This article discusses the Iraq War and the Second Battle of Fallujah and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
One of the bloodiest and most controversial battles of the Iraq War was the Second Battle of Fallujah, which took place in November 2004. The battle saw coalition forces – most of whom were American, but there were a number of Iraqi and British troops who took part as well – capture the city from al-Qaeda and other insurgent forces. The Iraq War is controversial and its history complicated, and I’m simplifying the events of the battle and the war to avoid making this article about a video game too long. Suffice to say that even now, eighteen years since the United States led a coalition to defeat Saddam Hussein, and more than sixteen years since the Battle of Fallujah, the events are controversial, disputed, and the consequences of military action are still being felt in Iraq, the wider Middle East, and indeed the whole world.
Six Days In Fallujah is a video game depicting the battle from the American side, and when it was initially in development in the late 2000s it became incredibly controversial in the United States, with politicians and Iraq War veterans’ groups expressing opposition and disgust. The idea of recreating for fun any aspect of one of the most divisive conflicts of the last few decades was considered obscene, and the idea of encouraging gamers to play through a battle that took place, at that time, a mere five years earlier was too much for many people to countenance.
After the controversy boiled over and saw media personalities and politicians get involved in 2009, Six Days In Fallujah disappeared, and by 2010 or 2011 the project was effectively shelved. The critics moved on, the developers moved on, and that appeared to be the end of the matter.
Last month, however, there came the announcement from a studio called Highwire Games – which is said to consist of developers who worked on games in the Halo and Destiny franchises at Bungie – that Six Days In Fallujah was back. The game is now scheduled for a late 2021 release date, and plans to retain the original focus that was the cause of such controversy a decade ago. Cue outrage from the expected sources.
What took me by surprise was not the strength of feeling expressed by some veterans of the battle, nor the criticism by largely self-serving politicians. That was to be expected, and the announcement of Six Days In Fallujah went out of its way to highlight how Highwire Games has worked with veterans in particular – clearly anticipating this kind of reaction and trying to pre-empt some of the criticism. Instead what genuinely surprised me was the reaction from some games industry insiders and commentators, who appear to be taking an equally aggressive stance in opposition to Six Days In Fallujah.
Politicians, particularly those to the right-of-centre, have long campaigned against video gaming as a hobby. Initially games were derided as being wastes of time or childish, but some time in the 1990s the tactic switched to accusing games of inspiring or encouraging violence; equating in-game actions with real-world events. Numerous studies have looked into this issue, by the way, and found it to be without merit. But we’re off-topic.
Advocates of video gaming as a hobby – in which category I must include myself, both as someone who used to work in the industry and as an independent media critic who frequently discusses gaming – have long tried to push back against this narrative and these attacks. “Video games can be art” is a frequently heard refrain from those of us who support the idea of interactive media having merit that extends beyond simple entertainment, and there are many games to which I would direct an opponent to see for themselves that games can be just as valid as works of cinema and literature.
To see folks I would consider allies in the fight for gaming in general to be taken more seriously calling out Six Days In Fallujah because of its controversial subject matter was disappointing. Art, particularly art that deals with controversial current and historical events, can be difficult and challenging for its audience – and it’s meant to be. A painting, photograph, novel, or film depicting something like war is sometimes going to challenge our preconceptions and ask us to consider different points of view. That’s what makes art of this kind worthwhile. It’s what makes everything from war photography to protest songs to the entire genre of war in cinema incredibly important.
Documentaries and news reports only cover events in one way. The way we as a society come to understand events is partly factual but also is, in part, informed by the art those events inspire. The First World War is covered very well in history textbooks and newsreels produced at the time, but another side of the conflict – a more intimate, personal side – is seen in the poetry of people like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The poems that they wrote about their wartime experiences were not pure depictions of fact, they were written to both inform and entertain – and perhaps to inform through entertainment.
If we relegate the Iraq War to contemporary news broadcasts and documentaries by the likes of Michael Moore we will miss something important, and so will future generations who want to look back and understand what happened. There are many works of fiction and non-fiction which attempt to show the big picture of what happened in Iraq, from the lies about “weapons of mass destruction” through to the use of banned weapons. Those works absolutely need to exist. But in a way, so does Six Days In Fallujah. It aims to depict, in as realistic a manner as game engines in 2021 will allow, one of America’s most controversial battles of recent decades – an event which will be seen in future, perhaps, as one of the American military’s darkest hours of the entire 21st Century due to their alleged use of illegal white phosphorus.
Getting as many perspectives as possible across as broad an array of media as possible about such an important event seems worthwhile, at least to me. Six Days In Fallujah may ultimately turn out to depict the event poorly, or be a game plagued by technical issues. It might be flat-out crap. But it really does surprise me to hear serious commentators and critics suggest that it shouldn’t be made at all, perhaps because of their own biases and preconceptions about the war and the game’s possible depiction of it.
There is value in art, and if video games are to ever be taken seriously as artistic expression, we need to make sure we allow difficult and challenging works of art to exist in the medium. That doesn’t mean we support them or the messages they want to convey, but rather that we should wait and judge them on merit when they’ve been made. As I said, Six Days In Fallujah may be a dud; an easily-forgotten piece of fluff not worth the energy of all this controversy. But maybe it will be a significant work that aids our understanding of the history of this battle, and the entire Iraq War.
It feels odd, as someone who lived through the Iraq War and all its controversy, to be considering it as an historical event, especially considering its continued relevance. I actually attended a huge anti-war march in London that took place a few weeks before British forces joined the US-led coalition and attacked Iraq. But the beginning of the Iraq War is now almost two decades in the past, and even as the world struggles with the aftermath of those events, we need to create works like Six Days In Fallujah if we’re ever to come to terms with what happened and begin to understand it. We also need to consider future generations – are we leaving them enough information and enough art to understand the mistakes our leaders made in 2003? If we don’t leave that legacy, we risk a future George W. Bush or Tony Blair making the same kind of mistake. I don’t know if Six Days In Fallujah will even be relevant to the conversation, but it’s incredibly important that we find out.
Six Days In Fallujah is the copyright of Highwire Games and Victura. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
February was a month where I was hoping to save some money, putting a little aside for some overdue computer upgrades. But I was pleasantly surprised to hear that pre-orders for Starlink – the satellite internet company owned by Tesla founder and Mars enthusiast Elon Musk – were available here in the UK. I promptly paid my deposit and have signed up for Starlink, which is scheduled to become available in “mid-to-late 2021.”
Usually I encourage people to avoid pre-orders, as they can lead to disappointment. But I’ve been in dire need of upgrading my internet connection for a long time, and with neither fibre broadband nor 5G seemingly on the cards any time soon, Starlink is the best option for me. I live in a rural part of the UK, and while some nearby settlements have been connected to fibre broadband and are enjoying download speeds around 50-60 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 10 Mbps, I’m stuck with copper telephone lines.
A SpaceX rocket launches, taking Starlink satellites into orbit. Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force/Airman 1st Class Zoe Thackervia WikiMedia Commons
It’s amazing to me in a way just how much data these old-fashioned copper telephone wires can actually transmit. Considering the technology is well over a century old, and that this village had its telephone lines installed sometime in the 1950s or 1960s (yes, rural England was late to the party!) it’s a shock that any internet connection is possible, quite frankly! I remember my father telling me about his childhood in London, when his family was the only one on their street to have a telephone. People would queue up at their front door sometimes to borrow their phone! How times change.
In 2021, the kind of speeds that copper phone lines can deliver are just not acceptable, even using broadband. On a good day I can expect around 7-8 Mbps down and barely 1 Mbps up, which means I can download almost one megabyte of data per second. That’s adequate for streaming, even in high definition, but it means downloading large files is interminably slow! When it comes to video games, which I predominantly buy digitally on platforms like Steam, this can mean waiting literally an entire day – or even longer – just to download the installation files for some of today’s modern titles.
My download speed could be worse… but it could be a heck of a lot better too!
That’s not to mention the unreliability of the service I get from BT – a.k.a. British Telecom. A few years ago, a fault of some kind at BT knocked me offline for over six weeks, and the “best case scenario” download and upload speeds I mentioned often fluctuate and dip below that; some days I can find I have barely 1 Mbps of download speed, meaning doing anything online besides reading text is impossibly slow. As a disabled person who spends a lot of time indoors, I find myself increasingly reliant on the internet for everything from communication to everyday necessities. I do my banking and sort out my bills online. In these pandemic times I use video chat to keep in touch with friends and family. I even order my groceries online! And of course, the online sphere is where I get much of my entertainment, whether that’s in the form of films, television, or video games.
As I said when I criticised the television license, I don’t watch broadcast TV any more, so the internet has become my primary way of accessing entertainment, news, and really everything else. It’s become a necessity in a way I would never have predicted in the 1990s or even the 2000s – and not just for me, but for almost everybody. So I’ve been in need of an upgrade for a while!
I’ve got a new toy to play with coming soon!
I looked into getting a 4G modem and router, but as it happens the 4G availability in my area wouldn’t improve the situation much. It was also much more expensive – almost double the price I currently pay. And as mentioned, neither fibre nor 5G seem to be coming here any time soon. I could move house of course, but I’m settled here and moving into a town simply for the sake of faster internet is not something I’d realistically want to do.
Then along came Starlink! I’d signed up to be notified about the service over a year ago, excited at the prospect of faster internet via satellite. And now I’ve officially pre-ordered it! Hopefully the company will stay on course for their mid-to-late 2021 launch, and all being well I’ll get connected in late summer or the autumn. Be sure to check back because I’ll let you know all about the experience when I finally get connected.
So that’s it. There isn’t much else to say at this stage, really. I’m very excited about this new, fancy-sounding piece of technology, and I don’t mind paying a little extra if my internet experience will be vastly improved. The pre-order process was simple, and I can’t fault it from that point of view. I’m looking forward to faster internet speeds some time soon!
Starlink is available to pre-order now in the United Kingdom and some other locations in Europe and North America. Availability varies by location but over time the company plans a worldwide rollout of the service. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
As we look forward to some of the entertainment highlights of 2021, I wanted to take a moment to look back and reflect on how the website did over the last year. 2020 was my first full year of running the website, and thanks to both my platform and Google analytics I have a lot of data about the site and how it’s been performing.
