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LawBreakers: You Can’t Sell a Game on a Name

Sean Alexander

LawBreakers is an interesting game. Not really from the game part though.

 

So who has heard of Cliffy B? A man whose affectionate nickname stands out because of his involvement in titles such as Gears of War, Bulletstorm and Jazz Jackrabbit…okay maybe just the first one. He also worked on a lot of the Unreal series. So yeah, guy has a resume.

His latest project was LawBreakers. A competitor, not-competitor to Overwatch. Using anti-gravity mechanics, you could move in ways that differentiated the gameplay from its other hero based shooter brethren.

Unfortunately LawBreakers has been a bit of a flop. In some respects that’s an understatement and I’m sure the game itself has a lot of heart put into it, as the development team is clearly passionate, as is the publisher, but sales wise, it didn’t do well, and it’s player base is unfathomably low.

 

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Personally the first reason I can think of this happening is obviously Overwatch. If you want to release a hero based shooter, you need to stand toe to toe with the marketing juggernaut that is Activision-Blizzard. You need to be able to outpace and match Overwatch, no matter how different your gameplay is, it’s occupying the same space and aiming for the same players.

Just like Battleborn, another game that was attempted to be sold on name alone. Sure, Gearbox software has a name to them, one of…mixed quality…but it’s still a big name. But that enough wasn’t going to stop Overwatch, which release just before it, from casting a shadow and kicking the game aside. Not even going Free To Start saved it.

LawBreakers fared even less well. It came long after Overwatch had established itself as THE Hero shooter title. Millions of players, millions in revenue, it’s a juggernaut. What hope did LawBreakers have of snatching some of that away, especially without the marketing behemoth that is Blizzard behind it?

 

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The next thing that stood out to me, or rather, didn’t, was how under the radar this game was. Before release I was aware of a beta. I was aware the game existed, but I didn’t know much about it. All I heard, and all a lot of articles really said was that it was kind of like Overwatch, and a game from Cliffy B. What the game was certainly could have been conveyed better, especially what made it different from Overwatch, and it certainly didn’t quite grab the zeitgeist like a viral hit would.

The weird thing is, who can say why this happened? I’d certainly like to believe it is because, yet again, you can’t be a comparatively smaller publisher shouting your lungs out about a game, when there is a man with a megaphone right next to you. You won’t win that battle, not without some unprecedented windfall.

It could have just as easily been a case of not presenting the rights parts of the game.

 

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The next point is what I think really damaged the ship. As I stated a lot of the buzz around the game was “It’s from Cliffy B!” and while that CAN sell a game, it more often than not doesn’t.

Example: Mighty No. 9. From Keiji Inafune. Game wasn’t that good really. Heck even long-standing industry veterans can’t sell a game on name alone. The name of the company behind it, or the franchise in question can certainly reach the masses. Granted the game still needs to be good. But the masses don’t know the individuals. Ask anyone who Shigeru Miyamoto is. They don’t care about that. They don’t know the people.

More so, you can certainly say “Oh, this is the man behind the concept”, but…what about the rest of the people actually making the game? Yes, Keiji Inafune could say Mighty No. 9 was his idea but the rest of the team was responsible for execution. A single name behind a game does not a good product make.

 

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The reason I wrote this article is that publisher Nexon had a huge $32.6 million expenses hole in its financial reports, and naturally investors want answers. Apparently that was to be filled by LawBreakers, and the response the company gave was…interesting?

“…the timing of its launch turned out to be unfortunate, specifically the blockbuster PC online game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds came out right about the same time, making the market environment very tough for first-person shooters in general and for LawBreakers”

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Now I can understand this being the case on PC. But on consoles? Well Xbox One only just got PUBG and the PS4 hasn’t yet and won’t for a while. So this argument even if true only holds partial water. But on top of that no mention was made to the in-genre competition from Overwatch and Paladins.

But as I mentioned, even prior to launch this game didn’t really spark interest or catch attention. Nexon was banking on sailing a ship into a port already full to bursting with other similar ships. PUBG was just passing by.

 

This just goes to show that your name can’t sell a game on its own, and nor is throwing yourself into a crowded space without catching the eye of consumers a good idea.

And blaming a game that was passing by? A lot of other games managed to sell well this year despite PUBG being a thing. But damage control is damage control. You can’t tell investors “Our bad” otherwise confidence plummets. When you have a huge black hole in finances the last thing you want is people jumping ship.

