to a vast majority of players anymore. That’s the problem with using skill as a barrier for criticism, it isn’t linear. If anything it’s a horseshoe that peaks as you start breaching competence. The low ends would be on either side where you don’t know anything of what’s going on or you know too much to the point where you can see the cracks in the walls everyone else would be passing by. 

Personally, I don’t care about gamers pretending they’re in search of the Goldilock-skilled reviewer, who is just good enough to overcome shoddy introductions but not too skilled to lay into their favorite game. It’s just another goal post people like to move around if your kicks are getting too close to the truth. Once again, no one ever tells you to “git gud” if you tell them you loved the game beforehand. What I do want to do is get the conversation rolling around games that are intended to be a little more difficult than the average. I’d call this a Microwaved Take, because it’s cold all around with a hot gooey center, but I think a lot of difficult games as of late are piling on the difficulty and dismissing genuine design problems. I, a man of the Latino influence, love the spice. But when the spicy became the trend I noticed companies kept pumping up the Scovilles on all kinds of food. Chips, wings, candy, burgers, all of it kept getting hotter but the flavor took a backseat. No more complimentary flavors like chile limon, mango habanero, or sweet tajin. We went ghost pepper, scorpion peppers, and then just extract to appeal to the spice heads. Likewise, developers kicked up the heat with no regards to amusement. Yeah, throwing me into a small room surrounded by a hundred bots is hard. Yes, making me run to the spot I died with less resources adds a challenge. Where’s your flavor? Where’s the map design that compliments the heat?  Difficulty itself is not fun, and you don’t have git too gud at video games to recognize when it ain’t enjoyable.

I pick on FromSoftware fans, because they are by far the most notable and timely, but GitGudGamers pop up anytime there’s criticism of any game or genre that has notable difficulty. Examples being games like Cuphead, Blasphemous, or almost any roguelike. Someone having a problem with a game doesn’t mean they weren’t good at it. My being good at a game doesn’t mean I can’t be wrong either, and I’m okay with that. Good games shine regardless of a player’s skill in the way Balteus was exemplary at all stages of my burying him with the starting punch buggy.– I didn’t even have a left shoulder weapon for crying out loud. If you think you need to git gud to get a video game, you need to git a grip.

The idea crept into my head while reading a thread by Rami Ismail, one of the developers of games such as Ridiculous Fishing, Luftrausers, and Nuclear Thrones. He speaks up about problems in the game industry, exploitative labor, troubles for indie development, and such things. But a common rebuttal he gets is that “the wallets will vote us out of this sticky mess we’re in.” He believes that’s a non-answer and not an option. It’s easy for game critics, journalists, developers, and gaming enthusiasts to get wrapped up too deep in the potential of the industry and preach to the consumers to only spend money on the things that they really want. That will solve all of our problems. But it’s more likely that the average consumer doesn’t see a problem. Odds are, they actually like the state of the industry as is.

Nowadays, I have to take extra initiative to remember my roots closer to the norm, otherwise I’ll start to think the average gamer actually does care about poor grammar and comma splices in a video game. “Poor grammar and comma splices in a video game, what? Ya see, what I mean? You didn’t even know that was a thing that came up, because my internet feed is not a universal experience. Looking back on the days when I wasn’t so severely invested, I can say I was unbothered by even the most surface level complaints like prices. I didn’t complain, I just walked away. I didn’t struggle with the fear of missing out or coping with living under the growing shadow of the titan that is my backlog. At the end of the day it was a voluntary hobby. If every video game from this day forward sucked, I would not be pressed because I can watch films, I can listen to music, I can read books, I can take part in one of the many hundreds of activities beyond the border of my front door. I voted with my wallet. It was a vote of self-interest and apathy.

When I did become more interested in video games, I played maybe three different games at most per year. I only ever pre-ordered the newest Call of Duty until I got one that I figured I could’ve waited for instead. The other games I played were the iconic ones like Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed, which I bought at a pawn shop for maybe five bucks combined. Xbox’s Free Games With Gold were my first taste of indie games. Frankly, it also gave me a taste of something that wasn’t a shooter, showing me there was plenty to love outside my comfort zone. Even though my palate was expanding alongside my interest, my wallet vote was still for self-interest and apathy. I rarely bought any games when they were new because the prices would get slashed in a few years, and because I was “late to the show,” as some would say, I always had a backlog of games to play, so why rush to spend my money? The only game I did play religiously I had confidence I would enjoy or at least have the company of friends to bolster the experience. The smaller indie gems were given to me for free.

That was over 10 years ago. Imagine that same mindset but within the context of gaming in the year 2023. Some of the biggest games with their finger on the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist are free-to-play like CS:GO, League of Legends, Fortnite, and Roblox. If a game is terrible on release day it will probably be in a more suitable state by the time you get around to it in a few years when a reasonable sale hits. Little Timmies are getting No Man’s Sky for Christmas and they’ll think Sean Murray delivered exactly as intended in 2016. Indie games are featured constantly on bang-for-buck subscription services like Game Pass or given away weekly in the style of the Epic Games marketplace. If you do think part of the appeal for gaming is being given the opportunity to spend money in your own virtual casino, then the gacha industry has you covered. We say microtransactions are a problem, but games like Genshin Impact have raked in over $4billion by now with their waifu fruit machines. At some point I thought we all came together to agree that Crocs are hideous, and yet they’re a growing industry bringing in about a billion dollars a year with their conventionally unattractive yet sensible footwear. The wallets have voted. Crocs are okay and so are microtransactions, incomplete games, and live services.