First, I thought it could be fun to run down my top five most-read articles of 2020. Obviously I’m excluding the home page and any other non-post pages. Let’s start the countdown!
Number 5: Cyberpunk 2077 and the dangers of hype
At time of publication this article did alright, but wasn’t exactly lighting up the board. As the release of Cyberpunk 2077 edged closer, however, I began to see an uptick in views. In the article I argued that, while Cyberpunk 2077 may ultimately be a good game, the ridiculously inflated hype bubble was likely to leave at least some players underwhelmed. Because this was published before the game’s release, the controversy the game ultimately generated was not yet known. Despite that, however, I’ve been around the games industry long enough to know an over-hyped title when I see one!
Standout line: “There will be things players can’t do, limits to customisation, and perhaps even the odd bug or glitch that snuck through testing or couldn’t be patched before launch.”
Number 4: In defence of Luke Skywalker
I was pleasantly surprised to see such a big response to my essay about Luke Skywalker. I didn’t expect to see it in the top five most-read posts considering it was only published at the beginning of December, but I guess that says a lot about how folks responded to it. When I first began working on the website, this was one of the pieces I had in mind. I made several attempts to begin writing it earlier in the year, but I couldn’t get the words out the way I wanted and it ended up being re-written several times before I was happy with it. I know that The Last Jedi remains controversial, but I hope this essay at the very least presents a different side of the argument.
Standout line: “I absolutely see Luke’s characterisation as a mental health story, and not only that, but one of the better cinematic attempts to depict mental health in recent years.”
Number 3: Could Voyager’s Doctor appear in Star Trek: Discovery?
You guys loved this idea, apparently! With one episode left (at time of publication) it’s still technically possible – and would be an interesting way for the season to end! I had speculated that the Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager – or rather, a backup copy of him from the fourth season episode Living Witness – could still be active in the 32nd Century. Bringing Robert Picardo back would have been fun, and would have tied Discovery to the 24th Century Star Trek shows. We did see some connections this season, but there aren’t many characters who could easily cross over. I didn’t necessarily expect this to happen, but there’s no denying it would’ve been cool!
Standout line: “If I were writing it, the way I’d see him involved would be working alongside Burnham, Saru, and the crew of Discovery to restore the Federation.”
Number 2: Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 theory – warp drive
This is the second of two of my standalone Discovery theories that apparently people responded to! The odd thing about this one, though, is how many folks were reading it weeks after the season premiered. We knew as early as the first episode that this theory – in which I postulated that warp drive may not work at all – was not true. Yet this piece continues to get clicks, perhaps from folks who haven’t begun watching the season.
Standout line: “In order to understand this theory, we need a basic refresher course in how warp drive works in Star Trek!”
Number 1: It’s time for Deep Space Nine and Voyager to get the HD treatment
Out of everything I wrote in 2020, this article was the runaway winner in terms of readership – more than three times as many people read this as read any other piece on the website. In this article, which was published back in March, I argued that Star Trek having a new home on CBS All Access (soon to be rebranded as Paramount Plus) should be the catalyst for Deep Space Nine and Voyager being remastered in HD. And the fact that so many of you have been reading and clicking on this post seems to validate that! I plan to follow this up and discuss options for upscaling or remastering older Star Trek episodes at some point this year, so stay tuned for that.
Standout line: “From a branding point of view, it isn’t a great look for CBS All Access to be offering some of its content for its flagship franchise in DVD quality. Netflix doesn’t do that, Amazon Prime Video doesn’t do that, and Disney+ certainly doesn’t do that.”
So those were the top five most-read articles and columns – out of a total of 226. When I started the website I had a few ideas for articles that I wanted to write – some of which have still not been published – but I had no idea I’d end up writing so many pieces on a range of subjects over the course of a year.
Not all of them performed as well as those above, though, so now let’s count down the five least-read posts!
Number 5: VE Day – marking the 75th anniversary with documentaries
I love a good documentary, and in this relatively short piece to mark the 75th anniversary of VE Day (the end of World War II in Europe) I highlighted a couple. On the day it was published it did okay, but only picked up a handful of views. Looking back, if I were writing it now I’d make sure to give it a better header image which might’ve inspired a few more clicks; as it is now it doesn’t look very professional! But even in May I was still getting to grips with the site and how images worked. I will continue to highlight documentaries that I like – and I note that my piece on the Netflix documentary series Pandemic: How To Prevent An Outbreak did much better.
Standout line: “I’m going to look at two documentaries in this article, one British and one American. They both look at the same conflict from the same side, but with very different perspectives.”
Number 4: An amazing tech demo
This piece looked at an Unreal Engine tech demo, one which I felt was as close to photorealism as I’d ever seen in a “game.” Even on my PC, which is several years old and is by no means a powerful gaming rig, Mýrdalssandur, Iceland looks outstanding, and it’s not always possible to tell you’re playing a game, such is the level of detail. I thought it was a great preview of how games could look in the years ahead. But I’m a geekdom and gaming writer, not a tech writer, and perhaps this piece just didn’t find favour with this website’s audience – even though I maintain its subject matter is interesting!
Standout line: “The imagery would fit right in with CGI created for the big screen – and looks a heck of a lot better than many of the CGI environments present in films from just a few years ago.”
Number 3: Children of Mars – a review
At the time I felt that my review of Children of Mars did okay, and it did – by the standards of how many hits the website was getting then. For a short while it was even the most-read piece on the whole site! But this was January 2020, and the number of hits I was getting at that time is much smaller than I’m lucky enough to see a year later. So it’s not a big surprise to see it as one of the least-read pieces. I didn’t like Children of Mars on the whole, its overly-artistic, music-heavy style just wasn’t my thing.
Standout line: “The sequence where Mars comes under attack is worth watching for anyone intent on tuning in for Star Trek: Picard, but as I said it’s barely a minute long, and the rest of the episode, while interesting in concept, ends up being little more than fluff.”
Number 2: Star Trek: Picard has red carpet premieres
As above, this was an article I wrote back in early January 2020 which likewise did okay by the standards of the website at the time, but has been eclipsed by other pieces written since. It’s also very topical, even more so than episode reviews, as it took a look at the premiere of Star Trek: Picard. This article was also a short one, which may be another reason why it was quickly forgotten.
Standout line: “When I’ve said in the past that it’s an absolutely amazing time to be a Star Trek fan, some people will have shrugged. But with such a huge amount of content coming, there really should be something for everyone…”
Number 1: How football is handling the pandemic
So we come to the least-read article of 2020. And it’s one in which I stepped away from the usual output of the website – entertainment and geekdom – and turned to the world of professional sport. It was also a piece that was topical, dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, and for both of those reasons perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that hardly anyone read it! Despite that, I don’t feel that the website needs to be confined to a single topic or series of topics. There’s room for me to talk about other things – and as I’ve said before, I don’t do this for clicks, I do it because I enjoy it. So while this piece about football was the worst-performing of the year, it may yet be a topic I revisit in future… if I have something to say!
Standout line: “But this situation is not only unprecedented, it’s one which the Premier League and the Football Association seem to have had no contingency plans for.”
So those were the top five least-read articles. Or the bottom five, if you prefer to think about it that way!
Let’s talk numbers. In 2020, over 14,000 of you visited the website. That’s an absolutely insane number of people! When I started writing I had no idea that my articles and columns would be read literally all over the world, but I’ve had readers from every continent except Antarctica! I’ve also seen the website’s readership grow month by month, such that December was the most successful month of the year in terms of hits.
In the first couple of hours on the 1st of January 2021, I’d surpassed the total number of clicks for all of January 2020, and by midday all the views for January and February. When I first started putting together the bare bones of this article I was planning to tell you that the best day for the website was back in October; I saw a big spike in views around the time Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 premiered, with folks checking in with a couple of my big pre-season theories. But to my surprise, December 31st blitzed right past that and became the site’s best day of the year – and best day ever. That was caused by a lot of people reading my article on what to watch at New Year, but that piece was a couple of weeks old so I was surprised to see it take off!
This piece about New Year did very well in the final hours of 2020.
Just going purely by categories, gaming is the most-discussed subject on the website. But adding up all of the various Star Trek categories, the Star Trek franchise beats gaming handily! I added eighteen posts to my “greatest hits” page in 2020 – a couple of which may not stay there forever! But those are the pieces I’m most proud of, and I’d encourage you to take a look at some of those articles and essays if you have time.
Across the 226 articles from 2020, I wrote a staggering 718,796 words.
To put that into context, I wrote more words on this website in 2020 than: Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Atlas Shrugged, Gone With The Wind, East of Eden, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit combined, or Moby-Dick.
Now I’m not saying that what I’ve written is objectively better than all of those famous works of literature. But… if someone wanted to read the most words possible, and didn’t care what those words were about, my website offers more to read than any of them. Just sayin’!
So that was a self-congratulatory look back at last year. I’m astonished at the positive response to my website and the pieces I’ve written here, and all I can really say is thank you. I’ll keep working on the site moving forward, discussing the topics I’m interested in, remaining positive wherever possible but also criticising where I feel it’s deserved, and hopefully continuing to have fun along the way!
Thank you for your support in 2020, and I hope you’ll check back regularly across 2021 and beyond.
– Dennis Thursday, 7th January 2021
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. Some stock images courtesy of Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Just a short one today. This year has been strange and disappointing for many of us, to put it mildly. When I began to create this website a little over a year ago, I had no idea that 2020 would have seen such misery on an unprecedented scale. It’s times like these where we need to close the door on the outside world and enjoy some wonderful escapism.
As someone with a varied (and growing) set of health problems, I do that a lot. Even pre-pandemic, disability greatly restricted what I was able to do and how far I was able to travel. My youngest sister is due to get married in the spring, and even travelling an hour to get to the wedding venue seems difficult – if not outright impossible. From a purely selfish point of view I haven’t lost as much of my freedom this year – because I’d already lost it gradually over the last decade.
You are not alone this Christmas.
