Metagame 005: Signs the Devs Just Aren’t That Into You

What's uppppppp. I got a lot of really thoughtful responses to last week's newsletter and it really got the wheels turning. So much so that I'm going to jump right into some of the responses, because it tees up some of what I want to dig into this week!

Before we get into it: seriously, I love engaging and talking to you all about the newsletter. Every single message and discussion gets me thinking and going. Y'all are the best.

I know the headline is provocative, but this isn't some war on Christmas thing. I've been really affected by the responses I got from folks because there's a shared through line in the responses.

I'm going to quote someone anonymously here from their message: "I have no problem sending you my thoughts. You're a safe space to do it. But why would I publicly post my thoughts about the industry when it'll be held against me by my current and future employers."

And it really just hits at my sensitive spot. I hate that we've gotten to this point, expedited by the abysmal state of the games industry in general, that the only feeling people have left at work is fear. What if I say something that upsets my current boss(es). What if I say something that harms my ability to get hired in the future, when there are so few gaming jobs.

In a sense, me writing this newsletter is an idiotic enterprise because I'm just continuing to give ammo to people that never want to hire me again.

And honestly, it's pretty good ammo. Don't hire the guy who wrote a whole column about New Zealanders fucking sheep. That's a fair point.

But when did gaming get this way?

Games are an interactive piece of art. A social experience you share with friends. A relationship you have with a developer. And somewhere along the way, as studios have become bigger and more traditionally corporate, we've made these creative enterprises extremely... uncreative. Not safe for creativity. Because creativity and opinions are destabilizing. And so instead, the conversation goes underground. It moves into DMs. Because it's not safe out there to have a real discussion when so few people hold power over games jobs in this current environment.

And my god. No wonder the gaming bubble has/is bursting. You can only survive a product like this with innovation, authenticity, and honesty between the people working on it.

Take this response: "I don't want my name on anything because it puts a target on my back."

I think this is a topic for a future newsletter, but the future of the industry is going to be split between THE mega-corporation that houses all the major studios and small, independent studios that are making interesting, vibrant work.

If I wanted to work in an industry where I was supposed to keep my opinions to myself and just do whatever was told to me, I'd work on Wall Street or something. But it's gaming. It's supposed to be fucking fun. What happened man.

2. "Focus on what people do, not what they say"

Which leads me to what I wanted to take a look at this week. A really thoughtful response I got tees it up perfectly: "we should mostly focus on what people do, and not on what they say." I think that's totally right in general. Players will often say one thing, because as someone else replied to me "...the people who post at the highest volume are inevitably doing so in a way that caters to the algorithm... enough people posting are doing so for internet points... instead of authentic engagement."

And so there's a balance here, right? You gotta look at the conversation that is popping around your game and your community because there's often a truth in there. And the internet point discourse is what fuels public perception.

But when combined with the first story, it got me thinking about, what would happen if you turned that same idea back on the studios themselves? Often times, studios are slow to move because there's drift inside the organization. A studio can have a value like "player first," - and everyone will of course say they are player first. Because what kind of fucking psychopath outwardly declares they aren't lol. But often times, what you find is that, when you look at the constant decisions and actions someone in an organization takes, they aren't player first. They just say it.

And so, a studio can say they are community or player first at all times, but at some point, it's going to fucking catch up to you. Your actual thoughts and feelings leak out through the decisions you make, because players are people, and people aren't stupid. They can feel what's happening to them over time.

And so, I thought it might be interesting this week to take some examples of this from the last week in games and see what happens when you look at what people DO vs. what they SAY, especially in moments of crisis and conflict.

3. TFT: "Judge us by the game"

Things have been tense in TFT land this year with their move to a standalone client in Unreal. I'm not going to litigate the merits of this decision. What I want to look at, instead, is the discourse happening around it.

Things have gotten so rough that the TFT team posted a video explaining they know what they've been shipping isn't at the quality bar you'd expect in a live game, that it's been causing real player pains, and that they want to be more proactive moving forward. So now, you can track all progress moving forward at Follow the Fix. And honestly, this is a killer idea. Take a look at the website; it's an unparalleled level of transparency as they work to get back to good.

