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elfdragon12 · 4 months ago

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Come Together

A short story of the Astro Squad with my human OC, Ettie. Some backstory building and some practice writing their interpersonal dynamics.

Inspired by the "team" prompt from @cybertronia-obscura.

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In the far off year of 2004...

If he was honest with himself, Missile Master wasn't sure on how grateful he was that the medic that Ultra Magnus had chosen to assign to his squad was a human. As he and 3 other members of his squad were classed as minibots and only two standard sized bots, the smaller dexterous human hands were more beneficial than other bot medics. However, humans were notorious for following their own rules and those little fuel pumps in their chests called "hearts".

At least this little human seemed to be keeping with his pace at the moment as they walked through the halls of Autobot City. He was only twice her height, so she wouldn't have had to run as if he were the Prime's height.

"This way," he said as he turned to the right. "The rest of the team is waiting in room AA125 to meet you."

"Yes, sir," she replied. Her voice sounded on the lower side for human females. Good that she could respond to a commanding officer right.

Soon enough, they reached the meeting room.

His team had been relaxing in their various ways when the two entered. Barrage had once again convinced Blast Master to a game of reflex with a ball; Missile Master was pretty sure it was called a "basketball". Heave was sitting at one of the computers hooked up to Metroplex's systems. Phaser was going through their projected ship manifest on a data pad. Moonrock was gazing out a window.

"Attention!" Missile Master called out. "Time to meet the new member of the team!"

Blast Master got pelted in the helm with the ball in his rush to turn around, but the others turned without incident. The ball pinged off his helm harmlessly before bouncing around the ground.

"Team, this will be our new medic, Loretta Caruso. Ultra Magnus thought we might benefit from a human medic on our upcoming expedition."

"Oh!" Phaser turned down to the manifest before back to the human. "This would explain why I was forwarded a human supply list! I was about to send a comm to Hoist about a mistake."

The leader nodded. "Correct. Medic Caruso, this would be my second in commander, Phaser. He is completely reliable and, anything you need, he has probably already has it on the list. Before we leave, I suggest the two of you go through the manifest to double-check as we will be away from Earth for quite some time." He gestured to the other standard-sized bot who waved enthusiastically. "That is his partner, Blast Master. While we travel through space, these two will be our ship and, thus, only available through communication." He looked back to their new medic. His optics narrowed behind his visor. "How much has our squad been explained to you?"

The human blinked up at him. "Oh! Some basic stuff. You're a team dedicated to deep space travel, mapping out new areas and general exploration," she said, "First Aid did explain that you guys were a team of two bot combiners? And he tutored me on the special treatments combiners tend to need."

"Good. We don't need as strict maintenance as he and the other Protectobots might, but we do require more care than single bots do. As I said, Phaser and Blast Master are partners."

"We are the only two who are same size and all!" Blast Master interrupted, a big grin on his face.

"Yes. Do not interrupt me," Missile Master corrected. "My own partner is Moonrock." This received a wave from said bot. "Barrage and Heave are the final pair. Barrage is our combat specialist while Heave handles our intergalactic communications." Barrage gave a short nod as Heave sat up to attention.

The little human nodded, her hair bun giving a little bounce. "Got it! So, as he said, my name is Loretta, but you can call me Ettie since we've going to be together for a while! I went through training here in Autobot City. I did classes with Sparkplug Witwicky and Raoul Delgado Herrara and then advanced classes with First Aid, Hoist, and Ratchet! I'll be able to take care of you without a problem!"

"Hello, Ettie," Heave said. Even with the face plate, his smile was audible. He always seemed to be more put-out than the others that the squad didn't get to spend as much time on Earth as other bots. Getting to work alongside a human was likely an excellent runner-up for him. "I'm sure we have lots of questions for each other."

"Speaking of," the human's voice trailed for a moment, "mind if I ask about the combining thing? From what I've been able to tell, some combiners seem like they've always been together while others act like that was something they chose later. What is it with you guys?"

Heave nodded. "Barrage and I have been together for only a short time, at least when it comes to us. You humans would think we've been together for ages! Phaser and Blast Master have been together the longest." He paused just long enough for the two to confirm. "I'm from the Burthov city-state, doing most of my studies there, and went to the Altihex research facilities later on. That's where I met Phaser and Blast Master. I didn't meet Barrage until after we started our first expedition together. I originally transformed into an individual rover vehicle."

"Full shuttle class bots are not as common as we'd like," Phaser explained, "so I volunteered for a combination program. We were partnered by the program director. It was thought that our personalities would balance each other's out."

"If it wasn't for me, Phaser would spend so long double-checking things, he'd never get off the ground!"

