In this episode of The Stuff of Legends, Frost tells the story of an Elite Dangerous author who was hunted by his own fans.

The Author Hunted by His Own Fans in Elite Dangerous – Transcript

You don’t happen to have antivenom do you? Yeah, I figured as much. I’ll just read this book and hope it wears off I guess.

Elite Dangerous, created by Frontier Developments, is another one of those space flight simulator games that lures you in with the great expanse and then before you realize it, you’re working a second full-time job as a miner, a pirate, or an assassin. God, how do they get me with space capitalism EVERY TIME??? Luckily, Drew Wagar’s first job is as a sci-fi novelist, so all of the time he spends playing at night can be considered a form of method writing. That’s probably why his book, Reclamation, is considered to be the best Elite Dangerous novel and why he was personally commissioned by Frontier Developments themselves to create a sequel with a rather unorthodox development cycle. Frontier Developments wanted to host a massive in-game event where the community would try to protect or kill Drew Wagar’s character. The outcome of the events would be written into the book.

From the outside, this sounded like a good bit of cheeky fun and cross-promotion. Drew Wagar gets to promote his novels which promotes Elite Dangerous which promotes his novels, back and forth, and players get a chance to see themselves in their favorite book. From the inside, the stakes couldn’t have been higher for the lore enthusiasts, because the character Drew Wagar was playing was at the center of the mother of all grand conspiracies. His character Salome was essentially Princess Leia from Star Wars on steroids. Imagine if George Lucas decided to do a live action roleplay session where he dressed up as Leia (ooh baby?) and if you killed or protected him you’d get to be written into Star Wars itself.

No one was more excited than a group of roleplayers known as the Children of Raxxla. Devoted to Salome and unraveling the web of political conspiracies that threatened her safety, it was them that made up the majority of her defensive entourage. Together, with Drew Wagar as Salome, the commanders repeatedly practiced fighting through a simulation of open space alongside their precious cargo, but she was shot down every time. It wasn’t until weeks later that the crew abandoned the idea of fighting altogether and instead opted to focus on coordinated defensive maneuvers and evasive action. In one such practice run, Salome made it through alive. There was hope.

Hope wasn’t enough for the Premonition Allied Coalition, a group of players who thought themselves to be the best fighters and strategists Elite Dangerous had to offer, and Salome’s only real chance of survival against any open space hostiles. The PAC took charge of the operation and forced changes that rubbed the community the wrong way. The most egregious of decisions was bringing in a group of hoodlums known as the Smiling Dog Crew. These players had a reputation for being the villains of Elite Dangerous. The SDC insisted it was all roleplaying, and while they didn’t cross major lines that warranted a ban from the game, they mostly picked on new or casual players. The PAC brought in the Dog Degenerates because they figured the best way to counter griefers and trolls was by enlisting the most famous griefers and trolls. If the SDC showed any sketchy behavior, an order would be given to shoot all members down like the Dogs they were.

I can not prove intent. I can not say whether the Smiling Dog Crew really intended to help from the start or if they were setting out to do the thing everyone assumed was going to happen. But what I do know is a wealthy player by the name of Commander Runis Oo did not like the fact that the villains of the game had swapped sides, so he put a billion dollar bounty on Salome’s head. He wrote in an email, “ I usually like to do some sparring with the bad guys in Elite, because they put up more of a fight and provide more entertainment than the good ones. When I heard that SDC was siding with PAC for Salomé’s protection I thought, ‘Hell, if even they and their friends moved to the righteous side, who is there left to fight? Traders and miners?’ I thought that if they chose to play it that way, I could make things a bit more interesting by throwing a billion into the ring.”

April 29, 2017, the day of the event. Drew Wagar logged into the game as Salome. His ship was surrounded by a small group of armed fighters. Another mass of fighters surrounded those fighters, but these were unarmed and could only intercept other ships. The SDC had convinced the PAC that the biggest threat to Salome was friendly fire from inexperienced players and that it would be easier to identify hostile players if everyone left their weapons at home. The PAC issued a declaration to the community that no one else was allowed to defend Salome. All non-PAC ships would be shot or intercepted on sight. Players weren’t too happy that the PAC had hijacked an event intended for everyone and had to get approval from them to participate. Many that intended to protect Salome were embittered to the point of trying to attack her. Others hoped the SDC would betray the PAC for their perceived arrogance.

Everyone set off. The scouts flew ahead and looked for safe spots to land. Once there, the coordinates were relayed back to the Salome group who then bought time for her to charge the hyperdrive to make the jump into hyperspace, but a jump can only take you so far. Salome was most vulnerable to being intercepted during the repair and charging of the hyperdrive, and the headstart they had was all but gone. Rogue ships flew in to pull Salome out of supercruise to shoot her down, but all non-registered flyers were intercepted by PAC members. If anyone made a mad break to the center of the formation where Salome was, they were intercepted and shot down by the few ships approved to carry weapons. This worked better than expected for the first hour, but the damage to Salome’s ship was beginning to add up and the outer layer of defenders was spreading thin because they weren’t allowed to use proper weapons to fight off invaders.

Communications had become a mess and Salome was spending more time repairing and charging in between jumps. The space net wouldn’t hold for much longer and her chances of survival were non-existent. The Salome crew made the next jump and that was the last time the main defensive group heard from her. In a bold move, the closest fighters to Salome decided to split away from the hive. They figured everyone would be too distracted looking for her in the middle of the fray, and that would be enough time to get their payload to its destination. Her ship had little means to fight back, and she was running out of resources to run. Luck didn’t seem to be on her side either, as a non-playable character was targeting Salome for interdiction. Salome’s ship was too weak to fight the tug-of-war, but her fighters kept her safe. They just needed to survive six more jumps.