The only thing that raises some eyebrows is in what's being said itself. I think Geoff does a great job taking accountability, and you see the comments on YouTube praising the same thing. You rarely see ownership like this.

The issue though, and this is what happens when you get rooms crafting apologies, you can see the defensiveness and actual sentiment leak through in the overall information provided.

For example, the message ends on a really bold note, which I love a bold take: "Judge us by the game." Which is basically the, look at our actions sentiment. Love that.

But when you look at the actions. That's where it gets funky.

One of the main complaints players have about this transition is that some of the previous cosmetics they bought in the old version of the game are not available in the new Unreal version, and that even when they do go live in this new Unreal version, they sometimes lose the fidelity they once had. And so there's a frustration that, not only am I losing what I paid for, but the game experience is also less smooth and more buggy. It's a lose-lose-lose for the player.

And so if that's one of the larger complaints, the big thing that sticks out is the bold: "2,661 of 3,573 converted" - in this case, referring to cosmetics. That sounds great. That's 74%. That's pretty good, even if it's not ideal. But 2,171 of those cosmetics are sticker emotes. The low value items that players feel like they are missing. When you take out emotes: little legends, booms, arenas, etc., the premium cosmetics that players shell out large sums of money for in the loot box system: 490 of 1,402 have transitioned... or 35%.

And so that's where as a player, you start to feel like you're getting gaslit. Take this YouTube comment from a player: "Why do you continue releasing new cosmetics when we're missing 70 percent of the old ones".

Now, if they looked at Follow the Fix, they'd think they were wrong. But the player isn't wrong. For the cosmetics that mostly matter to them, that 70% missing number isn't so far off.

Okay look, if we're really going into the math, on the super high end cosmetics, Prestige and Mythic items, TFT has moved over 62% of the items. Which is for sure better.

But it's not about the math in situations like this. It's about what a player feels like you keep saying, or doing to them.

Because when you keep saying things aren't great, without clear action, but then still keep asking players to buy all the new expensive premium items - you feel like you're only as good as the dollar bills you flow into the studio.

But what are you supposed to do when the sentiment has gotten so bad, that the format of the "empty words" TFT dev video have become its own TikTok joke - here's the most popular comment on that video:

And so I'm not going to comment on how they got into this situation. That's a separate product management and franchise management article. But it's a really tough situation to navigate for a publishing team that got handed a really suboptimal hand.

It's a long road, but I think they're taking a lot of the right steps. For instance, this tactic of sitting down for longform interviews with members of the TFT community, getting you great quotes like this: "The sour taste i had in my mouth about the cosmetics is gone. And I've gained alot of respect for Geoffrey."

Publishing and comms can only do so much to reconcile the thinking and decisions of a company making subpar decisions with an "undefined thank you" coming to players in a future patch. But I think they're trying as hard as they can, with what they have, to let players know the ship is turning around.

4. Battlefield 6: Oops, We Did it Again

Last week Season 5 went live and a couple of things happened at the same time that created a perfect storm of negative sentiment.

BF6 launched the "Ultimate Shortcut Kit" for $29.99, a pass that instantly maxes out every weapon, vehicle, and class so that you can get every unlock on Day 1. While I get why players have negative feelings about products like this because it undermines the average player experience, the price tag should tell you who the product is for: $29.99, which is more than the actual price of the game on Steam right now ($27.99).

The problem comes when a new XP cap on in-game progression shipped, capping players to 300xp per minute, meaning earning the items normally would take... a really long time. Steam reviews fell pretty hard when players realized it, dropping to 21% positive.

EA responded by saying "backend configuration changes resulted in an unintended issue" and reverted the cap. And look, the timing of these two things is not great lol. But as a person who's worked on stuff like this before, mistakes DO happen. You could take a conspiratorial view on things and say this was intentional, but I do think this was an honest mistake.

When thing like this happen, the tax of how you've been treating players unfortunately catches up to you, no matter if it was a mistake or not.

Roughly translated: "An unexpected issue? You only rushed to fix it because it blew up more than you thought."

