Coronavirus Pandemic Puts Video Game Privileges in Perspective
As the quarantine continues, nothing in our lives will remain unaffected, including our relationship with video games. Gamers and the game industry need to be prepared for whatever happens next.
By Jordan Minor
Gamers like to hold onto the misguided belief that our chosen hobby is above and apart from everything else in the world. But right now, the pandemic brought on by COVID-19 impacts everything in the world, and that includes video games. Since gaming is a leisure activity easily done at home, the quarantine has some of us playing more games than ever, not just for fun but for unexpected exercise and socializing, too.
Unfortunately, the video game industry can’t escape the negative consequences of the lockdown. E3 and other gaming events have been canceled. The Last of Us Part II and other games have been delayed. GameStop can argue all it wants that it’s an essential business, but the gaming retail giant is as close as it has ever been to the grave.
Games will eventually release, and trade shows will eventually go on. Life will hopefully return to some kind of normalcy. Even beyond these tangible examples of COVID-19’s effect on gaming, though, I think this strange period we currently find ourselves in is making us question some things about the hobby we previously took for granted. The pandemic is putting our video game privileges into perspective. Gamers and game companies alike need to be prepared for what happens if and when those privileges get revoked.
Half-Life’s Half of a Life
Half-Life is one of the most beloved and important franchises in video games. The 1996 original was a landmark first-person shooter. It pushed the genre to new heights technologically, with immersive interactive mechanics, as well as artistically, with a bold approach to storytelling. Valve’s Steam marketplace became a de facto monopoly for digital PC game sales thanks to the power of Half-Life 2. Arguably no cliffhanger in gaming has been more tortuous than the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode 2 in 2007.
So, how is it possible that so many people simply do not care about the first new Half-Life released in 13 years? It’s because Half-Life: Alyx, released just a month ago, is a virtual reality game—a gaming privilege we can no longer afford.
Despite being pushed as the next big thing for years now, VR gaming has always been an iffy prospect. Even before we all locked ourselves inside, people weren’t rushing out in droves to buy uncomfortable and nausea-inducing headsets. Sealing yourself off in a virtual world sounds even more appealing as the real world falls apart. But when you factor in not just the headset but the computer needed to power it, even for gaming hardware, VR’s costs outweigh its benefits.
Half-Life: Alyx seems legitimately great and, considering the modest competition, it’s the most exciting VR game by far. I’ve been giving it the backhanded compliment of “Sonic CD for a new generation,” since that was also a fantastic game trapped on its publisher’s off-putting hardware add-on. It’s just tough to justify the price when you’re still waiting for your government stimulus check to pay rent. Valve could use Half-Life to sell Steam because Steam (eventually) was just an easier way to buy PC games. The software was the opposite of a barrier to entry, unlike Valve’s VR hardware. No wonder so many Half-Life fans are waiting for mods that remove the headset requirement.
It didn’t take a pandemic to realize VR wasn’t catching on with the mainstream. However, the lesson for Valve and other VR boosters is now loud and clear. No matter how innovative it may be, new gaming tech can only leave so much of an impact if it’s only accessible to folks with iron stomachs and golden parachutes.
Streaming Won’t Save Us
Virtual reality went from a potential luxury purchase to arguably a straight-up irresponsible one in this current economic climate. It’s not the only fledging gaming hardware that may suffer from this. Streaming services, such as Hulu and Netflix, have become essential sources of entertainment during quarantine. You would think a video game streaming equivalent would be a similar slam dunk.
Instead, attempts to create video game streaming services have resulted in either fascinating previews of clearly unfinished tech or expensive, arrogant boondoggles that create more problems than they solve. The high-profile Google Stadia project managed to be both. Google leveraged all of its money and infrastructure to create a platform for playing cutting-edge games on whatever device you own as long as you had a strong-enough internet connection. The end product, while impressive in some respects, was ultimately a laggy mess that was far from the ideal way to play the limited library.
Exposed, Google Stadia’s underlying economic issues also make a risk that’s even less worth taking in our new status quo. The initial hardware may be affordable, and Google Stadia now offers a free tier with two free months of a Pro subscription. However, subscription fees eventually add up, especially since you also must pay full price for most of the games themselves.
On top of that, game streaming requires internet speeds way higher than video streaming to preserve the responsive controls. Forget just the price, getting those speeds might become literally impossible if more companies like Sony throttle download speeds to preserve network stability throughout the pandemic. Even if I can play Google Stadia, there’s just something obnoxious about paying this much money and sucking up this much bandwidth for such a compromised experience.