As part of the event, anyone on Salome’s friend’s list knew her location, with a bit of a delay. One such “friend” on that list was a member of Smiling Dog Crew. He had been following the party from the moment they split off from the thousands of players who vowed to defend her. Catching her during a jump was impossible, but her ship was so damaged that she was spending more and more time charging in between jumps. It was during this window of opportunity that he swooped in to intercept Salome. Her ship was once again too weak to sever the connection and relied on her fellow fighters to save her, but they were nowhere to be found this time. The game had crashed for one of her bodyguards. The others were having network issues. After an hour and forty-five minutes of flying through open space, Salome was shot down by one of the most well known trolls in Elite Dangerous, “Harry Potter.”

“Well what did you expect?,” said the community. The players mourned Salome and cheered for the egg on PAC’s face. The group dissolved, whether out of shame or to avoid being hunted down is anyone’s guess. The SDC stayed together and continued to harass players under the guise of roleplaying. And Drew Wagar, true to his word, wrote “Harry Potter” into his book after coming to an agreement that he be referred to as “Besieger” instead. It’s some kind of irony to be an author shot down by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Due-To-Copyright-Infringement.

This week on Cold Take, Frost takes a look at the sad state of consumer protections.

Check out more recent episodes of Cold Take, including AAA’s Struggle With Nostalgia, Why Are We Still Using Review Scores, The Hype Train is Running Out of Steam, and Armored Core 6 and the ‘Git Gut’ Mentality.

Consumer Rights Need to Catch Up – Transcript

Every regulation is written in blood – Happy Halloween – It’s a saying we have in the business of safety that basically means humans are bad at safety until after something bad happens. You see a sign that says “warning high voltage electricity” and you can probably guess that that sign didn’t exist until after someone felt what it was like to chew 5 gum. The video game industry shares that quality of doing something good after something bad happens, Steam’s refund policy came about after too many people were being scammed through the Early Access program. But the video game marketplace is constantly changing, so these regulations need to be updated frequently otherwise they get in the way of progress or leave buyers vulnerable to shady sellers. I don’t think anyone anticipated digital consumerism spreading as fast as it has, and that makes it harder for gamers to make informed decisions. Consumer protections are slacking, and I’d like it if we could get some signs put up before too many people get hurt.

The general gist of consumer protection is that sellers have a natural advantage over buyers because they know the real value of a product. I can try to sell you a banana for $100 and say it has magical properties that fight off macular degeneration, while really it’s a normal $10 banana  that I used to try and kill a spider. A referee then flags me down and says that I am allowed to sell the banana for $100 or even $1000 but I am not allowed to claim it has any powers beyond an average banana-sized dose of potassium and I must disclose that I used it to bash a bug in the bathroom. You’re still allowed to buy it but now that we’re on an even playing field, would you still want to? That’s old-school consumerism, designed to protect the consumer at all times by keeping them informed. You’re allowed to buy damaged goods or gamble, so long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else, but you need to know the full extent of the damage or that the odds are stacked against you. It’s not about policing morals or judging right from wrong. That’s a fool’s fool’s errand. Normal fools are going “yeah, even I ain’t touching that one.” It’s about consent and you can’t properly consent without being fully informed.

New school consumerism is a game of trying to pull a fast one on you without getting flagged down by the referee. In this scenario, my banana is normally $100 but for a limited-time only you can buy it for 80% off. This is not misinformation, this is simply intentionally confusing framing meant to pull on the strings of your imagination. “80% off? What a steal! It’s normally $100…I wonder why it was priced so high initially. Maybe it’s one of the magical bananas that fight off macular degeneration!” Meanwhile another banana (of same girth, length, curvature) with a consistent price tag of $20 offers nowhere near the same excitement. Buying stuff is nice but, for many, feeling like you got a better bargain than the seller is as sweet as any purchase. That’s why casinos and carnivals aren’t shut down by the marketplace referees. Everyone knows the odds are stacked against you, and yet that is the appeal. This is what Steam Sales used to be. Buy a game at 60% off or wait 30 minutes and see if it goes to 70%. Do you wait another 30 minutes for an 80% discount or risk it going back to full price for a few more months? I feel like my grandpappy going on about how gas used to cost a nickel. Back in my day I got Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag for $7.49 not even two years after release!

Can you believe we used to have to go to a physical location to pick up video games or wait on the mail for them? A lot has changed since then and most of it has come with the advancement of digital consumerism. This explosive growth has given consumer protections little time to keep up as it now has to deal with different global interpretations of commerce and the even more ambiguous nature of modern consumerism. This creates gaps in the marketplace and the buyers are liable to fall into the holes left by the biggest of sellers. 2023 consumerism includes all of the old trappings from 80% off stickers to pre-orders, but now we’re diving deeper into the liveservice pool. Live service has been a thing for decades, but it was predominantly centered around PC gaming and when it did come to consoles it was with a focus around online multiplayer. It’s changed so much that perhaps it’s worth a look at the older terms of conditions. Is the consumer aware enough of the current state of gaming to make an informed purchase?

Games used to be something you bought, you owned, and did not change. I can pop my disc of Crash Team Racing into my PlayStation 1 and it plays exactly as it did 24 years ago. I can access my digital download of Portal and it plays as it did 16 years ago. But No Man’s Sky is no longer the game it was 7 years ago and Cyberpunk is different from where it was 3 years ago. Both of these games do mention the potential for online changes in their End User License Agreement, that thing you never read but always say you did so you can play the game you already bought. No Man’s Sky just says it updates the game from time to time while Cyberpunk explicitly states “older, non-updated versions may become unusable over time.” Is this enough information for a consumer to make a reasonable purchase? Most people do not see the End User License Agreement until after they’ve bought the game. People still can’t wrap their heads around the fact that you do not own a video game but rather a license to play that can be revoked for any reason at any time, and now it comes with the added caveat that the thing you bought can turn into something else after the fact and there’s nothing you can do about it. Personally, I don’t think people are being informed as well as they should be.

