Category: Gaming

Gaming related thoughts.

Lootboxes: A Random Chance at Fun

.Reading time 27 minutes.

In an ever increasing suite of tools that developers and publishers use to monetize their games why is it that lootboxes stand out head and shoulders among them as the most odious? Lets look at a quick and dirty list of monetization schemes currently present in the game industry before we get started, in no particular order:

  • DLC
  • Season Passes
  • Lootboxes
  • Microtransactions
  • Premium Currencies
  • Pre-Order Bonuses
  • Platform Specific Content
  • Publisher Specific Content
  • Retailer Specific Content (Gamestop)
  • Early Access
  • Alpha/Beta “Testing” with Purchase
  • Forced Multiplayer/MMO Lite Mechanics
  • F2P Games (Cost More in Aggregate Than a Full Price $60 Game for the Experience)
  • Full Price $60 Games That Still Include Microtransactions

I’m sure there are more but that list is just what comes up off the top of my head. A lot of these you might say could be combined into a single category or are now defunct practices which is a fair criticism. A lot of these things are tied very closely to one another in their implementation but I’ve broken them out like that because it makes it easier to visualize all the different avenues used to siphon more of your entertainment dollars. A practice that I actually have no problem with in theory as long as what you are getting in return is commensurate with the price tag placed on it which is largely not the case in most of the above examples. Today though I’d like to specifically address Lootboxes and why even the “fairest” implementations of them still sour what may be an overall excellent game experience. Lootboxes are a sort of gambling mechanic introduced into games to serve as an alternate form of progression that sidesteps the investment of time and skill for real world dollars. The argument for why this sort of system is okay is predicated on the idea that it is primarily for players who have more money than time. It’s not an argument without merit however it requires such a delicate balance in order to maintain fairness for people who don’t want to pay vs those who overwhelmingly pay to advance. This results in a system referred to as “Pay to Win” when a game has a multiplayer component whose real money transactions confer a competitive advantage on those who use them. It undercuts the importance of skill and emphasizes instead the size of your entertainment budget and the overall luck of what randomized items you get from Lootboxes. Few people want to play a game where on release day players who purchase $1,000 in microtransactions can artificially reign supreme while players who grind their way will have a much harder time doing so. There have also been rumors and rumblings around the industry that companies have gone so far as to use multiplayer matchmaking as a sort of advertisement for items gained through microtransactions. The algorithms used to keep matchmaking roughly even based on skill instead will match newer players with ones who are significantly better equipped in order to encourage the less equipped players to buy lootboxes to be competitive. YouTube creator SidAlpha had a fascinating and chilling video out back in January about the future of microtransactions in games that I highly encourage you to watch for how these mechanics are viewed from the business side.

As these predatory practices have gotten a foothold in mainstream gaming it’s been a rough road for adoption as gamers have fought each step of the way to keep them from becoming the new normal. Unfortunately while it slowed their implementation it has done little if anything to stop it, companies were simply making too much money from them due to the large majority of industry customers not speaking out or still purchasing titles with microtransactions while “Not planning to use them.”. While the sentiment is nice the purchase of the game itself is still profit for the company and as we know not an effective protest of these policies. Thankfully the rise of Indie titles in the last handful of years has given people other outlets and has made it easier to avoid entirely Triple A titles laden with microtransactions and lootboxes. Nintendo has also, as far as I know, steered clear of microtransactions in their games and only this year will for the first time charge for their consoles online service with the Switch. Throughout the last few years language has begun to creep into game development like “Games as a service” which implies that design was now more focused around ongoing experiences that don’t end after a single playthrough but instead keep players returning indefinitely. Linear single player games are tough to monetize like that so multiplayer became a necessity for any title attempting to do so. Adding co-operative or competitive multiplayer to games is not inherently a bad thing however it can still cause problems. If the game development did not originally include a multiplayer then time and resources must be diverted away from the main focus of the game in order to create it which could end up leaving the whole product worse off at release. Games released in that state can feel markedly worse with the inclusion of microtransactions especially if you already feel like you overpaid with the initial $60 price tag.

