Summer Game Fest, here’s what I don’t want to see anymore | GameSoul.it

It can be done better!

Here we are, we’re about to start: the shows are ready to be streamed (find all the appointments in this article), announcements can’t wait to be announced and games to be pre-ordered. Oh yes, you can really smell the scent of it in the air Summer Game Fest and of all World Premiere which will be shot in our faces for a couple of hours which hopefully won’t prove too soporific.

Despite the many years of experience with the format and its limitations, the desire for enthusiasm is always there: June has always represented Christmas for gamersoverwhelmed by all the news that would then accompany them over the following months towards the holidays and beyond, wallowing with wide-eyed eyes between their favorite titles and the surprises that were truly such (damn leakers!).

There magichowever, that there is no more. Inevitable, I would say. But instead of basking in a consoling resignation, I prefer to try to identify some points on which everyone could intervene to make these events and, consequently, also the video game in general, better.

1 – Announcements made too many years in advance

I know how the hype is pure fuel for the sectorforced to create enormous expectations and make proclamations left and right to sell enough copies of the next and unforgettable masterpiece, destined to shut down a couple of weeks after launch.

For this, also just announce the games 3, 4 or 5 years before if not more. It is enough to promise the world with a logo (for goodness sake, some exceptions can be there) or a CG trailer and then abandon the players for who knows how long, perhaps forcing them to seeing the same title in 3 Summer Game Fests in a row and still have to wait for who knows how long.

My age and all the generations that have passed under my nose have led me to be more cynical, disillusioned, and at the same time to clearly understand the reasons for these moves. I know how the announcement serves to mobilize funds, reassure investors and convey a sense of “solidity” on the company sidenevertheless…

Yet there are those who manage to announce games 6 months after launch. It happened very often with Nintendo, it also happened recently with an unsuspected Ubisoft, which raised the veil on its Assassin’s Creed Shadows in May to announce a November release. And someone even complained about the “little time available” to evaluate the project, just to make it clear how we have been lobotomized, to the point of enjoying the drip of useless information and the “advertisements of announcements”. That’s enough, thanks.

2 – Live service, live service, live service

It may be trivial, but enough with live services! Really, we can’t stand it anymore: seeing managers and big publishers follow current trends like a parrot in the hope of carving out a slice of the cake that 4-5 major franchises have been eating for many years now (Minecraft, Roblox, Fortnite, call of Dutyetc.) and the big players in the Eastern market is, as young people would say… cringe.

Let’s understand each other, the more we become in tune with the world of work, the more we realize that the top management, almost everywhere, I’m not always holding the sharpest pencils in the pencil casebut from here we can see the constant and reiterated obstinacy to burn millions upon millions.

“Eh, but Helldivers 2 was good”

The exception that proves the rule

Certain. Because he, as well as other phenomena (comes to mind Palworld) has intercepted a public need, clearly and clearly: for competitive games on which banging your head for hundreds of hours for the purpose of obtaining a new nameplate/frame for the avatar there’s plenty of them, while drop-in/drop-out co-op games that invite their players into an ever-evolving world that can be shaped by their playthrough don’t. Of those there are 3 huge active ones on the market and 15 “wannabes” coming out every month ready to fail. Originality, freshness and the ability to understand that people are really interested in having fun are always rewarded, there’s little to say.

And then exceptions only serve to confirm the ruleso even if it’s not necessarily the fault of the Summer Game Fest the more an endemic problem of the sector, enough with live services!

3 – The cult of the superstar

It is true: we all need heroes, examples, models and goalswhich can inspire us or stimulate competition, which can lay out a path to follow or reinterpret.

But it is also true that we are really good at idealizing and putting everyone on a pedestal, because we are fascinated by success and in supporting a figure who has achieved it it is as if we were trying, in some way, to capture a reflection of it and make it our own. , almost as if it were an indirect gift.

At this precise moment, however, superstars only serve to illuminate the eyes of those who have to decide whether or not to invest in new projects. An enthusiast, on the other hand, should be clear on how one man is not enough to make a production valid or a game special and, indeed, the strength of the “group” should be valorised, particularly in this period in which those who – all things considered – bring home the result are considered replaceable.

