Solo Queue

Those WWE cards are like Steam Cards but you can't sell them to buy real games.

Also, holy crap this is a depressing show, lol. Umbrella Corp, I mean...shit.

@sparky_buzzsaw: Fair enough, but even so, when you're an unknown developer releasing a multiplayer-only game that relies on an active playerbase nowadays, you have to realize that you're going to need to hit a wildly impossible, insane streak of luck for it to take off in any survivable manner. I could be wrong in some cases, who knows, but it doesn't feel like a dedicated GB quick look would make a drop of difference beyond the week it was put up on the site, if even that.

Seeing Jeff pull out Tap Titans & make small talk was funny, but I do have kind of an overall weird/negative feeling about this feature.

@illrepute: Or maybe that person is theoretically a naive (for good or bad) developer who hopes maybe a major games coverage site will take five minutes to look at their stuff on a timely basis, hopefully giving them a small bump in viewership of their product. I get that can't always be Giant Bomb and maybe in some of these cases the games were featured on other sites. But maybe instead of doing this a week or two after the games are released, they make an effort to stick to a scheduled indie hour or something devoted to playing five or ten minutes of games like this. Because this? This is a really shitty solution.

Thanks! Off-the-cuff idea, new system, and using an audio mixer as a video switcher... I'll take props where I can get 'em.

OMG slowly turned to mobile game while waiting LOL

Man, I went into this expecting Jeff hopping into matches of things and getting to deal with the general salt and toxicity of trying to solo queue but it ended up being a long sad walk down the boulevard of broken indie dreams. I'm down for more, but that was more sobering than expected.

this kinda reminds me of the state of VR games. If not a wave base games its multiplayer game...easier to make than a campaign game

@sparky_buzzsaw: Everyone can probably agree there's no easy solution to the multiplayer problem what with the total market saturation, but your idea of having an Indie Game Hour would be a very, very cool thing. I'd love to see something like that turn into a regular feature-- maybe when they get some more staff on board?

Thank you, @jeff, for providing this valuable public service.

FTFY

I find smaller lost indie games fascinating.

perhaps they can chart them with... a whiteboard... maybe?

we have to keep things... scientific...

This is sad :(

Hope youse guys do something on Injustice 2

I feel like Jeff has answered this before, but why do they only have 35 games on his account? I thought maybe it was a 2017 only games, but there's two f1 games on there.

@sparky_buzzsaw said:

I don't think getting fans to play with you counts as proper coverage if that's what you need to do to get enough people to play a match. I also don't think giving smaller games a marketing push is a reason that any game is covered on this site. There's a reason they try not to mention Kickstarter projects.

About a year ago I jump on the XBOX 360 to check out some different mulitplayer games to see if anyone was home. There were people still playing the original LOST PLANET. I was impressed.

@alexandrite: Thats only his list of Installed games, and if memory serves steam scans a HD for all installed games regardless of if there on your account or not, and with jeff having a press account anything installed would show up.

this video bums me out. the hours that go into these games and they get nothing

My name is PirateBot! I'm totally a real person...

Maybe try Killing Floor sometime? Just curious about it.

@eccentrix: I don't kow how else games are supposed to get coverage if they're not actually covered. Throwing coins in a fountain? And by that logic, covering any game would be marketing for the developers. I'm not asking for positive coverage on these games. Just timely and well-planned coverage, preferably with an ideal situatio to showcase what the strengths or weaknesses of these games really are, rather than crapping on them for not having players when the games have had no chance to develop a player base.

Problem comes from the explosion of the indie scene a few years ago, now there is way to many of the same type of game the ones that are good and reasonably priced find a player base while the generic clone games are ghost town servers.

Jeff, you gotta prestige at 1000 and farm the tournaments a little. Stack those diamonds and all that.

Battlecrew came out this week. I think covering the game within the first week is fair. In addition, I feel like this video highlights the typical situation that you can get from buying one of these games. It's not Giant Bomb's job to present the ideal situation for a game, it's their job to cover the games as they exist.

I don't think pointing out this issue is necessarily crapping on the games, as much of a bummer that the issue may be.

Rocket League was on PS+ and it had the gameplay to keep people playing, that's the reason it hit big. If you're launching a game like this, I feel like you have to have some way of guaranteeing that there will be a player base at the start, whether that be PS+, GWG, Humble Monthly or something else. Otherwise, you're just shooting it into a void and hoping for the best.