I sympathise with everyone who’s not enjoying the holidays. As a kid I remember big Christmases with my parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. We could easily have twelve or more people together on Christmas Day. And later, when I lived in the United States for a year, I had fourteen people over for Christmas, fellow foreigners who likewise had nowhere to go for the holidays. Cooking Christmas dinner that year was exhausting! This year is, of course, very different. And like many of you, I don’t have anyone to share Christmas with in person; stricter lockdown rules are in place in the UK this year.
Though it’s become a cliché over the last year, none of us are really alone. We have the best communication tool humanity has ever devised literally at our fingertips or in our pockets, and even just by reading this you’re interacting with me. And I wish you a very Merry Christmas – or Happy Holidays if you prefer.
Merry Christmas!
I’m not a religious person, but Christmas has always felt like an enjoyable time of year. The bright lights, beautiful decorations, and sense of community that comes out has always been appealing. I decorate my home as best I can, and even managed to put up some outdoor lights this year. It meant so much to me when a neighbour of mine sent me a Christmas card and told me how she and her kids had been enjoying the lights on their way to and from school the last few weeks. Even when we don’t see one another, this time of year can bring us together – just not quite in the same way as usual.
Loneliness is something that takes some getting used to, and for people who are especially sociable, that’s going to be difficult. If you’re missing people you can’t be with this year, there is small comfort in knowing that the creation of vaccines should mean next Christmas – or even this coming Easter – has a high chance of seeing normal service resume.
Vaccines are coming!
Until then, let’s find a nice film series or television show to binge-watch as we count down the last days of 2020. Pick up a nostalgic favourite or something new you’ve been wanting to try, grab some nice snacks and a cold drink (or a mug of hot chocolate) and escape this world for a short while. Whether you’re visiting the distant future, a galaxy far, far away, or a fantastical realm, getting out of your own head and revelling in something different is no bad thing. It might just take the edge off.
Though there are many great festive classics to enjoy, if you want to skip this Christmas altogether I wouldn’t blame you. The Expanse is an underrated science fiction series that you can find on Amazon Prime Video, or perhaps something like last year’s The Witcher on Netflix if you’re in a fantasy mood. There’s always Star Trek – Star Trek: Picard Season 1 was great, and you can find that on Amazon Prime Video too if you missed it earlier in the year. The Mandalorian Season 2 has just wrapped up over on Disney+, and The Lord of the Rings film trilogy has just been re-released in 4K on Blu-ray.
Star Trek: Picard premiered in January.
If you’re looking for something different, perhaps something under-appreciated or off the beaten path, I could recommend a sci-fi show from the 1990s called Space Precinct, which is a fun mix of space adventure and police procedural. Then let’s see… Fortitude is an engaging thriller series set in the arctic – perfect for this time of year! The first season of horror-anthology series The Terror is similarly set in the icy north, and is a riveting watch with some absolutely outstanding performances.
On the film front, one of this year’s few big releases Tenet is already available to stream or get on Blu-ray. The Sonic the Hedgehog film from earlier in the year managed to be a surprisingly fun time as well. I’ll always heartily recommend Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Star Trek: Generations – the latter even features a Christmassy sequence. If you have access to the internet you aren’t short of options for things to watch!
Star Trek: The Motion Picture is fantastic.
You could try Fall Guys, the fun obstacle course video game that was released earlier in the year. It’s hard not to have a fun time with that cute indie game – even though it can be frustrating at times! Star Wars: Squadrons lets you pilot your own TIE Fighter or X-Wing, and if you want something gentle, Animal Crossing: New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch has weeks’ worth of fun.
Although it’s a crappy Christmas for a lot of us, there’s still plenty to watch and play to take our minds off it. And if you’re struggling, aside from telling you that you aren’t alone and you’ll get through it, all I can really do is recommend a few interesting options to watch or play. As somebody who lives alone with few friends or relatives nearby, I’m often in this position even in better years. For me, entertainment like television and film can take the edge off. We all need good distraction sometimes.
Wherever you are, however you’re celebrating, and whatever you wish you could’ve done instead, I truly hope you have a Merry Christmas.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, broadcaster, distributor, publisher, etc. Stock photos courtesy of Unsplash. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Update 2022: Unfortunately the video that I’m referring to has been set to “private” since I wrote this article.
I sporadically check in with fan project Star Trek Axanar. After Tim Russ’ and Walter Koenig’s Star Trek Renegades, Axanar was the fan film I was most interested in seeing when it was announced a few years ago. I was surprised to see Alec Peters – the creator and star of Axanar – had released a video titled In Defense of Alex Kurtzman – Why Star Trek is going to be OK on the fan film’s official YouTube channel a few days ago, and while I don’t normally do “responses,” I thought it was very interesting and worth drawing your attention to.
If you aren’t familiar with the development of Axanar, here’s a quick recap – and it should explain why the aforementioned video came as a bit of a surprise. In 2014, a fan film titled Prelude to Axanar was released. Produced by Alec Peters, the film served as a prologue to a longer crowd-funded fan film he and his team hoped to create. Star Trek Axanar would look at Garth of Izar, the famed Starfleet captain who was encountered by Kirk and co. in The Original Series’ third season episode Whom Gods Destroy. Fleet Captain Garth was the hero of an event known as the Battle of Axanar, and Peters intended to depict the events surrounding the battle in this fan film, which would feature a number of Star Trek actors.
However, CBS took exception to Axanar and ended up suing Peters and the team behind the fan film. The details of the lawsuit are complicated, but suffice to say CBS went after the production on copyright grounds, and the end result was a set of rules handed down that all fan films would be expected to follow. In addition, the Axanar team lost a lot of time and money that had been originally intended for the film.
Prelude to Axanar was released on YouTube in 2014.
All of this took place in the run-up to the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, and proved incredibly divisive for the fan community. Many folks backed Peters and Axanar, feeling that CBS was being unfair and attacking Star Trek’s most passionate fans. Others suggested that the motivation behind the lawsuit was that CBS was concerned that Axanar would be better than Discovery. Though it wasn’t the main reason why some Trekkies aren’t fans of Discovery and other modern Star Trek productions, the real-life battle over Axanar was certainly a factor.
CBS – now ViacomCBS – has certainly been tone-deaf when it comes to the fandom on occasion. I’ve talked at length about the decision to broadcast Lower Decks in North America only, and we can also point to things like the forced shutdown of fan project Stage 9 at a time when ViacomCBS doesn’t seem to be making any Star Trek games or comparable interactive experiences. So I can certainly understand the position of fans who took an anti-CBS position in the wake of the Axanar lawsuit.
I’ve written previously about divisions within the Star Trek fandom, and how people often present it as “old” Star Trek versus “new” Star Trek. Since 2017 Star Trek has been, in many respects, different from how it was in the 1960s or even the 1990s. And as I always say, individual tastes are subjective – we like different things, even within a single franchise. Some fans love The Wrath of Khan, others like The Motion Picture, just to give a single example. As the Star Trek franchise approaches its fifty-fifth anniversary and its 800th episode, it’s no wonder there are debates about which series or style of storytelling are the best!
ViacomCBS hasn’t always done right by Star Trek fans.
What I was so pleased to see from Alec Peters and Axanar in this video was a respect for what ViacomCBS and the Star Trek franchise are doing. Alex Kurtzman’s leadership has seen three new Star Trek shows premiere, with at least four others in the pipeline. It looks certain that the franchise will live to see its sixtieth anniversary in 2026 with new episodes still being broadcast, and as we enter the 2020s the franchise is, perhaps, on the cusp of a new era that could rival its 1990s heyday.
There is room within a fandom like Star Trek for Discovery and Axanar to coexist. We aren’t gatekeepers, telling other Trekkies that they aren’t “real fans” because the show or film they like best isn’t “real Star Trek.” That has never been what the franchise is all about, and anyone saying such nonsense has missed the point. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees; to get so bogged down in the minutia and detail that we miss the big picture.
The Star Trek fandom has always been a welcoming community. I remember my first visit to a Star Trek fan meetup in England in the mid-1990s, and as a younger guy I was welcomed by other fans to their event. This would have been sometime after Star Trek: Generations has been in cinemas, and while I was a huge fan of The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I wasn’t fully caught up on The Original Series outside of its films. Despite that, fans of The Original Series who I met didn’t tell me that I wasn’t a “real fan” or that I had never seen “real Star Trek.” They were incredibly welcoming, and most people seemed thrilled that the franchise was still alive and kicking.
The logo for Axanar.
The Next Generation was controversial when it premiered in 1987. People who entered the fandom in the 1990s or later – as I did – missed that controversy, but it happened. Deep Space Nine was controversial too, with its static setting and darker tone. I know some Trekkies who utterly hated the Dominion War arc, feeling it went counter to the franchise’s optimistic tone.
The point is that we all have things within the franchise that we like and things that we aren’t keen on. But we would never dream of telling someone who’s a fan of The Next Generation and Voyager but dislikes Deep Space Nine that they somehow aren’t a “real fan.” And the same is true of the Star Trek projects of today. Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks are “real” Star Trek, just as much as any other series or film. It’s okay to disagree about every aspect of those productions, and people will always do so. But they are part of the franchise, and just because they aren’t to some people’s taste doesn’t make them invalid.
Alec Peters and the team behind Axanar have largely avoided commenting on Discovery, Picard, and Lower Decks. I was pleasantly surprised to see them do so this time, and even more so to learn that Peters is a fan of Picard. There is a lot to like in modern Star Trek, and a lot to like in past Star Trek too. And Axanar still looks like an interesting proposition, one I will certainly tune in to see when the final version of the film (or episodes) are released.
Discovery is real Star Trek.
There are so many things in the modern world to divide us. But I would argue that, as Trekkies, we have much more in common with one another than we do with, for example, fans of celebrity reality television shows! There are, sadly, people who have begun to make money cashing in on this division, widening the gap between different groups of fans and trying to convince their audiences that only one kind of Star Trek fan is a “real fan.” I’m glad to see that Axanar isn’t on board with that, because there is room in the franchise for all of us. We can be passionate about what we like and dislike, and everyone is entitled to their own opinions about what makes for a good Star Trek story. But there’s no need to get nasty or aggressive toward someone who expresses a different opinion.
