Undecided

I had a hard time deciding what to talk about today.

I watched a poliziotteschi movie called The Big Racket (1976), but I didn't really like it very much. It's all about a police inspector who tries to take down a gang that runs a protection racket and commits horrible acts of violence against those they don't like. Parts, like a car rolling down a hill was superbly shot with the camera inside the car, and there were some nice action, but the main villain was lousy and the story as such made little sense. You could roll a car through the plot holes if you were so inclined. I realized that I can't really recommend it and if possible, I prefer to not blog about movies I don't enjoy.

Clearly this wasn't the topic for this week...

I also considered talking about how most of the AAA game company executives are keen to implement NFT (non fungible tokens) and block-chain technology in their upcoming games. In a nutshell, NFT's use the same technology that is used to farm cryptocurrency to create “unique” items in game, either for sale or to be earned through playing. These “unique” items can then be sold by the owner to other players for real money. The kicker is that the items don't need to be unique at all, just the code for this particular helmet makes it unique. It can look like every other helmet in-game. Sure, the items can be genuinely unique, but they still want to waste huge amounts of energy to create this market in order to cash in. It is incredibly bad for the environment and to top it off, they don't really seem to know what need or problem these NFT's would solve.

The backlash has been huge, with developers from the companies themselves like EA, Ubisoft and Take-Two asking their bosses what the point is, since microtransactions and in-game shops are already a thing. The bosses have no answers, they just mumble about “investments”, “metaverses” and other buzzwords. Ubisoft seems to be the keenest at the moment and are apparently planning on allowing players who own these items to transfer them from one game to another. Frankly, this is idiotic. Your fancy “property” is going to evaporate the second the game servers are shut down. Recently there was talk that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 would have NFT's until they realized the PR backlash and publicly stated that the game won't have them.

The NFT technology also raises serious questions about things like money laundering, capital gains tax, game companies holding valuable properties for players meaning that they might function like banks, etc. etc. Time will tell how this plays out, but they already had enough problems with children and loot-boxes. The defense then was that the boxes don't contain anything of real value, but the point of the NFT's is that they do have real value. Can children even earn them or what? Do they need to pay tax or does that get slapped on their parents? Some in-game items have sold for thousands of dollars already, so the potential is there. These are important questions that they don't seem to have asked themselves as they fall over each other to be first in a new gold rush.

Of course, this topic is a bit dull and negative, so I need to come up with something else. But now I'm running out of space so you'll have to settle for this comedy sketch.

Now it only remains to wish you Happy Holidays where ever you are, and I hope you will come back next time. Until then, have a great and safe week!

Game News

The AAA game industry keeps on staggering about like a drunken sailor on shore leave.

The hottest furor surrounding Blizzard has died down a bit, but Blizzcon is this upcoming weekend, and we'll have to wait and see how that goes. It has already been confirmed that all questions for Q&A must be submitted in advance. Not to brag (but I'm doing it anyway), but I called it on that score. After last years fiasco with Diablo mobile and “Don't you guys have phones”, I suspect they were always going to do pre approved questions this year. Now with the whole China scandal it was a given, and I look forward to seeing what protests they are going to have to deal with.

Blizzard has already “leaked” Diablo 4 and a remaster of Diablo 2 to create hype, but no one seems to be excited. Time will tell.

The co-founder and CEO of Ubisoft, Yves Guillemot, has admitted that they have messed up and he has delayed all their upcoming major titles until next year, causing their stock to plummet 20% or so. I'd be more impressed by a CEO admitting fault if he didn't do it all the time, and then change nothing.

Bethesda has continued to dig themselves a nice big hole with Fallout 76. First they announced that the upcoming Wastelanders update that would finally add human NPC's to the game was delayed until next year, and then they announced Fallout 1^st, a subscription that costs $13 a month or $100 a year. This is considerably higher in several countries.

Fallout 1^st gives subscribers private servers for you and seven friends, a junk box with unlimited capacity, a tent that functions as a quick travel point and some new cosmetics. This is in direct violation of their own promise that all updates would be free and people are furious. To make matters so much worse, it turns out that many players have reported that the junk box deletes everything you put in it. The tent has a tendency to crash you to desktop, deleting the server instance and kicking your friends out of the game, erasing all your hard work.

The private servers don't work either. Players are reporting that others can join in without permission and that they log in to find containers already looted and NPC's killed.