The flattening of Phaser's optics were enough to tell how he felt about that description. "And, if it weren't for me, Blast Master would have rushed off into space somewhere and gotten hopelessly lost."

Medic Loretta Caruso laughed. It was a nice sound. She looked back to Heave. "So how did you and Barrage meet?"

"I," Barrage finally spoke up, "got separated from my original crew. There was a planetary evacuation order--there was some sort of civil war and the captain didn't feel authorized to get involved--and I was too busy helping out some innocent civilians and missed the launch."

"Either way," Heave continued, "we picked him up when we came across the planet ourselves. We couldn't leave a comrade behind, after all. As for how we became partners, ah, well-"

Leaning forward, Barrage grinned. "Turns out he's something of a trouble magnet, so I decided to stick with him. Get him out of the trouble he gets into."

Heave mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like "now it's worse".

However, Missile Master had no time to get into that when their little medic looked up to him with interesting brown color humans have. "So what about you and Moonrock," she asked, "I've barely met you and I can tell you're pretty different."

Moonrock, in an unusual show of forwardness, gave a low chuckle. "While we were studying in Altihex, I would allow him to lead on all our shared projects and I've been his favorite partner ever since," he said.

Missile Master's face plate warmed up. "Our dynamic is beneficial to both of us," he said to rephrase the unflattering explanation. "As our expeditions tend to take us into deep space where we rarely have access to timely back-up, we agreed to undergo the reformatting process to combine into a larger and more powerful vehicle." He cleared his vocals and turned to look down. "Any further questions or shall we get to our final preparations underway?"

"Seems like we've got plenty more time to know each other on the way, so let's get this show on the road!"

"We'll be in deep space, Medic Caruso, it's unlikely we'll get many shows on the road."

"We'll do a crash course on human expressions too."

#transformers #Astro Squad #TF Astro Squad #Micro Masters #Missile Master #Moonrock #Phaser #Blast Master #Barrage #Heave #Human OC #fanfiction #My writing #Cybertronia obscura

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xb-squaredx · 18 days ago

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Gaming in 2024: Layoffs, Live-Service Bombs and Mascot Platformers, Oh My!

Another year in the rearview mirror, it’s important to remember where we’ve been to have a better idea of where we’re heading. Much of 2023 was marked by a massive amount of layoffs across the gaming industry, and uh….2024 hasn’t really seen any improvements in that regard. As the initial sale surges of the early pandemic cool off, unchecked corporate greed has led to all of these acquisitions and resulting layoffs rendering much of this industry a shell of what it was just a few short years ago. It hasn’t all been bad, of course, but it’s important to highlight the more worrisome trends in gaming alongside all of the success stories. So join me once more as we take a look back at gaming in 2024.

THE BIG THREE

As is customary, let’s start off with recapping what the biggest game publishers did with their year. Microsoft had…well, quite the tumultuous year. Following their spending spree of acquisitions over the past few years, we’re starting to see a lot of the negative effects of that. This year alone Microsoft would close down four studios (Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Games and Roundhouse Studios), and lay off over 1900 people in total. Tango at least would get picked up by…the developers of PUBG of all things with the Hi-Fi Rush IP intact at least, but that’s about the only silver lining. Even 343 Industries, the ones with the trusted Halo series under their belt, didn’t escape downsizing, with future games likely being outsourced.

Perhaps as a result of these decisions certain developers under Microsoft have fought back a bit. Activision’s QA department formed the largest western video game union this year, with various World of Warcraft devs also forming a union at Blizzard. Toys for Bob, known for working on the most recent Crash Bandicoot games also split from Activision to go independent. It’s honestly hard to not look at Microsoft as a bit of a sinking ship at times, what with their only landmark title for the year in Hellblade II getting a somewhat mixed reception, not to mention this year also saw the release of a few previously exclusive games to other platforms. Coupled with the rather bizarre “This is an Xbox” branding at the end of the year, it feels like in the near future Microsoft might not really be considered a major console developer and instead pivot to software, but we’ll see how much longer they can hold on like this.

For Sony, I think it’s fair to say they had a bit of an off year. Starting off, they were pretty public about not having many major releases for the bulk of the year in their tent pole series, and even mentioned needing more original IPs to leverage. In the realm of hardware this year saw the reveal and release of the PS5 Pro…to a mixed reception. For starters, it’s retailing at $699 USD, and that’s before getting into the optional $80 stand, or the fact it is digital only (but you could buy an optional disc drive for eighty more bucks!), but people are split on the actual value the system has with its upgraded specs. While a big game like Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth does look and perform noticeably better, it isn’t exactly a clear upgrade for most games across the board. Considering just how few games are truly next-gen exclusive at the moment (we still see games releasing on the PS4 even this year), it has been hard to convince people to upgrade and its sales aren’t quite matching the PS4 Pro in the same timeframe. The fact that scalpers are forced to sell at a loss should show that the demand just isn’t there. They weren’t strangers to cutting jobs either, with over 200 people laid off at Bungie.

