It seems like every week there’s some new farcical controversy that undermines the integrity of the gaming industry. It’s actually progressed to the stage where these kinds of corporate duplicity has become as routine as your morning dump. “Anthem” seems to be the latest faecal matter in EA’s long and notorious line of anal discharge. What a surprise to learn that Anthem, a grindy, repetitious, loot based shooter that everyone knew would be bad, turns out to be objectively bad. A conservative assessment for such a recurrent theme would be to regard it with platitudes aligned with the audience consensus. To ridicule the resulting catastrophe and express your own jaded assertions about the wilful negligence and duplicitous endeavours of an industry that has become more about deceptions than entertainment.
When Anthem was announced, particularly considering the parties involved I knew I wouldn’t be getting it. To me Anthem didn’t offer anything I wasn’t getting from a game like Warframe, that by design exhibits considerably more appealing promise given that it’s a free to play experience. Also its EA, a company that you can trust to make informed, consumer friendly products the same way the British government can negotiate an acceptable Brexit deal. What I find most alarming however isn’t that Anthem is an unfinished, plagiarised medley of concepts, saturated with EA’s patented business model of trying to continually charge consumers for content they’ve already paid for, but rather the community as a whole actively wanted Anthem to fail?!
Considering the overt exploitation of micro-transactions that were traditionally applied to Free to play models, it’s easy to understand why many have been revelling in the failure of Anthem. This unifying collusion of hate towards publishers has been reared by their persistent negligence, becoming a ubiquitous action that has gone unchecked for far too long. You can’t jeopardise the integrity of the industry when such practices have become such a common affliction I suppose. Realistically proactive abstinence and public anger are disciplinary measures desperately initiated to provoke some kind retraction of such eminent policies, to encourage a liberation from unnecessary micro-transactions. And really the only thing publishers like EA understands is money, especially when they aren’t accumulating as much as they want.
If a game actively encourages you to participate to earn rewards through a reasonable grind and repetition, then I’m fine with that. But when a game is so obviously geared towards fulfilling a monthly quota as opposed to actually providing a substantial experience for its users, then it’s understandable that customers so relentlessly exploited would eventually revolt. All this does is further perpetuate the mistrust gamers have with publishers like EA as well as “selective” reviewers. Doubt the veracity of any review that is based on just a few hours of play and includes many glaring omissions, because more than likely EA have encouraged some media outlets to promote a positive reflection of the game.
It’s sad that we’ve reached a point where you can’t even trust a game, let alone their creators, to not screw you over!
Game, Complain, Repeat 