Early Access games have to make you aware that the game is not finished and the end product can be completely different from what you are purchasing. Xbox Game Pass marks these as Game Previews. Steam has a big Early Access box that a customer can not avoid looking at because it is hovering over the purchase options, and this box provides a general FAQ about why the game is in Early Access and what that entails alongside links that provide more thorough explanations of the Early Access Program. Epic Games also warns you that the game you are purchasing is liable to change and to only continue if you’re okay with the state the game is in based on the trailers and patch notes. But, because some people prefer a hands-on approach when it comes to buying things, most digital game marketplaces will grant you a full refund if you fill out the paperwork soon enough. I’m not sure what the limit is for the others, but I know Steam will refund a game within two weeks of purchase provided that you’ve only played for 2 hours, and even then is known to make exceptions on a case by case basis. Under current policies, you can not refund No Man’s Sky or Cyberpunk 2077 if you log on and it’s a different game from the one you purchased on release.

Who would refund these two games in particular, Frost? They’ve only improved since their highly publicized missteps at launch and have given people hope that the live service model can offer redemption to any bad game. What if it doesn’t offer redemption? What if a bad game stays bad or, worst case scenario, what if a good game at launch only gets worse with patches like say Overwatch? Imagine your copy of Star Trek turning into a musical one day or Black Adam turns into an adult-film. Well, the acting will have improved. It’s not about whether they improve or not. The point is the process has major holes in it and I would be remiss to wait until a game goes from good to bad before having this conversation. I am OSHA trained, I look for the accidents before they happen. Redemption is subjective. Optimizing a game is one thing, but redeeming or ruining a game’s content is relative to the customer. A game being better or worse is a matter of opinion, but a game being different is easy to observe and prove in a court of law if it came down to it. It shouldn’t come down to it. All I’m asking for is a label. A glowing advisory saying the contents of this game are liable to change at any point before and after purchase. But would you want the banana then?

Would you subscribe to my fruit stand if you knew that one day the bananas could turn to apples, oranges, or tomatoes? They are fruit. Would I ever cycle back to bananas? “Sure…” I’ll tell you. Maybe. I’m not lying. There’s always the potential. If you don’t like what I have on offer you can always go to another fruit stand but they operate the same way I do. Casinos are fine because adults can make the informed choice to participate and if they don’t want to gamble there’s plenty of other places to go. As it stands now, I don’t think adults can make an informed decision on their games, let alone a child. And if every game turns into a virtual casino of sorts then there are only two choices. Participate or don’t.

This week on Cold Take, Frost examines AAA’s fascination with nostalgia, despite not really understanding it. Check out more recent episodes of Cold Take, including Why Are We Still Using Review Scores, The Hype Train is Running Out of Steam, Armored Core 6 and the ‘Git Gut’ Mentality, and The Problem of Voting With Your Wallet.

Why AAA Struggles With Nostalgia – Transcript

A toast to nostalgia! Ain’t what it used to be.

Nostalgia is a conundrum that goes as such: I want a new experience, just like the old ones. I want more of the same, but different. Let’s assume that it is 100% possible to make a nostalgia serum. Apparently money ain’t a part of the secret recipe because Johnny Triple-A has enough capital to toss God a quarter for the gumball machine, and they’re mostly still terrible when it comes to nostalgia. A difficult endeavor for sure, but corporate game development is specifically ill-equipped in this area because it operates more like a machine than a human–despite what the American court systems think– and humans are better suited for nostalgia than robots. It’s a faceless entity with no heart, no soul, and too many different departments trying to fight over what gamers really missed from the good old days. It can not miss things. It can not feel. The only fondness it has is for the days when their revenue was consistently skyrocketing. And it is this inability to tap into nostalgia that makes Johnny Triple-A violent. It tries to control the creative process, fails to do so itself, tries to force a timeline reset, and, worst of all, actively sabotages anyone else who could be successful. 

Nostalgia itself is tricky because it has to account for change. It is a longing for more than just having a specific game again. You yearn for the innovation it brought with it, the culture it created, and the impact it had on your own life at the time. Technically speaking, a re-released game can not innovate upon the techniques of now as it did prior because it’s building off of its old blueprints. It can not be a cultural pioneer sailing on uncharted waters, as it is now no different from one of the many legions of ships steering in the direction shown on old maps. And it can not impact your life in the same way, because that hole in your life has already been filled by itself years ago. Not every game needs to be innovative, culture defining, or life changing, and it’s okay to simply put out more of the same. But the video game industry likes to hoist the trend setters up as the frontmen, so there’s an unrealistic expectation that every game needs to be the new thing you love just like the others things you already love. Hard to make such a thing when Johnny Triple-A is naturally averse to taking creative risks

Every game that you know and love comes from people experimenting and delivering a twist on the formula you enjoy. The God of Wars, Elden Rings, and whatever Nintendo’s got cooking up are part of the reason why I say mostly and not all of Triple-A is terrible at doing nostalgia, because it feels like the higher ups of successful long running titles have this unusual ability to leave the creatives alone or, even rarer, they themselves are creatives. No, what I detest with an ulcer-inducing passion is when Triple-A refuses or is incapable of innovating, and instead of letting someone else who can innovate take charge or simply leave them alone, they actively attempt to coerce developers to play by their rules or they’ll stab a nail into the ball and go home.