 

 

As always I hope you enjoyed this article and that you give it a share and comment on social media! Until next time, Happy Gaming!

EA Has To Be Feeling The Burn Right Now

Sean Alexander 1 Comment

Star Wars Battlefront II sales figures are in for physical copies at retail from around the world. Oh boy.

 

 

So after the micro transactions mess and now lame excuses from EA, they have now revealed that maybe, just maybe, lootboxes won’t return to Star Wars Battlefront II at all.

EA has previously stated that the game will meet targets of around 14 million by March 2018, and at least match the 2015 predecessor, but now, it looks like that won’t happen.

 

Analysts in the US expected the game, at retail (So physical only) to chart below the original, due to the more prominent digital scene for game distribution now. Estimates coming out before the news breaks tomorrow, is it sold less than 1 million physics units in November.

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That is actually shocking, more so when that is believable, with Black Friday images showing the game going untouched in many stores. Evidently the backlash hit such mainstream presence, it damaged the reputation.

At the same time, it was also Black Friday, better deals and all that. Plus, EA did announce before the game launched that it would be discounted alongside the new Star Wars movie, so both could have had an impact. Either way, those remaining sales won’t have been made up digitally, that is for certain.

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More over in Japan the game debuted…at a solid 30,000 or so, and then fell from the charts. In the UK it’s hung around the top 3, ahead of single platform release Super Mario Odyssey (Which given the circumstances some would say is a sin) but for a game on multiple platforms, not hot, especially as both Call of Duty and FIFA are outselling it still. Granted, those games aren’t innocent either.

So what does this mean? Well, we can only hope EA is re-evaluating its stance, and so is Disney most likely, now more government bodies are looking into the lootbox issue. EA has to be sweating about whatever happens next, and the rest of the industry is now being scrutinised heavily, with Destiny 2 under fire for gating off content you could access in the game behind DLC, even though you had access to it prior the DLC release date.

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Battlefront II won’t hit it’s projected sales targets, and investors won’t be happy. EA had $3bn wiped from their value over the course of this controversy, and while that is small change for them, it shows investors were absolutely not pleased, at least briefly.

EA also said micro transactions weren’t necessary to the game making a profit (Despite many publishers saying they are in fact necessary to do so), but under the current circumstances, they humorously may well have been!

Either way, EA’s monumental screw up has had a huge knock on effect. No one company is safe from scrutiny now, and all it took was one last push, and EA was the one to do it. They pushed too hard too fast, though honestly, I would have expected this event to happen eventually anyway.

Whether they alter their course or not remains to be seen, but we are now in the stage where publishers are attempting tactics and having to apologise afterwards with their tails between their legs.

 

Plus, we get to see every other developer fire shots. That’s something amazing to witness.

 

If you enjoyed this piece as always share and leave some feedback on social media, and I will see you next time. Until then, Happy Gaming!

Valve: Why Did You Stop Evolving?

Sean Alexander 2 Comments

Valve created Steam well over a decade ago now, with the sole purpose of reinvigorating, restoring, and evolving the PC Gaming place. So why the hell did they stop?

 

I will open this by saying, while I am very much a periphery to PC Gaming and its largest audience, I have been aware, involved in, and observant of it for well over 5 years. In those 5 years, I have seen my housemates, friends, colleagues, all using it, but I never dived in. Something felt wrong.

That something, was how I was always reminded I was looking at something from the mid 2000s. Clunky, albeit robust in a way, but the impression I always got from it was the “Ma and Pa store on the high street”. Quaint. Funny. Quirky. A great idea that needs to grow. That’s what people said about it. In some ways, yeah back when it was new, that probably actually was the image it had. So why in 2012 did I still see that?

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The thing with Steam is that it’s the primary digital distribution platform for PC. Sure you have Humble and GOG, but they don’t come close to the market share. If you want games, you use Steam. If you want deals, they can often offer great deals, just to keep that competition down, as they’ve been there the longest, and have accumulated a lot of wealth in the back pockets.

Valve created Steam as a way to revitalise PC Gaming. It had hit a slump when Steam first came along, it needed some solid store presence, and that was Steam. You can get refunds, you can get games with great deals, download them to your device, and pray you can play them without some additional DRM getting in the way (I mean, Steam is DRM).

In the mid 2000s, sure, that was awesome. in 2017 though, and even back when I first saw it in 2012, has it evolved much? No, not really. Steam has numerous problems, all traceable, as far as I am concerned, back to one thing and one thing only. The two main problems I want to focus on though, is functionality, and content. They have the same root cause however.