Over the years many different styles of microtransactions have been tried with varying degrees of success and there are some important distinctions within that:

DLC Packs – Games like the infamous Train Simulator which boast a whopping 437 pieces of downloadable content for sale at a staggering price of $4,132.24 and thats when its on sale for anywhere from 40-90% off. A more popular example would be Just Cause 3 with 12 additional pieces of DLC adding more than the cost of another full Triple A game at $63.39. The Sniper Elite games are also notorious for the slew of small DLC packs post release. Sniper Elite v3 offers an additional $67.87 worth of post release content. Dead or Alive may be one of the most head-scratching examples of this list with the most recent iteration sporting 71 additional DLCs at the low price of only $1,289.79

Cosmetic Only – Games like Overwatch which are critically acclaimed across the industry offer lootboxes however the contents contain only cosmetic items that have no effect on the gameplay, removing balance issues like we’ll get to below. Counter-Strike has a similar system of cosmetics that live completely outside of the mechanics of the game. Most MMOs who implement these microtransactions make them largely cosmetic however when they don’t they are generally very careful about keeping their balance carefully in line with non-premium items. The new Far Cry 5 also includes these types of microtransactions.

Non-Cosmetic Items/Buffs – In this category is where we find games like Battlefront II whose lootboxes were heavily criticised for being “Pay to Win” as you could boost your power and access to items significantly just by paying. AC: Origins although only a single player game has microtransactions that offer more than just cosmetic items including the ability to buy crafting materials and skill points with real money. Middle-Earth: Shadow of War contains an almost needlessly complicated microtransaction/lootbox system that I’m putting under this heading for several reasons. Here is a story over at Kotaku that has a decent breakdown if you’re curious. While I would not classify Team Fortress 2 as a classic Pay2Win game items you can acquire through microtransactions are not strictly cosmetic so it belongs here.

Of these three main types the DLC and Cosmetic only systems are the least offensive for the majority of gamers because they ostensibly exist outside of the full priced product that you buy which should contain the entire experience. Both of these methods were also not popular at the times they were introduced as people rightly felt that studios were holding back content from their initial releases just so it could be sold later and they were not entirely wrong. Day one DLC was a stumbling block as it has been proven several times that DLC content was already loaded onto discs that were sold on release day. Purchasing the “downloadable” content simply grabbed a key which unlocked the content that already existed on the disc seemingly proving that studios were holding back content that should have released as part of the $60 purchase. This was not the case for every game that had DLC but even one unaddressed instance of this opened the door for it happening more and more often. The furor over day one content seemed to hit a peak with Mass Effect 3 when it released with a piece of DLC that contained what many felt was a vital piece of story content that had been teased in the lore since the series started. To put it lightly the move was seen as underhanded and greedy when the people they were fleecing had been loyal fans for nearly a decade. When you see me talk about the developers and publishers responsibility to treat their customers with respect that is a perfect example of a failure to do so. The incredible loyalty and love that Mass Effect fans had for the series waned heavily in the wake of several missteps made with the third entry all of which were entirely avoidable. The other issue with DLC comes in the form of Season Passes which have a questionable value return since the early days of their implementation. Like DLC in general it has certainly been done well but the number of times it’s been done poorly far outweighs them. Essentially a Season Pass is a way for companies to add another layer of Pre-Order onto just the physical game. Ranging anywhere from $24.99 to $39.99 on average the combined cost prior to a game release can run you up to $100 and the Season Pass content that you pay for is entirely blind. Occasionally companies will offer some vague descriptions about what you will be getting but it’s not enough to make an informed choice in my opinion. Season Passes can usually now be purchased after a games release and will sometimes even be discounted during sales which sort of invalidates the entire point of them. There have even been some bizarre instances on Steam where either the Season Pass or the individual DLCs will be significantly cheaper than their counterparts due to big sales. I’m not sure what causes the oversight but at the end of the day I suppose a sale is a sale, right?