The reason I praise FromSoftware is because they let a janitor run the company. I’m being dramatic. He wasn’t a janitor. He was a planner with no experience, but still, upwards mobility is to be praised. The reason I praise Kojima for finding success apart from Konami isn’t because I think he himself is so special but because he represents the pipe dream minority of developers who were able to wrestle for creative liberties and then become even bigger than the machine that was trying to control him. Sadly, Kojima is an example of survivorship bias, and the unfortunate truth is most developers will never get to the point where they can get payback on the studios that wronged them. You may have heard of Death Stranding, but have you heard of Amsterdam 1666? It was meant to be the next step by Assassin’s Creed creator Patrice Desilets until Ubisoft made a power play for it and wrapped him up in court until 2016. If you’re unsatisfied with Mirage’s attempt to reboot itself, maybe there’s still hope the Assassin’s Creed DNA lives on elsewhere. Kojima walked on with the genetic code for his style of development and gave us Death Stranding. In a way he managed to recapture the nostalgia of merging different gameplay at the core of a story and spectacle you’d expect to find in the cinema that made Metal Gear as big as it was. Meanwhile Konami gave us Metal Gear: Survive a failed attempt to continue the legacy without its original creators so bad that they hid the sales on the company financial report out of shame. Konami is now doing what major companies do when they realize they are not cut out to carry on the franchise they ripped away from the better parent, reset the timeline to a happier time when sales were still climbing astronomically. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is that reset to Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater, a much happier time..

Timeline resets is how I end up watching a release trailer in 2023 for Modern Warfare 3…again. A game that released in 2011, with a rebooted campaign but the trailer is showcasing all of the maps from Modern Warfare 2 which came out in 2009 and is even using the same song as the original Modern Warfare 2 trailer, Eminem’s “Till I Collapse” –the lack of self awareness there is extraordinary– but Modern Warfare 2 from 2009 was already rebooted in 2022.. The accounting department convinced everyone that our fondest memories were when we paid for the game so let’s have them do it again and again. It’s a little more awkward asking for mom’s credit card at 28 compared to 17. But the problem isn’t that it’s a reunion tour and a greatest hits concert. The problem is that the band that’s playing isn’t even the same band that made the game because they were kicked out as well.

Modern Warfare 2 (2009) was created by Jason West and Vince Zampella, the leads of Infinity Ward. They did so well with Modern Warfare 1 that they renegotiated bigger pay and complete creative control over the franchise with the stipulation that creative control would go back to Activision if the two were fired. In doing so they painted a target on their backs. Activision, like many Triple-A overlords, is frugal and a control freak, so they fired the pair on the grounds that they were conspiring against them with EA. West, Zampella, and 38 of the 46 original crew working on Modern Warfare formed Respawn Entertainment. They made Titanfall while trying to push the standards they themselves had set with Modern Warfare, but they struggled to get out from their own shadow. But being their own studio, they had the creative control and room to experiment. It was from this experimentation that Apex Legends was created in 2019 and in 2021 became one of the most played video games of all time with a player count of approximately 100 million players, surpassing their old franchise. 

That’s what convinces me to loosen the noose, the hope that some kind of video game Count of Monte Cristo will pop up years later and enact their revenge on those that wronged them. They’re few and far between, but it’s been an incredibly stressful year for game development behind the scenes with mergers, cancellations, price increases, and layoffs. Perhaps this is the beginning of the uprising and more teams will follow in the footsteps of Kojima and Respawn Entertainment who went their own ways and came out on top. We may not see them for another decade, but I’m cheering them on all the same because we could all use a bottle of the Good Ol’ Days. Oh yea…nostalgia is a refreshing concoction of brightest maroon, the color of childhood passion, with just the right balance of sweet familiarity and tart discovery that makes the lips pucker in a way ready to be tickled by the fizzy frothing of the good times of Christmas past. That’s what the label says anyways.

In this episode of The Stuff of Legends, Frost tells us a RuneScape glitch that turned into an unprecedented massacre.

The Famous RuneScape Falador Massacre – Transcript

What’s that behind your back? I won’t be mad. Oh! The Geneva Convention might be. Oh no! Don’t cry…no. Okay! Look! Senseless violence! Here’s a story about senseless violence!

Normally I’d write a short explanation of what one does in the video game I am about to highlight in case this ever breaks out of the circle of perpetually-onliners and into the hands of the I’ve-got-a-few-minutes-to-kill-on-my-lunch-break-and-this-was-recommended-to-me-for-some-reasoners, but I also don’t really know what one does in Runescape aside from chasing the highs of ceaseless progression. It’s a steady dripping of dopamine. There’s quests to do, bosses to fight, skills to train, capes to collect, you can even go on a homicidal rampage unstoppable by the devs themselves, and it constantly gets updated so the massive following of addicts who have been playing for years and years and years still have something to do. It’s the one game that makes me almost understand where my parents were coming from when they said video games were a waste of time and if I needed something to do there was an entire list of chores waiting for me. Sure, the same can be said for any video game, but some sell themselves more readily on better graphics, moment to moment gameplay, or even fanservice. I myself have played Runescape. I clicked over a square of water with a rod continuously until the progression was so miniscule I had to move elsewhere for more fishing, and then I went to recreationally medicate myself while folding laundry, both having more of a tangible outcome on my well-being, for better or worse, than whatever I had done in Runescape. It’s in a philosophical sense that I find Runescape to be so existentially exceptional, nihilistic nectar if you will. Because what is life if not a journey in no discernible direction with no tangible outcome with random characters making their own goals and sense of progression? Meaning makes things meaningful.

Runescape introduced new meaning for players on May 31, 2006 in the form of another skill that incentivized another hundreds upon hundreds of hours of grinding called Construction, and a contest to see who could be the first to get the skill to the maximum level of 99. It was a close race until a player by the name of CursedYou shot past everyone on the final day and became known as the guy who was better than everyone else when it came to making this particular furniture crafting progress bar go up. What a cause for celebration! CursedYou now had access to the biggest mansion one could create in Runescape at the time and he used it to throw a massive house party, open to all. Not a real one, of course. A virtual house party where you can set your avatar next to another avatar and small talk over virtual punch. It’s mostly for showing off your loot and gear to the public without getting robbed. Sounds like a sad alternative to the real thing, but you can’t abruptly dismiss everyone with the excuse of connectivity issues or low frame rate from a real house party. I’d probably be more eager to have family over for holidays if I could simply right-click and kick my mother’s belligerent brothers on a whim the way CursedYou tossed everyone to the curb for making his game lag.