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Look how far I had to go before I stopped seeing “Released on Today’s Date!”

 

Starting with functionality, Steam is a bit of a mess. It’s all algorithms, something now even YouTube is realising probably isn’t the best way to handle things. Games are suggested half-heartedly, there are “Alleged” content filters for you, it’s very automated. It’s mechanical, a process. That very process with some things is unrefined. Take for instance screenshots, because you can’t just PrintScreen stuff, you press F12. But to view said screenshot in your accounts gallery, listed under your account, there are steps to take.

I actually asked some PC aficionados why this is. They said it’s because you don’t want all your screenshots being viewed publicly. I told them, well like on any other platform, they should just be saved to your gallery, where you can then edit and set permissions as to whether some are private or not. Simple stuff. Turns out, you can set permissions like that, but not from within the gallery, but from within the incredibly small “Main” menu at the very top of the UI, under Screenshots, which is where you go to publish screenshots before they enter your gallery, and I have to ask, why? Why has this system been left in place when across almost every platform imaginable, it is streamlined and simple? Why did Valve simply stop evolving Steam, something they made Steam to do in the first place?

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But that isn’t all. That is minor functionality compared to refunds. In the event of a refund, it is only eligible within two weeks, and two hours of play time. So why, please someone tell me, can someone live stream an entire game, just under 4 hours, and then live stream themselves being awarded a refund with a false reasons given being “I bought the wrong game”? Let’s ignore the fact they live streamed it, and question why the hell Steam awarded a refund for a play time that was out of the rules they themselves set? Do they just not care? There has to be someone on the other side right? Otherwise that wouldn’t just go through an automated system!

This is baffling. Steam has these rules in place and they can just be walked around. Casually is if nothing is wrong with that. This loops back to the problem of content now.

It has been well documented by critics such as Jim Sterling and others, that Steam has a curation issue. No one is actually at their desk doing anything, and if reports are anything to go by, Valve doesn’t have a defined structure, staff just do whatever, and having seen Half-Life get a patch earlier this year I can believe that.

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Steam left curation to the community. A bold idea, back when it had the Ma and Pa store look to it, but now, Valve Corporation, you should have staff. God knows you have the cash to do it! But back to curation, Greenlight, as anyone who leaves something up to a community will know, was a disaster. Abused, broken down, and indies felt their genuinely good games are, well, buried really. They are.

Now with Steam Direct….let’s not even go there. It’s done nothing. It hasn’t helped. The entry fee is the same as it was for Greenlight, which doesn’t help matters, and it seems like there is less curation. Indies have become openly resentful of the situation, and I have to agree.

In a 10 month period where 6000 games are released on Steam (Yes 6000), which is a 50% increase over the whole of 2016 at 4000, one has to wonder why a single platform is getting triple the games that the PS3 got in its lifetime, in less than a single year. Why is this the case? Does Valve not have any concept of curation? No, they don’t, and we come to what I believe is the root of the issue.

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Money. Valve is swimming in it. They evolved the PC space and made bank, competitors can’t come close to their market share as they have the funds to flash sale away and keep people in the ecosystem.

Valve even makes games! Well, I say that loosely. They made a few games, maybe once or twice a decade, and just rolls in micro transactions and DLC sales, and of course, a cut of all those submission fees they get from Steam Direct, and every game sold on Steam. Now as for why I say they make/made games in a loose manner, is because…well a lot of them they just bought, or were mods of games that they published. Valve themselves do very little, they don’t need to. They can sit and be happy.

Steam was created to evolve PC gaming. But Valve, being a corporation, as much as they like to say and act otherwise, has hit the gold rush and stopped. They don’t need to anymore. They don’t need to be proactive, keep pushing with their philosophy, or even make games! Money just makes itself now, and the rest of the world is evolving past them. Valve has become purely reactionary, you can see that with how they handle even controversy and poor games: It’s all after the fact.

 

 

Valve….I mean at this point my only suggestion is hire people. Get a corporate structure, get people to actually work. Or any day now, hopefully, someone will come and evolve the market in a way you should have done ages ago.

 

 

Thanks for reading, and if you have any comments or want to share this with friends, please do so! Thanks for reading, and Happy Gaming!

The Unfortunate Obsession with Metacritic

Sean Alexander

The industry has a bit of an obsession with Metacritic scores. Both consumers, and unfortunately publishers, look at the numbers in a way that has proven not only counterproductive, but dangerous in recent years.