Steam early access has no quality control and its a terrible idea releasing a multi player only demo with a single map completed.

Perhaps I'm biased in favor of like, weird uncontent or whatever, but I sort of hope this becomes a recurring feature.

Not necessarily regular, mind you, it just might be fun to check in with this depressing little niche of nonactivity from time to time.

@pudge: Getting into PS+ is what, a one in a... however many games come out a month chance? They can't all be featured that way. And yeah, ideally we'd all love games to be polished and 5-star material right off the bat with such great gameplay that it's going to inspire the masses to never stop playing, but they're just not going to be that. Being fair to those games and readers doesn't need to be an either/or situation. You can still be honest in a quick (probably very quick) look at a game like this while still providing them with a slight bump to show the game as it could be.

I'm gonna have to bow out of this conversation. It's getting circular and I'm honestly not sure what else I can add that I haven't stated already. I'd love to see games like this given a fair chance. This isn't that fair chance. That's my opinion. If you disagree, that's perfectly fine. But this isn't the coverage I'd like to see and it's fair to say that.

Do people make these kinds of games because they think it'll be the Gravy Train on Biscuit Wheels stopping at Easy Street station?

the time and money spent for Umbrella Core would have went to Deep Down or a Mega Man game

EDIT: that BattleCrew trailer...cringed

Does @jeff have Book of Shadows and what level is it?

I'm 95% sure that first song during the Hitbox FFA is used on Twitch in some G2A or an esports betting site ad or something along those lines.

That was amazing

@auzurafi: Word! These games may wither and die, but that game collective thing got $5 from me, so hopefully that's cool for them.

It seems like the larger problem with a lot of these games (besides there being a ton of them out there) is everyone seems to think there going to get 15-20$ for a multiplayer only game with 0 buzz or backing behind it.

It's not the content we need but it's the content we deserve.

Is this video quieter than normal for anyone else?

This video shows the frustration of solo queue but from a different perspective. Even though these games may be underpopulated to the point of unplayable, I think it's not all that uncommon to run into this sort of stuff on more popular games.

@sparky_buzzsaw: I think the mistake you are making is assuming that it is Jeff's or GB's job to essentially market these games. They are here to cover them; good, bad, and ugly. They have no obligation to cover these games at launch and not doing so doesn't forfeit their right to cover these games a few days/weeks later. It is not the job of the games media to find a solution for a game's lack of playerbase. Jeff gave these games a fair shot and the players weren't there. It's not his job to evangelize/market these games to his audience.

Even getting featured on PS+ isn't enough sometimes. Dead Star, which was free when it launched last April, only lasted something like 6 months before its servers were shut down due to lack of a playerbase. Sure, I think a lot of people (myself included) dropped it after a couple of days because it wasn't very good, but it's tough out there for small-budget multiplayer games. If you don't get yourself an active playerbase via word of mouth quickly, and then retain it, you're out of luck.

Also, as someone who has already spent hours playing the Fire Emblem mobile game instead of actual, real video games, it seems totally competent as a Fire Emblem thing but also totally grindy in the way that a lot of Japanese-developed mobile games seem to be grindy.

@shiztoid: A simple call to play a game near launch isn't advertising, and as I've mentioned in another comment in here, trying to play a game with a userbase isn't somehow pushing a game and giving it some sort of positive advertising. Well, unless the game actually happens to be good, in which case awesome, more people are aware of a good game. That's not a bad thing.

One more point I'll make is that games journalism is evolving with the games they cover. If the rules about what's considered "advertising" need to change so the consumer has the best information going forward on a game, then that's a thing that should happen. And does. This is just another case of that.

I've shared Jeff's opinion on this for years now. I cannot fathom being an indie dev trying to make a multiplayer only game in this day and age. It just seems...foolhardy.

I understand wanting to be the next Rocket League or ARK, but hits like those tend to be either extremely polished or offer a ton of fresh, great ideas right out of the gate that just need to be polished up a bit. Just making "another shooter" whether it be 3rd person or a side-scroller doesn't really cut it anymore and hasn't for a long time.

I don't want these games to fail. I don't think any reasonable person does, but sometimes I look at games like this and just go "What did you expect?"