Having a subscription break immediately is already embarrassing but Bethesda's response has been ludicrous. First they claimed that the junk box was only a UI glitch and that all was fine. Then they admitted that the stuff was indeed deleted and that they were “investigating”the issue. The tent crash is also being “investigated”. They vehemently deny that the private servers are just normal instances that are semi-separate and that they would patch in better control on who can join your game at some point in the future. Their general attitude is less like a responsible company and more like a sullen teenager taking out the trash when their moms yell at them for the third time.

To make matter slightly worse still, they did the whole Fallout 1^st two days before The Outer Worlds went live. TOW has been highly anticipated as it's made by Obsidian who made Kotor 2 and Fallout New Vegas, both highly acclaimed. Many also pointed out all the other subscriptions that one could get for the same or less, like Netflix, Xbox for PC, EA Origins, HBO etc.

Fallout 1^st is a complete joke as a subscription, and if Bethesda is going to continue to do business like this, then one has to fear for their upcoming Starfall and Elder Scrolls 6. I can't trust them anymore and will adopt a wait and see. I'm not buying into this kind of nonsense.

Finally, a new report by the UK Children's Commission on micro-transactions and lootboxes paints a very grim picture. They have talked to kids of all ages and found that the issue is sort of worse than we thought.

It's bad enough when an adult can't control his spending but when kids are bullied by their peers for not having cool in-game skins, being taunted as “Default”, then that needs looking at. Many others feel pressured to spend money to keep up, whether in games like Fortnite or the annual Fifa franchise, they even straight up call it gambling. Since they go to school full time, they don't have the time to grind for good players and since the game resets every year, they feel the pressure to pay with real money. This is what EA called “Ethical” and “Fun surprise mechanics”. Please...

Well, I've rambled long enough. Until next time, have a fun week!

Ethical and Fun?

Today I thought a look at a piece of recent gaming news could be interesting.

A couple of days ago, EA's VP of legal and government affairs, Kerry Hopkins, appeared in the UK before a parliamentary committee to talk about lootboxes. There has been a lot of press about them in the recent couple of years due to strong allegations that they prey on people with poor impulse control and indeed teach/train children to gamble.

At the hearing, Hopkins interrupted an MP to correct him that they “don't use the term lootboxes” at EA. This isn't only rude, but a blatant lie. EA has, black on white, used the term on multiple occasions, even as a selling point. Hopkins went on to state that EA now calls them “Surprise Mechanics” and that like Kinder eggs they are, “both ethical and fun”.

This went over as well as one could expect on the internet. Surprise mechanics is a, frankly bullshit, term that means nothing outside of a corporate boardroom. A nonsensical attempt to cover up their greedy, moneygrubbing ways.

Then we have ethical and fun... They don't get to state what is ethical. Not even a little bit, no more in fact than I can state that this blog post is ethical. That's up to you to decide. As for fun? Come on... pull the other one.

However, the sheer gall to compare their “surprise mechanics” with Kinder eggs and other toys with random content is galling and inaccurate. When you buy a Kinder egg, you know that you are getting a tasty chocolate treat, followed by a really cheap little toy. That's it. EA likes to put game winning elements into their boxes. Their products are devalued without the extra content they sell you separately in an expensive and random manner. Shame on you EA. Shame.

It is no surprise that EA and indeed certain other big publishers are getting desperate concerning lootboxes. They are enormously lucrative, raking in hundreds of millions in revenue each year, and

no business wants to loose that kind of money. That's obvious. They are however already illegal in the Netherlands and Belgium, and now the UK and US are looking hard at them.

Of course the AAA industry is scrambling to defend their garbage, that's a given, but the fact that EA is changing the name and calling them ethical demonstrates that they know the boxes are bad for people. Otherwise they would be defending them as they are, not trying to weasel out of the dilemma sideways, which is what they are doing.

No one else gets to do that, and EA is no different. A burglar can't stop the police by calling his activities a “surprise visit” and a “moral readjustment of wealth”, can he? No, of course not.

Time will tell how this will end, but I for one hope that the politicians have the ethical backbone to protect the people and not the corporations. For once.

That is it for this time, tune in again next time and until then, have a great week!

Big does not mean Smart

It's been a tumultuous start of 2019 for the biggest boys in the video game playground.

EA's flagship Battlefield V had undersold like crazy, with pre-orders lagging 85% behind its main competitor Call of Duty, and that's only the start of that games problems, as player numbers are reportedly abysmal.

Bethesda keeps floundering about like a drunk elephant. Back in December, I talked about the bag controversy, their refund issues and their accidental leak of sensitive customer information.

Now, it keeps going. In the new years patch, they broke essential parts of the game, though they are now fixed, but not before tired players dubbed it Y2K19.

