The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomshowed us new and exciting ways to solve puzzles.Baldur’s Gate 3created a narrative so deep that many of us are in awe of what we didn’t see, let alone what we did.Alan Wake 2evolved video game storytelling by creating a really weird world that also has a really weird late night talk show, which gets extra points from me no matter what. But if there’s one game that truly shows off the video game industry this year, the game that deserves to represent all of 2023 isLord Of the Rings: Gollum.
I’m not saying it’s a good game!It’s not! By all accounts, the team was pressured to release a game long before it was done. But hey, that’s the video game industry for you! Massive publishers and rights owners know they can milk an IP for everything it’s got. Sure, you could go theInsomniacroute and create games that celebrate the source material through careful gameplay mechanics. But that’s expensive and you need a very rich company giving you a lot of money, trust, and time to get it right as possible. And - let’s be honest - very few companies are afforded any of those three. That ain’t Insomniac’s fault, but it’s hard to giveSpider-Man 2Game of the Year when it seems like the game was developed by normal people.
Wait, I’ve got bad news. In between the last paragraph and this one, I did a bit of a search. Turns outInsomniac’s satellite studio may have laid offpeople. Okay, bad example. But it still doesn’t move Gollum out of truly representing 2023 in games because it sounds like itsdeveloper also had layoffs this year. It’s hard to say who let go more people, but considering that Gollum is the perfect encapsulation of the problem plaguing the video game industry, I’m going to say it’s still top of the list.
Gollum is a broken mess thatdidn’t even put in the effort to have interesting fonts. Fonts, folks! We’re talking typefaces here! The entire game reeks of ‘get it out the door’. Which makes sense considering the black hole companies connected to it are sliding into at the moment. The developer Daedelic does some good work, but it doesn’t seem to be eating well on indie darlings alone. Andthe owner of the video game rights for Lord of the Rings, Embracer Group,is now a firehose of blood because they tricked themselves into thinking they were going to score a big deal with Saudi Arabia, failed, and need to cut costs.They’ve laid off about 900 people so far. That’s going above and beyond your usually mismanaged video game company. That’s a sign you’re truly one of the greats.
To be fair, there is some hard competition for the biggest representation of video games in 2023.The new King Kong game is a mess, but it feels like it knew it was shovelware.Redfall was a dramatic miss, but it’s still less of a disaster than Gollum and at least it was made by a company that seemed interested in what it was doing. Time out. Did another Google search. Yeah,it sounds like the developer lost about 70 percent of one office’s staff during development. Although to be fair, it doesn’t sound like they were fired - it sounds like they quit out of frustration. Gollum still has the lead.
Lord of the Rings: Gollum wasn’t made by bad people. It was made by people who had to work so fast under such strict deadlines that making a good game would’ve been impossible, let alone what was ostensibly supposed to be a triple-A game for a triple-A franchise. Game executives expected a miracle and - barring that - a cheap trick that could get a few suckers to open their wallets based on name recognition alone. Gollum didn’t fail because the ideas didn’t coalesce. Gollum failed because it was clearly made by a handful of worried people doing their best to keep their jobs as long as they could.
Of course, people will say that it’s the economy that’s the problem. Those darn interest rates are too high! The cost of development is increasing! Stockholders deserve profit! Stop it. Stop talking like a Ferengi and think about this for a second. The economy isn’t a weather pattern. Executives aren’t newborn children who think someone’s face disappears if they put it behind their hands. The people making the decisions understand that interest rates and the economy fluctuate. They just don’t care because it rarely affects them. You think someone at the top of the ladder is losing their job when a game bombs? Hell no - they’ll be on stage at The Game Awards presenting their next delayed dumpster fire.
Lord of the Rings: Gollum should win Game of the Year, because it is one of the few games that openly and gleefully pulls back the mask of this industry. It’s the game that best embodies the avarice of game companies and the disregard for their employees. In a year thatseemingly has some of the best games of all time, we’re seeing some truly awful treatment of the people who make those games possible. And I didn’t even get to the part wherethey used AI to write an apology letter! Gollum takes it all!