There’s too many conflicting accounts of the specifics that caused it, but the general story goes as follows: when CursedYou kicked everyone out of his home he accidentally caused a strange glitch that allowed a few players to attack people anywhere. Normally, fighting could only take place under specific conditions in marked areas, but these players were able to attack anyone anywhere. Another awkward condition is these players could not be attacked back except by other bugged players. They were effectively invincible against all attacks except from each other. Durial321 was one of the party goers that found themselves unceremoniously ejected from the house party and infected with the bug. I’ve dug for hours on his motives, but he gave no clear reasoning for why he went berserk and attacked everyone he could. He did it because he could. Meaning makes things meaningful?

Give an infinite number of monkeys on typewriters an infinite amount of time and they might reproduce a work of Shakespeare, but they are equally as likely to reproduce Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The thing I find hard to wrap my head around is how conveniently inconvenient the entire scene was from start to finish. If Durial321 had decided to teleport to the city, he would’ve lost the bug that allowed him to slay players indiscriminately. It’s a common method of getting around in the world, but Durial decided not to teleport because he was having too much fun picking players off one by one along the way– heh… It’s the journey, not the destination I suppose. The players, in their panic, were messaging everyone to run to Falador bank to store their valuables so they wouldn’t lose them if they died. The players would’ve been better off running away from the city, as this ended up concentrating more would-be casualties in the same spot, up to the maximum of 2000. The moderators of the server were getting messages that Durial321 was on a player killing spree, but they hesitated to act because Runescapers frequently misreported player killings in a Boy Who Cried Wolf kind of way, and this happened late at night when there were less Jagex employees available to look into it. When the moderators did decide to take action there wasn’t anything they could do because a player can not be disconnected from a server for 10 seconds after getting into combat. Durial321 could continue his spree so long as he didn’t stop for more than 10 seconds. It took well over an hour before Durial321 ran out of players to attack long enough for the moderators to disconnect him from the game.

Players were trying to make sense of the 2-hour murderfest, but there was nothing more to be found than an unfortunate series of loosely tied events. There was no grand web of conspiracies connecting one morbid part to the other. The bug accidentally came about because CursedYou booted everyone from his house while under network stress and awkward conditions. Durial321 was of no relation to CursedYou, just a stranger who was invited by the friend of the postman of the barber of some fisherman who happened to hear about the open house party. He didn’t target anyone specifically out of hatred, malice, or revenge for macking on his e-girlfriend, who is totally real– she just goes to a different Runescape server. A random 16-year-old was presented with the ability to ruin the experience of hundreds, if not thousands of players, in a manner that would undoubtedly get him banned once he was caught, and he went along with it. Senseless. But the Runescape community did what it did best and gave meaning to the meaningless.The Falador Massacre is solidified as a canon moment in the game’s history. There is a plaque in Falador Park erected in the memory of the fallen victims. For the 10th anniversary, Jagex recreated the events of the Falador Massacre by throwing a fake house party hosted by a fake CursedYou. Players would then be teleported to a new area where they could attack each other or join forces to fight a giant boss version of Durial321. Why? Because they could. Meaning makes things meaningful.

This week on Cold Take, Frost tries to figure out why we’re still using review scores.

Check out more recent episodes of Cold Take, including The Hype Train is Running Out of Steam, Armored Core 6 and the ‘Git Gut’ Mentality, and The Problem of Voting With Your Wallets, and Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Caused Quite a Hubbub.

Why Are We Still Using Review Scores? – Transcript

Yahtzee, who I’m sure you’re familiar with, has never taken part in the ambiguous grading of a game in Zero Punctuation, not even when it went by the name Fullyramblomatic, (10 out of 10 name btw). 3 Minute Reviews, our short but sweet look at the world of indies, doesn’t use a numeric rating system either. It didn’t use them when they were called 2 Minute Reviews on Gameumentary, and I imagine it won’t use them even as they get suspiciously closer to becoming 4 Minute Reviews. Arguably, for the longest time, refusing to use the same metric of measurement the rest of the industry went by was seen as a quirky choice. You’re just trying to stand out. I’m different from the other girls you know. I can’t count. Girl math or otherwise. But the major fall releases of 2023 have gamers, developers, and critics alike wondering once again if we should continue to use review scores. What purpose do they serve? If they are useless then why do we continue to use them? What should we use instead?

Let’s start off with the painfully obvious. Review scores are a sham of a mockery trying to quantify opinions. There is no standardized process and anyone claiming to be able to do so is a charlatan and a swindler. Done. Video’s over.

I’d love it if there was a readily understood rubric, a scale, or a unit of measurement that quantified video games. Life would be so much easier. None of us even use the same scale as it is. Steam has its thumb’s up and thumbs down. There’s 4-star systems and 5-star systems. 10 point and 100 point scales. Then there’s Metacritic pretending to use advanced algorithms to convert, combine, and average them all out while refusing to show its work. Sure, you can convert fractions and decimals in the same way we convert miles to kilomiles, but the context of each score is different between sites. To some, 5 out of 10 means it’s functional, but does nothing spectacular. Anything under that is fundamentally broken, so you rarely hear about games under a 4 out of 10. What’s the point of all the numbers if you’re not going to use them? No. Just no. I’m all for a standardized review system and I’d start giving all games scores tout suite if there was ever an accurate system. I don’t even like calibrating my cooking thermometers. I don’t know how we’d calibrate the review score gun.