Then there is the Nuka Dark issue. In Fallout there exists a drink called Nuka Dark, which is essentially a 35% alcoholic coke, and in November (I believe), they announced the real world Nuka Dark product, a bottle of rum that looked like the in-game bottle. Together with shipping it clocked in at about $100, but when fans finally got it, they were outraged to find that it was a cheap plastic shell around a normal bottle, containing an equally cheap rum. Maybe not a case of false advertising, but certainly misleading. It wasn't stated anywhere that this was the products true nature, so in the absence of contradicting information, it was natural for people to assume the bottle itself would be glass in the iconic Nuka-Cola shape. Needless to say, but I'm saying it anyway, no one is happy about this.

Then we turn to Blizzard-Activision. Within a week (more or less) both parts of the game giant lost their Chief Financial Officers. The Activision CFO left to take up the same position at Netflix and shortly thereafter, the Blizzard CFO also quit. One wonders why?

Then came the big shocker: Bungie split with Activision and took the Destiny IP with them. In case you didn't know, Bungie developed the (mostly) beloved Halo franchise with Microsoft, before starting their multiplayer sci-fi shooter Destiny. They then partnered with Activision, and the controversies started rolling in.

Now, free from Activision, and popping champagne bottles in the office, Bungie is free to do what they want. However, they would do well to remember that they can't hide behind Activision anymore so any and all screw-ups are theirs to own.

Last year at the controversial Blizzcon, they talked about their E-Sports scene and how well it was doing and how it would grow in 2019. Six weeks later they axed all support for Heroes of the Storm. Preceding this move was a survey that looked at what people felt about the game. Now, a survey is circulating concerning Hearthstone, their Warcraft themed card game. Is Hearthstone next on the chopping block? In either case, Blizzards now former CFO warned before she left, that costs had to be cut. Ominous news for Hearthstone fans.

Finally, fans of the Alien franchise were excited when the official Twitter account started teasing a new game in the franchise. The tease seemed to hint at a sequel to Alien: Isolation, but then the bomb dropped when it was announced that the game in question is Alien Blackout, a mobile game. Naturally, people were pissed again. Apparently 20^th Century Fox is as clueless as Blizzard-Activision when it comes to the western video game market: we don't want mobile games. By all means, sell them in Asia and to whoever else wants them, but stop announcing them as a big deal to PC and console gamers, please.

That's that though. Join me again next time for more Eccentric Spheres and until then, have a great week!

The bigger they are...

The last few weeks have been an interesting time in the AAA game industry. Interesting as in the ancient Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times.”

EA releases Battlefield V, and most gamers barely notice. It's lousy sales numbers compounded by their former Executive Vice President in charge of Worldwide Studios, Patrick Söderlund, who stated “If you don't like it, don't buy it”. Then he took his multimillion dollar bonus and quit. Well, it seems that's what gamers did. They didn't buy it. EA's stock price has plummeted by almost 50% this year...

Blizzard, now Blizzard-Activision, dropped the ball twice in a row. First during their own conference, BlizzCon, where they announced a Diablo mobile game after leading fans to believe they had a proper game in the works. The devs on stage then double down and sarcastically asked the crowd: “Don't you all have phones?” Blizzard was booed at their own con...

Then, the announcement breaks that Diablo 3 is being released on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo's new console / hand held combo device. To celebrate, Blizzard announces a competition where you can win a Switch with Diablo 3. Nice prize, the Switch is fairly expensive. To enter all you had to do was take a picture and upload it, but the picture had to be of you playing Diablo 3 on the Switch... So to win the prize, you already had to own the prize.

Now on to Bethesda, dear Bethesda. Their last couple of months have not been good. First Fallout 76 launches to less than positive reviews, then a furor erupts when Bethesda refuses to give refunds on digital versions of the game. But, there are no physical copies. Even if you went and bought it from a physical store it was a case with a download code in it. So people start talking civil suit, as in several places (like the EU) it's illegal to withhold a refund within reasonable terms.

Then the bag controversy pops up. The Collectors Edition (or power armor edition) of Fallout 76 was advertised to come with, amongst other things, a sturdy canvas bag. People got a cheap thin nylon bag instead. When they complained to customer service they got answers like, “Sorry, the canvas bags were too expensive to make,” and “We're not planning to do anything about it”. To no ones surprise people were furious. To make matters worse, the Collectors Edition was left on the Bethesda store unchanged for days after the story broke. Now, if it had truly been impossible to make the canvas bags, they should have changed the ad, but it remained.