There’s a part of me that thinks the votes are more apathetic than active. People were willing to reaffirm their faith in the same studios, franchises, and practices out of trust that they would keep the consumer in mind. I can’t blame anyone for wanting to sit back and let the industry continue to work the way it was from the 2000s and into the early 2010s, but I think at some point their reputation was making up for a lack of quality. Enough time has passed with lacking quality that the reputation doesn’t hold up as well as it used to. It’s a trend that’s easier to see if gaming is looked at as a whole, but who involves themselves that much with games? Critics, journalists, and enthusiasts, but what percentage of the whole do these people make? If you’re watching this video right now I imagine you’d be considered an outlying statistic a few steps away from the average demographic the industry continues to target. If you only care for Elder Scrolls games, are you all that bothered while you wait patiently for Skyrim 2? If you only play games branded with the Nintendo logo, do you see any problems with the current state of gaming? If you only buy games on sale, or play free-to-play games, or enjoy spending money on cutesy in-game cosmetics, is there a problem to begin with? The wallets have voted.

Cynicism is an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest. Nowadays people take it to mean a cynical person doubts everything and they’re always cranky. No, I believe in a lot of things, puts a little pep in my step. I believe people are going to continue to vote with their wallets in their own self-interest. I believe a majority of people measure video game quality by the graphical fidelity and level of hype it brings. I believe people are okay with spending money on top of the money they’re always spending. Otherwise why else would these things be so present? The studios are only supplying the demand. But I also believe the studios are trying to keep their own best interests in mind. They’ll continue to cut corners and nickel and dime their audience while they shoot for the center to catch as much attention from the average consumer, and eventually something’s going to give because neither the consumer nor the service provider is interested in being in a mutual relationship with the other. Both want the upper hand and will not be satisfied with shaking hands. Game subscription service prices are rising, video games are getting more expensive, and studios are closing down. Maybe the wallets might start to reconsider their votes.

It was a July like any other. Xalavier, a writer for Hypnospace Outlaw, El Paso Elsewhere, and the upcoming South Park game, said Baldur’s Gate 3 is an amazing accomplishment of human engineering, but they wanted to preemptively realign people’s expectations of RPGs moving forward. They were trying to explain that Baldur’s Gate 3 is a virtually impossible standard to achieve. It had been in the oven since 2017, Larian Studios had plenty of practice making two games before this one, there was a 3 year Early Access period, over 400 developers all over the world were involved, and of course it had major brand recognition by using the Dungeons and Dragons license. Michael Jordan’s best game should be celebrated, but not used against the other players or himself as a comparative norm. Not even Larian Studios themselves are trying this again. They’ve already made comment that their next game will be smaller in scale, because you can’t have the Avenger’s suiting up for every movie. It’s not feasible. And that was kind of taken out of context, or a different conversation was started up on top of it, to mean Tony Stark hates us. Developers don’t want to try to make good games anymore. Developers are afraid of Baldur’s Gate 3’s success because that means they have to work harder now. If you don’t think Baldur’s Gate 3 is the new standard then you’re okay with overpriced ports, microtransactions, and buggy day one releases.

I understand both sides. Everyone is frustrated because we want that game. I want that game that makes it feel like Christmas again. I want that game that makes it feel like I’m witnessing history in the making. I know what it’s like to go through a lull. You want that something that reignites the passion and the vigor that makes you commit to this hobby over all other hobbies. You could’ve been collecting stamps, but instead you’re getting mad over internet opinions because it can feel at times as if you’re watching your favorite means of escapism get kicked and abused by the very people who swore to keep your best interests in mind… especially in these most recent years that’s seen us go through a pandemic into a recession. The big games get more expensive and less complete for this reason or that. Yet they brag about record breaking profits while your studios go under and you get nickel and dimed. For some, it hasn’t felt like Christmas in a long time. Yet here’s a game that defies industry standards, from the substance to the price of admission. Of course you want more, and hearing someone tell you not to expect more can bring out the ugly.

There’s too many factors working against Baldur’s Gate 3 for many studios to keep as their guiding star. As stated before, the cost of development is the first major turn off. There are dozens of Vampire Survivor clones being released as we speak because its development is incredibly fast and cheap relative to what it stands to make. BG3 is not a cherry bomb in the toilet, it’s the Manhattan Project – I am become debt, destroyer of credit scores. The genre doesn’t do it any favors either. A classical roleplaying game that lives on its mechanics, branching narratives, and emergent gameplay aspects eats up development time and money more than just about any other genre, otherwise you’d see more free-to-play CRPGs popping up than battle royales. What I will concede is that this could be a trendsetter years from now once most of the workload can be lightened by advancements in technology. I understand Larian Studios is the giant whose shoulders we could stand on, but you still have to climb the giant.

That’s not to let Johnny Triple-A slither away without learning a reasonable lesson or two. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a complete game, with no microtransactions, being sold for $60. It was developed without outside influence because the studio didn’t want their vision skewed by money owed to publishers or stockholders. Larian Studios isn’t even beholden to Wizards of the Coast because they paid for the Dungeons and Dragons license out of pocket. Leave developers alone. It’s wild to think that the people who made game development their life’s work know more about developing a video game than executives and algorithms. Hell, I think it would be even worse if Triple-A did try to copy BG3. At best, you’d end up with games featuring the most comical features pushed too far out of context. Every dialogue option should lead to fornication. Let’s buy more licenses because Gollum’s failure was a fluke. The people want genitalia customization. And at worst, you could get publishers trying to force a clone with less people, more crunch, and more microtransactions…and it wouldn’t even be good. Let’s be honest. There is no game worth the inhumane treatment of another human being, and especially NOT the games we’ve been getting lately.

