Amazon Is Having No Luck at This Gaming Thing

Aspiring Megacorporations like Amazon always have plans to expand their influence to nearly every form of business and entertainment imaginable, shown through how the company that started as a mere online bookseller came to sell everything. It wasn’t surprising to see them introduce plans to dip their feet further into video game development with the Amazon Game Studios initiative, only a couple of years after they acquired streaming service Twitch. All three games announced were planned to rely on online functionalities, the kinds of games people like to stream and others like to watch in bulk on Twitch. The lack of game footage at the time made it clear they were all early in production.

Four years have passed since then, and Amazon’s plans, needless to say, have not panned out in a way anyone expected.

Crucible had the most promise in terms of potential success, a free-to-play multiplayer third-person shooter developed by AGS subsidiary Relentless Studios, with gameplay features taken from multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) and hero shooter titles. After spending time in a closed beta state, which garnered mixed impressions, the game’s public beta released in May this year. The twist came in how it returned to a closed beta state after only a little over a month, an uncommon and revealing step. It never left that state again, after Amazon confirmed this month that the project would be put to rest, and will be pulled from services like Steam early next month.

The idea of combining elements from two types of popular games is hardly original in theory, and players who took a chance on it explained how this was part of the problem. The unengaging gameplay and overall lack of clarity in its features was unhelpful, which made finding teammates and finishing objectives too complicated. Combined with the unremarkable characters and art style (both important for a game like this, as shown through inspirations like League of Legends and Overwatch), it’s easy to see why it didn’t take off. The games it mimicked are also still receiving updates years after their releases, and this title’s public beta debuted around the same time as other competition like Ubisoft’s Hyper Scape and Riot Games’ Valorant.

Crucible is interestingly the second game announced by AGS that’s suffered an untimely demise. First was Breakaway, a four-on-four multiplayer brawler developed by Double Helix where players competed to move relics (a ball-like substance) into the opponent’s goal, similar to soccer or hockey. It combined gameplay elements from games like League of Legends, Rocket League, and Power Stone to a lesser extent (noticing a trend here?) to make for a title that would purportedly be fun to play and watch on Twitch.

Early impressions for it during testing sessions were mixed, though skewing positive from players and publications, despite its lack of originality. But the game just didn’t come together. Following months of rumors, the developers confirmed the plug had been pulled on its production in March 2018. Breakaway was cancelled in a quicker fashion than Crucible, after the all-consuming entity they work for was not impressed with its progress.

It’s noticeable how both these games had problems in common, suffering from a lack of originality. That and other issues like the bland art styles made them seem like poor facsimiles of other games that have done what Crucible and Breakaway intended to do better. The teams at Relentless and Double Helix should keep this in mind for their next projects, but hopefully layoffs since their previous efforts were cancelled weren’t too heavy. There were scattered reports on social media of both developers shedding talent, but nothing has suggested the layoffs and departures were massive. It’s possible Amazon is keeping them around for a second chance.

Several of them, meanwhile, are assisting with the third project announced back in 2016, New World, which remains in development. This will be an MMORPG that takes place in the mid-1600s, where players will colonize a land modeled after colonial America. The mere themes of colonization were enough to deservedly ruffle feathers, given the horrendous atrocities colonization caused in American history, and it’s possible the game received adjustments following that.

New World was originally planned for release in May this year, but was delayed until August, and then again until sometime early next year. Its beta test session concluded on September 21st, the impressions for which have been positive. But you can’t blame anyone for being skeptical about whether its support will be pulled too quickly after release, or if it releases at all, given what happened to the above games.

Only time will know whether Amazon Game Studios can turn this around and actually release solid games. I recommend they release smaller games for them to prove themselves instead of investing millions upon millions in online games that might go nowhere, especially in Double Helix’s case given their work on the Strider reboot and Killer Instinct before Amazon gobbled them. Chances are Amazon desperately wants online games that make millions upon millions for developers and publishers who can release and support them successfully, so they might try similar games again despite that being unwise. You have to love how big companies work.