Watching the video I was struck by how mature Peters was in his tone. Axanar may have been controversial, but there’s no denying that he – and the team he built to bring the project to fruition – are deeply passionate Star Trek fans. What I took away from his video, though, was that he can appreciate that Alex Kurtzman is a fan too. Kurtzman and Peters may have very different attitudes to Star Trek and storytelling, but to express respect across that divide is something I believe many fans needed to see.
I liked what he had to say about giving Kurtzman time, too. Though I don’t necessarily agree that every Star Trek show’s first two seasons “suck,” as Peters put it, we certainly should give the new team at ViacomCBS time to tell more of the stories that they want to tell. For a lot of younger fans, Star Trek has always been a complete product. Every episode was available on DVD or streaming, and it’s easy for someone younger to look back at the franchise as a single entity, not appreciating the decades of work that went into it. Star Trek developed gradually, over a long period of time, in order to become the franchise it was in the 1990s. For fans who didn’t see any part of that process, for whom Star Trek has always existed in its current form, it’s perhaps easier to criticise modern productions as they find their feet and grow.
A screengrab from the video.
We are certainly in a new era of television storytelling, and this is another point Peters brought up. Star Trek – like any franchise – has to adapt to meet audience expectations in the 2020s; many episodes and stories that we look back on fondly would struggle if made today. As Trekkies, we’re a tiny portion of Star Trek’s audience. The franchise has to have broad appeal to a wider audience beyond this niche if it’s going to survive, and someone like Alex Kurtzman was brought on board because the people at ViacomCBS believe he has the creative vision to help the franchise grow. It’s never nice to be told “this wasn’t made for you,” but in a sense it’s true – and always has been. Even The Original Series was produced with a wider audience in mind, and we can trace the franchise’s move away from ethereal sci-fi toward more action-oriented stories to at least 1982’s The Wrath of Khan.
The point is, Star Trek has always been evolving. It’s a franchise that has tried many different things over the years, and the current era is no different. As Alec Peters pointed out, Kurtzman and his team are listening. That’s why we got Strange New Worlds, that’s why some of the storytelling decisions were made in Discovery, and even while Kurtzman and his team focus on bringing Star Trek to new fans and a wider audience, they are trying to balance that with feedback from fans.
It’s not up to Alec Peters or myself to defend Alex Kurtzman and his vision for the franchise, at the end of the day. It’s okay to dislike Discovery, Picard, or any other Star Trek project that you feel didn’t appeal to you or didn’t work very well. But I think we could all agree that the fandom would be a nicer place for everyone if we didn’t try to play gatekeeper and tell genuine Trekkies that they aren’t welcome because they like the “wrong” show or film. It’s a big galaxy, and there’s room for all of us.
You can find Alec Peters’ video embedded below.
The Star Trek franchise – including all properties mentioned above – is the copyright of ViacomCBS. Star Trek Axanar, Prelude to Axanar, and the Axanar logos were created by fans. The video above is hosted on YouTube, and merely embedded (linked) here on Trekking with Dennis. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, and other iterations of the Star Wars franchise.
This article deals with the sensitive topics of depression and mental health and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
The Last Jedi was an incredibly controversial film within the Star Wars fan community. Many people I’ve spoken with greatly disliked it, ranking the film as the worst in the franchise, with some even becoming “anti-Star Wars” as a result. Though recent projects like The Mandalorian have brought a lot of those folks back into the fold, there is still a significant contingent of ex-fans; people who have come to hate modern Star Wars.
There were many points of criticism from The Last Jedi’s detractors – the confrontation between Admiral Holdo and Poe, the hyperspace ramming manoeuvre, the death of Snoke, the Canto Bight storyline, and the character of Rose Tico being just a few off the top of my head. In this essay I’m not going to look at any of these in detail, though I would make the case that, by and large, while I understand the criticisms I don’t feel that any of them overwhelmed the film or made it unenjoyable. Instead I want to focus on what I feel is the most misunderstood point of criticism: the characterisation of Luke Skywalker.
We aren’t going to dive into every aspect of The Last Jedi on this occasion.
Of those fans who hated The Last Jedi most vehemently, many had been invested in the old “Expanded Universe” of novels, comic books, games, and the like. The Expanded Universe told a wholly different story to that of the sequel trilogy – a generally poor quality, incredibly convoluted and overcomplicated story, in my opinion – but one which put Luke Skywalker at the centre as an invincible hero, taking on all manner of enemies and challenges in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi. To fans who fell in love with that version of Luke – the all-conquering unstoppable hero of fan-fiction – the new version presented by Disney and Lucasfilm in the sequel trilogy is understandably jarring.
Even to fans who weren’t invested in the Expanded Universe, many had built up in their heads over more than thirty years a vision of where the Star Wars galaxy may have gone after Return of the Jedi. At the forefront was Luke and his plan to rebuild the Jedi Order – he was the embodiment, after all, of the “return of the Jedi.” There was an expectation, perhaps not unrealistically so, that Luke would succeed in this task, and that any sequel films which focused on him would depict that. He could be a wise old Master, having trained potentially hundreds of new Jedi in a rebuilt order that would, like the Jedi of the Old Republic, serve as peacekeepers and a check on the power of evil.
The Jedi Council in The Phantom Menace.
The Force Awakens set up a far bleaker view of both the galaxy as a whole and Luke himself in the years after Return of the Jedi. A new wannabe-Empire was on the rise, led by a dark side user named Snoke. And Luke’s attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order ended in failure when Ben Solo betrayed him, killing most of the students and swaying others to the dark side. Luke himself had vanished.
All of this was a “mystery box;” a style of storytelling common to many projects helmed by The Force Awakens’ director JJ Abrams. Initially contracted to tell the first part of a three-part story – a story that would, unfortunately, be split up and have practically no overarching direction – Abrams did what he does best and created a mystery. Where had Luke gone and why? Was he secretly training more Jedi? That’s what fans hoped, and as Luke stood in his Jedi robe in the final moments of The Force Awakens, that was at least a reasonable assumption.
JJ Abrams directed and co-wrote The Force Awakens, and was responsible for the “Luke is missing” storyline.
There was a two-year break in between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. For two years, fans speculated wildly about what the new film would bring, crafting intricate theories about all manner of things, including Luke. Many of these were appalling and would have made for awful stories, but fans latched on to some of the popular ones, convincing themselves that their pet theory was true and that The Last Jedi would surely prove it. When I write fan theories of my own – as I often do in the Star Trek franchise, for example – you’ll see me say that these are just theories, and that no fan theory is worth getting upset about. The reaction to The Last Jedi is a big part of why I feel the need to add in that little disclaimer.
Though it can be hard to look back even a few short years and remember the way people felt and the overall mood, especially in the aftermath of the film and its controversial reception, in 2017 the hype around The Last Jedi was growing, ultimately building to fever-pitch in the weeks before its release. This would be Luke Skywalker’s big return to Star Wars having been almost entirely absent in The Force Awakens. What happened after he met Rey on the clifftop on Ahch-To?
Fans speculated for two long years what would come next.
This moment had been built up for two years – and for more than thirty years since Luke’s appearance in Return of the Jedi. There were lofty expectations for what Luke would be and how he might act, informed in part by the Expanded Universe, fan theories, and the like. Those expectations were not met for many fans, because far from being the invincible hero they hoped to see, Luke was jaded, depressed, and uninterested in galactic affairs. When his attempt to rebuild the Jedi Order failed, he didn’t try again. He cut himself off from his friends and from the Force itself, and retreated to Ahch-To to die.
Luke Skywalker suffering from depression is not what fans wanted or hoped to see, but not only is it an incredibly powerful story, it’s one that many fans needed to see, whether they realised it at the time or not. There is an incredibly important message burning at the core of Luke’s story in The Last Jedi – and continued, to a degree, in The Rise of Skywalker. That message is simply this: anybody can fall victim to depression and mental health issues. I absolutely see Luke’s characterisation as a mental health story, and not only that, but one of the better cinematic attempts to depict mental health in recent years. It’s also a story which strongly resonated with me.
I found Luke Skywalker very relatable in The Last Jedi.
My health is complicated. In addition to physical health conditions which have resulted in disability, I also suffer from mental health issues, including depression. When I saw the way Luke Skywalker was presented: apathetic, lonely, withdrawn, and bitter, I saw myself reflected in Mark Hamill’s wonderful portrayal. Depression isn’t just “feeling sad,” as it’s often simplistically presented in fiction. Depression can be social withdrawal, apathy, a lack of sympathy, unintentional rudeness, and many other things. Luke doesn’t sit around on Ahch-To crying, he sits there overthinking, letting the intrusive thoughts dominate his life. He refuses to let anyone – even his sister or his closest friends – know where he is or help him, taking on the burden of his mental state alone. I’ve been there. I’ve been Luke.
One of the worst arguments put forward by The Last Jedi’s critics was some variant of this: “Luke Skywalker is a hero! He would never have run away. He would never act like this!” People making that argument are, in my opinion, incredibly lucky. It would seem from that ignorant statement that they’ve never had to deal with mental health or depression, either in their own life or with somebody they love and care about. If they ever had, they would recognise something in Luke that would elicit empathy, and a recognition that life isn’t as simple as it seems when you’re a child or teenager – which is when many critics first encountered Luke.
Luke’s story says that anyone can fall victim to depression.
I was born after Star Wars’ 1977 premiere. So anyone of my age or younger quite literally grew up considering Luke to be an epic hero, particularly if they encountered the original films in childhood. I first watched the original trilogy in the early 1990s, and I have to confess that much of the nuance was lost on me in my youth. It’s only going back, decades later, and re-watching the films with a more critical eye that I can spot elements within Luke’s character that clearly set up what The Last Jedi would do.
Luke made a mistake. He may have made a series of smaller ones leading up to it, but the big mistake we see on screen is his wordless confrontation with a sleeping Ben Solo. Luke, fearing the power of the dark side growing within his nephew, very briefly considers killing him. It was a flicker of a thought that lasted mere seconds, but when Ben noticed Luke’s presence and sensed what he was feeling, that was enough to tip him over the edge. What came next was Ben’s transformation into Kylo Ren and the destruction of Luke’s new Jedi Order.
Luke made a mistake – or a series of mistakes – and sunk deeply into regret and depression as a result.