That said, there’s three big games to talk about for Sony this year and unfortunately most of them don’t have the best stories attached. On the one hand, at the start of the year Helldivers II was a bit of a sleeper hit, selling very well and getting a lot of praise for being a hit multiplayer shooter in a market flooded with them. But that good will was hampered by the decision made by Sony higher-ups to require a PlayStation Network account to play the game even on PC. While they would walk that back a bit due to backlash, in the end 180 countries that have no access to PSN are also effectively locked out of playing Helldivers II. Coupled with some questionable updates and balance adjustments, the game lost a bit of its momentum. But hey, at least it didn’t pull a Concord.

Concord was to be the first title from the freshly-purchased Firewalk Studio, and Sony clearly anticipated it being a major hit. So much so they had commissioned an episode of the video game anthology series, Secret Level, to be about the game. And then with the release, Concord broke records…by becoming perhaps the most high profile video game bomb of all time. Launch numbers seemed dire, the game not even breaking 1000 players on Steam on day one. Within the first two weeks the game was effectively un-launched with all copies refunded and a month later Firewalk Studio was shut down. The game was developed over the course of eight years, well before the Firewalk purchase and was rumored to have a budget of over $400 million. It was lambasted for stale, uninteresting character designs, a kiss of death for a hero shooter, on top of just…not representing anything interesting in the overcrowded live service space. I’m sure retailing at forty bucks didn’t help it, though after Helldivers II’s massive success with a similar price point, no doubt Sony expected lightning to strike twice. While not particularly memorable itself, it has become one of the most infamous bombs in this industry, though time will tell if any lessons are learned here. Seeing that Sony wants to buy Kadokawa, one of the largest media distributors in Japan (not just for games but tons of anime licenses), it seems like Sony is still pretty acquisition hungry, even if a sale isn’t happening…FOR NOW.

The only real bright spot for Sony this year then was found with the surprise hit that was Astro Bot. Despite being around for much of the PS4 generation, Astro Bot finally getting his own standalone non-VR, non-pack-in game had him break out into the big time and was one of the more celebrated games of the year. For one thing, it’s just a high quality 3D platformer, and that’s an endangered species as far as genres go (if your name isn’t Mario or Sonic anyway), but it was also a game that celebrated the 30th anniversary of the PlayStation console in general. Tons of cameos and references to various Sony first party titles were found inside, on top of a lot of notable third party cameos too. Between this and the pack-in Astro’s Playroom on PS5, Team Asobi seem to be one of the few devs that still remember why people fell in love with Playstation in the first place. It ended up winning several awards at The Game Awards, including Game of the Year, so that’s a brighter note for Sony to end on for this year.

And that brings us to Nintendo, who had a fairly quiet year in terms of game releases, though they are not without some controversies. On the one hand, with multiple rumors swelling about the impeding “Switch 2,” that MIGHT come out next year (it will apparently be REVEALED by April 2025 at least), this was a year where games were mostly handled by various smaller dev teams at the behest of Nintendo as their major teams clearly have their hands full. Peach and Zelda got starring roles with Princess Peach Showtime and The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom respectively, which is great and long overdue, but there were also smaller series given some spotlight. A new Endless Ocean, remakes of the Another Code series, and a brand new entry in the Famicom Detective Club series shows us that the Switch did so well, Nintendo had to dig deep once all the other bigger series were more or less taken care of. Taking note of that last title, Emio – The Smiling Man got a lot of attention for its mysterious viral marketing…that it was a new Famicom Detective Club game did roll some eyes, but it clearly got more eyes on the game than it would have gotten otherwise. Mario RPG fans ended up eating pretty well too, with the Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door remake hitting in the summer alongside the first brand new Mario & Luigi RPG in more than a decade. All and all, not a bad year for a console that’s been around for over seven years.

That’s just with games though, as Nintendo DID get involved in some more dubious things as the year went on. On the one hand, we have the more zany, left-field Nintendo ideas that were dropped at random points throughout this year like the Nintendo Music app or Alarmo…the digital alarm clock that plays game sounds and music to wake you up. But on the other hand, Nintendo was on a bit of a warpath with lawsuits this year. Notorious Switch emulator Yuzu were sued for over $2.4 million this year, seemingly shutting down by far the most prominent emulator for the system. And then there’s all the stuff related to Pocketpair and Palworld.