 

Metacritic (And similar aggregators) have a simple job: Collect review scores and average them out. Now that’s all well and good and can be a useful source for a range of different reviews on a game, movie, music and so on.

Metacritic though has become a focal point. The vaunted goal, the barometer of what’s worth buying, and even what determines developers getting bonuses. Yes, Metacritic alone has become a huge part of the industry, and while it does a job that is needed, namely collecting reviews into one place for convenience, how it does it and the impact of that, is the problem.

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First, the rise of competitors such as OpenCritic have raised awareness that Metacritic seemingly acts selectively with getting reviews from places, requiring verification. Further, it also reaches very slightly different averages, indicating that some reviews are weighted more than others. Weighting is in fact a key point that we will come back to later.

Another issue is review scores, because that’s what Metacritic uses for an average, will be based on different criteria. A 7 from one site is a different set of criteria from a 7 elsewhere. But for Metacritic, a 7 is a 7. The reasoning behind the number could be completely different, but the context behind that number is ultimately lost.

The idea that Metacritic and other aggregators can give a consensus is a bit foolish. ure, it will say “Generally Favourable” or “Mixed” or whatever other word of the times it chooses, but is that accurate, when the context behind those numbers is lost? The average number is just a basis from generalisation.  A game could come out with 80/100 and be “Generally Favourable” only for the reality underneath to be…well mixed. This is especially prevalent with mixed or divisive games, as outliers skew the data, and in statistics, significant outliers are anomalous. But Metacritic doesn’t care about anomalies and their context, just the number. More pull is assigned to the lower end of the scale, so even if a game has by all accounts more “Positive” reviews than “Mixed”, the “Mixed” weight it down. On top of THAT, not every game will have the same number of reviews, further skewing data.

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I’m going to keep bringing up that number, because just like on this site and our refusal to score reviews (Again, context is key), that number in recent years has become the most contested aspect of any game.

The 4 point scale, admittedly nowadays more like 3 point scale, is a problem. Undoubtedly so in fact, to the point where now, a game below an 8/10 is considered bad. Yes, really, and I wish it wasn’t the case. A key factor in this is in fact aggregators have weighted (There is that word again) the averages.

Say you have a 10 point scale, in this case 1-100. If that was to represent a range of values from terrible, to bad, to average, to great, to excellent, why would 50% of that scale be assigned to “Negative” and below? Why is 50%-75% the range for “Average”? Why is the range for “Good to Excellent” only the upper 25%?

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This doesn’t make any sense. The cream of the crop would stand out regardless, so why is there a significantly larger range for games to be considered bad, than the other 2 general ratings? Why is the general bar for “Okay” around, of all things, 75-80%?

This extends to the issue regarding the 4 point scale. As the averages are locked to this upper half of the board, and most games fall in that range, it starts to push the minimum for what gamers call “Acceptable” up and up over time. Once, it was 7. It’s closer to 8 now and heaven forbid it hits 9/10.

These scores, and the uneven distribution and attribution of values given to the scores, is simply nothing more than fuel for a fire, of my game is better than yours, and so on so forth, amongst gamers, or even attacks on developers. It’s okay to have high standards, but average is not 7/10.

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Finally we are going to come to the other obsessed group: Publishers. Companies like EA and a handful of others, are known for tying bonuses for developers to a Metacritic score. Get a certain score, or no bonus. This is the dumbest, most disrespectful thing imaginable.

Sure, you should get a bonus for doing a good job or working extra hard. That is true of any industry. But developers go through crunch time, unpaid overtime, without union support. Worse to that, if the game has great visuals, and those artists, animators and modellers did the best they have ever done, but the programming leaves the game a mess with a low score, those visual development staff won’t get a bonus, even if it is their best work.

This is of course, assuming they still have the job afterwards, due to high turnover in the industry as well. Bonuses for a developer should be based on the work of the individual, and not held behind an arbitrary and without context number that a publisher wants to see, that can be broken down by a completely separate part of the development staff.

 

 

The industry has manifested a culture of abusing developers and not giving them their dues, based on what other people think. Not their work individually, not even what the publisher thinks, but what the rest of the world thinks, and the obsession with every increasing standards and a shrinking scale of what is acceptable means that this culture will only hurt developers in the end.

 

As always if you enjoyed this, give it a share and let me know what you think on social media. Until next time, Happy Gaming!