@sparky_buzzsaw: I just feel like that is asking them to manufacture a scenario/experience that isnt true to the current reality of the game. The best information that Jeff could have provided about these games is that they don't have any players. Period. Some of these games looked neat and I'm sure Jeff could have corralled some people to play with him and had a decent time but most consumers won't have that luxury and it wouldn't be true to what they would experience. What would happen for them is exactly what happened to Jeff in this stream and they would be super bummed that they can't play these games.

Agreed. And of course they ramp up the difficulty spike on the very last chapter of the story, so you have to spend hours between story fights grinding out XP to beat them.

The worst part about it, though, is you can't preview the maps or change your team once you commit to a map. It only tells you which weapons the enemy units on the map have, not whether they're mounted/armored or what the terrain's like, both of which change your strategy. I'm not sure if it's an oversight or if they purposely did it so you'd waste Stamina scouting the map before your "real" attempt.

Also, it's really, really weird getting used to sacrificing units in a Fire Emblem game. At least units that are killed lose any XP they gained on that map, so you still have a reason to keep them alive.

Regardless of my issues with it, this still seems like the best mobile-suited game Nintendo's made yet. (Why oh why didn't they stick with turn-based battles for Pokemon Go?)

Please do more of these sorts of videos.

Although i know the answer I'd like to see for real how the over saturation of game development is effecting player bases and what sort quality can be expected.

I want to say this is one of the most impressive pieces of gaming journalism in the past year, and it says something that this is the kind of professional critical evaluation of the industry and a genre that can only occur through the setup that Giantbomb is doing here. You could do this outside the quicklook format, but I don't think I'd watch it. I don't think I'd care if there was a 5 minute video condensing this experience with videos of waiting in lobbies and voice over saying, "We tried lobby after lobby from Online Shooters to Racing Games to multiple side scrolling platformer dungeon crawlers, only to find nobody playing except for bots." It's better to show off, in real time the frustration of, you see a cool game on steam, you see it says NEW Multiplayer Game, you think "That looks cool, I'll spend $7 on it", and find no information in terms of online presence, total players currently playing, or even what modes to queue for. Not to mention legitimate questions like if I launch against bots, can players join?" "If I start a single player game, can others still join, or should I wait?", which the game should probably have told him that.

This stream is depressing as a guy who played a ton of online 'indie' games from the late 90s into the early 2000s. I've run underground servers with more people than this. I've run map testing servers that could host a maximum 4 people that kept a higher player count than this. There are MUDS and online Roguelikes that have been around forever that still get new players.

It's the first month of release, these games should be popping, even a playerbase of a few hundred is enough to keep a few dozen people online in the darkest parts of the night.

What the hell happened? It's like, twenty years ago was the start of this Cambrian Explosion of online gaming, and what, Infantry, Subspace - these type of games are gone like the trilobites. League of Legends and WoW and Overwatch and Hearthstone happened. The steam front page basically stopped existing. Still, this is unbelievable, you'd think the developer and his friends and family and their friends and family would keep it going the first couple weeks at least.

Steam was supposed to save these type of games! Remember when Defcon launched as an indie online only game only on steam, and it was like 'this is what Steam can be! Not just Sin Episodes and Counter-strike, but the games the publishers and big retail won't let you play'.

Instead, we're all just trading keys and cards to buy hats for Viper. Take Hitman, my favorite game from 2016, it just got its own version of horse armor this week in the form of a white explosive duck. Having played the game, let me tell you, NO ONE WILL SEE THE DUCK. You throw it and run AND IT EXPLODES! I'm positive more white ducks will sell than any of the games seen here.

This whole thing just is sad. Just seeing those cosmetic mods and upcoming characters for games no one will play. The rise of shared game spaces was supposed to undermine our expectations for single-player games, instead here Jeff sits thinking, "even if this game is an online game, I should at least have single player things to do. Now for ironic juxtaposition let's show my collection of WWE cards on my phone. Notice this application that involves PULLING UP JPEGS has a form of virtual scarcity that rewards consumerist debasing AND is more enticing than this $20 game." Watching Jeff open boxes or play tappers would be both more exciting and rewarding for both the viewer and him.

I realize they don't give pulitzers for Youtube videos about video games, but if they did, this should win one. In an hour you managed to show what's wrong with Steam, online gaming, new releases, indie games, microtransactions, characters speaking online 'meme's', and phone games, while still being generally positive and entertaining the whole time. It's February and we already have the two worst trends of the year: virtual 'scarcity', and multiplayer only games dead on arrival.