Who even needs review scores? Review scores are useful to consumers– and I don’t mean that as a slur. Games are a product and people exist who’d like to make informed purchases. And because people who care about how they spend their money tend to care about how their time is spent as well, a number serves as a quick summary or supplements the important parts of a lengthy reading. Traditionally, reviews were given on the functionality of a game because they are a technological marvel, and if you’re playing on PC it’s not even a standardized marvel at that. Every video game has a technical aspect to it because it is a form of software coordinating with your varying choices of hardware. All manners of bugs, breaks, hiccups, and unintended interactions can exist and technical reviews frame “how good is it?” as a question of performance. “How well does it work?” “It ran well for an hour then it blew up, 1 out of 10.” Technical game reviews still exist, usually mixed in with the opinionated bits. Off the top of my head, SkillUpmakes reviews that do take into account the performance side and he informs his audience of things like the state of Cyberpunk’s new DLC on last gen consoles, current gen consoles, Steam Deck, and multiple PCs with different hardware, while holding conversation around graphical fidelity and playability. These are objective benchmarks that can be assigned a value. In this manner, technical video game write ups are closer to what I read when I’m looking for a new blender or an air fryer than when I’m looking for a film or a book, and a review score lets me know to not waste my time with the 4 out of 10s and below because they’re broken in some manner of speaking.

Sellers also like review scores as a badge of honor. Publishers are all too eager to highlight a notable review outlet and slap it across all of their advertisements. I know this sparks the fear and conspiracy that reviewers get paid off to write sweet nothings about a game to boost their metacritic average, but the keyword I’m using here is “notable.” A 10 out of 10 score from “crusty old man we found rummaging through our company dumpster” does not hold as much weight as a tweet of appreciation from say Hideo Kojima. He is trustworthy, and you don’t build up trust by shilling or being wrong more times than you are right. It just so happens that as you gain more attention you attract people with different points of view so you’re likely to find more people who disagree with you and saying you’re being completely irresponsible with your opinion. Thus, you end up with a noxious cloud surrounding the major outlets, and everyone outside of the zone is wondering how they got so big to begin with if they are apparently shills. That noxious cloud is usually composed of people who are addicted to arguing on the internet or who have mistaken their hobby for a personality. That one was a slur.

So we agree review scores are useful as a quick gauge of technical quality, but video games have an artistic nature about them and there is no such thing as objectivity in the arts. 144 frames per second may be objectively better from a performance standpoint, but, from an artistic point of view, maybe the vision of Link adventuring in Hyrule only needed 30 frames per second to be realized in Breath of the Wild. There are people buying Mortal Kombat 1 on the Switch and it looks nothing short of a Walmart bathroom. That’s true love that can look past the surface level and into the real beauty beneath. Unsurprisingly, review scores fail miserably when you want to converse about personal enjoyment with any kind of nuance. And wouldn’t you know it, that is the burning question that dominates the airways. “Is this game good? Will I like this game? Will it make me feel whole again?” I don’t know. Go to therapy or to a brothel if you want to feel w(hole) again. The only people who can say for sure what you will like are people who know what you like, you and your close ones. So what do review scores communicate then? They’re a parasocial shortcut. It’s not about the games anymore. It’s about shooting a flare into the air signaling “everyone who feels the way I do come gather around.” Like a school of guppies, it’s easier to fight off dissenting opinions as a collective.

But let me tell ya, just because you feel the same way does not mean you think the same way. Believe my 5 ex-wives would agree with me there. I know plenty of friends and peers who love and hate the same games I do, but for different specific reasons. It’s impossible to get game recommendations from them. Inversely, there are plenty of other creators who do not feel the way I do, but think the way I do, so I trust them more than my own immediate circle. Example, Iron Pineapple, one of the most prominent content creators for the soulslike genre, feels Lies of P is the best non-Fromsoftware or non-Nioh soulslike. I feel Lies of P is the least worst non-Fromsoftware or non-Nioh soulslike. We think the same way, we both

This week on Cold Take, Frost dives takes a look at how the concepts of hype and anticipation are starting to run out of steam.

Check out more recent episodes of Cold Take, including Armored Core 6 and the ‘Git Gut’ Mentality, The Problem of Voting With Your Wallets, and Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Caused Quite a Hubbub.

The Hype Train is Running Out of Steam – Transcript

Wait, if I’m on the hype train and you’re on the hype train, who’s driving the train?

Xbox got caught with their pants around their ankles. Long story short, Some kind of internal mishap led to a public leaking of secret documents and corporate emails. I will note that a lot of these documents are older and made during the pandemic, so I’m not sure how many of them hold relevance in a business that pivots fast and loose in a time when everyone was locked inside baking bread and watching Tiger King for some God forsaken reason. For example, the new Xbox may or may not be shaped like a jumbo can of chili from Costco. What did catch my attention was Phil Spencer’s emails where he criticized the business practices of the industry he’s in for being too short-sighted and wanting to make more money in the immediate at the risk of not having a sustainable future.

It echoes a lot of my earlier Cold Take topics, like in the video where I say publishers are looking to prey upon the smaller developers and consequently force them into monotony, the business-heads are ruining video games video, and the we need Triple-A video games, the list goes on. The exact thought from Spencer that I am basing this ramble around is when he points out that triple-A publishers have been riding the success of 10-year-old franchises, because they’re the only ones capable of being a safe enough bet to commit millions of dollars for production. The reason they’re safer than new ideas is because old IP runs on its own reputation and hype. We’re seeing the long-term effects of riding your own coattails for a decade, and it looks like the hype train is starting to run out of steam.