Palworld is definitely one of the more infamous games released this year. Developed by Pocketpair, a smaller Japanese dev known for little before this, the game made waves whenever a new trailer was shown off, being known by many as “Pokémon but with guns.” It released early in the year, showcasing a blending of monster catching and survival elements that made it out to be a strange fusion of an open world game similar to Breath of the Wild or Genshin Impact with a side of ARK: Survival Evolved. That said, what caught many people’s attention was just HOW similar a lot of the designs of the Pals were compared to a variety of Pokémon. Some argued that the wire meshes for the models was too similar to be a mere coincidence in some cases, but on the other hand…most Pokémon are based off of animals and mythical figures, so it’s not like THEY are wholly original either. That said, many felt it was just skirting the line and wouldn’t have been surprised if Nintendo or The Pokémon Company retaliated…and they eventually did, though not in the way most expected. Pocketpair would receive a joint lawsuit filed from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company over patent infringement, all relating to mechanics and animations that were present in Pokémon Legends: Arceaus, and while this is ongoing and will likely take some time to fully complete itself, the suit itself doesn’t really set a good precedent. Many would argue that trying to patent rather broad gameplay elements like this is anti-art, and only hurts the industry. But at the same time, Palworld feels like a rather cynical, derivative work that really straddles the line of plagiarism to a degree. It IS worth noting that Sony has a vested interest in the Palworld IP and has even invested some money and wants to go into multi-media so this could also be read as Nintendo and The Pokémon company wanting to snuff out any early competition. Who would have thought a seemingly unreal meme game would eventually lead to all of this?

And while we still have Pokémon on the brain here, we should also bring up the rather massive data leak that came from Game Freak late this year. Following a successful phishing attempt with an email, a reported terabyte of data was stolen from the developer. We’re talking the source code of some games, beta designs from older Pokémon games, potential info on the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A titleamong many other things. The element that probably drove the most engagement in the aftermath of the leak was a lot of alleged old lore entries or stories in the Pokémon world that often had Pokémon engaging in very…graphic acts. At this point though, it’s hard to tell how much of this was actually real, the results of dodgy translation or just a writing exercise as developers tried to hash out what they wanted for the series. All I know is I’ll never look at Typlosion the same way again. That said, the actual worst part of this leak is that this also included employee information. Don’t get me wrong, seeing some of this beta stuff and development notes IS legitimately fascinating, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of real people’s safety and privacy. With all this in mind, it hasn’t been easy to be a Pokémon fan this year.

That’ll cover the big dogs, but there’s still the matter of other assorted industry news to cover and…sadly the trend won’t really improve all that much.

THE LITTLE GUYS LICK THEIR WOUNDS

For starters, we can look at Square Enix. They announced layoffs in their US and Europe offices, and saw a major drop in their stocks. After lacking sales in their most recent Final Fantasy games, Square seems to understand that staying console exclusive isn’t a viable path anymore and will likely be changing course on that in the future. Ubisoft is also not having the best of times at the moment. For one, they were sued over the closure of The Crew, a pretty notable lawsuit regarding how online-only games are allowed to be made worthless with the flip of a switch. They’ve had quite a few gaffs this year, such as trying to tell people that they should just “get used�� to not owning the games they buy, and wants Steam to hide player numbers so people aren’t aware of how their games have been failing. One of their most high-profile failures this year was with Star Wars: Outlaws, showcasing that despite the Star Wars branding, people are not totally down with the open world Ubisoft formula anymore. With that in mind, there have been rumors of Tencent buying up Ubisoft.

Speaking of Tencent, they were notable for laying off the staff at Ouka Studios before their latest game, Visions of Mana, could even release. We’re at a point where you don’t even get to see if a game is successful before you get let go anymore it seems. And lastly from Tencent, renowned Capcom developer, Hideaki Itsuno has jumped ship to Tencent, though time will tell if that venture pays off for him. In the realm of game journalism there were quite a few shake ups too. IGN acquired multiple publications from Gamer Network, with perhaps the most notable being Eurogamer. Elsewhere, Gamestop would shut down Game Informer, which is a pretty major loss for gaming news. For over 33 years they were the premiere US-based gaming magazine known for in-depth interviews and looks at games; the void they leave behind is pretty massive.

In April Void Interact suffered a massive 4 terabyte data breach which sadly included source code for their game, Ready or Not, a tactical FPS that had just hit early access late last year. No employee information was seemingly found in the leaks at least, but alongside the Game Freak leak this year its clear security in the video game scene needs a lot of work. Annapurna’s gaming division all resigned en masse this year as well, following disagreements with where to take the company, which certainly calls into question the fate of certain games partnering with them. I suppose it might be better than the alternative of just laying everyone off.

