By Nelson Schneider - 09/08/24 at 02:37 PM CT
Last week, something completely unexpected drifted into my Steam feed: A recommendation by a curator I follow called “Coop Cowboys” for a new game being developed by Valve…. Yes, you read that right! VALVE, the parent company of Steam, responsible for such incredible games as “Half-Life 2” and “Portal 2” is dipping a timid toe back into the realm of actual game development again after the disastrous launch and inevitable failure of their digital Trading Card Game, “Artifact” in 2018 and the well-received-but-limited-audience launch of their VR-exclusive ‘Half-Life’ spinoff, “Half-Life: Alyx” in 2020.
Valve’s new game is simply titled “Deadlock,” and based on the recommendation by Coop Cowboys and the vaguely-interesting-from-a-thematic-perspective screencaptures available on the upcoming game’s store page, I got overly excited. Just a few days later, people in the invite-only Beta test revealed that “Deadlock” is not the next great story-driven Valve IP, but is yet another in the over-saturated genre of PvP Hero Shooters, only with a few MOBA elements thrown in, seemingly in an attempt to lure out Valve’s hardcore Team Shooter fans who are still playing “Team Fortress 2” and Valve’s hardcore MOBA fans, who are still playing “DOTA 2.” Apparently someone at Valve thinks gathering all of these toxic players into a single, unified audience is a good idea, and Lord GabeN didn’t veto it.
The grim truth of the matter is that, even with a beloved developer/publisher like Valve behind the scenes, any new Hero Shooter is going to have its work cut out for it. Blizzard and Epic Games have already locked-down the genre completely with the one-two gut-punch (because they were supposed to have coop, PvE modes that were ultimately canceled) of “Overwatch 2” and “Fortnite.” If Valve thinks they can harvest enough players from those audiences to combine with the “Team Fortress” and “DOTA 2” players who are looking for something new, that they can create a viable player-base for an all new game, they might want to think twice. Or three times. Or four times. Or however-many-times it takes them realize that it’s an EFF-ing STUPID idea!
“Deadlock” sounds, in many ways, like the late, not-quite-great Gearbox Hero Shooter/MOBA, “Battleborn,” which the MJ Crew played, and mildly enjoyed, due to that game’s inclusion of a cooperative, PvE Campaign Mode. There’s little chance that Valve will include such a thing in “Deadlock,” leaving their new baby with little-to-nothing to differentiate itself from the pack.
Nearly simultaneously to Valve’s reveal of “Deadlock,” a different platform holder, Sony, was forced to eat and entire flock of crows (and a murder of ravens, to boot), when their DEI-inspired Hero Shooter, “Concord,” failed to gain any sort of audience, selling a whopping 25,000 copies to the mythical Modern Audience (or, more likely, Hate Players and Trolls) over the game’s mayfly-like lifespan, before ultimately pulling the plug and issuing full refunds after a mere two weeks on the market.
This apathetic reaction to a brand-new, big-budget, first-party Hero Shooter should give ANYONE with designs of getting in on the genre pause. “Concord” isn’t even close to the only stillborn casualty of genre over-saturation, as other games, like “Gigantic” have faced a similar fate, though it seems that the powers that be aren’t quite done flogging that particular dead horse either, as it has recently reappeared on the Epic Games Store and Steam as “Gigantic: Rampage Edition,” and is currently enjoying player numbers well into the double-digits (48, at time of writing, on a lazy Sunday afternoon).
Whenever a studio or publisher I like reveals a new game with an appealing theme and art style, THEN reveals that it’s a PvP-only wannabe e-sport, I die a little inside. There are already too many games that are played as e-sports. We don’t need anymore. It would be like if ESPN and the Las Vegas bookmakers decided to collude with each other and constantly invent new sports for people to watch and bet on, imagining in their delusion that there is an infinite amount of people with an infinite amount of money to take up their new sports/betting as feverishly as the existing cultures around football, basketball, and soccer. It’s just NOT going to happen, and the vain endeavor will end up consuming more time, money, and resources than any failed outcomes will recoup.
This copycat process needs to STOP. We do not need more nearly-identical PvP Shooters, MOBAs, or any combination thereof. No, your “great,” “new” idea to combine aspects of Shooters, MOBAs, and some other unrelated-but-inexplicably-popular single-player genre will NOT revolutionize the market and steal away the audiences that are already fully invested in existing PvP titles. The only time it’s right to frantically rush and scrabble to push out a new competitive e-sport wannabe is when the audience has demonstrated that they are finally growing weary of existing fare and long for something different – or, more likely, when the existing titles that have captured the entire player and audience bases for such things, are shut down by their owners, forcing the player and audience bases to migrate to something else. Until those conditions are met, any efforts to copy the success of existing PvP games will only result in failure and the waste of vast sums of money. And in an Industrial Gaming economy as horrible as the current one, with mass layoffs, mass mergers, and balance sheets teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and ruin, spending money on foolish endeavors is more dangerous than ever.