Gamers can scoff all they want at the likes of Ubisoft, EA, or any other big name that some would consider to be in a creative and moral downwards spiral, but you have to have earned grace to fall from grace. Earning a reputation is difficult. You need to chain together explosive releases that break the mold of one time and make a new one for the next. It’s as much a stroke of genius as it is a stroke of luck the first time around, but the follow up gets a boost. There is always a crowd watching and waiting to see what your next work may be. This is as true for old franchises, from CoD to Metal Gear to Mario, as it is for smaller studios like Supergiant Games, and it even manages to trickle down to the most personal level where people patiently await the follow up creations of solo developer auteurs such as Toby Fox, the creator of Undertale, Eric Barone, the creator of Stardew Valley, and Lucas Pope, the creator of Papers, Please and The Return of the Obra Dinn. If you manage to catch lightning in a bottle a second time you draw an even bigger crowd. Do it again and you’ve gained a reputation that has its own gravitational pull. The size of the crowd itself draws a crowd. I’m sure everyone’s bought a game at least once that they knew nothing about aside from “well, a lot of people seem to like it, so I figured I’d give it a shot.” That is hype.

Hype is the anticipation that something will be good based on past performance. “Why is that a bad thing? Let people be happy, Frost. Let people hope.” Therein lies the detail. Hype and hope are different. Hope is wishful thinking that something will turn out well. You put your positive energy out into the world and move on with your life knowing that sometimes good things come and sometimes they don’t. Hope needs no justification. Hype believes it has every justification. Hype believes it’s better informed and reasonable, in fact it’s banking on it. You can monetize it. “The game isn’t even out yet, but the last game was so good you might as well just give me your credit card now!” Hype is scheduling time off work to play Diablo 4 on release day, knowing good and well that Blizzard’s servers can’t handle the stress and you’ll spend most of your day waiting in line. Hype is buying the next installation of a franchise that’s been well out of its prime for longer than it was in it simply because it still has the same name. That is what publishers have been peddling for quite a while now.

Hindsight being 20-20, around 2013 or so is when I got the tingling sensation that games had stopped surpassing the quality that came before. I’m not saying games got bad. Oh no, they were still good, great even. Hell, some still managed to catch lightning here and there, but they weren’t consistently shifting the culture in the way people had gotten accustomed to. Regardless, the hype train continued picking up speed, and the quality of the tracks was starting to degrade. The speed of the train made the cars shake as the quality of games went from culture-defining to just good, until a few studio mishaps made the train go off-rails at certain points. Phil Spencer lamented that Xbox had no premiere exclusive content for 16 months due to improper planning, calling it a “disaster situation.” The hype train had gone from the Halo Infinite station and crashed straight into Redfall’s poor release. Costly mistakes make publishers even more hesitant to play it risky, and they were already renting old IP instead of making new ones to minimize the gamble and keep the hype train running on schedule. EA rented Star Wars, Sony rented Spider-Man, Ubisoft rented Avatar. I don’t think anything is sadder than Call of Duty, and that’s coming from an old fan. They’re using their old content as fuel for the hype train. The big CoD release of 2023 was the big release of 2011, filled with all of the old maps. But here’s the thing, who is that appealing to? The new demographic is there for an entirely different feel than what initially brought me to the series. Assassin’s Creed is doing it as well with Mirage targeting the people who preferred the stealth patrolling style of the originals over the new RPG style.

Actually I did think of one thing sadder than old IP being burned to keep the hype train running, workers being thrown off to lower costs. As I write this, Epic Games has laid off 16% of its workforce. The reason given by Tim Sweeney, the CEO of the studio that owns the money-printing machine that is Fortnite, is because they spent too much money chasing “the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators.” Simply put, Epic bought into their own hype from the Ninja era and the Major Crossover era, a moment in time where Fortnite grew beyond the sphere of gaming and into the rest of pop culture because of pop stars like Drake and Travis Scott, alongside sports stars like SuperBowl Champion wide receiver Juju Smith-Schuster, and major collaborations that brought recognizable IP to the game like Thanos and Goku. Oh, and let’s not forget this happened right before a major pandemic that shut people inside with nothing better to do than twiddle their thumbs, a literal captive audience. I don’t mean to be an armchair business mogul, but the revenue gain during that time should’ve been marked down as abnormal and unsustainable growth. Give all the hard workers a bump in pay, but save a majority of it for when things return to normal so these people can continue to work and explore other avenues similar to the exploration that created Fortnite. The reason these companies can make billions and still lose money is because they buy into their own hype and believe their new highs are the standard, so they feel justified in raising their cost of operations because they assume the money will be made back.

Hype does make money. It makes money for the businessman who wants to make a quick buck for 4 to 5 years and cash out. Hype has no business in any business that is serious about their long-term growth and potential. I agree with Phil Spencer’s older emails. There’s too many publishers squeezing their cash cows dry, selling you powdered milk on hype alone, and then butchering the cow when it’s got nothing left to give. I can’t say this means Phil Spencer is looking out for the everyday gamer or even that he is a good businessman, but he’s a better dairy farmer than his penpals. That’s for sure.

In this episode of The Stuff of Legends, Frost tells us about a Baldur’s Gate 3 serial killer that was more than what they seemed.

This week on Cold Take, Frost dives takes a look at Armored Core 6 while wading into the waters of the “git gud” mentality.

Check out more recent episodes of Cold Take, including The Problem of Voting With Your Wallets, Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Caused Quite a Hubbub, and 10 Years Later, Early Access Turned Out Okay.

How Gud Do You Have To Git? – Transcript

Those of you who do not wish to see me beat the final boss of Chapter One in Armored Core 6 while only using a default mech may leave now. Spoiler Warning: I’m about to beat ass.