I believe every Triple-A game asking for $60 or $70 should be in working condition on release date without any essential microtransactions. Personally, I don’t care if a game lets you swipe a credit card for a skin that doesn’t impact gameplay whatsoever. I know some people are into that. That’s my minimum standard, and if we want to have that conversation then let’s have that conversation.  What’s more concerning is the game industry has gotten into a state where we’ve stopped recognizing the monolithic outliers for what they are, because we are so fed up with all the nonsense. I can’t think of any bigger sign of respect for a game than other developers coming out to say what Larian Studios did is impressive and near impossible, yet somehow that’s turned into calling those developers lazy and scared. So which is it? Baldur’s Gate 3 can not be legendary and common. Let it have some time to taste the sun and the glory before it’s relegated to being the bare minimum. And let’s have those conversations. What is the minimum standard for a video game? What are the minimum expectations? What have we been getting? Why are we so upset? Let’s talk it out. You want amazing games. I want amazing games. They can’t all be amazing. That’s the fact of the matter. And that’s not through lack of trying. The developers don’t hate you. Sometimes everything just lines up and you deliver the game of the century. But a lot of the big games could stand to be better than what we’re getting. I get it. No one is defending buggy releases and microtransactions, and it does feel like something has to give.

In a sense I feel I’ve already talked about this topic at length through my other Cold Takes. This is what happens when good isn’t good enough and greatness feels obligated. I’ve talked about the many failings of business executives, data-driven design, and how the ire of gamers has been turned into a farcical blame game. If anything, we, the people who enjoy gaming, need to get better at talking to one another about our frustrations and our expectations and redirect that energy towards the people that matter instead of exploding on ourselves. I am anticipating a lot of people saying “you must be new here.” I did just come off my freshman year into games media. Maybe I am naive. As much as it is tempting to write-off all the discourse as rage-baiting algorithm driven drivel, I think people are angry, repressed, and they have a lot to get off their chest, but at the end of the day these are all opinions after all. Far be it from me to deny someone an asinine opinion on the internet. Where else are we supposed to put ‘em?

I went a little bit into this in the Factorio Stuff of Legends video (that you should go watch cause there’s a quiz at the end), but basically around the 2010s Early Access was a lawless wasteland ruled by caveat emptor. That’s Latin (darlin’) for “buyer beware.” That means when you are purchasing anything from online video game retailers, it is 100% your responsibility to be as safe as possible. All sales are final. If that sale of what you presumed to be a quirky new survival horror game turns out to be three viruses in a trench coat that stole your social security number then it’s your fault. There is no support ticket you can email. There is no customer service you can call in. There are no refund policies. You lose. Good day, sir.

The upside of this dog eat dog marketplace is the consumer could potentially find themselves an unrefined gem of a game at a fraction of a fraction of the eventual full release price. These early adopters could provide feedback and help shape the game to their liking while it was still in the most pliable and experimental phase. Minecraft is possibly one of the more well-known success stories of a small studio with an early access approach, more commonly referred to as an alpha release in those days, but not every dream game made by three people is a Minecraft–as much as they’d like to convince you that they are. The downside of the every-consumer-for-themselves approach is that sellers always have the advantage, because they can just lie, as in the case of Earth: 2066. The gameplay trailers and the screenshots can be completely fabricated so that people think they’re looking at a shoddy work-in-progress instead of empty asset drop scams.

As much as marketplaces like Steam would like to believe this was online no-holds barred consumerism, it was simply hosting shady services in virtual international waters where real-world laws had yet to kick in. At the time you had people like TotalBiscuit citing UK laws such as the Sale of Goods Act to call out the Early Access program as downright immoral and illegal. Fit For Purpose means the item has to at least function and Satisfactory Quality means the buyers need to be made fully aware of the current condition of the product, both of which were being abused by code-based conmen in developer’s clothing. The entire system was on shaky ground until Steam implemented quality control and a refund policy, but there was still a development side problem. While scammers made up a smaller part of the whole, by 2015 only 25% of early access games were even seeing a final release. Games like Arma 3 were the first to be accepted into the program and graduated in 2013, but others like DayZ prolonged their development to the point where you couldn’t be blamed for presuming them dead. And others, like Project Zomboid, are still in early access development after 10 years, and you know what? I think it was well worth it. The waiting. Not the scamming.

Given the amount of games that die before the finish line, early access offers a second and third chance to games like Dave The Diver that build up a small following during the development phase. Hades was the Game of The Year in 2020 for many major publications, and it is an alumni of the academy of Early Access. Their existence becomes a sort of gamer rumor in passing. “Did you hear about this scuba diving sushi fishing game?” Then you hear about it once more upon full release, but because it was in early access it already has an established reputation and public feedback. You don’t have to feel like you’re going in for a blind purchase, equally thrilling as it is intimidating. Even if it doesn’t end up being what you expected, the new refund policy is yet another safety net for the consumer. You know something must be going well, or it’s a sign of Armageddon, when my partner in crime Benjamin “Yahtzee ‘I-don’t-review-early-access-games’” Croshaw breaks his one rule and we’re gumshoeing for baddies in the procedurally generated immersive detective sim Shadows of Doubt, while it is still in early access.

The one thing I am struggling to come to terms with is the new public feedback cycle. I prefer strong developer vision over crowd pleasing. For example, I love Darkest Dungeon (the first one.) I, like many other reprobates, fell in love with the idea of an existentially dreadful party based dungeon crawler. The organic storytelling that oozed out as you tried to fight off certain doom, and emphasis on failure, filled a space that other games haven’t quite touched since. But the sequel feels as if the most decisive feedback came from players who did not like the core of the original. Naturally, because people who dislike your games will have a lot more feedback to give than the people who are content with your design decisions. The management and decision making was streamlined, so you only ever have a handful of choices to make and meta progression was added to ease the sense of loss. But, at the same time, the developers kept older unspoken mechanics and used symbols from the first game without explaining them in the sequel. Thus my theory, that Darkest Dungeon 2 is not an attempt to become more newcomer friendly, but rather an attempt to appeal to people who wished Darkest Dungeon 1 was more like Slay the Spire and in the process it became less like Slay The Spire and less like itself. In this manner, Early Access indies have mimicked the Triple-A design by committee homogenization that makes games feel a little too much like each other. 

