Metagame 001: Everyone Is Right About Wolverine (That's the Problem)
"what's wrong with letting the wolf in?"
Hi!
Welcome to issue 001 of Metagame. This issue clocks in at roughly a 17-minute read (about 4,374 words). Close your mouth and stop acting shocked. This is the Sunday paper, not a news brief.
Grab a coffee. Sit down. Relax. Let's spend some time together. Skim what you want.
If for some reason you haven't subscribed (first of all, how dare you) - you can check out the About page for more info about me and why you should trust my 17-minute takes.
1. Blizzard is walking a delicate tightrope but doesn't want you to know it
BlizzCon was last week and man... they REALLY wanted you to know the future is BRIGHT! They gave the people what they want - that's for sure. The StarCraft cinematic did fucking work. It came with one major talking point: 2030.
Why announce a game that's so far out? You do that, when you're thinking with your corporate comms brain.
Johanna Faries told Bloomberg "We're a Blizzard that's going to ship, and ship big, and ship on time." On time is easier when it's 2030 (although still really fucking hard in modern game development). But imagine if Blizzard showed up to BlizzCon without any major news. Guess what quote by it's president is now false? Ding ding ding. So we gotta bring out the goods!
A French guy on jeuxvideo said it better than any of us: "Annoncer des jeux pour 2029 2030 c'est bien mais du coup pour les 4 prochaines blizzcon ils vont annoncer quoi ?" or, translated into English,"Fine, but what do they announce at the next four BlizzCons."
But hey. That's a problem for the next comms strategist! We got the win now babyyyyyyy.
And you might be like, Tone, that sounds really cynical. And yeah, it for sure is, but if you look at what's happening with Blizzard's current live games, it gives you a hint at what's going on at the company. A divide between the promises of the bright future and the current reality we live in.
WoW: Forever opened its beta Thursday! And it only costs you $59.99 for (guaranteed) access. You could "opt-in" and hope you get chosen, but considering that folks who spent the money couldn't get in and dubbed it the "$59.99 Login Screen Simulator" because of login and queue issues, I don't think chances are looking good for those free opt-in folks (proof that opt-in invites haven't gone out yet).
If you can't figure out the pricing, you're not alone. The game itself costs nothing extra. It's in your normal WoW sub and you can play it Nov. 4th like anyone. The beta is different. You get in, in one of two ways: opt in for free and hope you win the lottery or buy the $59.99 Epic Pack (or the $79.99 Collection) for a guaranteed spot.
There's also a $29.99 tier, which allows you the privilege of checks notes... playing as a hot elf? And it doesn't get you any access to the Beta. You just have to wait until November 4th to finally be that hot, hot elf. But again, I get why you'd be confused.
The best way to tell that something's wrong? Look at what player support is saying, because they're working off of some kind of script or fact guide:
There's something really funny to me about telling someone who paid for your game: well... did you buy the version that actually lets you in? Check your purchase history and find out!
Blizzard is not in a crisis by any means, and I'm not trying to say that. But it does show an organization trying really hard to navigate the vision of a brighter future while trying to fucking survive the reality of this current one. And let me tell you, organization change is INSANELY hard. So honestly, I commend them for doing it! Most people wouldn't give it a shot. And there's more than enough haters out there.
Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what we say or do. What matters is, is your product good? And there's some really positive signs! Take this Reddit post:
So yeah, people can make jokes about pricing models, server queues, whatever. But guess what? PEOPLE WANT TO FUCKING GET INTO THE GAME. WoW is #3 on Twitch, up 361%! And the community sentiment flying around the internet is red hot. You couldn't ask for a better verbatim than this:
I would 100% clip that in a stakeholder deck, lol. Especially at 4.6k upvotes.
So look, I know this one started a bit cynical, but Blizzard is probably going to make it to the other side of its big, bright, bold future. The hardest part about having a vision is getting people internally and externally to actually believe you. So yeah, Blizzard is walking a tightrope. They just don't want you to know how hard it is to do. But they're doing it!
2. "I promise you we're listening"
I've never seen something more confusing to me than Wolverine's launch. The takes are hot. Molten even. The takes are contradictory. And yet somehow... everyone is right?
Wolverine's Metacritic score is 77. And 77 doesn't sound so bad. Until you pair it with this disaster of a headline from Kotaku: "Sony's Lowest Scoring Game Of The PS5 Era". Give this editor a raise for an incredible informational, yet click baiting headline.
But what about the folks actually buying this game? How's that going? Wolverine currently has 4.77 stars out of 5 on 38k ratings, which is still pretty good! And according to Alinea's estimate, they've sold 1.9 million copies and $130 million in three days. More than Death Stranding 2 did in TOTAL on PS5. Not bad!