Who among us hasn’t made a mistake? Who among us hasn’t considered or fantasised about – for the briefest of seconds – using violence in a certain situation? Who among us hasn’t had an intrusive thought that makes us feel uncomfortable or ashamed? If you can honestly raise your hand to all three of those points, then you’re very lucky indeed, and perhaps having never had such an experience, it’s easier to criticise others for it. The fans who attacked this characterisation of Luke are either conveniently forgetting their own mistakes, or they haven’t lived. Many are young, and perhaps that’s part of it too. As we get older we experience more, we grow, and we come to realise that no one is invincible, and no one is perfect. Luke Skywalker isn’t perfect, and he never was.
Upon seeing Ben Kenobi killed by Darth Vader, Luke’s reaction was to seek revenge, desperately firing his blaster in the vague direction of Vader. He then sat, depressed and dejected, aboard the Millennium Falcon. Princess Leia – who had very recently seen her family, friends, and practically everyone she knew murdered in the destruction of Alderaan – tried to comfort him, but did Luke ask if she was alright? No. He sat there sulking, selfishly absorbed in Ben’s death not thinking of others.
Luke sitting depressed and dejected aboard the Millennium Falcon following Ben Kenobi’s death.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke rashly cuts short his Jedi training, casting the Jedi Order aside to do what he believed was right. He ignored the advice of Yoda and Obi-Wan, believing he could take on Vader alone. That hubris ended up costing him his hand, and while he did return to his training afterwards, acting on a whim and doing things while unprepared are innate parts of Luke’s character.
And finally, Luke was tempted by the dark side of the Force in Return of the Jedi. In his final duel with Darth Vader he drew upon the dark side to give him the power to defeat his father, even considering killing the disarmed and defenceless Sith after beating him. That moment alone should be enough to prove to even the hardest of hardcore Luke Skywalker fans that there is, at the very least, a flicker of darkness within him. That he can suffer from those intrusive thoughts that we talked about. That he can act “out of character” when under pressure or in dire circumstances.
Luke was tempted by the dark side in Return of the Jedi.
So those points all show that Luke has at least a sliver of darkness, and that he’s capable of making mistakes. He was never the perfect, invincible hero of amateurish fan-fiction in the Expanded Universe. If he had been such a one-dimensional, boring character, the original trilogy would have been an exceptionally dull watch; what made it interesting was the nuance and conflict within Luke.
We also have to keep in mind that it’s been decades since we last met Luke, both within the story and outside it. The Expanded Universe was expunged, and though some fans may still cling to it, it has no bearing on The Last Jedi. Those events, canonically speaking, did not happen. The last meeting we had with Luke prior to The Last Jedi was 1983’s Return of the Jedi, and in the intervening decades he’s been through a lot. No one is exactly the same at age 60 as they were at 30; people change. Sometimes those changes can be positive, sometimes neutral, and sometimes they can be for the worse.
Luke’s new Jedi Order was destroyed by Kylo Ren.
Expecting Luke Skywalker to be the same man we left at the end of Return of the Jedi was naïve in the extreme, and fans should have known that. The experiences of half a lifetime have shaped his character, changing him in many respects into the man we meet at the beginning of The Last Jedi. Because some of those experiences have been incredibly powerful and transformative, there was no way to know how he’d be feeling, but one thing should have been clear: he was not going to be how we remembered him.
We can absolutely argue that seeing Luke’s transformation for ourselves would be a story worth showing within Star Wars, and indeed it could have been an entire trilogy of films all by itself. That’s a valid argument, and perhaps would have quelled some of the detractors’ criticisms had his descent into depression been allowed to unfold on screen. Of all the criticisms of The Last Jedi, this might be the one I consider to have the greatest merit, as it is an undeniable change in the way Luke’s character is outwardly presented, even if many of the elements and much of the groundwork already existed.
Perhaps seeing more of Luke between Return of the Jedi and The Last Jedi would have made his transformation easier to understand.
Regret can be a very powerful emotion. Anyone who’s actually lived a life will have regrets, some bigger than others. When the feeling of regret becomes overwhelming, depression may not be far behind. That’s what I see in Luke: regret, heartbreak, shame, and depression. His depression was caused by circumstances he believes himself responsible for, so he withdrew. Feeling himself a failure, considering himself incapable of guiding a new generation of Jedi, and ashamed of his actions, he became bitter and jaded, and travelled to Ahch-To to hide away and await the end of his life.
When you try your utmost at something and truly give it your all – as Luke did when training his young Jedi – failure can be devastating; even more so if that failure feels like it’s your own fault. Telling someone in such a situation to “just try again” is missing the point and demonstrates a clear lack of empathy. Luke wasn’t ready to train anyone else. He felt that the rise of Kylo Ren and the deaths of his students was his own fault; training anyone else could lead to a similar disaster, and he just can’t handle the thought of that. It takes time for someone feeling this way to even be willing to try, and it isn’t something that can be forced.
It took time – and the arrival of Rey – for Luke to confront and overcome his depression.
The lack of empathy for Luke shown by some critics of The Last Jedi was truly sad to see. Even with very limited knowledge of mental health, seeing someone suffering as Luke was should prompt a degree of empathy – at least, in anyone with a heart. When I saw the misunderstandings and the lack of empathy from people attacking the film, saying things like “Luke Skywalker is a hero, he would never be depressed!” I honestly felt upset. These kinds of statements, born of ignorance, not only went after what I saw as the film’s core emotional message, but they also showed that, on a fundamental level, as a society we have a long way to go when it comes to understanding mental health.
And this is why someone like Luke Skywalker becoming depressed is so important. It shows clearly that anyone, no matter how “strong and brave” they seem on the surface, can fall victim to this insidious illness. In Luke’s case we can find the cause – the loss of Kylo Ren to the dark side, and the deaths of his students, all of which he blames himself for. But in many cases, depression can hit someone from nowhere, coming out of the blue and bringing someone’s world crashing down. Seeing a character like Luke Skywalker go through this is incredibly powerful because it tells people suffering from depression that they aren’t some kind of freak; depression is normal and can happen to anyone.
The story of Luke becoming depressed is incredibly powerful and shows how anyone can suffer from mental health issues.
Young men in particular need to hear that message. The availability and quality of mental healthcare is improving compared to even a few years ago. But there is still a huge stigma around mental health, particularly for men. There’s a sense among men that in order to be “macho” or “masculine” you mustn’t show any weakness or vulnerability, and admitting to something like depression carries with it a stigma as a result. To take one of the most important characters in a massive entertainment franchise which probably still has a majority-male audience shows to young men that depression is real, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and maybe, just maybe, the way Luke was presented in The Last Jedi actually helped someone out here in the real world. I know that it helped me.
It’s okay to be disappointed in a work of fiction, especially if it’s something highly-anticipated. I don’t pretend to tell anyone how to feel about The Last Jedi or the way Luke is portrayed in it; works of fiction are, despite what some of the film’s detractors like to say, subjective. But where I absolutely feel that people need to be willing to consider things from “a certain point of view” (as Ben Kenobi said in Return of the Jedi) is the way the film deals with mental health. You can disagree with me about Luke till you’re blue in the face if you believe he acted “wrong” or you didn’t like the performance or the storyline or for any one of a number of reasons, but don’t make the ignorant, asinine argument that “Luke would never be depressed.” Depression does not work that way; you don’t get to choose if it afflicts you, and being a strong, heroic character is no guarantee of avoiding it.
We can disagree about Luke’s characterisation in The Last Jedi. But mental health is an important subject that shouldn’t be ignored in fiction.
I sat down to watch The Last Jedi several months after it premiered in cinemas. My health precludes me from going in person these days, so I’d heard much of the criticism already. I had relatively low expectations for the film as a result, but I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did it tell a different story within the Star Wars universe, one which didn’t attempt to be a beat-for-beat retelling of a previous title, but specifically because of how Luke was presented. Here was the hero of Star Wars shown to be human. Vulnerable. Relatable. And as much as I disliked The Rise of Skywalker when I saw it earlier this year, it continued a theme we saw in the final act of The Last Jedi: hope.
Yes there was hope for the resistance, for Rey, and for ultimate victory in the galactic war. But that wasn’t all. Luke himself had found hope; he found a reason to believe in something again. Depression isn’t usually something one can just “snap out” of, and in that sense perhaps it’s the least-realistic part of the narrative. But it’s hard to tell a story about depression in two hours that doesn’t have at least an element of that if a character is to find a way out of depression by the end, so I give it a pass on that front.
Luke eventually found something to believe in again.
Not only did Luke himself find hope, but The Last Jedi conveys to sufferers of depression a sense of hope. After everything Luke experienced, he was able to move on. He found inspiration and was able to begin the process of getting back to his old self, a process we see continued in his ghostly appearances in The Rise of Skywalker. The way Luke came across in The Rise of Skywalker can feel like fan-service and certainly was a conscious effort to overwrite his portrayal in The Last Jedi, but if you remember that they’re two parts of one story, it’s possible to see the way Luke behaves as indicative of his overcoming depression.
I find that to be a powerful message to end a powerful storyline. Luke became depressed, just like anyone can. But he found a way out. For my two cents, different groups of fans needed to hear those messages, but in different ways. Folks going through their own difficulties needed to see someone like Luke falling victim to this condition to normalise it, to make them consider the way they feel, and perhaps even as a prompt to seek help. They could also see that, despite the way Luke was feeling at the beginning of The Last Jedi, by the end he found a way out; there is light at the end of the tunnel. And fans who have been lucky enough never to have to deal with mental health either in their own lives or with someone they care about needed to see that it’s real. That it can happen to anyone.
The Rise of Skywalker tried to overwrite large parts of Luke’s characterisation. But taken as two parts of a larger story they show his recovery from depression.
The way Luke was presented in The Last Jedi may not have been what fans expected or hoped to see. But it was a powerful story, one which resonated with me and, I have no doubt, with a lot of other people too. It built on what we already knew about Luke from the original trilogy in different, unexpected ways, but ways which were true to his character. His flicker of darkness, his occasional rashness, and his struggles were all present in those films and made Luke the kind of flawed protagonist worth supporting. Those elements remained in his characterisation in The Last Jedi, but so did his innate decency and ability to reach for the best in others and in himself. It just took him some time to rediscover that about himself; a journey that will be familiar to anyone who’s been in that position.
