Amazon’s New World Reveal

The following is a very cycnical screed about Amazon’s New World, fueled mostly by yet another rainy day and the constant barrage of Internet commenters acting shallow and uneducated about the election. And I have a headache. Please look away if you’re excited about this game.

I am reacting only to the one paragraph of information shown in MOP’s reveal article, which is the same information shown on the Amazon page.

“Carve your own destiny in New World, a massively multiplayer, open-ended sandbox game set in a living, cursed land.”

Says nothing.

“Choose how you play, what you do, and whom you work with or against in an evolving world that transforms with the seasons, weather, and time of day.”

Says nothing, except that there will be times when you log in and can’t complete whatever objective you wanted to do because it’s night time, or it’s snowing, or whatever.

“Band together to reclaim monster-haunted wilds and build thriving civilizations, or strike out on your own, surviving in the face of supernatural terrors and murderous player bandits.”

“Band together”, “build thriving civilizations” = Zergy, guild-focused, team-focused. Possibly this means player-built structures (“civilizations”), a la ARK. If so, that means you’ll have to band together, else other groups will keep breaking down your structures faster than one person can rebuild them.

“Murderous player bandits” = it’ll be an open world PvP gankbox if you decide to “strike out on your own.”

“Focused on emergent gameplay and rich social features-including deep Twitch integration with broadcaster-led events, achievements, and rewards-your only limit in the New World is your ambition.”

“Emergent gameplay” = We devs won’t have to worry about making content, you players can do that for free. A win for the shareholders! Or: Bugs aren’t bugs, they’re “emergent gameplay!”

“Broadcaster-led events” = A whole game made to bolster the viewership of their Twitch platform? The way this is featured so prominently is very troubling. It makes it sound like we players of the game are only valuable as background actors in somebody’s Twitch stream.

“Only limit is your ambition” = Ambition, not imagination. The game will focus on competition, which makes sense because that’s better for broadcasting.

This game sounds like it’s being built from the ground up by a big corporation board room who decided that they needed a way to increase the amount of original content on their streaming platform. I’m guessing there won’t be any deep integration with, say, YouTube.

No, I didn’t click on the button to get more information, because I’m not going to become a pawn in this obvious corporate scheme to use consumers as currency.

I said I was feeling cynical today.

P.S. I reserve the right to change my mind and jump on the hype train at any time, but it’s way too early right now.

P.P.S. I couldn’t care less about the other two titles.