Overall for the things that can and do go wrong with the use of DLC I do think that there are enough companies out there selling worthwhile expansions to their games that this is something we can continue to live with. We have enough resources and reviewers at our fingertips that we should be making informed decisions about post release content that is worth our money and time. I would caution against purchasing Season Passes prior to the release of the base game, the passes will be available after launch so there is no reason to make what is most likely a non-refundable purchase of digital content. There is no rush, if you like the game then it’s nice to know that there is still more to do once you finish the core content. 

This brings us to cosmetic only microtransactions and over the years I’ve gone back and forth over whether or not these are something I feel belongs in gaming. Overall I think I’ve landed on being mostly neutral about them since they are entirely optional to my overall enjoyment of a given game. Overwatch and Counter-Strike I think are two good examples of how to handle cosmetic only microtransactions however they fail in one significant way that makes me largely ignore them. Blizzard’s title Heroes of the Storm has cosmetics on sale for real money but the important thing about their system is that you can purchase the exact item you want with no mystery or disappointment. There are also a selection of skins on offer that can be bought with in game gold which gives players who don’t want to pony up the dough a method to still customize their characters. This, to me, is the absolute ideal for cosmetic microtransactions as it utterly removes the distasteful and predatory gambling aspect of lootboxes. Lootboxes may be more profitable simply due to their unpredictable nature but being able to purchase what you want and only what you want will yield happier customers who are content with the money they have spent in your game. Warframe developer Digital Extremes takes this approach to their totally free to play game and has seen incredible success with it as players can spend their money on items that will specifically enhance their individual experience. Virtually eliminating disappointment and regret, two things you never want to feel with your entertainments monetization scheme. Overwatch and Counter-Strike are a close second however even though the randomization of their lootboxes can yield consistent and expensive disappointment for people who spend their money. Overwatch has the advantage of selling their lootboxes for roughly $1 per box with better bulk deals as you buy more, far and away the cheapest cosmetic boxes I’ve run into. They also completely avoid the irritation of a premium currency you must buy in order to then spend on the boxes. Counter-Strike similarly mitigates the annoyance of random chance by allowing people to sell skins they acquire through the marketplace which gives players the opportunity to avoid the reward chests and just buy what they want. The downside to that system is that since they are collectible and some of them can be quite rare it can make the occasional skin sell for hundreds even thousands of dollars on the market. Overall I would still say their system is better than most at giving people options on where and how to spend their money.

Cosmetics allow a nice balance of choice for people who want nothing to do with competitively necessary microtransactions but still want the customization options or to just support a developer they like. Another plus to cosmetics is that many games allow even free players to earn the occasional lootbox just through regular play when they hit certain milestones meaning that even if you aren’t actively purchasing you still earn rewards. Most likely I’m sure their data has shown that giving out occasional free lootboxes increases engagement by non-money players. The motivation aside it bears mentioning. Given the alternatives I find this to be a perfectly acceptable way for companies to monetize their games while being fair to their customers.

The ugliness of this entire subject falls in our final category of Non-Cosmetic Items/Buffs which happens when developers lock game altering items, buffs or even characters behind a paywall meaning that it causes a rift in the playerbase. Most multiplayer games and their appeal are predicated on tight balancing that means winning or losing is down to individual or overall team skill and co-operation. Any outside factors that tilt the scales one way or another are seen as unsporting, frustrating and ultimately game breaking. It’s one thing to work your way to the top and another to simply buy your way. I already spoke earlier about Pay2Win models so I’ll try to minimize my rehashing here by commenting on something that Battlefront II did to further exacerbate the already huge problem with being Pay2Win. The “free” avenues for progression in the game were made so arduous and time consuming that it would be nearly impossible to earn new heroes, equipment or star cards without dedicating most if not all of your free time to exclusively grinding that one game. Reality is that very few if any gamers limit themselves to playing one and only one game for a year let alone multiple years consecutively. Since I began gaming over twenty five years ago I cannot remember a single time that I was so obsessed with a game that I played it to the exclusion of all others for longer than perhaps a few months at most. EA seemed to be under the impression that players would be happy to make Battlefront II essentially a second job. If that wasn’t the case then they had the option to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on lootboxes to unlock content they technically already paid for. Lootboxes may far and away be the most profitable type of monetization but it is also the one that sports the most anti-consumer method of extracting those profits than anything that came before it. If that isn’t bad enough the entire game is geared to push you towards purchasing them as a necessity. It’s no longer an option for convenience so that busy or not any player can make progress but rather some games treat it as the only reasonable means of progression if you are a human being who occasionally has to do something other than play. The subject of these transactions when it comes to single player games allows it to side-step the issue of “fairness” but I can’t help have a sour taste in my mouth after seeing them. It makes me question whether or not the in-game “grind” was made intentionally worse to nudge you towards opening your wallet in order to grease the way. Am I paying to just lower the difficulty of my single player game now? It feels like it sometimes.