I don’t want to tell anyone disappointed by The Last Jedi that they have to like it. Nor do I want to say that the way Luke was portrayed is something they have to like either. Instead I wanted to present the other side of the argument, to defend Luke’s characterisation, and to explain why it resonated with me. We can disagree vehemently on this topic – and myriad others across fiction – and remain civil.
I’d like to close by saying that, however we may feel about Luke in The Last Jedi, in my mind there’s no way he wasn’t Luke. Some fans latched onto a comment by Mark Hamill saying the character felt like “Jake Skywalker” and not Luke, but I have to disagree. He was always Luke.
The Star Wars franchise – including The Last Jedi and all other titles listed above – is the copyright of Disney and Lucasfilm. This can be a controversial topic, so please keep in mind that this is all subjective. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
I know what you’re thinking – it’s way too early to look back on 2020 as there’s still more than a month left. Believe me, that kind of thing irritates me too – but that’s not what this article is. It was one year ago today that I started the website, and I wanted to commemorate the occasion by looking back at some of the highlights, as well as give my own thoughts on a year spent writing about the things I like.
My first article was published on the 30th of November 2019, and it was just a very brief introduction to the kind of website I intended to create. I would go on to incorporate some elements of that into my “about me” page as I built up the site.
As the 2010s drew to a close, I was hit with a strong feeling of time slipping away. I was reminded of a line spoken by Dr Tolian Soran in Star Trek: Generations: “Time is the fire in which we burn.” Picard, of course, would rebuff that in the film’s closing act, but the line – and the concept it represents – always stuck with me, and although decades are merely arbitrary representations of the passage of time, the impending end of the 2010s led me down an introspective path.
“Time is the fire in which we burn.”
Though I’ve had health problems going back decades, the 2010s saw my health take a sharper decline, one which culminated in disability and a restriction on what I’m able to do, both physically and psychologically. It also saw a divorce, bereavement, financial troubles, and other problems which had me at a very low ebb at points. I don’t say this to seek attention or sympathy though, because by 2019, despite my health issues I was relatively settled in a home I can manage despite my limitations, with my cats for companionship, and feeling generally secure. The ending of the decade, had you asked me in early 2019, seemed no more significant than any other New Year.
By the summer of last year, though, I had begun to think differently. Though it was still an arbitrary date, there’s significance in a new decade. This would be the fifth turning of a decade in my lifetime; an event that comes rarely and often marks change. When looking backwards we talk about “the seventies,” “the eighties,” “the nineties” and so on as blocs of time. Whatever the 2020s was going to bring – and whether I’d still be alive by the end of it – it was going to be a change. A new bloc.
The impending beginning of a new decade pushed me to take the plunge and start a website.
That was the mindset I was in when I decided I wanted to make a website. For several years I’d been commenting on videos on YouTube and on social media posts, but I wanted a space of my own where I could discuss what I wanted to at my own pace. I began looking at website-building options, and after considering a few possibilities I settled on WordPress. The website was born.
The site has evolved massively since I made that first post. Firstly, I stated back then that reviews “are not really my main purpose,” yet I’ve since reviewed 25+ individual Star Trek episodes and several films! I’ve also gotten better with the way I use images, as well as selecting a better overall layout for the site – at least, I think those are improvements! Unfortunately I don’t have any screenshots of the site as it looked back in November, but here’s one of the old headers (complete with the website’s old, defunct name!)
The old website header.
As someone who enjoys writing, having somewhere to publish my musings and thoughts on some of these topics has been incredibly helpful. When I first imagined creating a website, this is what I hoped I’d be able to achieve: posting a selection of articles on the topics I find interesting within the entertainment realm. And when I look back on the past year’s pieces, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Occasionally the site can feel like a burden, but those deadlines are self-imposed. There are no real consequences for me if I don’t publish a review of a Star Trek episode within a couple of days of its broadcast! But in a way, that self-imposed pressure to write to an imaginary deadline spurs me on, and at no point have I felt like I’m writing out of obligation rather than enjoyment. If I had felt that way, I probably would have taken a break.
It isn’t my intention for this website to grow into something large and unwieldy, with a huge social media following. That might seem odd, but I measure success less by the number of people clicking on a page and more by what I got out of writing a post. That’s something I learned over the summer when I challenged myself to try to write every day – something I can keep up for a while, but not indefinitely. As I’ve said before, I don’t have a Twitter account, Facebook page, or any other social media attached to this website. The posts here speak for themselves, and while some have been shared on social media, they weren’t shared by me. That’s not because I don’t want criticism or want to fly under the radar because I write controversial things, but I feel that if what I’m doing here were ever spun out into a “brand” with a huge following, the pressure to write to deadlines and to push out content would grow. I don’t enjoy writing under those circumstances, as I found out when I took on that daily posting challenge.
There aren’t many things from this past year that I’m disappointed with or that I would want to cover up. Perhaps I could’ve been less critical of The Mandalorian in my first post discussing the show; I stand by most of the points but perhaps I’d reword some of them to be less confrontational. When it comes to the new generation of games consoles, Xbox in particular, I’ve blown hot and cold on them and as a result, my output on next-gen gaming in general might look a bit confused if you tried to read all of it. In general I feel that both companies made mistakes in the run-up to launch, such as concealing their prices until the last minute. However, I didn’t mean for that to detract from anyone’s enjoyment or excitement for new consoles, and despite the problems with pre-orders and stock availability, I hope both machines are a success. Otherwise I don’t think I’ve published any “hot takes” that I’d like to retract… famous last words!
Hopefully no angry mob is coming for me… yet.
Occasionally, after having published a review or other article, I’ll stumble upon someone else’s take on the same episode, film, or subject, and they’ll make a very good point that I wish I’d thought of! I want my reviews and writings to be my own thoughts first and foremost, so I’ll never read reviews or critics’ opinions before I sit down to write my own review – something I make very clear in my methodology page. Within the Star Trek fan community there are a few reviewers and critics whose articles or videos I regularly check out, but only after writing my own reviews.
So having looked back, it’s time to look forward. What will 2021 bring?
The short answer is probably more of the same. I have no immediate plans to make major changes to the website or the kind of things I do here, so as we move through this holiday season and into the new year I expect to keep up with posting several new pieces each week on topics relating to – as I say at the top – “Star Trek, gaming, and the wide world of geekdom.” I have a few articles in the pipeline that are in various stages of being worked on, and of course I’ll continue to cover major developments as I see fit.
For those of you who have become regular readers over this past year, thank you for your support. If you’re new here, welcome. I hope you find something interesting to read.
See you out there!
– Dennis Monday, 30th November 2020
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, distributor, company, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis is based in Great Britain and does not endorse any American political party or candidate.
Ever since I was first able to vote when I turned 18, I’ve found election night coverage fascinating. Though the manner in which elections are conducted is very different in the United Kingdom and the United States, election night programming is remarkably similar on both sides of the Atlantic, with panels of self-proclaimed “experts” lining up to break down the incoming results, and politicians on hand to chart increasingly unlikely paths to victory for their party or preferred candidate. I still find election night programming absolutely fascinating, and stay up for hours and hours to watch it.
We’ve seen several recent elections go against expectations – here in the UK, the 2015 and 2017 election results were unexpected, as was the 2016 referendum result. And of course, in the United States the result of the 2016 presidential election came as a tremendous shock to all but a few pollsters and pundits. It’s difficult to get into the ins and outs of election night coverage without discussing the actual political implications, but what I’d like to try to do is examine election night programming itself rather than comment on either of America’s two presidential candidates.
The exit poll in the 2017 British general election came as a surprise to many – and was very accurate.
One of the things you hear on every one of these broadcasts – and often for weeks or months beforehand – is some variant of this expression: “this is the most important election in our lifetimes!” Gosh, that phrase irks me. I’ve lived long enough to have seen enough elections come and go – and enough politicians of all stripes voted in and voted out – to know that no one single election is that important. For Americans in particular, if you don’t like who you voted for you only have to wait a scant four years before you have the chance to unseat them. Even less than that when you consider the presidential primary season begins more than a year before election day.
Hyperbole aside, what really interests me are the statistics. The vote tallies are, of course, the main event, but seeing different areas broken down expertly into different voting blocs or constituencies is fascinating stuff. The sheer volume of data coming in can be overwhelming, which is where having the right presenter who’s able to explain what’s going on in a calm and easily-understood manner can make all the difference.
Though pre-election polling has been sketchy at best in recent years, exit polls have proven far more useful. The amount of time and attention required to properly craft an exit poll on such a large scale is almost unimaginable, yet they routinely prove to be accurate on election night. Here in the UK, exit polls are kept sealed until the moment election day is over – 10pm sharp. That’s when the broadcasters make their big reveal and their predictions, and even if the result seems a given, the moments leading up to it are tense!
Pre-election opinion polling for this year’s American presidential election.
Nowadays the visuals and graphics used by news organisations are great, too. Gone are the days of the “swing-o-meter,” a crude cardboard arrow attached to a board! Instead we’re greeted by green-screen projections and fancy computer graphics, with presenters making use of huge touch screens to look at incoming results or polls in specific constituencies or districts.
Election night programming is, most of all, designed to be informative. Most people are tuning in having cast their ballot and in nervous anticipation, waiting to see if their favoured (or least-hated) candidate or party will score a big win. And the programmes have to cater to this audience, providing as much information in as nonpartisan a manner as possible. But that doesn’t mean that election night can’t be entertaining too, and if you’re a statistics nerd like I am, the way the results are discussed and debated – and the fancy graphics and technology the major broadcasters have for this purpose – is all part of the fun.
In a kind of bloody-minded way that I think a lot of Brits have, there’s fun to be had when things don’t go to plan. Watching politicians squirm as they see their party sinking ever-closer to defeat can be heart-wrenching… or pretty funny, depending on how you look at it (and how apathetic you’ve become to the actual outcome!) Politics is something that affects all of us, of course, but at the same time, I find the passion behind it to be a younger person’s game. I certainly don’t subscribe to the argument that says this election – or any election at all, for that matter – is “the most important in history,” as I’ve seen enough politicians come and go to know that no matter who wins, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll be out of office too. Though I have my political preferences (as indeed we all do) I’m no longer as passionate about seeing any of them win or lose as I was when I first sat down to watch an election night programme after casting my first ballot.
