I was reading a post on Massively Overpowered the other day, talking about how many people believe that New World’s legacy will be one of failure. As Amazon Games quickly admitted that it has no idea how to make games and decided to sweep it’s projects under a rug, many people believe that it was the game that failed. As the article mentions, many people believed that in the end, both conceptually and from an operational perspective, New World was a PvP-centric title. The article reminds us that it was concepted as a PvP title, but pivoted to a PvE title at the 11th hour and spent the rest of it’s life-cycle trying to build up from there.

This is an age of exceptional brand consciousness. Not only are people obsessed with brands — I refer you to the “green versus blue” bubble rift as Exhibit A — but anyone who decides to hang a shingle online has, themselves, become a brand. I don’t like to demonize “social media” because it’s a mindless tool whose actual sins stem from the mindless tools who abuse it, but as it’s designed to propel individuals into public consciousness, the rocket fuel people use to get there is based solely on image management. I recently read some thoughts, author forgotten because I Am Old(tm), that talked about how everyone right now is scared, and angry, and sad, yet somehow social media is filled with happy, funny, well put-together individuals. Social media is our cultivated image, and people have lost clout as well as money when the machinery driving their online personas crashed and burned, revealing the “real person” behind the wheel.

Admitting that we can be wrong is one of those “stick-in-the-spokes” things that everyone tries to avoid, especially when cultivating a facade of a smart and thoughtful person behind the keyboard. Stirring the pot with anger and negative sentiment gains eyeballs; being known as “grumpy” or “angry” is a shrewd brand accent that too many people adopt to bring in the followers. While some people adopt this angle as an act, other people are just so naturally horrible that such a persona is a bit of their reality breaking through online. They don’t pretend to dislike a product, they actually hate the product because they’re miserable and this is the target they’ve chosen to rail against today.

That’s OK; not everything is for everyone, but the value of a “hot take”, of being first on the scene with a say, and of being the loudest, most controversial opinion as quickly as possible is a force-multiplier. That’s why people who may have railed against New World when it was planned as a PvP game can’t acknowledge the reality that it wasn’t that for the majority of it’s lifetime. They chose a hill to die on, and so now they must stay dead and buried there lest they lose face, or followers, or clout. Without likes and subscribes, their life loses meaning.

Why New World? The post’s author was a fan, and covered the game for MOP so it makes sense that for this topic, this column, it was New World. But what about games like Marvel Heroes? Or City of Heroes for that matter. Wildstar. Crowfall. Any game that was closed down…who’s fault was it really? People point to “the developers” as if they are a monolithic monoentity that exists in a world of black and white. Whether things go right or wrong, it’s “the developers” who made it happen. Whereas the MOP article talks about how some people refuse to believe that New World is a PvE game, some/many/most/all people don’t bother with nuanced analysis of why a game fails; failure is failure, and that’s the only thing they need to know.

Games are, after all, a business and live service games are ongoing businesses that need to not only make enough money to keep the lights on, but to make enough of a profit to make the product owners happy. Maybe an MMO makes money, but if it’s not enough to satisfy the stakeholders, it’s in danger. Maybe an MMO makes a lot of money, but if it’s still not enough to satisfy the stakeholders, it’s in danger. Amazon has some of the deepest pockets on the planet, and there’s no reason they couldn’t leave New World running. The people who really call the shots don’t care that fans are sad. They don’t care that they willfully parted with their money and expect recompense in perpetuity; that’s not how business works, and contracts always favor the producers in this circumstance. New World and many other games aren’t intrinsic failures; their management is ultimately to blame for not reading the room correctly, or sooner, or at all, and for making decisions that fell on deaf ears, or of not selling the right message to the right people.

This is also why I refuse to blame “the developers” for whatever is going on with Star Citizen on any given day, because I have been around this game long enough to see the pattern that the problem is and always has been with management. But the general population won’t care because so many people have already made up their mind about what Star Citizen means to them, and some/many/most of it is entirely negative. Development takes too long. It’s pay to win. It’s greedy. It’s a train-wreck. I, myself, have levied those accusations against the game and I still stand by those criticisms, but I’m not going to expire on this particular hill. I’m rolling with the punches. I will give credit where it’s due, when it’s due, and I’m willing to admit when and if I’m wrong, but I’m not staking my online reputation on being Yet Another Star Citizen Hater, just as I wouldn’t want to come off as Yet Another Star Citizen White Knight. Look at what’s in front of you. Experience the reality for yourselves. Be open to being influenced by what you see, and be willing to admit when you’ve been wrong. Video games are entertainment, not thrones to bow before, so be more willing to be entertained and less time trying to save face.