The reality is that microtransactions of all kinds are here to stay and there is little we can do to change that. What we can still affect though is the extent to which they affect our experiences. The fervor that met Battlefront II  it seems we as a community have sent a clear message on where we draw the line. I could have lived with us drawing it a little sooner but given EA’s recent decision to completely remove microtransactions from Battlefront II I think we did okay. As always we’ll see what happens going forward, it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve backed off only to reintroduce it in a more insidious fashion down the road. So keep a close eye on it.

Finally I just want to say that as a gamer you should never feel like your time and money aren’t worth some consideration by the developers and publishers we buy our games from. I’ve said it a thousand times but we want to give these companies our money and we are constantly looking for excuses to. They have only to put out a product worthy of that money and they’ll see their profit, we don’t need to have sneaky mechanics trick us into doing it, we’re already willing. It’s tantamount to walking into a store and then having an associate jam a gun in your ribs and take your wallet. Why? I’m already here to spend money, just show me something worth buying.

Don’t be afraid to let a game go un-purchased if it deserves it, there are more than enough titles to keep you occupied in the meantime.

I’m sure I’ll do a follow up at some point on the other things I listed at the start of this but this article is long enough as it is. Until then, happy gaming! I’m off to play some more Ni No Kuni 2 while impatiently waiting for the arrival of my light kit so I can get to painting my Star Wars: Legion minis. And recording that journey for their embarrassing entertainment it will undoubtedly yield.

  • Non-Washable

*I know I didn’t mention GTA:V in this post even though it’s online portion definitely deserves to be here given the microtransactions, I didn’t feel like it would necessarily add anything that the games already represented couldn’t do adequately. If you feel otherwise leave me a comment and tell me why!

Stay a While and Listen…

.Reading time 19 minutes.

I’m working on a post right now about some of the various issues facing the gaming industry, naturally the first one is going to be talking about lootboxes. The conclusion I come to I don’t think will surprise anyone nor do I think most gamers would really disagree with it but it’s always nice to get your thoughts down somewhere to make room for stuff like a gif I saw yesterday of a phallus shaped paper rocket. I know most people are probably sick of hearing about it but unfortunately it’s going to keep coming up until we find a reasonable solution where the customers get their way.

At any rate what I wanted to talk about today was a phone call that I got today from my brother in law who a couple weeks back asked me if I played D&D. I laughed before I even thought about it, not because the question was dumb or even unreasonable but because it continually fascinates me when it gets asked because it’s so so different from when I was a kid. That was a question you really only asked good friends or people you literally witnessed playing the game because you knew for sure what the answer was. If you asked the wrong people it usually led to endless ridicule especially if you weren’t leaving that school for a year or more so you could have some different classmates. We didn’t advertise our love for computers, video games and, things like roleplaying back then. It and we were not what you would call classically popular. Of course as we grew up it became easier because we cared less what people thought and we had some friends and friends of friends who we knew it was safe to discuss our nerdy pursuits with. We played Magic: The Gathering after school in the lunch room and even if we were bothered we just shrugged it off and went back to having fun. Occasionally people who weren’t part of our group would sit and watch, sometimes they’d play if we asked them to join but that was as close as we ever really got to “acceptance”.