Donald Trump was not expected to win in 2016 – yet he surprised the pundits and polling organisations and defeated Hilary Clinton.
The other fascinating thing about election night programming is how long it goes on. It can take many hours for the results to trickle in (or longer, in some cases) meaning that the programme’s presenters have to find things to talk about and keep the show going for all of that time. After the excitement of any exit poll news, there’s often a lull while the votes are counted, and it can take time before the first official results are announced. There’s a skill to keeping viewers interested during those moments, and as well as being informative, presenters have to be at least somewhat entertaining.
I know it’s an unusual kind of programme to get excited about, and I also realise that for most viewers election night is less about the broadcast itself and more about the information presented about the politicians and political parties. But I think it’s possible to view election night broadcasts the way one might watch a major sporting event – it can be tense and exciting, with moments of high drama.
I’ll be tuning intonight to see how Trump and Biden get on. And it’s quite likely that, whatever the outcome, it’ll be a fascinating broadcast.
The United States presidential election takes place on the 3rd of November 2020. Election night programmes will be broadcast on many channels and networks both in the United States and around the world. Trekking with Dennis is based in Great Britain and does not endorse any American politician or political party. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
To perhaps nobody’s real surprise, three big films have recently announced delays: No Time to Die, Dune, and The Batman. With the coronavirus pandemic clearly not dying down any time soon – at least in the west – studios quite rightly feel that releasing their titles this year or even early next year won’t bring in audiences and won’t make enough money. They’re not wrong in that assessment; many people I know here in the UK would be uncomfortable visiting a cinema in person, even if the law or guidelines say that doing so is allowed. It’s going to take time – and, perhaps, a widely-available vaccine – for that mindset to change.
Over the summer, the UK government ran a scheme called “eat out to help out.” If you’re unfamiliar with it, the programme offered diners a 50% discount (up to a maximum of £10 per head) at participating restaurants. The goal was to encourage people anxious about the ongoing pandemic to get back into restaurants and, frankly, save the industry from collapse. It was successful, at least partially, with participating restaurants reporting increased takeup. However, such schemes are temporary, and there’s no way the government could run something like that for every impacted industry.
Cinema bosses have denounced decisions to delay releases – or, in the case of titles like Mulan – send titles directly to streaming platforms. Without big blockbuster releases, there’s no way to entice cinema-goers back, and the entire industry is on the brink. Cineworld, one of the world’s largest cinema chains, has announced it will close all of its US and UK sites until further notice – putting 45,000 people out of work. This is the real impact of the pandemic, and the longer it goes on, the worse it’s going to get.
Dune (2020) has been delayed.
There’s no “eat out to help out” equivalent coming to cinemas. The industry is on its own to handle the fallout from the pandemic – as are so many others – and there’s no easy fix. Until the public at large have confidence that it’s safe to go out, that it’s safe to sit in a big room with a couple of hundred strangers, there’s nothing that can be done. Even the release of Tenet in August failed to bring in sufficient numbers of viewers to make running a cinema financially viable. At this rate, the highest-grossing film of 2020 will remain Bad Boys for Life. Nobody would have predicted that in January!
I can understand from the cinemas’ perspective that film studios aren’t behaving appropriately. Cinemas and film studios are two parts of a greater whole, yet the studios have unilaterally acted to pull their films, either delaying them or sending them directly to streaming. And I can understand why that’s going to sting. Where there could have been a coming together, it feels like the bigger companies are acting selfishly; it’s everyone for themselves instead of a sense of community and togetherness.
And ultimately that’s going to make things more difficult. We’ve already seen Odeon, another large cinema chain, pledge to stop showing films from Universal Pictures in retaliation for Universal making Trolls World Tour a streaming-only title. As I wrote when looking at Mulan’s release on Disney+, if every cinema chain were to come together and announce a boycott of companies that acted this way, they could effectively prevent the release of any film they chose. There’s power in working together, but ultimately the question will be: who has that power?
Mulan (2020) went straight to Disney+, upsetting cinema chains worldwide.
Film studios clearly see streaming as a viable option. As television screen technology continues to improve – and as screens get larger – the adage that a particular film was “better in the cinema” doesn’t ring true for a lot of people any more. In some ways, the move towards streaming is something we can absolutely argue was coming anyway; like with many things, the pandemic may have accelerated the move, but it didn’t fundamentally cause it. Titles like Annihilation and the critically-acclaimed The Irishman began production with the intention of a theatrical release, but circumstances changed and they ended up going to Netflix instead.
Streaming titles have also been nominated for top awards, and when a film is released digitally nowadays, it’s become so commonplace that it scarcely gets a mention in reviews. When people of my parents’ generation were young, going to the cinema was at least a weekly outing, and not only was there an A- and B-movie but you’d probably also get a newsreel too. Those days have gone, and for increasing numbers of people pre-pandemic, the cinema was an occasional treat rather than a regular one. Attendance has been steady, but the likes of Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, and big-budget television series like Game of Thrones have slowly been eroding the need for cinemas. In short, if cinemas try to pick a fight with film studios over digital releases, I think they’ll likely lose.
But for film studios it’s not as clear-cut. Selling an already-made film to the likes of Netflix is a complicated undertaking. Netflix wants to make sure any purchase is going to be worth its while, and the gold standard is whether a title will bring in new subscribers. As a result, I think it’s not unfair to say that a lot of films would likely make more money at the box office than on a streaming platform. That’s why Mulan costs $30 instead of being available to anyone with a Disney+ account; Disney wants to make as much of the film’s budget back as possible.
Bringing a film to Netflix – or any streaming platform – is not straightforward and will not make as much money, in most cases, as a theatrical release.
Making a film is an expensive project, and the vast majority of any title’s money is made at the box office, not through streaming or sales. If film studios were to move to streaming-only releases, a lot of things would have to change. Budgets may have to fall in some cases, which would not only be to the detriment of the quality of films, but would also put more people in the industry out of work.
As I said at the beginning, there is no easy answer. Streaming is a short-term solution that may be viable for some projects, but certainly can’t replace the revenue of a full theatrical release for most titles. Mulan was a test case, but as a film that has received mixed reviews at best, it perhaps isn’t the best example for studios to look to. And besides, most film studios don’t have their own streaming platforms, meaning they have to negotiate with the likes of Amazon or Netflix to put their titles out.
One thing that history teaches us about the longer-term effects of a disaster on any industry is that things do eventually get back to normal. If one big cinema chain were to go out of business this year, within five years or so most of its empty cinemas will have been bought up and reopened by some other company. The desire for going to the cinema may not be present right now, but it will largely return when the pandemic is brought under control. At least, that’s the way I see it. Streaming has already been disruptive, but there’s still a sense of enjoyment in going to the cinema, and from the point of view of studios, streaming is far less profitable. That means that as soon as they can, film studios will want to encourage people to get back to the cinema.
How long the pandemic will continue to drag on, and how long studios and cinema owners can hang in there are the big questions right now. And unfortunately those are the same questions people are asking across many different sectors of the economy. When the pandemic is brought under control – and it will be, sooner or later – how many businesses will have survived? And how long will it take to rebuild? From the point of view of films, are we about to enter a “dark age” where budgets and quality drop? I don’t have a good answer to any of these questions. Only time will tell.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio and/or distributor. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Steam is the biggest digital shop in the PC gaming world. Many PC players – myself included – have built up Steam libraries over a number of years that are irreplaceable. But Steam is not the invincible juggernaut it once was. Not only is the growth of Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service something that has the potential to be a major disruption, the Epic Games Store has been aggressively elbowing its way onto Steam’s turf.
I had an Epic Games account until recently. However, when their crappy customer support caused me a problem that should have been easily resolved and cost me money, I vowed not to shop with them again. But that’s not always easy, because the way Epic has been competing with Steam has been to buy up the rights to as many games as it can, making them exclusives or timed exclusives to the Epic Games Store. Players like myself who only use Steam thus can’t access the titles – and Epic hopes that will bring more players into its marketplace.
The Epic Games Store is proving to be a major competitor to Steam.
To be fair to Epic, despite this policy being anti-consumer it has worked. And again, to be fair to Epic, asking PC players to install a second launcher for games isn’t a huge request. The Epic Games Launcher isn’t particularly cumbersome and works as intended. It’s a minor annoyance, but one players are willing to put up with to play the games that they want to. I may have my own reasons for disliking Epic Games considering they cost me money, but most players – even those who were initially opposed to Epic’s policy of buying up exclusive rights – have softened their tone and signed up. After all, for those titles it’s the only way to play if you’re a PC gamer.
Watch Dogs Legion and the remaster of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 are two of the latest titles to be snapped up by Epic, and at this point the exclusivity problem is beginning to bite. Watch Dogs Legion looks moderately interesting, but I was definitely excited to play the remaster of a skating game I remember with fondness from the Dreamcast era. Alas, the only way to do so is to subscribe to Epic.
The upcoming game Watch Dogs Legion isn’t coming to Steam.
For Steam, this is a growing problem. One or two titles here and there can be written off. Shenmue III may have generated a lot of controversy amongst its Kickstarter backers, but since hardly anyone bought the title the actual loss to Steam is negligible. Watch Dogs Legion, however, is a pretty big release – the kind the games industry refers to as “AAA” or “triple-A.” Its loss to Steam is going to be significant, with revenue easily into the hundreds of thousands of dollars simply disappearing.
One way or another, Steam is going to have to get a handle on this. Their recent partnership with Electronic Arts has brought some popular titles – like the FIFA series – to Steam, but that’s a distraction rather than addressing the problem. Steam has never faced such stiff competition; the platform had the PC gaming realm almost all to itself for a long time. I’m not sure that, at a basic level, they even know how to deal with a problem like competition from Epic Games.
Steam will need to tackle Epic Games somehow.