But if you look how the story is traveling with the chronically online, it's stuff like, the game plays itself. I've literally gotten a ton of TikTok clips showing that one motorcycle sequence. Here's a headline in Polish literally saying this, or this commenter saying "they just laid the controller down and the game played itself for 3 minutes. Come on now, how is any of this ok."
And as all things online, community sentiment got an official name thanks to one Tweet from Gene Park: i don't think you can turn off the Wolverine fart gas - in reference to the blue scent trails that make it REALLY clear where you're supposed to go next in the game.
Okay, so that's the chronically online. Let's look at what at this from Insomniac's point of view.
Monday, 5:04pm, James Stevenson, community director at Insomniac, on his own account: "We have been 100% listening over the last few days and the team has been cooking hard today in response to some of the feedback - in case you were wondering what that smell out of our kitchen was 😉" 650K views. 6.4K likes. And the studio account, same day, the corporate version: "We're also actively engaged with our player community and gathering feedback to further refine the player experience." Which generated the most generic headline known to man: Insomniac Promises They Are Listening to Feedback.
And look, it's a good tweet! It's funny. And he did it on his own account so the studio account could tweet out the bland version that then generated the bland headline.
The thing is, what the fuck are you actually supposed to do in this situation. The scent trails are not a bug, they can get adjusted (and did), but it's still a core game mechanic. The "plays itself" complaint is not a bug. That's the game baby. You're not going to rebuild it overnight because you heard some feedback. But the studio is also never going to say "we made a game that the chronically online don't like but normies love," even though, that's literally what's happening. What a unique comms hell to be in.
But players are not dumb. They know this shit on some level. Take a look at the replies.
Under Stevenson's tweet, the first reply: "Definitely patched out the scent trails but these fools will have something else to nitpick. 'HiS bEaRd iSnT ShAgGy EnOuGh'".
Now go to r/PS5, where the biggest comment of the week is 4,200 upvotes and it's this: "I think a lot of you don't realise how many gamers out there are more casual than people who care enough to get into it on a subreddit and critique a game for everything it isn't. A huge number of people aren't looking for anything deeper than this, they want to come home from a long day of work and have fun for a few hours... Why shouldn't there be games that cater to lazy gamers?"
The mods had to take the community to task and pin a note saying: "with all the bans we've had to hand out just this morning I'm gonna have to say it: Let people enjoy things." On fucking launch day! They were banning people on launch day for dropping their Rorschach hot takes.
This is just how more and more launches are going to look moving forward. Hopefully not getting 70s on Metacritic, but the ability to see whatever the fuck you wanna see because you gotta fuel your own hot take agenda.
And look, if you asked me, I'd say a post that just says "we're listening to your feedback" is the most empty thing you can do or say. It's like stock template answer. But what do I know? It's working!
Insomniac's post "Our team continues to listen to player feedback." got 1.5 million views and 13k likes, more than double the kitchen tweet! So maybe sometimes, all you gotta say is "we're listening." And that's enough.
Unless you're in Korea, where Wolverine has a incredibly funny Korean nickname, "돈버린," roughly, money-thrown-away-erine. Which is just comic gold. 한국을 사랑해요.
3. Sony's no good, very bad month
We're now four straight weeks with nothing from Sony on discs, Physint (not to be confused with physical discs), the lawsuits, or the prices of PS5 Pros. Who needs to deal with controversy when you can just say, nah. We ain't gonna talk about that shit.
Sony's silence did manifest in one specific place tho: Tokyo Game Show. Sony had a booth at TGS, but Xbox continued their PR victory lap by letting Kojima talk for them, using it to announce Bill Skarsgård as Physint's lead. Kojima called it "the culmination of more than 40 years of my career." And look. Does anybody really care besides Kojima and his obsessive fanboys? No, not really. But it gives Xbox another place to shout from the rooftops, in Sony's backyard, WE CARE ABOUT GAMES AND THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THEM UNLIKE YOU FUCKERS. I don't know Asha, I don't know really anyone at Xbox, but I would imagine one of them is holding themselves from screaming this out loud on a daily basis.
And yeah. Players caught on.「今日がPSの終戦記念日か」, "So today is PlayStation's surrender day." "Thanks Sony, guess I don't need a PS. I'll play it on Steam." And Push Square ran a piece about Sony being the only platform physically at the show with a top comment of "Sony is present... What's the word... Physically? No, that can't be right."
Xbox has been fucking on one. The Kojima deal is worth the insane amount of money it cost for the continued longterm press and photo ops they get to keep doing (Asha Sharma: "Working day with @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN and team on OD, PHYSINT and the future."). You could pay an agency a lot of money for some slick brand campaign and an agency retainer. Or you could just make some fucking deals and talk about it. (I'm sure some PR, social, and marketing agency is still in fact making lots of money off of this.)