Speaking of even more layoffs though, just to make sure we’re covering our bases, there’s even more jobs lost from the likes of Riot. They cut 530 jobs this year alone. Seeing how they still rake in so much money from the likes of League of Legends it’s frustrating to see that success not equating to job security. Supermassive laid off 90 staff, following the less-than-stellar reception to some of their latest games, including the Until Dawn remake. And perhaps most devastating of all, EA saw 5% of its workforce laid off, so that’s another 670 jobs gone. Grim stuff in general here.

I suppose I should bring up that in the realm of video game adaptations we had some mixed reception to certain new products. On the one hand, the live-action Fallout adaptation was extremely well received and successful, and Arcane mostly seemed to deliver on its final season. However, the Amazon-original Secret Level has been a lot more hit-or-miss. An anthology show depicting a truly random assortment of games, audiences seem split on the quality of many of these episodes. Some, like the Mega Man one, were very short and relatively solid reinterpretations of their origin stories, but some took more creative liberties, such as the Pac-Man episode that seems to have mostly been a stealth ad for the recently revealed Shadow Labyrinth game, a darker and edgier take on Pac-Man similar the reviled Bomberman: Act Zero. And then there was that episode on Concord which uh…need I say more there? Oh and then the Borderlands movie bombed, but at least the Sonic 3 movie seems to be doing well (less said about the Knuckles spin-off the better though).

I also feel I need to at least pay some lip service to the ongoing video game voice actor strike with SAG-AFTRA members. Following ongoing negotiations with the ever-growing threat of generative AI taking over the industry, in July of this year a video game strike was launched against various video game developers and publishers. While some publishers have made interim agreements or side deals with the actor union, many are still on the picket line as they fight for the right to not have their voice thrown up on an AI database and just used without their knowledge or consent. AI is a pretty hot-button issue right now, not just in gaming but everywhere. We’re living in a world where it can be hard to tell what is real and what is being generated by an AI program, where capitalists see this as a way to cut down on costs at the expense of art losing its soul and manmade touch, not to mention the potential environmental impacts. I certainly hope that actors can get the protections they need and eventually this strike can come to an end, but at time of writing it continues onwards. Maybe once that AI bubble pops we can get some GOOD news for once.

Speaking of good news though, I want to switch gears and indulge my own niche interests a bit here, and talk about all the good (and bad) things in the realm of fighting games this year.

LEGENDARY PARTNERSHIPS AND RESURRECTIONS

All things told, this year was pretty good for fighting games, though there’s definitely a few stinkers mixed in here. The year itself started off with the launch of French Bread’s Under Night In-Birth 2: Sys Celes, and despite some launch issues overall it’s a fairly well-regarded release that continues to iterate on the gameplay that makes the Under Night series stand out. SNK also was in the news a lot this year with continued news about their next title, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves. They’re received a lot of praise for the game’s visual style, and fans are eagerly awaiting the release early in 2025. But the biggest game release by far this year was Tekken 8. Pretty much the sole big 3D fighter at the moment, the game drew equal amounts praise and criticism for its more aggressive playstyle and changes to older characters, alongside the rather large visual upgrade. The story mode was also praised for being very bombastic, with a very intricate final boss that takes the Tekken story to new heights. Sadly…it couldn’t escape some criticism here or there though. After release the game would suddenly add in a cosmetic shop littered with microtransactions, something that reviews never seemed to get wind of, and later on drew the ire of players with the release of a new stage that was NOT included with the season pass, despite an earlier stage seemingly being included in the pass. They received a lot of flak for some of the DLC choices as well, with the latest character for the season, Clive from Final Fantasy XVI, splitting the fanbase a bit. Despite all of that, the game has clearly done well for itself (taking home Fighting Game of the Year at The Game Awards) and will likely be supported for years to come.

This year also saw a lot of older franchises come back from the dead, and some longstanding partnerships were suddenly highlighted. For starters, a new entry in the Dragon Ball: Budokai Tenkaichi series, Sparking Zero, saw release. This was a bit of a dream come true for longtime Dragon Ball fans who love diving into the virtual toybox that this series supports…though it IS worth noting it was also home to a very embarrassing official tournament that highlighted some fairly terrible balance decisions in the game. Capcom came out of nowhere with the surprise release of a fighting collection of all of the Marvel Comics fighting games they made over the years, especially the iconic Marvel vs. Capcom series. Not to be outdone on that note, they confirmed yet ANOTHER fighting collection, this time being made up of a variety of early 3D titles such as Project Justice or the Power Stone games, alongside the two SNK crossover titles. Capcom and SNK are particularly buddy-buddy this year, as this year also saw that for Street Fighter 6’s second season we would see Fatal Fury’s Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui joining the game, and for City of the Wolves both Ken Masters and Chun-li will also guest star. Adding onto all of that, there was also the finale to the Capcom Cup and the $1 million prize. About the only thing to complain about is a lack of costumes for SF6.

