1489: Championing the Underdogs

If you’ve ever wondered why I talk so much about lesser-known games and visual novels I come across that I end up loving, Twitter today is the reason why. Specifically, this is the reason why.

For those unfamiliar with the way Twitter works, that’s a search page giving a snapshot of the number of people using the words “Titanfall beta” at any given moment — at the time of writing, there are approximately 30 tweets every minute on the subject.

Titanfall, the new game from Respawn Entertainment, the studio set up by the guys who created the astronomically popular Call of Duty series, one of the biggest names in gaming for the past few years, is going to be a big hit, it seems. And this is lucky not only for Respawn, but also for Microsoft, who are counting on Titanfall being a system-seller for its so far disappointing Xbox One console. We’ll have to wait and see whether Titanfall shifts Xbox One systems, but if interest in the beta is any indication, chances are good.

But I don’t want to talk about Titanfall. I haven’t played it and thus can’t comment on it in any great detail. I have registered for a beta key because I’m interested to see if it can change the mind of someone who finds Call of Duty utterly mind-numbing, but I’m not going out of my way to get one, and frankly I’m sick of hearing about it.

It’s this latter point that ties in with what I said in the first paragraph. Any time something “big” like Titanfall comes along, any smaller developers attempting to promote their work may as well just pack up and go home, because the big game is all anyone’s talking about. This is how marketing works, of course; EA and Respawn want Titanfall to be as big a seller as possible, so it’s in their interests to ensure as many people are talking about it as possible, and what better way to stir the pot than a steady flow of beta keys being released into the wild?

But what of the poor souls who, like me, have pretty much zero interest in Titanfall? There’s nothing stopping us continuing to go about our gaming business, of course, but it’s frustrating if it just happens to be this week that we find something really cool that we want to share with people. It’s also frustrating if otherwise great games come out, but news of them actually being great is drowned out by everyone stampeding to play the beta for the latest manshoot. I fear for Bravely Default and Danganronpa, both of which are fantastic games that deserve a far greater audience than they will almost certainly get — Michael Pachter would probably brand them “failures” if he had any idea either of them existed — and titles that are competing against Titanfall’s beta test for the attention of gamers worldwide.

I certainly don’t begrudge anyone who’s enjoying the experience of the Titanfall beta; by all accounts, it sounds like something that someone who enjoys competitive team-based multiplayer shooters will have a lot of fun with, and that’s great. But at times like this, it’s easy to feel a little cynical about the games biz’s apparent inability to acknowledge the existence of more than one Good Thing at a time. As ever, the game that’s likely to make the most money gets the majority of the spotlight attention, leading to swathes of articles from diverse sites all writing very similar things to one another, providing validation to those who were probably going to buy the game anyway and continuing to alienate those who are more interested in more niche, specialised titles.

At times like this — and I’ve said this before — I feel as if the games press needs more specialised publications. We’re starting to get this to a certain extent with indie-focused websites, but we need to go further. There needs to be an acknowledgement — or more of an acknowledgement, at least — that gaming isn’t just about the latest, biggest-budget game out there, and that games don’t cease to be relevant after their “opening week”. The latter point in particular is something that infuriates me no end; if a game doesn’t sell a zillion copies in its first week, it’s instantly branded a failure by analysts and press alike — meanwhile, it’s extremely rare that people like, say, me buy something the moment it’s released.

What have I been playing today, for example? Atelier Rorona, a PlayStation 3 game that came out in 2010. Are the experiences I’ve had with that game today irrelevant due to the fact it came out four years ago? No, of course not, but you might be forgiven for thinking that if you took a look at Twitter today.

Sigh. I’m pissing in the wind with this, of course, and it’s far easier to just get on with what I’m doing, talk about the things I’m enjoying and hope people who feel the same way might gather together with me. I just felt the need to express some frustration, and I’ll start taking my own advice tomorrow, I think.