But this is actually the bigger story and takeaway. I don't know how either of these companies work internally. I've got no insider information. But at Xbox, it's clear that someone is actually in charge. With a vision. A POV. A perspective. At Sony, you can FEEL the bureaucracy, the rooms, the multiple people having to agree on things, the slowness, the inability to have one clear perspective and response. The LACK of vision. This is how companies die. And it's really starting to cost them.
I've always liked green more than blue anyway.
4. John Wardogs: The Players' Champion
I hope you're paying attention to WARDOGS. If not, WARDOGS is a $39.99 early access shooter from Bulkhead. A studio of 100 people that Tencent walked away from and said, deuces! God you can't write a better underdog story than that.
It sold 1.25 million copies in 24 hours and 2 million in under a week. Alinea pegs 2.2 million and $70 million in week one, which is a better Steam launch than Helldivers 2 or Arc Raiders. Those numbers should make every publishing person working in games pay attention. Their all-time peak was 428k concurrent. #3 on Steam and #3 on Twitch. And the studio's own stated break-even was 400k copies. So yeah, congrats on the Scrooge McDuck money I guess.
Their CEO, Joe Brammer (the aforementioned John Wardogs), on Twitter, six days before launch: "we planned for 5k players concurrent!"
So how did they get here?
On August 11th, they release a video called "10 Reasons NOT to Buy WARDOGS." "If you don't enjoy the beta, just refund it." "We will never monetize in-game gold bars, they must be earned through play." And then it jumps to #1 on Steam's top sellers off a video airing out all their baggage and dirty laundry.
September 4th, right before launch, Brammer tells everyone that player count will fall for months after launch and that's fine. September 5th, the open beta post titled "Come break our servers."
Then launch on September 10th. 300k in queue. Reviews hit 42% negative and the studio's hotfix post says "working through the night." September 12th, the most upvoted post on their entire Steam hub: "It's time we own up. Community Servers have been underserved and the server browser experience as a whole has been poor... As we've always said, when we're wrong, we'll hold our hands up. We got this bit wrong." And to make it up to players, a 5% cash bonus. Reviews go to Very Positive the next day. Now that's listening lol.
September 15th, the victory lap: "Thank you all. Beyond humbled. We made a game we wanted to play with friends. Watching you play it with yours has been the best."
The real takeaway of why this is working: Brammer to VGC: "We're not transparent, and we're not honest. We're being clear. Right now, it's in our interest to be transparent about some things, but we're not telling everyone everything we're doing." Also: "It's obviously not Call of Duty. Don't buy us if you want to play Call of Duty."
I have managed teams where "authentic" dev comms get written by a committee of people. And then ANOTHER committee of people give notes on it. And then ANOTHER committee of people gives notes before they approve it.
This is what comms looks like, when someone with the authority to say the thing is also the person typing out their own responses. There's no Natalie Harp here. And I wanna give Brammer some credit, he says they are not transparent or honest, just clear. What it means is, their values, and the WHY behind what they're doing is genuinely good for players. You don't need to spin if you're not being shady.
What's fucking miserable about working in comms in many corporations is that it's the harsh reality and intersection between your internal reality and external reality. And man, people REALLY don't like it when you hold that mirror to them. That's when you enter the spin zone. To help protect the ego.
I've worked with a lot of people that SAY they want to be honest and authentic, have a clear point of view, but then when you try to give them one, they hedge. They pull back. They complicate things. They twist the language into something that's not actually honest. They haven't reconciled with the fact that what they are doing or planning, is perhaps, not the most player friendly or easy to understand thing they say it is internally.
But when you're fully aligned internally, and not like organizationally, but like, in your mind and spirit. Authentic comms is really fucking easy. You just let it rip.
Again, look at some quotes from John Wardogs: "People know what I believe. They know I don't believe in work-from-home for making video games. They know I expect people to crunch. I own that." "For the last three months, Wardogs has been more important than a lot of [our team's] family lives."
And the one that went viral: "We check people's socials, and if you're constantly tweeting anti-crunch messaging... we know that and go, 'Look, you're not going to be happy here, so we're not going to go with you.'" And as people were running with this tweet and twisting it's intention, John Wardogs returns to lay down the smack: "No information says mandatory, they made this up," and in a formal statement to Eurogamer, "We admitted to the staff that this was crunch; we clearly stated that we needed to crunch. It was optional; four people opted out... But I can admit that maybe the social pressure within a very tight-knit team might make those individuals feel less than great."
That's the cost of authentic comms, isn't it? Sometimes you're going to say something that gets twisted, because the internet thrives off hot takes. But over time, your consistency of tone, message, and reputation is what carries you through. Because that's the thing players notice. Of 9,579 steam reviews 14 mention crunch or the CEO. Fourteen.
Clarity works! Integrity works! Because after the crunch moment, players still view John Wardogs as the gamers' champion. Take this thread "John Wardogs Defends Studio honor" with 2.9k upvotes on Reddit. And it's just a tweet. Just be yourself and be fucking honest. And if what you have to say honestly doesn't land... then maybe that's something to think about, no?