But if the worst thing that can happen is I get more Slay the Spire clones for sequels then it’s not all that bad. Because, as we’re finding out with the success of BattleBit, crowdsourced design is remarkable in terms of hitting on the nostalgia that Triple-A walked away from. (I recommend watching the new Battlebit Design Delve if you’re curious how 3 indie developers were able to outdo Battlefield, one of the legendary FPS franchises, at their own game.) Meanwhile, Dice has been struggling to recover from their failed releases, because most of their efforts go into cannibalizing popular FPS trends and making sure you can spend money without too much hassle. Here’s the shop. Here’s the battle passes. Here’s the microtransactions. The heart and soul of the franchise will be patched in at a later date. Even though Battlefield: 2042 is struggling to find its footing with the reintroduction of its older features, other Triple-A publishers in charge of games like Cyberpunk 2077 are using a similar strategy to the Early Access programs to keep people waiting and drag people back into their messes. Reportedly the Phantom Liberty DLC will revamp the game into its “2.0” version, which is just fancy talk to say the game’s finally going to be what people were promised. Why should any triple-A game ever release in a finished state now?

It’s not about heart, intent, or morals. It’s about money, and the money shows that people are willing to pre-order unfinished games, QA test them for free, and market them for free. Because that’s what you’re doing if you’re buying into these unfinished Triple-A games. You’re an unpaid part of the development team now–being an alpha tester used to be free or a paid opportunity, now you’re paying 70 bucks for it and can’t even put it on a resume. I deserve to be at those office pizza parties. Why is this different from indie games in early access? Indie games are people pooling their money and resources to help smaller teams rise up. Triple-A in faux early access is like a billionaire going on welfare and eating up the resources intended for the less fortunate just to save a nickel. It’s the exact same concept twisted the wrong way.

So here we are, over 10 years later. Early Access has had its ups and its downs. Aside from the incredibly rocky false start, the indie game scene has benefited greatly from the concept. I look forward to seeing the games that continue to pool community resources to push themselves across the finish line. I wish I could say the same for Triple-A, but I’m anticipating a lot more games that deliver a mediocre release and then treat “2.0” patches as the real releases. Oh, and that quiz I promised you. There is no quiz. That’s the quiz.

What is even is “indie?” Shortened artsy fartsy lingo for “independent,” indie art has always been difficult to describe, be it indie music, indie films, or indie games. For some, indie is seen as the bottom of the financial totem pole in any creative industry relative to the Triple A space that employs hundreds and spends millions to rake in billions. I’m not particularly sold on this measurement. Comparing a game to its development costs creates a false equivalence. Indie is not when developer is poor, living on welfare, and working out of mom’s garage. And to the contrary, that same developer doesn’t become an uncreative hack once their bank account gets into the 6-figure range. I, myself, take indie to be a flavor. Games that are beholden to no one during their development phase have a subtle fragrance about them. It’s a delicate smell easily overpowered by the stench of executive intrusion and the salty wafts of saturated trends. It’s the intoxicating scent of uncompromised passion.

Edmund Mcmillen reeks of uncompromised passion. Well known for Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, he’s maintained a tangible presence throughout all of his creations, themed around cartoonish body gore, poopoo, and Judeo-Christian taboo, whether as a solo studio with no money, working alongside publishers, or publishing his own game again but with a much better credit score this time around. If money played into the identity of indie games, then all of these projects would drastically differ from one another based on his income. The key to maintaining a consistent middle school bathroom aesthetic was his fight for creative control. Mr. Mcmillen was repeatedly offered more money if he was willing to hand over the reins to his publishers who wanted to “clean-up” his game’s identity in order to make it more consumer friendly. But what is The Binding of Isaac if not a space for the developer to muse about the motifs of their childhood, be it a biblical upbringing within the confines of a Legend of Zelda-inspired dungeon crawler, thus inviting us to look into our own nurtured inspirations? Sanitizing it to the point where it can be fenced off to a general audience inspires a homogenized experience that inevitably spawns more of the same bland gruel day in and day out.

Likewise, Kojima has money to spare on his own studio and creative endeavors. He has enough budget and profile to be considered Triple-A or a minor country, if measured with money, and his games have only gotten more bizarre with his newfound freedom. Death Stranding embodies the independent spirit of games the industry was founded on. The millions used to fund it don’t make it any less indie in my mind; money didn’t impede his creative vision. The solution seems to be all or nothing. Either have a stack of cash so fat you could crush a senior executive asking where the loot boxes are going to go, or have so little money that another medical bill is just another bit of paper added to the pile. Somewhere between no money and all money, are faustian bargains promising financial stability and guidance to smaller developers.

To a certain extent, I could put the blame on Triple-A for the way they gobble up smaller studios and regurgitate them onto a napkin with their own IP. But over time the big fish have lost the need to be so direct. The more popular services like Game Pass get the more likely a developer will be to keep Microsoft’s sensibilities in mind for hopes of being featured themselves. Edmund McMillen didn’t clean up his games for Nintendo, who initially rejected him for not lining up with their kid-friendly image. But the Switch’s popularity and blossoming indie curation is more charismatic than the socially awkward 3DS. Would-be game makers know good and well what kind of image Nintendo wishes to uphold and they’ll scrub their own games clean of independence to fit in with the cool kid. Without coercion, the higher ups have managed to use the indie scene as a means to advertise their bigger budget games.

But the practice of cageing developers with dodgy contracts isn’t completely gone either. It’s trickled down into the Double-A and indie scene. They aren’t peddling aggressive monetization, moreso they push for the continuation of trends well past their expiration date. It’s like a mom that can’t help but compare you to your more successful older brother. “I wish you’d use more voxels and survival crafting. Minecraft did voxels and survival crafting. I know it’s been 10 years but I do wish your world was more depressing like Dark Souls. You don’t have to, but I already told everyone your roguelike would be just like Hades, and you kind of owe me a lot of money…” The indie game scene has attracted little league indie mobsters who know they will get their money whether developers succeed or fail. Savvy game development does not mean savvy business acumen, so younger devs are liable to misstep in the hopes of seeing their dream games come to life. But everything comes with a price and their dream game turns into just another jelly bean lost in the jar of indie games.