That said, by far the most significant return to fame this year was Sega finally confirming a brand new Virtua Fighter game. With a teaser shown off at The Game Awards, and a massive “Virtua Fighter Direct” detailing things afterward, Sega seems to be committed to reminding people why they were once the kings of the 3D fighter. When you have the president of Nvidia and a Saudi prince singing the praises of the series and seemingly throwing their own support towards this revival, it seems like it might be something special, though we don’t yet know how long we’ll have to wait for the game. In the meantime, there has been yet another re-release of Virtua Fighter 5 on PC that supports proper rollback netcode as well as balance adjustments to sate players for now.

Of course not everything was great in the realm of fighters. Mortal Kombat 1’s first full year was filled with a fair bit of criticism, but the announcement of their second season and major story expansion, Khaos Reigns, didn’t seem to do much better. For starters, it was quite pricy at over fifty dollars for a short story expansion and six characters, with no ability (at least at first) to just buy the characters separately from the pack. There’s also the matter of the character choices; revamped versions of the cyborg ninjas alongside Noob Saibot were a bit disappointing for some but then there’s the guests. Ghostface from the Scream films, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Conan the Barbarian, and the T-1000 from the Terminator films. Some feel they’re kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel for “fitting” guests, not to mention many are still reeling with the double dose of “evil Superman” characters like Omni Man and Homelander last season. Rumors swirled that the expansion sold poorly and future DLC likely won’t follow. In general it’s hard to feel like MK1 wasn’t a bit of a misstep.

We’re not done talking about Warner Bros. fighters either. After a yearlong slumber, MultiVersus returned. While this free-to-play platform fighter seemed like it was going to be a smash hit during its open beta in 2022, it quickly ran dry of content and then abruptly announced it would be going offline for a year to prepare for the “real” launch. I’ve talked about why this relaunch faltered elsewhere but to sum things up: the game plays substantially differently, it is still loaded with bugs and strange design decisions that were still present in the beta, on top of some of the most aggressive and desperate monetization I’ve seen yet. At one point, WB outright bought the studio behind the game, Player First Games, so it seemed like maybe they were ready to invest more into the game. However, ahead of its fourth season reveal, WB Discovery CEO David Zaslav stated in an investor call that the game, among others, contributed to a $100 million loss so….getting some mixed messages here. That said, the recent release of Rivals of Aether 2 does seem to have given platform fighter fans SOME solace.

Oddly enough, MultiVersus’ failures seemingly scared off Riot and their own attempt at a platform fighter, if rumors are true. Outside of that potential game, Riot finally unveiled a bit more information on their upcoming League of Legends game. Once known as “Project L” for years, it has a new name….2XKO. This name got lambasted pretty quickly, though later on in the year the game got a playable beta that received a lot of feedback from players. Many still seem to be really highlighting this game as being something special, but details are still scarce regarding the release date, so this is far from the last we’ve seen of it.

And lastly, I feel the need to highlight the truly awful hand dealt towards the indie fighter, Them’s Fightin’ Herds. Going from a fan game based off of the Friendship is Magic My Little Pony generation, it eventually became its own title. It was a fairly solid little fighter, even if it never quite got a lot of attention for one reason or another. Sadly, this year the devs, after being purchased by Maximum Entertainment, were abruptly laid off before work on the final two characters of their first (and now only) season pass could be complete. These last two fighters were hastily released and completely broke the game with massive oversights and game breaking bugs that threatened to ruin the game’s small, if dedicated, competitive scene. Later patches would smooth over SOME of these issues but it’s clear that this game was not given the sendoff it deserved. With other fighters in development with Maximum Entertainment, such as Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age, a beat-em up fighting game hybrid that employs controversial fighting game dev Mike Zaimont, as well as a game set in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe, I think audiences should think twice about supporting this publisher. They clearly don’t support their developers.

With that detour out of the way, let’s return to talking about some big titles that hit this year as a way to wrap things up.