I’ve played D&D on and off since middle school along with a few other weird systems we picked up along the way. I did fall out of it for a while around the time 3.5 was in full swing and spent some time playing the Star Wars RPG. I only got back into D&D around the time 4th edition came out because I was working at a bookstore so when I started putting those out for sale I couldn’t help but flip through the pages admiring the art which then lead to reading. That of course turned into me reading them on break and then buying them shortly after; this was the first time that I had any inclination that the world had changed a little. After i’d bought them I sat back in our break room reading through the Dungeon Masters Guide when a fellow co-worker walked by and then peeked back in to stare at what I was doing. He was roughly ten years older than I was and by all accounts a good guy but never in a million years would I have pegged him for someone who spent his free time scouring dungeons and killing goblins. He asked if I played and I confessed I hadn’t for quite a while but this new edition had kind of sparked my interest again. He sat down and we started talking about the new game and then quickly transitioned into swapping stories about old and now forgotten campaign escapades then he hit me with the real surprise of my day. He still played. He and his friends still had a weekly or semi-weekly game that they had been playing in for over five years. I couldn’t believe it since we had worked together for almost two years at that point and somehow it had never come up but after that interaction we soon found out we shared a lot of similar geeky pursuits including a passion for video games. The first 3DS I ever played was one he picked up on release with a copy of Pilotwings and Street Fighter, if I remember right. Nearly every day from then on we talked D&D and it seemed to just cascade throughout the store as we found out several more of our co-workers including an ex-Marine also played. A few of them hadn’t played in a decade or more but had always wanted to get back into it if they could find a regular group. Suffice it to say before long we had people together that we could play with although no one had ever been a Dungeon Master before besides me. I had wanted to play a character but as a lot of DMs out there know sometimes if you want to play you have to be the one to run the game. It’s extremely rewarding to run a campaign with a good group so it’s not a complaint just more of a reality we as a community struggle with. I wrote up a fairly basic adventure to get us started and we got together as often as we could re-learning as we went and it was exactly like being home again, the rules may have been different but the feeling was the same. As is bound to happen with D&D as adults eventually our schedule conflicts got to the point that playing regularly became nearly impossible and eventually we stopped. From that seed though grew several other temporary groups including an ill-advised attempt to run a game of 7-9 people most of whom were new, I should have known better but it was just so amazing at the time to have that much interest in a hobby I’d only recently rediscovered. That massive game lasted through half a year and eventually it was so hard to get everyone together at once we gave it up, while it was disappointing to stop it was fantastic that we’d even gotten that far in the first place.

More groups came and went and eventually I started to hear that people who were only tangentially related with those games had started playing or running their own outside of it which in itself was great to hear. I was back in and consuming every bit of D&D news I could find when eventually rumors of a new edition started making the rounds and soon we found out that D&D Next was on it’s way to being tested and released. In the interim though I had begun to find out that while I had been away D&D had started coming back with a real vengeance including a new thing I hadn’t seen before, D&D Podcasts. In 2008 WoTC partnered with Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from Penny Arcade to make a series of podcasts that started in 4e and the show still continues even today. It even spun off a franchise show called The “C” Team. While it was difficult for me to put together a steady 4e group these podcasts and others did the job of scratching my itch to play. During this time my girlfriend and I put together a weekly board game group with a few close friends and that has been a fairly regular thing for going on at least five years however I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m low-balling that by a bit. At some point during all this I finally managed to convince my girlfriend that she might like being a Dungeon Master so she set out to write up a one shot for our weekly group. It actually ended up lasting several sessions because we like to take our time but it was incredibly fun and she did a masterful job designing our characters. We were given our character sheets and a folded letter we were to read before starting to play which described a few relevant details about our relationship to the other party members including a secret or two. I was given the pleasure of revealing at the end of the one-shot that one of our fellow party members who had taken a shine to my character was actually my daughter. Suffice it to say we all had great laugh over that when it was finally brought into the open.