5. The Love and Deepspace Post Mortem
I remember where I was the first time I had seen Love and Deepspace. I was at a team dinner with all of our international teams, and someone from the China team was like, do you wanna see what Chinese players are playing? They loaded up the game and took me to a real time event where I could touch the screen to make the guy on screen breathe heavily and shirtless. And then, I was shocked to hear it was the number one monetizing game in China.
You may have never heard of Love and Deepspace, but honestly, you really should. It's a billion-dollar game. Sensor Tower had it at about $1.1 billion lifetime in May. It's been a top-five gacha game worldwide every month of its life, beating out Genshin in June. It's a romance game with five male leads, made by Paper Games in Shanghai. Roughly 60% of the money it makes is from Chinese players, mostly women, and in July it did about $10 million, the worst month in the game's life, down about 70% from June.
Today? It's absent from Sensor Tower's monthly chart of Chinese games abroad, where LDS used to top the charts. In eight days!
Kotaku covered the story when it happened, along with other publications, but every one of them covered the Western half. What you didn't see, was what was going on in China, why it happened, what the studio actually said, and what the government said back. I found this post-mortem on TMTPost that is a fucking fantastic crisis comms case study about the whole situation.
June 22nd. Surprise! In a livestream, LDS announces a sixth male lead, 敖尹, Valko. A sexy werewolf slash chairman of a tech company. The announcement got over a million likes and 749k comments. The trailer got 51k likes and 306k comments. The last character trailer got 202k likes and 16k comments. Peep those ratios again. The first major sign that something was amiss.
June 24th. A fan writes "I can't get into this face." The official account replies with "对不起！但是他眼睛亮亮的……要不要看一下再决定……" (Sorry! But his eyes are so bright... won't you take a look before deciding...). Why on earth would the studio role playing cutesy voice when their players who spend A LOT of money are fucking pissed is beyond me. But maybe twenty thousand complaints in one day and sixty thousand by the end of the week helped them understand where their players were at.
Then on June 28th. A trailer drops with the line "what's wrong with letting the wolf in?", a popular phrase in Chinese. The App Store rating goes to 2.0, eventually dropping to 1.2. Apple tells a reporter that apps under 1.4 get reviewed and can be delisted. The official Weibo account loses 500k followers in four days. The top comment under the studio's first apology is "I do not accept this," and hits 175k likes.
And then you have the Chinese government. I'm going to paraphrase the translation I got of what they said, but basically: look. You can create fantastical worlds and characters. That's great. But you can't make women feel unsafe for attention (re: what's wrong with letting the wolf in?). Which yowza.
Love and Deepspace had already been walking a REALLY fine line when it came to regulations in China, but when you have a viral moment like this, you can no longer be ignored. And when the government writes a sentence about your trailer, you are no longer in crisis comms you are... what's the word? Oh right. Fucked. Way worse than a slack from the CEO.
In high stress defensive mode, the studio accused players of an organized disinformation campaign and said it would go after them until the very end. Which again, lol. Always goes over really well. But what are you going to do when the government is writing about you?
Never! Not "we're pausing" or "we're listening to your feedback". Just bam. No more new husbandos. Ever. Which, is a crazy business decision, because they're cutting off any form of high potential future new revenue.
Clock it. Eight days from reveal to cancellation. Insane work.
So how are things going now? They delivered the September update as promised! A new story for it's existing characters, free rewards. But that App Store rating ain't moving. 2.4. Not good.
6. A Protest Ritual Turns Into a Celebration
This is absolutely one of my favorite stories of the week. I honestly don't fully get the background context, but once upon a time, in Indonesia, when players were really upset with Hoyo for their stingy anniversary rewards, they decided to review bomb the Google Classroom app in protest. You can read up on it here if you want more background context.
But this year, Hoyo got it right! Giving away a 5 star for the first time in the game's history. And what did the community do? Band together to give Google Classroom a fuck ton of five star ratings. My favorite quote, translated, is basically "Finally Google Classroom gets its redemption arc."
I dunno. There's something heartwarming about a community that invented a weird protest ritual and then turned it into a way to say thank you to its developers when they felt heard years later. May we all find love like this in our lives.
That's issue 001 of Metagame in the books. I know it's long as fuck, but I warned you up front. It's the Sunday paper, not a news brief.
If you somehow made it to the end of this thing, THANK YOU! Thanks to everyone who signed up for this silly newsletter and/or got baited by a picture of my son playing Sonic in a Costco.
Tell me what you think! Did I say something you disagree with? Wanna correct something I got wrong? Tell me why I'm fucking stupid for writing a 4,374 word newsletter and expecting people to read it. Hit reply, let me know!
See you next Sunday.
Member discussion