THE BIG GAMES OF 2024: MANY HITS AND MISSES

Fans of live-service shooters were spoiled for choice this year, though not all of those experiences are made equal. After all, we already talked about Concord. That said, another failure of sorts in this genre was WB’s own Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. The first brand new (non-VR) game from Rocksteady in almost a decade, the game was sadly dead on arrival and was one of the more notable bombs early in the year. Many felt that it wasn’t the best call to make a game about taking out such beloved heroes in their first major appearance in the Arkham Series. There’s also the fact this came from a studio known for making tight, single-player experiences and suddenly jumping ship to a live-service multiplayer game seemed unwise. Really you could go on with all the ways in which this game failed to be very appealing, but it ultimately lead to poor sales and would barely get out a year’s worth of planned content before effectively wrapping up. In all, it is said to have cost WB $200 million in revenue. With all that being said, a bit of a major shocker at year’s end was the surprise success of Marvel Rivals. While clearly somewhat derivative when compared to Blizzard’s Overwatch, the slick presentation, relatively consumer-friendly microtransactions and generally solid gameplay has led to the game getting a ton of attention, gaining 10 million players within three days of going live. Certainly did better than something like Foamstars, a game clearly aping Splatoon that has fizzled out in the same year it debuted. I guess at the end of the day live-service games can do just fine if you…you know…make it appealing.

We’ve covered most of the bigger games from the major, well-known publishers this year but there are some more notable hits from various developers in Asia. From Korea, we have Shift Up’s Stellar Blade, an action game that managed to be very…eye catching in various ways, seen by many as a solid title that took more than a little inspiration from Nier Automata (even scoring a collab with them). It DID unfortunately get embroiled in some culture war stuff; some feeling it was a game that “destroyed” the West because uh….the main character had a big ass or whatever. There WAS a bit of controversy from this same crowd when some of the costumes in-game seemed to be censored…but honestly it looks like people making a mountain out of a molehill. At the very least, the devs seem to be pretty normal about things…which unfortunately I can’t say for one of China’s biggest success stories this year: Black Myth: Wukong. This title became a true smash hit with over 21 million copies sold and won a variety of awards by the year’s end. But there WAS a lot of controversy regarding the game, with some bizarre streaming guidelines that forbade influencers from talking about “feminist propaganda” among other things. And then there’s the director of the game being more than a little salty that the game didn’t win Game of the Year at The Game Awards. Still, it’s good to see gaming continue to grow throughout the world with a variety of other countries really coming into their own.

And lastly, I want to shed some light on some of the more notable indie games released this year. There’s dozens of titles that deserve some limelight, like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, a visually stunning mystery game from the developers behind the equally visually stunning Sayonara Wild Hearts. Or there’s Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, a game that sets out to emulate the infamous Zelda CDI games…except, you know…good. There’s the adorable platformer The Plucky Squire, or the acclaimed puzzle metroidvania Animal Well too. In sheer variety, UFO 50 has you covered with 50 games from a bunch of different genres in a way that emulates those old retro collections with games of dubious quality. Horror games even got some interesting entries this year with Crow Country as a fun throw-back to PS1 horror similar to Signalis from last year. Mouthwashing also came out of nowhere and ended up becoming a surprise hit for many, as the dark and at times distressing story really connected with people, introducing one of the most hateable characters in gaming (seriously, Jimmy is the worst). But the biggest hit by far this year was Balatro. The Poker roguelite has sailed past 3.5 million sales this year, ending up securing some wins at The Game Awards, and it shows little signs of slowing down. A deceptively simple gameplay loop, themed around gaining special Joker cards that allow you to cheat in increasingly crazy ways at Poker, the game proves hard to put down and even as some were perplexed that it would be nominated for Game of the Year, all it takes is a few games to be converted. Seeing as this was made by one guy, that’s pretty damn impressive. With how bad the industry has been for the top dogs out there, it’s not hard to feel like indies really pick up the slack in many ways.

Ordinarily we’d be done here, but I have one last segment I want to go over….because we’re STILL not done with the rampant layoffs and such that plague the industry, but one company in particular needs to be brought to task.

A DEADLY EMBRACE

So far we’ve covered a variety of layoffs and studio closures from Microsoft, Sony, EA, Riot, Square Enix and more, but there is one company that stands out among all others. An entity that has been putting its fingers in all the pies, and it has basically ruined the entire bakery. I’m talking, of course, about Embracer Group. The last few years have seen Embracer swooping in and grabbing up as many studios as possible. At one point it was easier to think about what they DIDN’T own. However, their spending sprees (and a failed Saudi deal) have had a lot of repercussions this year especially. Let’s take it from the top of the year.