I won’t bore you with the entire interlude of what we did before finally putting together a regular group that could meet bi-weekly but I can promise you that D&D was never not on my mind in some fashion or another. One of my best friends who is a regular in my current campaign also wanted to try his hand running a game of his own with us as his guinea pigs and we were happy to oblige, me especially when he told me he wanted to run a game of Dark Heresy. I was immediately into it while the rest of the unwitting victims at our weekly board-game night had no idea what they had just agreed to but it was Sci-fi and that was enough to pique their interest. Once we explained what it was it was decided that we were going to have to get them all up to speed on this universe and it’s lore. A couple weeks later we both compiled a stack of notes and with the liberal application of some alcohol we taught a class on the universe of Warhammer 40,000 to prep them for a future where there was only war. They were good sports and asked a bunch of insightful and relevant questions during the couple hours we were there and at the end everyone was excited to give it a shot. That campaign lasted for a fantastic half a year until it got interrupted by life and responsibility. We’ve meant to get back to it ever since and yesterday I think we finally managed to talk our GM into picking it back up or he convinced us, either way in the end it was mutual.

In the midst of all of this several of our friends have taken to running one shots of their own for family and friends or participated in our occasional games. Once 5e came out I began looking around again for a regular group to run with and for the past year or more we’ve had a weekly/bi-weekly game of D&D which I have enjoyed immensely. Not the least bit as a result of the fact that one of my players is my father who I think has read more fantasy fiction than anyone I’ve ever met in my entire life. When I finally had the thought to ask him I felt like such an idiot for not having considered it before that moment which brings me back to where I started with all of this. He didn’t need any convincing and said yes immediately to giving it a try. Thus far through all of the myriad tries to get regular games going he’s been one of the few where absolutely no cajoling was required. Currently he plays a Dwarven Alchemist Entrepreneur who is in the process of setting up his own shop in a town that the group played an important part in saving early on in their campaign. He also found a Rust Colored Bag of Tricks which he’s used to great effect so far in spite of the fact that the two goats he has a chance of pulling are either of the fainting or screaming variety. He also inquired as to whether or not they remember what happens to them each time they are pulled from the bag, I hadn’t considered it myself but you can safely assume it’s come up since then.

Anyways, not to get too far off on a tangent lets wrap this up. In all my years of being involved in D&D simultaneously the most and least surprising thing was my fathers willingness to play this silly game with my friends and I.  At this point I don’t think theres a single one of my siblings that hasn’t played or doesn’t currently play and I’ve gotten questions about the game from friends of theirs who want to learn but need some direction on where to start. That call from my brother in law got me thinking again about the sort of surreal feeling that I get when I look around at the tabletop roleplaying community and realize what a truly special phenomenon it really is. The game itself is nearly without barriers that appeals to seemingly anyone with some spare time and a willingness to escape into a co-operative fantasy for a few hours. What’s more is that we as a community have somehow kept that eagerness to share it with anyone who even shows the slightest hint of interest and I hope that’s something we never lose.

In the end if you’re thinking about playing or asking people if they’d be interested in playing then i’d encourage you to take that leap because you never know just who might be waiting for an invitation or who may not even know they want one. Barring that check out the event schedule for your local game store and see if they host an Adventurers League, those are a fantastic way to dip your toes in and see what the fuss is all about. And if the only thing thats keeping you from playing is not having a DM then I’d also encourage you to give it a shot. I wont lie and say that it’s easy or that you’re guaranteed to love it but if you do end up enjoying it I can promise that you and your players will create some of your best memories around that table.

If you stuck around to the end, good job! That’ll be 100xp and whatever is in the chest over there. Roll a percentile die and I’ll get back to you with what you find. Until then I hope you had a fantastic weekend and I’ll be back soon.

