Something strange is happening. No, I'm not growing hair in unusual places and developing a strange interest in the opposite sex. I'm becoming... well, I don't wanna say important, but my opinion seems to matter now.
My articles have "evolved" alongside my primary field of expertise - Free2Play. When I started in this business roughly a half decade ago, F2P usually meant "Crappy game, which failed in development and got bought and re-released by some Korean publisher". Okay, sometimes they were Chinese. But you know what I mean. Hellgate London/Global. Mythos. That kind of stuff. F2P also meant "Okay game, which mimics subscription-based MMOs without ever reaching the same level of quality". Runes of Magic fits that example. Nice little game, I'm not gonna knock it.
Today, just about every MMORPG out there is F2P or at least Buy2Play, with the exception of WoW. And that's only a matter of time now - WoW is already free till level 20, they already have an item shop (sorry, "Blizzard Store") and should their subscription numbers drop to a less than legendary level, they'll go F2P and proclaim: WHAM! 200 million users! Why not? Nobody questions the supposed 50 million players in World of Tanks or the 41 million players in the very mediocre Flash-based 'Dofus'.
Long story short, F2P suddenly matters. F2P no longer means "Crappy grinder with overpriced item shop". It means Tera, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, Rift, AAA titles with very fair and affordable pricing. Because in a day and age where customers can play whatever they want for free, they're not gonna spend a dime in your cash shop if they feel ripped off. The competition is strong and publishers have to try harder than ever. Good times!
And with F2P becoming more and more important, more accepted by a wider audience, my work suddenly starts to matter as well. When I first got started in this job and I wrote about stuff like La Tale or Hello Kitty Online, I used to tell myself that I can take it easy, because "nobody reads that crap anyway". A self-defense mechanism if you will. Imagine you write your very first review and tens of thousands of people are going to look at it. And people disagree with you, they disagree with everything, criticise not only your work, but you as a person. The internet is not a happy place. I dared write a sarcastic article about the dungeons in Guild Wars 2 (which SUCKED right after release!) and I haven't seen so much hate and so many personal insults against me and my entire family since I've last won a match in Call of Duty. You get used to that stuff over time, but when you're still new to the whole thing it can be very harsh. And, more importantly, you don't want to look bad in front of the guys you work with. I read the reviews and articles of the guy who hired me when I was just eight years old! A personal childhood hero! You don't want to write something that looks crap to a guy you've idealized throughout most of your teens. "It's okay, it's just Hello Kitty, no one is gonna notice if you screw up". I take my work very seriously, I try not to screw up, but... you know. Fear ain't rational.
F2P was very relaxing and easy in that regard. The important writers get Dragon Age, I get Regnum Online. Dragon Age is clearly the cooler game, but if you make factual mistakes or write a stupid review, your readers, the publisher, everyone will get pissed off at you. If I make mistakes reviewing Regnum, well... I bet you didn't even know the game existed until I just mentioned it.
And today? BAM! Neverwinter! Title Story! It's a really big thing. And it's mine. I wrote that stuff!
And you know what the weirdest thing is? PR people. Talking to me. Treating me like I was royalty. Because F2P is big now and so is my opinion. Free mounts. Free companions. Free collector's edition - and a fucking cool one at that!
This is all new to me and I'm not sure how to deal with it. Yes, of course they're buttering me up. It's a fucking dilemma! I play Neverwinter anyway. For fun. Not just for work. So I really like all the freebies they're giving to me. I benefit from that stuff a great deal. My problem is that I can't even write a fair review without feeling a little guilty. I'm not giving the game a perfect score, because it has a few gaping flaws and shortcomings, which I need to address if I want to do my job properly. Makes me look like a bit of a dick, doesn't it? I take all of their stuff, then I go and tell people that the boss battles in Neverwinter suck. Which they really do.
Also, I'm starting to get emotionally attached to the whole damn game. To me, most PR-people are soulless minions, who like whatever game they're paid to like, even though they don't even play any of that shit. I had PR guys asking me why I gave their games (not Neverwinter) a low review score and when I tried to explain certain flaws and problems I saw within their product, they tried to sell them off as features. They're genuinely trying to sell me shit as something cool. With a straight face. Like I'm some kind of drooling idiot. If you know about the E3 presentation of the Xbox One, then you'll know what I'm talking about.
And then there are those PR folks, who actually play their own game, who genuinely care, who are happy and proud to be part of the whole thing. And it's so much cooler when you can feel the love and genuine excitement that goes into a game rather than, "According to this press release I am very satisfied with the launch of our new game."
And then you want them to succeed, you want people to be just as enthusiastic about that game and you get a different perspective on the entire thing, simply because you get a bit of a "behind the scenes" experience. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I guess things just become somewhat different if the games and the companies you criticise have names and faces.
As for Neverwinter, Claire and I are still playing. Here's a picture of my guardian fighter critting for almost 16k. :P
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| The amount of damage reflects my gearscore fairly accurately |
So, everything went okay with that game. Reviews so far have been good, everyone seems happy. I hope to god I'll never sympathise with a bunch of guys who have me review a really, really awful game.
But the real surprise this week is something even bigger!
As I wrote in my previous entry, I'm in the beta of Final Fantasy XIV and I'm anything but impressed. Well, guess what? I get to send a 'mock review' to Square. You know, describe how I feel about the game in its current state, what's good or bad about it, what kind of score it would receive, and, believe it or not - they're actually paying me.
This is SO big!
Now, now. Don't get any wrong ideas. I don't consider this a chance to say, "Suck it, Square! Nobody is gonna play your stupid game! HAHAHAHA!" But it's a chance to point out the many flaws and problems, things that most F2P MMOs out there do better than Final Fantasy right now. Honest, genuine feedback. Whether they're actually gonna listen or even agree with me, is a different matter entirely. But right now they're asking me to tell them what's what. They really want to know. This is a big deal to me, because I genuinely care about FFXIV and I want it to be a good game and it feels so much better to be able to talk to these guys before the release rather than being forced to write about how good this game could have been in a review, when it's too late. Which is exactly what I had to do with the original version of this game. But this time they're asking me ahead of time. My opinion matters all of a sudden. Whee! I feel privileged!
Again, god knows what they're gonna make of all this. I'm gonna put as much effort as possible into that text, explain where I see problems and how and why other games are better in certain key aspects and hope for the best. They might just throw it away, "whatever, dickhead" and that's that. But then they wouldn't pay me to do it in the first place. This is exciting stuff! On the one hand I gotta tell them why I wouldn't pay money to play their game in its current state, on the other hand I don't wanna tread on their toes. It's fucking Yoshi-P, man! Been playing that guy's PC-Engine games since I was seven years old! "Yourgameisawfulpleasedonthurtmeiloveyousomuch!" >.<
-Cat
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