The main disappointments of 2018 in the gaming industry (Topic)

Looking back over the past year, it becomes even a little bit sick of the number of scandals that have been deafening in the gaming industry. The reason is simple: the more popular video games become, the more often capitalists from the brain to the tips of their toes come to management positions, who view games not as art, but another way will be enriched, guided only by sales schedules and modern trends. An urgent problem, so in this article we will tell you about the most important failures of 2018 in the gaming industry.

Fallout 76

The old proverb says: "There is one step from love to hate" and the best confirmation of this is absolutely all the news related to Fallout 76. Even at the time of the announcement of the game, numerous Bethesda fans met with little enthusiasm the idea of transferring a primordially single role-playing project to multiplayer rails ... At the same time, Bethesda's reputation is almost cloudless, so it only remained to wait for the release and trust the creative vision of Todd Howard's studio. But when Fallout 76 was released, Bethesda opened Pandora's box.

Problems plagued the game on all fronts. It's worth starting with the disastrously disastrous quality of Fallout 76, which was rife with bugs and strange gameplay solutions, making the game one of the lowest-rated projects of the year. Some players even wanted to sue Bethesda, and one of the buyers destroyed the Gamestop store altogether when he failed to return the disc from Fallout 76. In addition, Bethesda surprised with failed marketing decisions, it is worth remembering at least the scandal with the replacement of expensive canvas bags with nylon in the collectible editions of the game.

Not surprisingly, a week later, Fallout 76 was on sale at a big discount, and Todd Howard's studio in just a couple of months was able to move from being popular favorites to the main object of ridicule and hatred in the gaming industry.

Battlefield V

The fifth part of Battlefield was another game that generated scandals around itself with enviable regularity. But in fairness, we note that, unlike Fallout 76, the problems of Battlefield V were primarily not in the quality of the game, but from the controversial decisions of the PR department of Electronic Arts and developers from DICE. You can already start with the announcement trailer, which looked more like a cartoon sketch of the Second World War.

The reaction of the DICE staff to the players' indignation was simply amazing: the game designer Patrick Soderlund said at all that "if you don't like our game, don't buy it." A bold statement, a stupid marketing decision and a new meme that players still remind developers in the news about the not-so-great sales of Battlefield 5. Then there was a postponement of the game's release and the message that most of the game's content would not be available at release.

The final cherry on the cake, Battlefield V, was a private launch event where developers scoffed at player feedback. It seems that DICE is ready to do absolutely everything to take the main anti-awards of the gaming industry in 2018 from Bethesda. We admit, they almost reached their goal.

Story FPS Extinction

The outgoing year will surely be remembered by fans of single-player, story-driven shooters. But not thanks to the hail of sensational releases in your favorite genre, on the contrary, thanks to their almost complete absence. Let's remember 2017, when we had excellent Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, Prey (although Immersive Sim, but still) and a standard set of single-coil campaigns in Battlefront and Call Of Duty. Moving on to the 2018 FPS releases: Far Cry 5 co-op, niche retro shooter DUSK, and a low-quality seed for Battlefield 5's multiplayer War Stories.

The release of Cal of Duty Black Ops IIII is also notable, in which the developers for the first time in the series abandoned the single-player campaign. Most notably, in the case of the new Call of Duty, while offering a fully multiplayer entertainment package, the game still remains at the top of the top sellers. This trend is especially depressing in light of the commercial failures of single Prey and the second part of Wolfenstein. It seems that players really don't need story-driven shooters today. But in any case, it is too early to sprinkle ashes on your head, because at least in 2019 the release of blockbuster Rage 2, DOOM Eternal and a slightly smaller project - Far Cry New Down is planned.

Mobile games in cult series

Probably, it will not be a secret for anyone that the main profit in the gaming industry is generated not by the favorites of critics with multi-million dollar budgets like God of War and Red Dead Redemption 2, but by relatively cheap mobile games in production. Therefore, it is not surprising that more and more eminent developers are trying their hand at the field of mobile gaming, which became the reason for two high-profile scandals in the gaming industry in 2018.

First, let's recall Command and Conquer Rivals, announced at E3 2018. The idea of transferring the legendary RTS series in a budget version to smartphones was not received by players enthusiastically. The dissatisfaction is clearly visible in the numerous negative comments on the Internet and the record number of dislikes under the first trailer of the game. But we must admit that such a move from Electronic Arts was to be expected, it was not for nothing that the publisher received the award twice as "the worst company in the USA".

But what exactly we could not expect is a stab in the back for hardcore players from Blizzard. For some reason, the developers decided that it would be a good idea to announce a budget version of Diablo on a smartphone before the Blizzcon finals, while not providing an alternative in the form of a full-fledged Diablo 4. The reaction of players to Diablo Immortal was so violent that Blizzard shares fell by an impressive 7%, but be warned, mobile Diablo is just the tip of the iceberg.

Insiders have reported that the developers have Napoleonic plans to strengthen their positions in the segment of games for smartphones.

Assassins Creed Odyssey XP boosts

Another major failure in the gaming industry was noted by Ubisoft with the release of Assassins Creed Odyssey - a rare game from a French publisher that does not have multiplayer, and you have to make money on something. Experience boosts were the solution to this pressing problem. Their presence could not have been noticed at all, if it had not been for the suspicion that Odyssey was originally developed in such a way as to spur buyers to buy boosters to speed up pumping.

Unlike The Witcher 3, most of the story missions in Assassins Creed Odyssey require a high level, which leaves the player with no choice but to go into the open world and spend time completing secondary activities. If the player really gets carried away with the new "Assassin", then on the contrary, he will be glad of additional motivation to explore the world, but there is another layer of gamers. They do not want to waste their time on trifles and want to pay attention only to the most elaborated and interesting content of the game - story missions. Therefore, for them it looks like a real mockery when the game persistently puts a spoke in the wheels and offers to "ease suffering" by buying experience boosters.

However, judging by the negative reaction of gamers, boosters in Assassins Creed Odyssey are mostly an experiment and, most importantly, unsuccessful. Therefore, we hope that the situation does not repeat itself in the case of new single-player projects Ubisoft and the publisher will look for other, less intrusive ways to further monetize games.

See also other materials with game results of 2018: Top 10 best and worst games of the outgoing year.

The Topic of Article: The main disappointments of 2018 in the gaming industry.
Author: Jake Pinkman