There’s a sound I hear from time to time in the gamer jungler. “Git Gud.” What is that? “Git Gud.” It is the not-so-rare call of the skill-obsessed gamer, scientifically known as the FromSoftwareus Sapien. Used as a catch-all rebuttal when you critique their favorite game and trigger their defense mechanism, the FromSoftwareus Sapien signals to all within a 50-foot radius that any attempts at communication will be met with a personal attack aimed at your own mastery of the game. Any problems you have with the game are a reflection of your lack of skill and lack of understanding. “The game is never the problem. You are the problem.” I like a challenge and I’d say I’m quite good at video games– in spite of the dexterity impairing microchip that was installed in my brain when I became a games journo. So, I’ll bite, how gud must one git before criticism becomes valid? Are there diminishing returns and a point where one gits too gud, and their criticism is no longer applicable to the average player?

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In this episode of The Stuff of Legends, Frost tells us about a funeral held in World of Warcraft that went terribly wrong.

The World of Warcraft Funeral Crashers – Transcript

Hey, let’s not be hasty! Oh thank god, I thought it was loaded. Regardless, point that anywhere else, and I’ll give you a story that’ll put a little yee in your haw. 

Act 1

May 2006, three characters sat around camp, drinking to their heart’s content. Molasses Firewater, it’ll get ya to where you need, just don’t drink it near any open flames. These three gentledrunks were well acquainted with the effects of the sweet spicy brew and were no strangers to a little skewed vision, but maybe some gunpowder had gotten into this particular batch. It didn’t have them seeing double. They were seeing viguple. Twenty. Twenty strangers had snuck up and were now surrounding the three. Wasn’t the most impressive feat of conjoined stealthery, victims of firewater were about as hard to catch off guard as a chicken dinner. The leader of the three took another sip for social acuity.

“You’ere,shaeshothersh-hic?” Maybe a few words were missing from that question, but in his mind he was in a state of heightened eloquence.
One of the twenty stepped forward from the pack, firm eyes betraying nothing. “What?”

“I said, are you here the same as the others?” The head of the trio was starting to get used to the machinations of his own mouth again.
“Oh,” said the firm eyed leader of the twenty. “Yessir, same as the others. And might I say it is an honor.

“No, no, no. The pleasure is mine.” A smile crossed his face as he looked for a suitable surface to set his drink. “I was just saying to my cohorts here, what this lovely spring night is missing is a good unholy brawling.” He shook his head and chuckled to himself as he readied his favorite mace. “Heh, ain’t been nothing but funerals since that funeral”

Act 2

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This week on Cold Take, Frost dives into the idea of “voting with your wallet,” and how that ship might have already sailed.

Check out more recent episodes of Cold Take, including Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Caused Quite a Hubbub, 10 Years Later, Early Access Turned Out Okay, and The Indie Game Identity Is In Danger.

The Problem of Voting With Your Wallets – Transcript

The internet is a technological marvel. Just a few months ago my power went out during a storm and I looked up a youtube video that helped me open my electric garage door from the inside. I use it to look up recipes for my air fryer on the regular. And I can get a rough translation of a different language in almost an instant. But, with its aggressive curation, echo chambers disguised as communities, and engagement based algorithms, it can feel like the internet consists of only two people: people who think exactly the way I do and share my every opinion or people who are spawned simply to fight me on every opinion. I have to remind myself constantly that that is not the case. It’s an illusion, I am out of the common spheres. If you’re taking an interest in a hobby to the point where you’re looking for objective or opinion based content for it, you are no longer a part of the average body of hobbyists. That can create a bit of dissonance with your favorite hobby, because the target audience for many businesses is the average body. If you’re as knee deep as I am, it can feel as if everyone is in agreement that pre-orders, microtransaction, bad ports, and terrible first day releases are a problem, but corporations have somehow found a way to foist these on to the general public against their will. Or is it consensual? We constantly say voting with your wallet will make it so businesses will only create what you’re willing to buy. So then a scary assumption rises to the top: gaming is in the state it’s currently in because the vast majority of gamers are okay with it? Have the wallets already voted?

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In this episode of The Stuff of Legends, Frost tells us about Carmageddon and the absolutely cursed story behind its development.

The Cursed Development of Carmageddon – Transcript

You want that one? That story? It’s a little graphic. Well, I won’t tell if you won’t.

Carmageddon is credited by many as the game that pioneered 3D physics game engines and prototyped open world design, but it almost never was. There were problems with licenses, game-breaking bugs, cops, and the British government, but every misstep ended up being a blessing in disguise. Before Ubisoft, before Bethesda, before CD Projekt, there was a small development team on a quiet island, their math professor, and their professional nutjob friend Tony Taylor. 

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This week on Cold Take, Frost examines the ongoing discourse surrounding Baldur’s Gate 3. Check out the rest of the series here.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Caused Quite the Hubbub – Transcript

I’m starting to think we just like our fiery emotions. Redfall was terrible and everyone’s upset. Baldur’s Gate 3 is amazing and everyone’s upset.

There’s been a lot of spicy discourse over Baldur’s Gate 3, and at the behest of my chief I went digging to see if there was anything of substance for a Cold Take. I inspected the scene of the crime at the website formerly known as “Twitter.com.” I watched the IGN video to the point where I now see Destin Legarie in my dreams. I saw videos about that video and videos about those videos, and I’m here to end that cycle because, honestly, the only thing that kept popping up, as my IQ slowly depleted, is that Twitter is a horrible public platform for nuanced conversation and today’s gaming discourse is screaming over each other, loudly misinterpreting what the other person said instead of asking them directly what they meant. Who coulda known? The real takeaway is we’ve skipped over conversation and gone straight to grandstanding, so I thought I’d have a crack at it too–I do love me a good soapbox. Currently, the two camps are split. In one corner there’s people thinking BG3 is the current pinnacle of classic RPGs that no other game has a chance of a shot of a hope of touching for a while. The other corner takes offense to this statement and believes BG3 is where the standard should have been all along, anyone not trying to match Baldur’s Gate 3 is scared and lazy.

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