Traditional video streaming thrives in this pandemic because it truly is more convenient than physical media or digital downloads. You can’t say that about Google Stadia, and its competitors are only marginally better. Fortunately, other gaming companies have rolled out their own new ways to easily sample tons of exciting games from the comfort of your own home. Instead of streaming, look to subscriptions such as Apple Arcade and Xbox Game Pass to access great gaming libraries for one low monthly cost.
The Future in Jeopardy
Although they may be the future, experimental tech like VR and streaming are still at the fringes of gaming. No gamer would or should feel guilty about ignoring that stuff with so much else going on in their lives, gaming or otherwise. The most important, immediate future of the medium, the future perhaps the most at risk from a pandemic-induced depression, are the upcoming home gaming consoles. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are still presumably slated for release this holiday. Will people actually buy them? Is the next generation itself a gaming privilege we can no longer afford?
Whereas previous generations have defined themselves with radical new changes in formats or controllers or online connectivity, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X so far have marketed themselves as little more than power bumps over their predecessors. The PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X already began to blur the line between consoles and PCs, and now the line is basically irrelevant. The Xbox Series X already looks like a desktop tower.
Power is plenty important when it comes to gaming hardware, especially for the hardcore. I’m curious to see how beautiful games can look with so many teraflops at their disposal. It’s a mistake though, to think that power is everything, that it can excite a broad consumer base. If that were true no one would even buy consoles, just PCs. People buy consoles because they’re cheaper, they’re more convenient, they have exclusive games, and they do different things.
We don’t know yet how much these consoles will cost but $400 is the absolute minimum and that’s no small amount of money. Microsoft has already confirmed that all early Xbox Series X games will also run on Xbox One. Most Xbox games launch on PC, as well, and now some PlayStation games are launching there, too. Arguably, the most convenient and different aspect about these consoles so far is their greatly reduced load times, a nice, but not exactly mind-blowing feature.
Even the controllers are basically the same. I’ve argued for a long time that the amount of effort gamers spend squabbling over largely identical controllers, controllers that many non-gamers still can’t wrap their heads around, is an indictment of the rigid community’s bad priorities and gatekeeping. It happened again with the reveal of the PS5’s DualSense, a controller that looks just like any other video game controller, but with a slightly funkier color scheme. It has all the same buttons and sticks and triggers in pretty much the same places along with some new tertiary light bar gimmick no one will use.
Controllers used to be the perfect opportunity to introduce a new innovation (D-Pad! Rumble! The Analog Stick!) and draw in new audiences (Touch Screens! Motion Controls! Plastic Instruments!). Nintendo saw much success with these methods, especially during the previous huge economic downtrend. Even the ideas from the failed Wii U and its GamePad form the clear basis for the hugely successful Nintendo Switch. However, these next-gen controllers from Microsoft and Sony are business as usual. The exciting evolution that saw primitive arcade trackballs and Atari joysticks evolve into DualShocks and Xbox Elite Controllers has seemingly reached its boring conclusion. Not bad, but boring.
“Not bad, but boring” might have worked fine during a normal console transition, but nothing is normal these days under lockdown. Consoles depend on a steady stream of great games to maintain their long lives, but the narrative and momentum established by passionate early adopters is also crucial. A lot may change, and hopefully improve, about the state of the world between now and the holidays. Maybe instead of being frugal, we’ll want to splurge to celebrate having our whole lives again (even though I’m definitely buying a console online and not standing in some infectious midnight launch crowd). However, without a compelling hardware or software argument otherwise, I’m convinced that folks will be more skeptical than ever about needing to upgrade to a next-gen console right away, if there’s even enough of them to go around. We’re going back to the days of confused parents getting upset about the Super Nintendo replacing the NES. There will be shiny new boxes to buy and lovely new games to play on them, but gamers and console makers should brace themselves for what might be the most muted next generation leap yet.
Whether it’s the newest games or the hottest hardware, video game culture values rapid consumption. But the thing about this global pandemic, about weathering any seismic life-altering crisis, is that it makes you reassess your values. Companies, it’s okay if people don’t want to rush out and buy pricey, unproven, inaccessible, and arguably unnecessary new tech. Gamers, it’s okay if publishers to need ask for your patience as they finish upcoming projects more slowly than expected and delay release dates to prioritize the health of developers. Blockbuster movies are skipping theaters and releasing on-demand. Businesses are seeing that remotely working from home was more possible than they ever realized. The world and everyone in it is adapting to the new reality. Why would gaming be immune?
Originally published at https://www.pcmag.com.
