You’ve heard the hype, you’ve waited months for a games release, it finally comes out…! And its just not what it was all cracked up to be… Today we will be talking about the games that took a turn for the worst, in particular, online multiplayer game Anthem. Why did this game flop? What influenced it the audience’s reactions towards the game? For those of you who aren’t aware, its not as if this game was made by a small game development company, being ran out of someone’s home office, no, in fact, this game was developed by BioWare and Published by none other than Electronic Arts (EA), you know, that not so small video gaming company, that works their butts off to produce the Fifa EVERY year, working alongside the same guys and gals that bring us the Mass Effect trilogy. Considering this we are left to wonder where did it all go wrong for Anthem?
Is it possible that compared to games like Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, which also released in 2019, Anthem just couldn’t keep up with the hype Activision was producing? Especially considering Crash Racing would eventually even turned around to win The Game Award for Best Sports/Racing Game. Or maybe the game was purely overshadowed by the massive year that the gaming community was experiencing, with both Sony and Microsoft announcing the future release of their next-generation consoles taking place in 2020, along with the famously popular Nintendo revealing their Nintendo Switch Lite to the world.
Well time to answer the question of what went wrong for Anthem.. or more so what went right. The disappointment in the game goes ‘beyond’ fans, as game developers were left stunned and confused when the game released with a different name, only being decided in the weeks upcoming to the release. This left many people baffled as this game had been originally been concepted with the name ‘Beyond’, as the game had been produced with the intent of players venturing beyond the walls of their confines and exploring the harsh landscape which surrounded them, Anthem on the other hand, had no connection to this statement of adventure and exploration, ‘Anthem’ was simply ‘Anthem’, which initially had a dramatic impact on the initial release of the game itself. Following this unusual turn of events, the game went on to be produced and released, only to be majorly criticised by its audience and critics, even receiving BioWares lowest score to date from review site Metacritic, coming in at an astonishing 55, barely even scraping past halfway.
Sadly, much of this game’s scrutiny might’ve come from a pure lack of time management, with some of the games key features only being finalized in the last months leading up to the reveal of Anthem. Thus, resulting in players being dissatisfied with the clunky, hard to use menus and user interface of the game, along with the messy and perplexing combat play, finishing with the game loot being an almost useless component to the game, with a low chance of receiving a rare drop and often just receiving impractical items which contribute nothing to the game, Anthem was majorly criticised for its looting system.
Although Anthem was criticised highly for the actual production and development of the game itself and its mechanics, that wasn’t enough, the critique continued, faulting even the missions within the game. Some saying that the game missions and objectives lacked any form of excitement and user engagement. After much critique, it is undoubtedly expected that BioWares “10-year-plan” for Anthem had been diminished shortly after it had only begun. As to be expected, not long after negative comments and reviews seen light and spread, the game had met its foreseeable end resulting in Executive Producer, Christian Dailey releasing the difficult statement that the team had come to the decision to discontinue development work on Anthem, although acting as a silver lining, Dailey continued on to add that the game would however, continue to keep the game running as it stands to date.
Ultimately, as put elegantly here by Vikki Blake “Anthem‘s demise comes not from one fatal blow as much as it bled to death from a thousand small, inconsequential cuts. It failed because it took so much from its live-service peers that it neglected to craft an identity all of its own. In its desperation to be all things for all players its become nothing for no-one, failing to stand out in any meaningful way in an already grossly over-saturated market.”
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