It’s okay to have the big name that gets attention, it’s okay to bow to the genius of Kojima or Miyazaki, but it’s not like these people magically put their finger on a PC monitor and bring their visions to life or are able to program, model, animate and perfect every element of their titles themselves. Indeed, history teaches us that those who are “upstream” often does not have the skills of its collaborators and, without them, he can do very little.

Let us always remember the “peones”, especially now that we are scandalized by closures, layoffs, downsizing and so on, because the great name is always saved even in the midst of the rubble and it is our merit/fault that during events like the Summer Game Fest we find ourselves dazed in front of the screens as if we had seen a God. And instead it was just one Hideo.

4 – Always online? Even enough

For a passionate and involved player, who perhaps has been collecting pieces of his videogame library with great enthusiasm for years, hear phrases like: “Get used to the idea of ​​no longer owning your games” It doesn’t have to be pleasant, not at all.

Which in reality is quite clear what is meant: the time of the “done and finished” product at the D1, delivered in its entirety and playable entirely in the physical medium, has passed and ima
gining that by buying a disc today you can use the same game forever is a luxury that we lost from the first moment the post-launch updates arrived via the internet.

Licenses expire which cost a lot, the servers they cannot be preserved indefinitely without a real economic return (let’s understand, do you really expect them to keep you on the server of a game bought 10 years ago and belonging to two generations of consoles prior to the current one?), the users move and with it also includes the proceeds and the commitment of the developer/publisher: it is It is normal that projects can be abandoned and, if equipped with an online function, players are completely denied access.

Less noble, however, is the intent to “terminate” a product because it may hinder the sales of the new one (who said “The Crew”?). If this is the game, fine, we can stay with it: but you, publisher, you have to prove to me that your product is really worth the money you ask me at launchbecause if I have to buy something to be played for a limited time, I’d rather wait for the sales and buy it for €20. Or I go to the cinema.

If you want to push users to always chase the new game and abandon the old, spending good money every year, well… it’s your bet. You’re not the only ones producing games, people’s money doesn’t just go to the company you’re part of, and the production of titles of all kinds is enough to fill the void of your absence, should you disappear tomorrow (Perhaps).

So please, when your next announced “always online” masterpiece will explode into failurepublish a nice patch to play it offline too (like they did with Redfall), you will see that you will get some money to lick your wounds at the end.

5 – Geoff Keighley

My sympathy For Geoff Keighley has been known for years since from the days when he molested Reggie. We must give credit to this guy for having always believed in it and for having managed to make space for himself in the sector with a certain boldness having understood quite early that video games are a world made up of marketers (who remembers the Doritos Pope? look just below), big smiles and vigorous handshakes.

All things that players, especially during the Summer Game Festare of no interest and actually create a certain detachment: if every game is a masterpiece, no one is a masterpiece. If every ad is sensational, no ad is sensational. If every new trailer to be shown on stage is a privilege… well, you understand how it goes.

Keighley has been in an important position for some time now, privileged, which I imagine he’s trying to defend tooth and nail. Like all those who reach the “top” in certain sectors, however, he also has the opportunity to do something more than simply show up on stage dressed well and lead his shows without the charisma necessary to make them truly interesting.

Plastered, always ready to pour out rivers of words devoid of any expressive freedom and bound by commercial agreements as well as technical times (which do not apply to his friends), the Canadian is now associated with the image of those who sold their soul to carve out a space for themselves in the world and perhaps he could try to take a few steps back and thus gain some sympathy.

He is now the king of the empire and is not obliged to put his big face in front of everything since his real work is behind the scenes. If his position is so delicate that he risks something when he is not the one presenting… well, then the general situation is not the best.

None of Keighley’s words have any real value to the publicalways ready to doubt his honesty, we might as well call in charismatic, friendly, engaging presenters and pay them what they deserve (Future Game Show it does, not to mention Devolver Digital) and make a much needed leap in quality to make his shows something more than just catwalks.

Without prejudice to respect for what he has achieved over all the years, really impressivereading the changes in the sector in advance and thus managing to cover the chasm left by E3 over time: precisely for this reason, perhaps, we legitimately want something more.

We are at the end of my little “outburst”, which I hope will provide many with a useful starting point for starting a conversation. What do you think of the Summer Game Fest and the summer of video game ads? What would you change?

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