Of course this is blatant false advertising, which is extremely illegal. Some lawyer at Bethesda must have gotten through to the decision makers because they announced that everyone who bought the collectors edition will get a canvas bag as soon as they are produced. All they had to do was contact customer service with their details so that Bethesda can send them the new bags. Simple, right?

Well, no, because Bethesda's CS pages apparently flipped completely and allowed a small number of random people access to the personal information of everyone who responded. Eight pages of real names, addresses, screen names, type of credit cards (but not complete CC numbers), etc. In internet parlance Bethesda doxxed a lot of their already angry customers. To make it even worse, these people could affect the tickets, as if they worked at Bethesda. The problem is fixed now, but there's a saying about barn doors and bolting horses.

All this leaves me wondering what is going on in the AAA game space? How can companies like this screw up so monumentally? What's next?

That's me for this week, join me again next time for more Eccentric Spheres and until then, have a calm and successful week!

Really dumb

Just a few days ago, there was a beta for Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the new version). Shockingly, it came to light that the game's entire progression is based on loot boxes. In other words, all progress in the game is down to random luck, and in order to mitigate that luck, you can buy more boxes for real money.

This is a tactic mostly used in so called freemium games, games that are free to play but urge you to use their micro-transactions to earn them money. Some are decent about this, others are scummy beyond belief, making you grind for days for everything unless you give in and pay.

Much have been said about the freemium market, but to see it so blatantly in a full price AAA game is disgusting. This comes on top of the Middle Earth: Shadow of War controversy, where it came to light that the multiplayer part of the game is heavily affected by loot boxes. Popular racing title Forza has added them as well in their seventh installment. Everywhere you turn, you find full priced games pumping out more and more micro-transactions and pay-to-win mechanics.

Publishers openly call their customers “Whales” and brag about not tightening the financial screws completely, “Because the whales might actually notice”. Games are becoming increasingly chopped up before the point of sale. We have Basic, Silver, Gold and Collectors editions costing ever more and more. Add on season passes for DLC that's not just unannounced, they're not even planned and you have an unbelievably hostile environment for the customer.

The natural question that follows is, why? To maximize profits, pure and simple. Some AAA games have budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the publishers want their money back with a hefty profit on top. This is of course standard business practice, nothing sinister there, but then the question becomes, why make games that are so expensive? Now the answer is not so obvious anymore. My best answer is that the businesspeople that make the decisions aren't gamers and they certainly aren't game developers. In their minds, if you invest a lot of money, you get even more money back. Fair enough I suppose, but games aren't just a product, they are an interactive form of art, and you can't make good art by throwing money at it.

When you spend this much on a game, you can't take creative risks anymore. This is why publishers love their flagship games so much. They can be pretty certain that gamers will buy the yearly installment no matter how repetitive they get, making it a safe investment. This brings us to today's actual point. Yes, it's not just me ranting at the AAA publishers, no matter how much they deserve it.

Just recently, a game called Cuphead got released. It's a side-scroller, jumper shooter. The soundtrack is 30's jazz and the animation is 30's cartoons. It's absolutely amazing to behold. There is nothing like it on the market. It is genuinely new! Disclaimer: it is also insanely difficult, so make sure it's for you before you buy it.

The kicker is that the development team, StudioMDHR, consists of two brothers. Another guy made the music. That's it. 2-3 guys, and the game has sold more than a million copies.

The hit, Stardew Valley, has sold more than a million copies, and it was made by one guy. The Five Nights at Freddy's franchise is made by one guy, and has made around $30 million. Ever heard of Minecraft? Developer Notch started alone, before hiring on some help. The when it became popular Microsoft bought out Minecraft for $2.5 Billion.

See where I'm going here? Instead of making bland, boring games year after year, the publishers with all the money could do a lot of smaller varied games. Games that people would talk about for years and even decades. Who is going to talk about Call of Duty X three years later? No one. Even better, the AAA publisher could stop using poverty as an excuse to cram gambling elements and RNG loot boxes in the games. Wouldn't that be fun? I think so.

Of course the AAA boys don't just make garbage, I know that. I'm just getting so tired of this behavior. They can keep their flagship games, but the world needs new games as well. The best part is that smaller games are cheaper to make and require less people. This has been proven. Some AAA title have 600-700 people working on them. That is way too much especially when some teams are in different cities or even separate continents. Communication and vision of clarity becomes impossible at that point.

Alright, I could go on, and I might at some point, but I think that's enough for today. Until next time, have a great week!