Then other independent game developers walk by the jelly bean jar and assume through its overwhelming representation that this must be what people want. They start second-guessing their own thoughts and designs to tweak in favor of what is deemed popular. It’s peer pressure. No contracts. No coercion. Indie game development skews towards this unassuming norm. While I was over the moon to see that cozy games have a platform to promote themselves now, I can’t deny it felt bittersweet to see low-stakes crafting game after low-stakes farming game be presented during the Wholesome Direct in the same manner that playing through Next Fest demos elicited a haunting sense of roguelike deja vu. There’s variety within each genre, but we bottleneck around the same success stories and follow-up derivatives for fear that the niche games might scare someone off with their pearls clutched in a prudish fury. Maybe people don’t want Squirrel With A Gun. Maybe mom was right, I should’ve made Minecraft again.

You don’t have to make Minecraft again. No one knows what they want until they have it, don’t take it personally. There is no round of applause to be expected with the inception of your project and after the fact, when you’re wondering where to go with your follow up, people will only tell you they want more of the same. That’s just human nature. As the video game industry mimics the growth of the music and film industry that came before it, it needs to steer carefully around the glaciers of commercialization. The virtual gentrification of the medium means money will pour in to try to appeal to a wider audience which inevitably scrubs out the culture.  Why is it in danger now and not before? Simply put, the indie scene has shown through its parallel growth and resilience that it is as much a staple of gaming as the Triple-A blockbusters. The big pockets are looking for different ideas at a fraction of the cost, because they’re starting to understand the diminishing returns of pouring money into game production and not getting it all back. They’ll tempt the indie scene with juicy contracts and a stipulation to only change a “few” core details so your game can fit in with the rest of the market.

The indie scene was never about fitting in. It was about standing out. People don’t want the same product. They want the same experience as before, but new and dangerous ways of getting there. Your favorite shows, songs, food, favorite anything all take you to the same place, but feel vastly different. Those differences are worth celebrating. Developers making the differences are worth elevating. Publishers offering to help with the business side of things while leaving the creatives to express themselves over every pixel are also worth a pat on the back. Let the bigger studios worry about presenting their games with suits, ties, and washed hair. There’s good games. There’s bad games. There’s bland games. Indie is where the freaks come out to play. We must preserve it. As the late great Robin Williams put it, you’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.

Business-heads are as much victims of the industrialization process as anyone else. Fresh out of college, working their way up, or the last man standing, the big boss eventually brings someone in with a fancy name tag made up of one noun and too many prefixes. Allow me to introduce you to the Senior Regional Head Co-Director Viceroy Manager of Finances or what have you. Their primary job is to assign everything a number and define it as a profit or a loss for the head honcho. The process is fairly straightforward in any standardized business from retail to industrial. Most of the time the bosses all ask the same questions. “How much money do I make? How much does this cost me to make it? How much money do I have once it’s all said and done? Where can I put that money back into the system to make more money?” People were surprised that Microsoft used mock reviews for Redfall. That they paid someone to give them a prediction of how well the game would do upon release, but that’s just a standard practice when you run a business with numbers. Phil Spencer was more surprised that they weren’t accurate.

A by-the-numbers approach is a stumbling block in the entertainment industry. As creators know, one day you may push out something that resonates with an audience and the next day you don’t move a single pulse. Maybe you hit a saturation point and people get sick of looking at ya–people are struggling to finish the last thing you put out and you’re still putting out more– or maybe you’re the fresh new something someone’s been looking for. You can look at YouTube as a micro-representation of the fields of chaos where strange flowers spring up from time to time and business-heads desperately try to give meaning through numbers. Then look out into the bigger industry. No one could have predicted the Fortnites and the Destinys, but of course more people want to produce their own Fortnites and Destinys. That’s one thing you can always rely on, mimicry after the fact. Once the numbers are a little more set in stone, then everybody once a piece. Perhaps you can assign a number to Vampire Survivors now, but what would you give it before it was produced? What about Grand Theft Auto before it was a big hit? You can tell me the costs, but the profits are too volatile to bother with bookkeeping. Thinking you can simply produce smiles with bar graphs is how you end up with Jeff Bezos, a man who made his billions from logistics–the shipping, receiving, and selling of products–, saying he’s discovered the 12-step fail-proof formula for iconic TV shows and then micromanaging his half a billion dollar production of The Rings of Power into a grand state of anemia.

The entertainment industry ain’t a warehouse where you can use past measurements and algorithms to forecast profits and losses. At best, a creator can be pleasantly surprised when they succeed, but CEOs don’t like surprises. Traditional industries live and die by their bookkeeping, so it’s on the business-head to minimize surprises. If the business grows tenfold but they can’t see it coming, they will lose their jobs. Even if great things are happening, what’s the point of a fortune teller that can’t read the future? Business-heads get paid too much to not know what’s gonna happen. They also get paid too much to not grow. That’s the second part of the job. They have to tweak the numbers to continue increasing the profits and decreasing the losses. And the most common way to increase money in a factory is to increase production. In my case, I was working with giant equipment with numerous knobs that directly responded to my every whim. Increase the speed of the blades. Change the temperature. Increase the rate of plastic going into the machine. Hire more people to keep the pelletizer running 24/7. I doubled production and directly doubled the money flow. The CEO told me to triple production, but it didn’t triple the money flow because we oversaturated our own market.

You see that all over the place in video games. See through the eyes of a business-head. Look at Microsoft’s recent acquisitions. Spend more money to produce more content at a pace that your competitors can’t keep up with. I pick on Assassin’s Creed because it is the shining example of trying to manufacture creative lightning in a bottle. What was originally meant to be a trilogy, continued even after the original creator, Patrice Désilets, bowed out, saw two major releases in 2014, and had to take a break in 2016–but still released three spin-offs because we can’t completely disappear from the public, they might break up with us.– before they finally decided it was time to pump the brakes on the Assassin’s Creed assembly line. It makes sense for Halo, Call of Duty, and Battlefield to try and outpace each other in the First Person Shooter genre, but who was chasing after Assassin’s Creed that they felt they had to sprint away from so desperately?  It seems video game companies forget that overzealous spending and oversaturation is what nearly killed video games in 1983.