I'm sure online social media makes it easier for small communities to login and play together at designated times, and I realize it's the superbowl, but that never stopped us before. This 'genre' (independent online multiplayer games) has been wiped out by having too many games and not enough players, and no good enough ways of directing the player base to the games that matter. If people aren't playing these fresh games in their first month, what are they playing?

You'd think the industry would self correct, the 'publishers' would go under or get bought out by the big guys, but maybe you can just host these servers forever on Amazon for nothing. What happened to 'the future of the internet is curation'? Where are the editors and curators directing the masses on high, "this is the new stuff, check it out!" And if that's the role you want to be, which I hope Giantbomb wants to, how the are they supposed to do it?

Fuck it, I'm old. Just stream classic games from my childhood, and modern reboots of games from my childhood, and dota and we should be good. New games are dead.

It is awfully damning. It's also useful consumer advice. "Hey, this multiplayer shooter has no players, it's probably not a good idea to buy it"

Ultimately it is not the responsibility of the games press to ensure the optimum conditions before covering a new game. Yes, they could put out a call for people to join them, but is that actually "proper" coverage? Most people don't have the 150,000 Twitter followers of a Jeff Gerstmann to gem up enough players to make one of these games playable. And if a developer is asking for money from consumers then it's useful to actually know if you can play the bloody thing.

Is it a harsh that a devs hard work, blood, sweat & tears gets dismissed in such a way? Yes, it is. But it's also entirely fair. We've known for years that the Steam marketplace & other virtual stores are overcrowded & terribly curated, that just being a good game is not enough to rise to the top of the pack. A developer's naivete on their passion project isn't actually an excuse to overlook the fact their game is in effect unplayable.

@shiztoid: Totally - the beginning of the video is pretty much the entire preface for this whole thing "We wanted to do a quick look and it just doesn't work". Mustering fans to play something wouldn't actually show the game in it's "true" current state.

That being said, I do partially agree with @sparky_buzzsaw and that it'd be cool to see more indie games get exposure on Giant Bomb, whether through UPF or short quick looks or something. Maybe a round-up of indie games? I think there's a couple of titles from 2016 that could've been really fascinating to see a quick look of.

But I don't know if a call to get people playing a game ISN'T advertising though, as the role of a game reviewer, quick look or otherwise, is to present the game as it arrived to them/exists and I feel like that attempts to alter the conditions to try to present the game in a more positive light. If the game launches without players, that's very much a part of the problem; the developers have made an online-focused game with no guarantee of an audience.

And while an audience can be created or mustered to show a game in it's "optimal" state, few of us can get a group like that on demand. If the flaws are in the game or the idea of the game then no amount of presentation will fix that. But I totally agree; it's a difficult situation. Do you show the game as it COULD be and perhaps will be, or do you show as it is and maybe all it will ever be?

What this video is is actually sobering; it's kind of a reminder of how often this continues to happen. The bevy of Steam titles without audiences, with empty lobbies and empty matches. I wish some games could get the audience they deserve, whether through coverage or sales or whatever. But it is still rather ill-fated and very overly optimistic of indie developers to make online-only/multiplayer focused titles when there's no guarantee of an audience.

Maybe include steamspy numbers to see if anyone even owns those games

@joystickjunkie: If Giant Bomb was strictly about games journalism as an objective medium, I'd agree with you. But it's not. It's also about personalities and entertainment. It's also not my site. If this is the way they want to present indie games, it's Jeff's business. But as a consumer, I'd sure love to see these games being given a fair chance by games enthusiasts and journalists saying "we're going to give this thing, good or bad, a shake in half an hour. Join up if you want." That doesn't seem like advertising to me, because if a game's shitty, it just means more people are going to see how crap it is. Sure, maybe there's an initial run on the game so people can play with the GB crew, but maybe it also casts a light on bad game development when everything blows up. Or hopefully the opposite, when good games are being discovered.

Maybe that's not how games were reviewed and looked at objectively when the site started or before then, but as I mentioned, the world of games has changed. I'd like to see Giant Bomb change with them. If they choose not to, that's fine, but this feels like the video equivalent of the guy who loves to say, "I don't mean to be a jerk, but..." If the intent is just to show off empty lobbies, then why bother?