First, Lost Boys Interactive hit layoffs right in January, though an exact number wasn’t given. A second round of layoffs would occur in September, once again being quite significant but no numbers shared. Also in January, 97 jobs were cut from Eidos Montreal, and on top of that work on a new Deus Ex game was halted and cancelled. After Embracer picked up the studio in 2022 they haven’t exactly done much with it and now here we are. We’re STILL in January with more cuts from Black Forest Games losing a whopping 50% of its workforce. With this in mind, by February of this year, taking into account some cuts made at the end of 2023, Embracer was suddenly out nearly 1400 workers. To paraphrase a quote given about these layoffs, their highest priority is their shareholders. These people don’t care about games, or people’s livelihoods…they just want to make sure the line keeps going up. I wish I could say we were done here but we’re still just getting started.

You see, in addition to all of these layoffs, they also sold off a variety of studios that they owned in an attempt to get rid of debts and right their ships. In March, they sold off Saber Interactive for a deal that seems to be valued at around $250 million, with a variety of projects now given ownership to the buyer, Beacon Interactive. At least with this deal jobs seemed to be secured. The same can NOT be said for the sale of Gearbox to Take Two for about $460 million. Shortly afterward Gearbox faced layoffs, though an exact number wasn’t given.

As a result of all of this, in April Embracer would announce plans to split into three different brands: Asmodee (dealing primarily with trading cards, off of a purchase from 2022), Coffee Stain and Friends (focusing on a variety of their smaller gaming IPs) and Middle-earth Representatives and Friends (focusing on bigger powerhouse IP with games as well as the Lords of the Rings franchise). This is being done to allegedly allow all of these different studios and business ventures to run as efficiently as possible but forgive me if I’m not altogether optimistic. To prove my pessimism right, in June Embracer would close down Pieces Interactive, known for the Alone in the Dark franchise. One final blunder to close this section out, also in June Embracer would talk about embracing AI for even more efficiency in their game distribution. Oh sure, they say that AI won’t replace any real human jobs, but I trust them about as far as I can throw them. Then again, if they keep closing down studios and laying people off, they really won’t have any humans left to replace.

Laying it all out here like that, it’s just so…sickening. Somewhere around 1600 people losing their jobs in the span of a year after ONE company went on a spending spree and thought they’d landed a multi-billion dollar deal, on top of riding the highs of inflated spending from the pandemic. Adding to all of the other layoffs and closures this year it’s a wonder the gaming industry is still standing. This isn’t sustainable, and the fact there seems to be next to no protections to keep things from getting to this point, let alone being able to punish the companies that play chicken with people’s jobs is just…well, it’s enough to make me say something that would probably get my Twitter account suspended. The biggest question here is undoubtedly “when will it end?” And how many people’s livelihoods have to suffer while the so-called leaders are mostly unaffected? I wish I had an answer.

CONCLUSION

The gaming industry rode a wave of profits for some time while so many were forced inside. The ones at the top believed that this would last forever and kept spending more and more, blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes. But the common worker is the one who pays the price, and the industry somehow still limps along anyway. Not to be a big downer or anything but…it’s hard to look at all of this information and not feel like things are so utterly bleak. But giving into despair isn’t going to solve anything.

There ARE some bright spots here at least. I’m glad to see a game like Astro Bot win so much acclaim, since it was a title made by some talented, driven people that haven’t forgotten what gaming is SUPPOSED to be about: fun. Or at the very least an engaging experience that isn’t concerned with checking off boxes for focus testing or making sure it maximizes profit about all else. With all of these live-service blunders I can only hope the industry eventually forgoes this model, or at least makes it all less predatory. With a new Nintendo console on the horizon again, I’m also hoping the Big N can bring about some great games that don’t need to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to impress and then barely make any profit back. Indies continue to hold up this industry with some really inventive games that make for pure experiences that can go toe-to-toe with the biggest AAA titles. One last little story that emerged at the end of this year also gives me a bit of hope for the future. Following the turmoil at Platinumgames, Hideki Kamiya has formed a new studio, Clovers, and is working with Capcom once again on a sequel to the Okami game that once made Clover Studio infamous. Kamiya mentioned that had he stayed at Platinum, his creative soul would have died. Seeing that Platinum seems more focused on live-service titles at the moment (despite their previous effort crashing and burning), I take this as a sign that the creatives out there will still fight for the right to make the games they want to make and won’t just roll over and let the greedy executives win without a fight. There are silver linings in these massive clouds over the industry and I think that, if the people will it, brighter days will be ahead. I certainly hope that 2025’s year in review will end on a much happier note.

Happy Gaming.

-B

#blog #xb-squaredx #video games #layoffs #embracer group #astro bot #wukong #concord #suicide squad #switch 2 #palworld #pokemon #2024 #year in review

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