Once the offset supply-and-demand reckoning hits is when the poor little business-head is forced to pull out the scissors. All of that increased production is spewing out costs, so the excess needs to be trimmed back. Features are slashed. Side studios go under. People lose their jobs. The CEOs demand the business-heads cut costs based purely on numbers again. Find what costs the most money, cut it off, and pray that it wasn’t vaguely important. This is the most dangerous step in the video game industry because if you don’t have a number to justify your worth you will not be spared. Think like a business-head and it makes more sense why Konami started angling towards the mobile gaming market and parted ways with Kojima, the auteur behind Metal Gear Solid. There is no pen-to-paper number you can assign a Chief Content Officer known for perfectionism and big-budget productions. Here’s an employee that uses the company credit card to pay for music he never ends up using in his game. It’s enough to give middle management conniptions.

The cost cutting continues and we find it strange that games seem to come out a little buggier nowadays.  Crucial jobs like QA turn into revolving doors for the industry starting at the lowest pay possible. It’s why businesses are trying to court AI in the tech space and it’s leaking into everything. Business-heads aren’t giving AI the side-eye because it’s numerically better than humans. It’s numerically and undoubtedly cheaper than humans–even when taking into account all the copyright infringement lawsuits. Machines don’t need to stop for a lunch break or a potty break. They don’t need have to sleep and you don’t have to pay them overtime, health insurance, or residuals. Writer’s don’t go on strike so they can afford yachts. They strike to validate their own value, but alas if they aren’t talking tangible numbers then business-heads don’t speak it.

Then we get to the last step, aggressive monetization. It tends to take customers by surprise who weren’t paying attention to the production increase and then the cost cutting. Frankly, it’s embarrassing to see a company walk back all of their low prices and fun perks because they realized a little too late that it wasn’t sustainable– while also announcing record breaking profits… Microsoft, 2k, Sega, Sony, Nintendo, so many publishers have to raise the prices of their premium games. Yeah, sure why not? The economy happens but Xbox Game Pass is also seeing an increase because they’re trying to make money out of whoever is still around waiting for them to come up with a hit. As much as I hoped and dreamed that Microsoft would use all of those acquired studios to make great games, it was painfully obvious that they were angling to muscle out Sony. The longer the Activision-Blizzard acquisition stalls out in court the more those bought out studios are going to accrue losses. Microsoft will have to start selling off their purchases for scrap.

And as the year passes by, I see more oddities come about like EA’s decision to split into EA Sports and EA Entertainment and I wonder if these are decisions made for quality assurance or if it’s just business. My guess is it’s some kind of tax write off. There is money to be made in failing products, but that’s another talk for another time. Meanwhile Nintendo does the opposite and runs their business around the quality of their games. They sue everyone to protect their product and their image. They bowed out of the graphics arms race and focused on their own identity. Valve leaned into the publisher space and provided a more consumer friendly platform that promotes smaller titles as much as the triple-A. Quality comes first and the money will follow. That’s the way this industry needs to operate, unless it wants to start digging more holes in landfills for the inevitable sequel to E.T.: The Video Game.

I’m a man of extremes who’s extremes average each other out, so I’d like to balance out the last video’s downer tone with a little toxic positivity.

There are truly great games these days. Good wholesome, nutritious games are important, and they do exist. But I think people have forgotten what it’s like to be in the heated embrace of a game so devilishly crafted it costs you your health, your social life, your college career, and your sanity while you smile ear to ear as it all comes tumbling down. After all, escapism is the drug of choice for the gaming community. It’s a drug that a business major with a minor in sociology can try in vain to synthesize, but it’s not going to come out of many studios if they’re playing it too safe. Games still come out that are too good for their own good, but they’re too spread out across different genres. We’re missing the addictive quality and quantity of the product that made the game industry bigger than movies and music combined. This might sound weird, but I don’t mind if a game’s predatory or tries to manipulate me. What’s a great game if not a hijacking of the brain? The problem is I haven’t been hijacked in a while.

As far as wholesome, non-predatory games go, I don’t think any community speaks up for their game like Deep Rock Galactic’s. Ghost Ship Games has sold over 5.5 million copies of their online co-op shooter featuring a lot of the contemporary norms. It’s a live service online multiplayer game with battlepasses. That’s more red flags than a golf course. But the gameplay is balanced around chilled out teamwork and the battlepasses can be done at your own pace. There is no FOMO, no ‘Fear Of Missing Out,’ because you can’t miss out. And I almost forgot to mention these battlepasses are free. The devs try to stay in contact with the community and they’re able to respond directly to the fans without worrying about numbers from on high. At worst it’s possible to become a little too fixated on completing your routine tasks and push a sleep schedule back a few hours, but no one’s gonna judge ya for partaking in the virtual equivalent of grabbing a few drinks at the pub with friends and staying out until closing time. Under the surface of dangerous caverns and alien combat, the game offers serenity and bliss, or as the gnome spelunking enthusiasts would put it, “Rock and Stone.”

But Serenity and Bliss are a different drug. Primarily peddled by the cozy genre, we’ve always had a game or two that dealt in low-stress high-enjoyment experiences like the Sims, and the genre’s really been standing out as of late. Valley Peaks promises mountain climbing as a frog in a world where you can practically smell the brisk Autumn air. Mika and the Witch’s Mountain feels like your own Studio Ghibli adventure as a one-witch postal delivery service. Post-dad games like Power Wash Simulator and Hardship Spacebreaker are seeing high demand for invoking the satisfaction of a job well done. It’s gotten to the point where you can garden in Jedi Survivor and nurture your own slice of heaven in Disney Dreamlight Valley with all the other HarvestValley-likes –even Johnny Triple-A wants a cut of the cozy action. These games are important. Cherish them. But it’s going to take a little more than Serenity and Bliss to get us away from the zombie drugs the business has to offer. People need a visceral high again.