  • Non-Washable

 

The Mysterious Atari VCS

.Reading time 15 minutes.

atari-vcs-03-20-18-6

Beautiful isn’t it? Conceptually this is about as slick a promo pic will ever look and the hype video wasn’t bad either, unfortunately digging any deeper is an exercise in insanity.

The PR for Atari’s latest venture is just an ouroboros of generic groomed statements and metaphorical comparisons to other industry staples. It’s hard to even wrap your head around all of it considering how much of it is wishy-washy nonsense. Before we get started talking about the message itself lets set the stage for what they are stepping into.

First off I want to talk very briefly about a collection of games that came out many years ago on Steam called Atari! 80 Classic Games in One. The second I saw that sandwiched between DEFCON and some neon Tron looking tank game that for the life of me I can’t remember the name of. I bought without hesitation and enjoyed the hell out of that fresh influx of nostalgia. Back then I probably had barely double digit games in my Steam library, now ~500 games down the road and I haven’t looked at that Atari collection again. That isn’t to say those games aren’t worth playing or mean any less to me than what they did back when I bought the collection but it’s by way of saying that the gaming industry is a constantly raging run of rapids that hasn’t slowed in decades. In fact it’s only picked up speed to the point that things change weekly if not daily in a lot of areas. Hardware in PCs changes so quickly it’s nearly impossible to stay up to date unless you dedicate a good portion of your free time to staying informed.

I think it’s important for context that this is the game industry that Atari is re-entering with it’s newest hardware offering. They haven’t been entirely out of it as they’ve stuck around as a fairly large publisher and developer but the hardware game left them behind long ago. Hell, even the major hardware platforms we have in this current generation were running behind on the day of their release, not far but enough that the rest of the hardware industry zoomed right by in no time. The first stop on our tour of the available information on this started back up at the top of this article with the hype video for the system. If you take a moment to check around you’ll notice that in 9 months that is literally the only video on that channel with the description pointing you to their website. Not that it means much but it strikes me as suspect that for Atari’s grand return to the hardware scene that the channel isn’t stuffed full of videos for people to gorge themselves on. Every company has their own style of building interest in their gear, I respect that, but it bears noticing I think.

So, when you hop over to their website you see a cheeky 80’s retro styled advertisement for the VCS or Video Computer System which is a name that sounds like it’s straight out of the early game industry.  Apparently you should also “Hurry” because pre-orders are coming soon. Below that we see an advertisement with a few nicely coiffed photos and this statement,

Game. Stream. Connect. Like Never Before.

Killer Atari Classic Games. Hot New Indie Titles. Open Linux OS.

Join the Revolution

Nice, quippy and to the point but just beneath that there is a second identical place to enter your email so you can join the waitlist for this system. To say that after a 9 month lead up for a system that has been “Years in the making” that this website is thin on information would be generous. Below the place where I can add my second email address so I’m really sure I don’t miss out on this mystery box with a logo I recognize there are some testimonials that I feel are… well, odd to be honest.

“Sharp and Modern”

“This design is so sharp and modern! I am super excited about the release. Thank you Atari for completely revisiting my childhood.

Monty E.

So generic so as to be meaningless. Their hype video for this system garnered almost 1.76 million views and this is one of the best pull quotes you could find? Who is Monty E? Is he a critic of some kind? Is an intern at the office? The barista at your local Starbucks? I’m not saying you have to be somebody to have your quote pasted on a product page, look at me I’m a nobody and I talk about all sorts of things. For a system like this with the history of Atari I have to think this could be far more substantial.

“Amazing”

5 years from today people are going to say come over my house so I can show them this new Atari game… this console is going to be amazing.

Markus S.

Alright, listen, I really am a reasonable person and like I said above there is no reason you have to be a name in order to have a say but what is this? Either the mistakes make it seem more genuine or it comes off like whoever wrote it didn’t care, nor did the people who asked for it. Also, what exactly is this quote based off of? What evidence does this person have to support this quote? Everything I have seen thus far suggests to me that in 5 years this system will be a small paragraph on their Wikipedia page. I desperately hope that I am wrong but again, all evidence points otherwise.