I don't think people are inherently distrusting of game companies they have a long relationship with. But sentiment like this starts to leak out when players feel like they've been taken advantage of more than once.

It doesn't help that some of the new cosmetics that shipped were accused of being made with AI. And while the studio says the design was intentional, what doesn't help is that in the past, they've updated items where players complained it looked like they were made with AI.

If you think about games as being in a relationship with your players, each little thing like this that happens builds distrust that snowballs over time.

That said, Season 5 itself is getting rave reviews from core players and creators. Check this comment on the jackfrags season preview with over 870k views:

And for all the sentiment, players keep buying the game, with an estimated 10.5M copies sold on Steam. So it's not like people aren't showing up.

Like every relationship, you aren't judged by one moment in time alone, but how you show up time and time again. And so the real thing to look at will be what Battlefield does next.

5. "Jagex actually did it"

This is an interesting anti-TFT example.

At RuneFest (October 3rd), Jagex announced RuneScape Reignited, a fresh-start world with its own economy, walled off from existing players. And veteran players went nuts.

On October 5th and 6th, Jagex apologied to players and then pulled trailers that had AI artifacts in it, after promising no generative AI would get shipped in player facing assets.

And then, on October 15th, Reignited gets cancelled.

I actually think the comms on this one is really fucking solid. Like really good. "It is clear that we missed the mark on this, and so we are not moving forward with it." Words with action, not just, we're sorry. Compare that to the TFT apology where you just get told, we're sorry, here's a tracking website, and there will be a "thank you" but we have no idea what it will be.

What makes this piece really land for me is this line: "the last time we didn't listen to player feedback, combat changed forever." That's actual humility, and pointing to a growth mindset to try to listen and learn. Not just sweep things under the rug.

And then, the final thing that brings this whole thing home, is this banger of a line: "shout with that same energy when you think we're getting it right too." Which I think is the most baller way of saying, hey, judge us by what we do. Because it doesn't just say, hey, we're going to do it, it says, fucking save it dawg for when we finally get shit right again. Love that energy.

And with that comes the community victory lap and a call to action to actually show up and reward the dev team for their actions:

There is one thing to watch. Which is the folks who are upset Reignited is getting cancelled because it was free from MTX.

And so there continues to be real sentiment clash to deal with. But they are applying the idea of "watch what people say vs. what they do" to the most maximalist state. Your most outspoken, dedicated players taking priority over people who say they are going to revive.

6. Lost Ark and the Empty Chair

This one's a little more short and straightforward, but very on theme. Lost Ark director Jeon Jae-hak promised to "draw a line" on raid difficulty, and on October 16th, scheduled an apology broadcast hosted by former CCO Geum Kang-seon.

What's notable is that Jeon Jae-hak didn't show up. At all. The person who made the promise (again, words easy) didn't show up to come and answer for it (actions).

The most clear take on this from Inven: 「정작 책임자인 전재학 디렉터가 직접 소통에 나서지 않았다는 점에서 모험가들의 반응은 좋지 않았다」 (roughly: "players' reaction wasn't good, since the director actually responsible didn't come out to talk himself".

Players are seeing it for what it is, with this comment coming from a fan video: 「너무 노골적으로 금강선 방패막이 하려는게 눈에 보여서 더 실망함」 (roughly: "It was so obviously using Geum Kang-seon as a shield that I'm even more disappointed").

7. ARC Raiders: Give the People What They Want

Sometimes you get some really great gems. Take Arc Raiders testing a new PvE mode. And the reason why was pretty simple: "we can't ignore what the data is telling us" - coming from player surveys Embark ran.

This is also how you build long term advocacy and your players fighting for you, with this comment from a creator video criticizing the PvE mode:

That's all for this week!

I know I say it every week, but I HYPER appreciate all of you that share and forward the newsletter. I've been hearing some fun stories about the folks you're sending it to and the studios that you share it with and it warms my heart. You know. Assuming they don't hate the takes.

Hit reply and tell me your thoughts. It really does shape the newsletter and what comes next.

See you next Sunday.

p.s. - I see you Allen, Michael, and Tim and your public comments. The fearless trailblazers we need.