Take these modern incremental loot systems for example. Finding gear that increases your stats by a percentage of a percentage is like sniffing glue compared to vintage Borderlands, Diablo, or even Terraria loot systems where you’re hunting down each individual piece to a set that can give you completely unique and diverse abilities. I still check in on Ubisoft’s game trailers from time to time to see if their open world adventures are worth camping outside of a GameStop at midnight and calling in sick for a week, because I crave the near-sinful pleasures their products used to provide for a one time fee. Games like the OG Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry showed the game industry we would settle for nothing less than the best until we settled for less than the best. Every game studio and buzzword you turn your nose at nowadays used to turn noses the other way if you catch my drift, so I don’t fault people for gravitating to the next closest thing– cut with a little more sawdust each year. FromSoftware still gets mentioned week after week because they’re one of the few remaining dealers trying to put their fans in the clouds with each release. But contrary to the opinion of the fans, they don’t supply the entire space.

If you don’t like souls games or Nintendo’s Tears of the Kingdom then you’re stuck scratching the withdrawals away while you wait for the next hit in your preferred genre, be it platformers, looter shooters, sports games, ARPGs, open worlds, Todd Howards… Not everyone likes every kind of game. Your high may not suffice mine and vice-versa. But shooters used to have an overabundance of superstars like Half-Life, Doom, GoldenEye and so on. Platformers had dangerous diversity across Banjo-Kazooie, Mario, Psychonauts and so forth. The indie scene was cranking out anything: Undertale, The Binding of Isaac, Rimworld, and the like. Each individual genre seemed fully stocked to the point where I could be in online calls with my friends and each of us was playing a different favorite game that was released that year. There is still high quality product, but if it’s not in your preferred genre then you have to wait for the next lap around to see if it’s your turn.

Don’t conflate this with me asking for more high-prestige games. Wanting every game to gun for game of the year or bust gives this air of pretentiousness to the point where you can feel games bending over backwards to include as many award-bait features as possible. But then there’s also an air of resignation. If you’re not going to be game of the year then what’s the point? Just because you won’t be the game of the year doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to be someone’s game of the year. Somewhere between B-tier and award-winning is where games like Project Zomboid or UltraKill make their home. These are the summer blockbuster hits. The Will Smiths of the game industry. It’s nice you got the Oscar for King Richard. However it was Bad Boys, Men in Black, Enemy of the State, Wild Wild West that sold us on Will Smith Summer and none of those saw an award.

I’m not condoning vices. All I’m saying is if I must choose a vice I’d like it to make me feel something beyond mild numbing dissociation, but I don’t always want it to take me on an introspective trip through the cosmos. It’s like having a dealer that only ever sells you two things: a tube of OraGel they found on the street or gluten-free LSD.  But OraGel is where we are because good games have played it safe for a while now. Looking at the big hits of 2023 so far shows that a decent chunk of them are laced in Nostalgia. Dead Space, Metroid, System Shock, and Resident Evil with more to round out the year perhaps. As good as they are, our tolerance inevitably builds up and makes it harder to get to the same place with the same recipe. Nostalgia reminds us of the good days, but it’s missing the fearlessness and suspense of the time. Maybe it’s because the economy is currently looking like two miles of bad road. Maybe Sony doesn’t feel the need to shoot for the stars while Microsoft’s doing a nosebleeding nosedive. Nintendo’s still got the goods, putting out a title that’s so much more in line with my desires that I might muster up the courage to wrestle the Switch away from my girlfriend for a sniff. No one seems to remember the guy Nintendo sued into legal slavery for modding their games now, huh?

It’s hard to hear the cries of “Boycott Blizzard” over the amount of traffic Diablo IV is getting currently. Imagine that power of development being used for good. All the psychological trickery and sociological design being put back into world building, character development, and creating intricate systems to create worlds unthinkable to the human mind and mechanics that innovate what we already love across a multitude of genres all at once. Maybe that’s the key element that’s missing here, the phrase “all at once.” Games needed to deliver a near lethal dose as soon as you opened the box because there were no second chances. The internet lets studios slowly drip-feed dopamine over a longer period of time. Distractions are what’s on offer because they’re cheaper to make than Escapism and will make do in the meantime.

Consider me the ugly duckling of reviewers. While I do believe video games can be high art, I’m also looking for a dirty good time. While I do pay my dues to the wholesome games and occasional near-masterpieces, I think there is a lack of fearlessness in the developer space to make raunchy intoxicating experiences that remind people that we got into this habit for more than just a mild buzz.

Let’s have a truce until the end of the video. I’m not ashamed to say Call of Duty Black Ops was the reason I got an Xbox 360. Three of ‘em actually, a freak lightning storm took out the first one and the second one succumbed to the Red Rings of Death. Halo: Reach, Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and Black Ops 2 kept me hooked until I swapped to PC gaming in 2013. That’s where my traceable paper trail begins. 6,000 hours in Smite. 600 hours in PUBG. 300 in Ark. 250 in Dead By Daylight. Who knows how many in Minecraft? So I’m coming at it from a place of sincerity, experience, and passion when I say something is wrong with multiplayer games today. Too many are overtly predatory, using every trick in the book to keep people playing. And for what? Aside from a select few, it feels like there is no content in live service games and no real development plan outside of implementing whatever the loud crowd and serious men in suits want. All in an effort to keep people churning through, because people are the real content in video games.

My multiplayer disenfranchisement began with Paragon, the first game I personally witnessed be tainted by the multiplayer miasma that comes mandatory in today’s games. It was a third-person MOBA created by Epic Games in 2015. I say ‘was’ because it’s dead now, murdered by its own monetization system. It was technically free-to-play, but you had to buy card packs with real money, or currency you grind out, for a chance to get a piece of an item. If you’ve never played a MOBA, that’s like being forced to pay for bullets in an online shooter. Something tells me Epic Games saw Blizzard’s success with Hearthstone at the time and figured card packs were the way of the future into an early grave.