“Retro Revival”

I think that this is definitely what the market needs – something new and fresh with a slice of retro.

Jonathan R.

Again, it’s nice to be optimistic but realistically is this actually true? Every system has embraced in some fashion downloadable indie games, every system has a slice of retro that plays like new. Nintendo nailed their retro offerings with the NES and SNES Classic systems and the Switch Nindies are booming. So far I can’t see an unblocked or unoccupied avenue for the VCS to drive in on.

Also, just to top this section off if you scroll just a tiny bit below the three testimonials you will see a third place to enter your email for the waitlist. I don’t sign up for a lot of these so maybe this is S.O.P. of the stench of desperation is a bit overwhelming. Now moving away from this website let’s check on some of their latest press and see what has been revealed.

We’ll start real quickly with the guts of this new set-top box and Atari originally told us that it would be housing some custom AMD tech which was very cool given this has been a very strong couple of years for the folks in red and black. Nintendo scored huge partnering with the green giant nVidia on the hardware for their Switch, an endeavor that was touted to have taken “500 man years of development time”. Plus the modern consoles also use AMD hardware so it’s not a bad place for Atari to start. However a bit worryingly it’s an APU and not a particularly powerful one either which makes their claims of it also being able to handle more modern games a statement in desperate need of specifics. It carries a Linux OS which is great, it’s modifiable and open source with a lot of potential for industrious go-getters in the modding community plus a lot of room for developers to work in as long as they want to.

Actually… this entire setup is starting to feel a little familiar, almost like a Steam powered machine from our past. The reality is that for every aspect of this system that seems unique or interesting has generally been done better elsewhere or at the very least the concept exists after a fashion. That isn’t necessarily a reason to not try something new but it definitely means that a profit seeking enterprise should think twice before moving ahead in a crowded marketplace. On the subject of the Steam Machine comparison Atari Connect COO Michael Arzt had this to say, “I don’t think it’s as ambitious as a Steam Machine.” You can’t help but appreciate the honesty but again it raises the question, what is it? He also helpfully described it as, “A good laptop without a keyboard.” which is looking to be priced somewhere between $250-300. It may seem snobbish of me to say but I’m not sure a laptop in that price range can really be considered “good” for things like gaming above a certain basic tier. Artz also commented that, “It’s a much more casual device.” which again is great but Atari’s description about wanting moms to be able to turn on the VCS to easily get into their Netflix or other entertainment services isn’t as complicated on modern devices as Atari seems to think.

Back at the beginning of this I talked a little bit about how the industry isn’t in the 70s anymore and is in fact moving away from its roots at lightspeed. Everything I’ve read about this new venture makes me think this device and the company making it are about a decade late to the show. The optimistic side of me says that they can’t possibly be that out of touch in the industry which they help birth but it still leaves me scratching my head. What do they have up their sleeve that sets them apart from the pack? Not to mention there are a variety of other questions like what sort of third-party support is possible for this system? Are they planning to carry it solely on the strength of their own catalog and licenses?  Whats the lifespan of this console they have branded a PC? What app support can we expect beyond Netflix and Hulu?

9 months at least since the teaser. Vague promises, fuzzy details and broad descriptions on this devices future and it’s purpose. I want so badly to be excited for this, for a new player in the market to light a spark under the incumbents and get them really pushing to innovate again. It was one of the biggest tragedies when Sega exited after the Dreamcast because for all the things that system did wrong it did a lot of things right and did them before anyone else. If Atari can turn this bizarro experiment into a true contender I’ll be ecstatic but I can’t help but feel like they’re coming unprepared to a new and much changed game.

Thanks for listening to me ramble a bit about this while I try to figure out exactly what it is that Atari is up to. I’ll be back later this weekend with another post and hopefully some gameplay videos up on YouTube for MTG: Arena and Ni No Kuni: Revenant Kingdom which I’m looking forward to playing some of tonight.

Have a great one, folks!

  • Non-Washable