More like DrDisinterested

What's the career path of a celebrity gamer?

What I needed was DOOM.

I’m not going to discuss the obvious. But suffice to say that to counterbalance the stresses of our new, terrifying world, I went back to an old failsafe remedy. Last weekend I emerged (victoriously, obviously) from DOOM Eternal. What a rush. Turns out that blasting demons from an inter-dimensional hellscape is a fantastic way to offload some of this contemporary anxiety.

Anyway, now that my mind is less cluttered I may finaly have the mental bandwidth to figure out how all of what’s going on is affecting the games business. Beyond the short-term increases in playtime everywhere, I have yet to read anything that helps me understand what the long-term effect will be on the industry’s landscape. Expect more on this soon.

In the meantime, perhaps I’ll venture in Animal Crossing. I’m told the volatility on its in-game stock market is easier to digest.

On to this week’s update.

NEWS

Viral vitriol: A study on toxicity incidents in World of Tanks

Poor online behavior is a hallmark of multiplayer games, unfortunately. Anonymity is more often than not an invitation to behave poorly to the point where it results in a toxic experience that hurts players and developers. Even so, academic attention has been lackluster because publishers generally don’t like (or don’t know how) to share user data in search of a solution. In a large-scale behavioral study, researchers conclude that “teams that are losing, or have a high internal skill disparity among their members tend to breed toxicity.” Losers gonna lose.

Aimbot bonanza in CoD Warzone

Infinity Ward assures us that they’re working on it, but if Warzone’s success is going to resemble Fortnite or some similarly popular shooter, the aimbotting will be persistent and basically a weekly game of whack-a-mole. With all the current excitement around increased player activity, and the slowly materializing dream of games becoming the next major social platform, cheaters are the Facebook equivalent of fake news spammers. Not in the least because the now standard cross-play that seems to give PC players a leg up. The costs of keeping your online universe wholesome and fun for everyone are going to increase. Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a company is success. Link

DrDisrespect is obviously bored

I’ve always been partial to DrDisrespect. Somewhere between his ridiculous humor and the moment of humility when he took a leave of absence after cheating on his wife and fessing up to it online, I started to like the guy. And so I was happy to hear of his big announcement of (finally) signing a “life-changing” exclusive with Twitch.

After seeing all of his competitors taking deals and doing daytime television appearances, DrDisrespect obviously considered his own next move. The plan, so far is to evolve his recognizable persona into an icon of sorts and becoming a brand. It raises the question on where to go next once you make it big. Successful entrepreneurs become investors. Retired athletes become coaches. So what’s the career path here? Hosting corporate events? Shoutcasting matches? Halftime show performances? Biggest loser, gamer edition? The lack of an obvious path forward for the current generation of online personalities and celebrity gamers is an awkward by-product of the sudden success of games and live streaming. In the short term, I’m guessing the money is good but, man, DrDisrespect is starting to look really bored.

Amazon starts talking about Project Tempo

We’re finally starting to hear more detail on what Amazon has in store for us in the cloud gaming department. I am whelmed. Codenamed Project Tempo, senior leadership touts the steady pace, deep pockets, and basically humane working conditions as a way to distinguish its strategy from everyone else’s. Sure, sure. But after seeing several talented and experienced people join and then leave the effort, this line of reasoning feels like a retroactive dress up for what is really a bunch of empty promises. In short order: (1) As the biggest streaming platform, Twitch can’t seem to make more ad money, (2) Lumberyard (Amazon’s own game engine) is getting squeezed as Epic Games and Unity wrestle for dominance; (3) We’re expecting to see two of its main titles (Crucible, New World) roll out in May, sure, but do those even stand a chance with releases like CoD Warzone and Valorent?; and (4) The “hundreds of millions” Amazon is apparently investing doesn’t sound like nearly enough to to truly become a meaningful competitor in the cloud gaming space.

All this to say that Amazon’s gaming effort, both as a content category and platform, is desperate for some love from upper management. The people doing the actual work are quite capable and mean well. But that may be in vain if gaming remains an afterthought to Amazon’s leadership. I mean, it’s cool and all that Bezos gave up his fave URL, relentless.com, for the games division but I don’t think that constitutes a business strategy.

My expectation is that at this rate Amazon is going to spend a bunch more money and time pursuing this, only to have to admit in Q1/Q2 2020 that, alas, gaming isn’t for them. Over the past decade all major tech firms have been valued increasingly on how well they perform in gaming. Amazon will soon have to decide whether it’s serious about games, and likely it will have fallen behind on Microsoft, Google, Sony, Apple, Facebook, and every endemic game company out there. It’s a shame, really, given the value and talent of its current team but reading these initial signals I have a hard time believing it will even do better than Stadia. Link

Steam releases data. Kind of.

After shutting down SteamSpy two years ago with the promise of providing its own insights and data, Steam just now released a bunch of self-serving analysis.

It reads, however, more like a PR piece than actual analysis. For one, the summary tells me nothing: “a continuous increase” is a qualitative observation for something that pretends to be a quantitative assessment, and the statement “Earnings prospects improved for most” is empty. Talk n-u-m-b-e-r-s to me. Given the degree to which the analysts applied limits to the data set, as far as we can tell, it is difficult to ascertain what we’re supposed to do with any of this.

Next, the stupidity in coming out with data over a 14 year period without accounting for basic economic indicators is overwhelming. Simply put: $10,000 in 2005 is not the same as $10,000 in 2019. In fact, to account for costs in a small dev outfit, we’re mostly talking about people’s rent and basic necessities. Over the entire period analyzed by Steam, the cumulative rate of inflation was 30.9% which means that a fair comparison would be a cut off at $13,090 for 2019. I’m going on a limb here and say that the extra $3K would make a massive difference for small devs.

Finally I’m also not impressed by the absence of critical contextual data. Certainly, there’s a big jump in the numbers after 2013. But how does this compare to the growth in Steam’s audience? How much did the active user base grow during that period? It’s one thing if Steam is an effective platform that successfully caters to the needs of small devs and helps get their game out there with clever algorithms. It’s another if small fries survive because demand outpaces supply due to increases in residential broadband penetration. Small companies in mobile gaming did well, too, for a long time because the category was exploding. What will this look like as the market starts to settle and substitutes like cloud gaming become viable?

It’s all a bit disappointing, really, especially considering that Valve led the charge with the hiring of economists like Varoufakis back in 2012. I say we bring back Galyonkin and SteamSpy. Oh wait: he’s been at Epic this whole time.

Tencent acquires 16,523,819 Class B shares of Huya for 262.6MM in cash

Now the largest shareholder with 50.1% of shares, Tencent is clearly looking to close the loop between marketing its titles and acquiring users via gaming video content. In Asia the struggle over who's the biggest streaming platform has been raging for some time now, especially in South East Asia, and it shows no signs of slowing down. According to Mr. Ren, Tencent's COO, it aims to establish a "self-reinforcing content ecosystem" which is contemporary speak for vertical integration. Next stop: expanding the advertising empire. Link

PLAY/PASS

Play. The Japanese government is planning to invest in esports in a big way, “with an eye to generating ¥285 billion ($2.6 billion) in economic benefits a year by 2025.” Hajime!

Pass. NASCAR driver rage quits esports race and loses his sponsor. Git gud, sucker. Link

Play. Riot’s marketing team is crushing it with an overwhelming presence on Twitch for its new release Valorent that rivals previous high water marks for Fortnite and League of Legends. All that without paying anyone. Impressive!