I desperately tried to tell the developers that this was a horrible idea during the alpha, but other testers rebutted me, saying opening card packs is exciting. Opening card packs is exciting. Getting legendary loot is exciting. Finding one more fry at the bottom of the burger bag is exciting! But it doesn’t make sense outside of games like Magic: The Gathering and Hearthstone! I’m not inherently against a company making money or a person spending their money on claw machine waifus. That’s your prerogative. It’s when a monetization system is duct taped to the face of a game that I lose faith in the ability of developers to wrestle the steering wheel away from the data analysts or the accountants that run game studios these days. Online multiplayer games used to ask me if I cared to spend a few bucks while I played. Now they ask me if I care to play a few games while I spend money. In the end, a good game with bad monetization is just a bad game.

Then 2016 came along and that’s when I felt games were really jumping the gun to ask for my mom’s credit card. A fully integrated day one esports scene for Overwatch seemed opportunistically premature, like the fox was trying to get into the chicken coop before the chickens had even hatched and it was selling other foxes reservation in the hen house. It’s as if Blizzard was trying to copy the model set by League of Legends without any of the grassroot efforts that created the scene. It happened to Heroes of the Storm and I won’t be surprised if it happens to Overwatch 2 too. I wouldn’t say Blizzard was solely responsible for games putting the cart before the horse, but I’d wager they made it more fashionable. Fortnite may have popularized battlepasses, but the game went through a rough birth before they got kids hooked to V-bucks. Online multiplayer games have always had shaky releases, but now they release with concrete ways to spend money and time, the two biggest boxes on the corporate checklist. Mobile gamers know what I’m talking about. Even if you play a game without spending a dime you’re flooded with notifications about the newest battle passes, chests, card packs, daily rewards, seasonal events. There’s so many things you can do! I’m not here because I have too much free time.  I wanted to play a fun game designed by creative people. If I suddenly found myself immortal maybe I’d consider partaking, but until then life’s too short. I want something fun to do, not just something to do.

Put a few more drinks in me and I would blame Path of Exile for all of this. Chris Wilson gave a talk at a Game Developers Conference in 2019 where he described the process to making a game last forever. Frankly. it’s brilliant and easily backed up as Path of Exile continues to break its all-time user peaks even today. I recommend watching to hear how a passionate but struggling studio in New Zealand formulated a plan that maximized the appeal of their work which maximized their longevity and money as a byproduct. Battlepasses are effective. Seasonal content changes are exciting. Randomized loot drops and procedural map generation can be beneficial for games. Targeting the whales and content creators is a viable strategy if it all supplements the amazing core of one of the best free-to-play ARPGs that’s ever hit the market. Without a solid core, it doesn’t work for any game. This system especially does not work for online multiplayer PvP games.

But since then I’ve seen multiplayer games mimic Path of Exile’s development plan. There’s the season patches. There’s the battle passes. There’s the new event every 13 weeks. That’s where I can spend all of my time and money. But where is the game? Well, the game is PvP. You could play casuals, you could play ranked, you could bring your friends with ya. So the players are the content then. Every time someone stands up for lackluster multiplayer drivel by saying “it’s fun with friends,” a red-suited investor’s horns grow bigger. I’m always curious about the excuses people come up with to defend the inexcusable and it’s generally been the same. It’s more fun with friends. Why don’t you see that as a virtue of your friends and not of the game? There’s a newer excuse that comes up recently and that’s “maybe one day the game will have more content.”

And that sums up what online multiplayer gaming has become in the last decade, a way to dangle carrots forever. If you don’t like the carrot once it finally drops, it’s okay because we’ll dangle another carrot for ya. There will always be more promises for and if you don’t like the current content then tell us what kind of content you want and we’ll do our best to bring it to you. In the meantime go back to playing the game. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Live service games eventually reach a point where the heartless design pushes creatives away and leaves only the developers who are willing to design by CEO, community feedback, data analysts, and quarterly projections. The fanbase that’s left will be primarily made up of people who are willing to actively partake in the carrot dangling and shout over each other so the next one caters more to their needs.

I have to give it to Fortnite. It’s created a hub within its own game for people to socialize, play other kinds of games, be competitive, or create things with people. While gamers are the content within their game, Epic Games have taken the time to make something worthwhile that they can then monetize. It’s a better look than Paragon. That’s for sure. But I doubt the rest of the industry will take the moral of the story to be: make better games first and monetize after. Instead, online multiplayer gaming gets to where it is now. Even the PvE games are going the way of color-coded loot, opening packs, battle passes, and seasonal updates. Redfall was inevitable. What’s also semi-inevitable is the game industry’s habit of chasing after successful trends and adapting it to the benefit or detriment of their games. They’ve been knocking on the always-online door since the Xbox One’s release, but never had a suitable excuse until now. Stay online so that we may better service you with a constant flow of things for you to do and stuff for you to buy, while the game maintains an amorphous quality about itself, too vague to be considered good but constantly changing so you can never completely write it off as a lost cause. As I am making this video, Sony has revealed three new online multiplayer games, Haven’s Fairgame$, Firewalk’s Concord, and Bungie’s Marathon, and the Last of Us multiplayer game has been delayed. It didn’t even have a release date to begin with. They’re just getting us ready, aren’t they?

That’s why online multiplayer gaming has lost its appeal for me, and this trend of making hollow open-ended charades will continue, because firmly defining your parameters as a developer risks losing the wider audience. And you need that wider audience to feel like their opinion sways the content development cycle, so they can continue playing in perpetuity as they wait for the next patch to arrive with the content that will satisfy them. But it will never come. Because there is no content. The people are the content. Soylent Green is people.