Epic Games has been throwing its wallet around to nab as many exclusives as possible. Not only has it worked for them, but that practice shows no signs of slowing down. If anything, we’re likely to see more games go Epic-exclusive, not fewer. In addition, the backlash games could expect to receive online for announcing a deal with Epic gets smaller and smaller every time. In the cases of Watch Dogs Legion and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2, I don’t recall seeing any criticism at all – no one even mentioned it. It wasn’t until I looked up the titles for myself that I learned they’re Epic exclusives, so from a developer or publisher’s perspective, there’s a lot to be gained and almost nothing to lose by signing on with Epic Games. Why wouldn’t they do it?
Competition in a marketplace is usually a positive thing. It forces all participants to be better in order to remain competitive – at least, that’s the theory. It doesn’t always work, and there are times where competing companies have done some pretty crappy and shady things in order to get a leg-up on their adversaries. But broadly speaking, competition can force companies to do better and to ditch bad practices. Epic Games should be a wake-up call for Steam. After years where they’ve had an effective monopoly, there’s finally some real competition. They need to step up, because Epic won’t give up and go away. Not when they’ve found a model that works, and one that’s becoming more palatable to players by the day.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 (the 2020 remastered version) is another Epic exclusive.
Even though I’m still stinging from Epic’s refusal to help me a few weeks ago, I have to admit it’s probably only a matter of time before I give in and sign up for an account again. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 almost pushed me into doing so; it’s only anger at this point that’s keeping me from jumping back in. As a single person, it’s easy to feel like any such protest against a large company is meaningless. Epic doesn’t care in the slightest that I don’t have an account. They already have the money I spent on the few titles I owned, and any lost revenue from me – especially given that I’m not someone who buys games every day of the week – is negligible to a huge company like that. Regardless, I continue my one-person protest simply out of spite!
Steam has a real problem on its hands. And they need to start looking for creative solutions. The more Epic Games’ presence in the PC gaming realm grows, the harder they will be to dislodge. Steam can no longer afford to wait it out – Epic is clearly not going away. Fighting fire with fire is one option; Steam could use its considerable resources to buy up exclusive rights for a lot of upcoming titles, beating Epic at their own game. Or they could undercut Epic on every shared title, even if that means selling some games at a loss. The point is they have options, but right now they seem to think they can coast. Steam seems to think that their position as the current number-one in the PC gaming space is unassailable, and that they can ignore Epic’s presence altogether. That is simply not viable.
The Epic Games Store homepage.
This article may have been prompted by a couple of recent games, but there are dozens of big Epic Games Store exclusives. Here’s a short list of some of the big ones that Epic has successfully kept away from Steam:
Anno 1800, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, The Division 2, Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, Hitman 3, Industries of Titan, Magic: The Gathering Arena, Maneater, Rocket League (free-to-play version), The Outer Worlds, Saints Row The Third Remastered, Shenmue III, The Settlers, SnowRunner, Super Meat Boy Forever, Tetris Effect, Total War Saga: Troy, Twin Mirror, and The Wolf Among Us 2.
That’s by no means an exhaustive list; there are many more titles that Epic has snapped up. In some cases the games are available elsewhere, such as on Uplay or Game Pass, but Epic has still been willing to open its wallet purely to stop the title also being released on Steam. And Steam quite happily lets them do it, offering no protest and no rebuttal.
Something’s got to change over at Steam, because if they don’t get a handle on this – and soon – their days as the number-one PC gaming shop will be over.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Watch Dogs Legion promo art courtesy of the press kit on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
A lot of things in the world are a mess right now, upended by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In addition to the tragic loss of life we’ve seen lockdowns, job losses, and economic chaos on a level unseen for a long time. And tech companies – including Sony and Microsoft – have suffered as a result of major disruption to supply chains and manufacturing facilities. Yet despite all that, both companies are pressing ahead with their new video game consoles, scheduled for release in November. But is that the right decision? Or might it have been better to wait a year or two?
One of the things that struck me most when looking at all the gameplay and footage released by both companies is how absolutely minuscule the so-called “upgrades” are, at least in terms of the way games will look on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Both companies use graphics as one of their major selling points, yet when you stack up a current-gen and next-gen version of the same title side by side, it’s hard to really see a difference.
Perhaps some consumers who have an incredibly fancy (and incredibly expensive) television – or superhuman eyesight – will notice a big change. But I didn’t, and from what I can tell by reading and listening to the reaction from players, a lot of other folks can’t either. There is more to a good game than graphics, but when it’s a key selling point I think it’s not unfair to say that players expect something more than either new console is able to offer.
The trouble is that even on the oldest version of current-gen systems – those consoles released in 2013 – games look pretty good. Players have been enjoying the visual style of titles like The Witcher 3 for years, and even some launch titles from 2013, like Ryse: Son of Rome, look fantastic. Any upgrade was always going to be minor, and things like slightly more realistic controller rumble or faster loading times are difficult things to market to the average player. The result? It’s hard to escape the feeling that the two new consoles already feel like a minor upgrade at best… and a waste of time and money at worst.
That’s before we account for the fact that disruption across all areas of the industry has massively complicated matters.
The Xbox Series X is going to be released without its key launch title – Halo Infinite. This game should have been one of the console’s selling points – despite its simultaneous launch on Xbox One. Without it, the Xbox Series X will be released with some cross-platform games and not a lot else.
However, things are even worse for Sony. The company recently announced that they were producing several million fewer PlayStation 5 consoles than expected. As a result there has been pre-order chaos. Initial plans to hold a “lottery” to determine who could pre-order a machine didn’t pan out, and the console sold out within minutes of being made available. Reportedly, some shops have either cancelled pre-orders outright, or informed irate gamers that they may not receive their console on launch day despite thinking they’d secured a pre-order.
We’ve seen consoles launch without sufficient stock numerous times. Here in the UK, getting a Nintendo Wii was nigh-on impossible in 2006 and throughout most of 2007, such was the lack of stock. Even with that in mind, though, this feels worse. Reducing the number of units available worldwide is clearly indicative of a company struggling with production, yet rather than delay or take steps to rectify the situation, Sony has been quite happy to make the PlayStation 5 impossible to get hold of – something which will only be to the benefit of shady resellers who’ll happily sell the console for double its asking price in the run-up to Christmas.
All of this comes at a time when many people are in financial difficulty or face an uncertain financial future. As the pandemic drags on and the idea of “getting back to normal” seems further away than ever, companies are closing left and right, and as temporary schemes like the furloughing of employees come to an end, many people will be out of work. A £450/$500 outlay in that environment is an impossible ask, and feels decidedly anti-consumer. This is made worse by price rises of games themselves, many of which look set to retail for £65/$70 when the new generation arrives.
As we approach what could be a bleak and lonely Christmas for many people, players and parents are looking at these companies and asking themselves how they could possibly have the audacity and lack of awareness to go ahead with something like this. The minor upgrade that most people perceive is incredibly overpriced at £450, and even the Xbox Series S with its lower price will still be out of reach of many in 2020.
I look at these consoles, and the footage the companies selling them have released, and I’m asking myself who would be interested? At least Microsoft can say that their policy of releasing games on Xbox One for the next couple of years – bizarre though that is in many ways – means that players can stick with their current systems and don’t need to shell out a ton of money for this minor upgrade. But Sony still plans on having exclusive games, and are in effect gating off those titles behind a very expensive paywall, one which will prove insurmountable for many players in 2020.
“Big companies do something anti-consumer” is not a surprising headline, either in the games industry or beyond. And as someone who worked for a large games company in the past, I understand that there are many factors at play, including research, development, and manufacturing contracts that were almost certainly too far along to be undone at the time the pandemic hit. Even so, I’m struggling to see how releasing these machines now is a good idea. A one year delay would allow both companies to resolve manufacturing issues, produce far more stock, and allow more development time for launch titles in order to overcome pandemic-created problems. We might even see marginally better graphics as a result. And a delay of a single year wouldn’t mean the internal components of either machine would feel out of date – they would still be cutting-edge devices even if they weren’t launched until November 2021.
Regardless of what some of us may think, the console launches are going ahead. Manufacturing is well underway, and with mere weeks to go until launch day it would be very difficult – if not outright impossible – to slam the brakes on at this late stage. Despite my misgivings both machines will still sell, and will be picked up by enthusiasts with enough disposable income. The beginning of a new console generation always leaves behind those who can’t afford to make the switch; this time around there’s just more people in that position. Hopefully things really will get back to normal soon so everyone can enjoy the next generation of consoles… and the minor changes they have to offer.
The Xbox brand – including the Xbox Series X – is the copyright of Microsoft. The PlayStation brand – including the PlayStation 5 – is the copyright of Sony. Both the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will be released in November 2020. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Whenever a new console generation kicks off, it’s inevitable that there will be some games that are released on both new and old systems. This is perfectly understandable in many cases, as games which are new and have had a lot of time and effort put into their development want to get the widest audience possible. Many titles in this category go unnoticed, or at most some reviewers will point out that the game may not be fully-optimised for new hardware. But some other titles are the subject of pretty heavy criticism, and I can fully understand why.
When it was announced that Grand Theft Auto V would be ported to the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, many fans were upset. This was a game initially developed for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and it’s going to be ported again?Grand Theft Auto V has been a juggernaut this console generation after getting its start in 2013, but after more than seven years fans are itching for a new entry in the series.
Grand Theft Auto V was originally released in 2013 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
In 2014, when Grand Theft Auto V was re-released on current-gen consoles, it was barely a year old. No one at the time begrudged Rockstar the chance to port the title to new hardware because there was an understanding that the game had been a big undertaking. As the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 era drew to a close, it made sense to bring some new titles to the new systems.
But that was six years ago, and in that time Rockstar has developed and published precisely one new game – Red Dead Redemption II. There are arguments to be heard that the pace of game development as a whole has slowed, and I don’t want to ignore the reality that developing an open-world game on the scale of Grand Theft Auto V is a colossal undertaking. But that doesn’t excuse what seems to many fans to be the company taking shortcuts.
Red Dead Redemption II is Rockstar’s only game in seven years.
What’s worse is that the time and effort spent on creating a next-gen port could arguably be better spent creating a new title. Even in a studio with the financial resources of Rockstar, porting existing games does take time, resources, and personnel away from other projects. So it’s not just a case of corner-cutting – fans feel that the company is wasting time.
Practically every current-gen title is going to be “forward-compatible” with new hardware anyway. What that means is that any Xbox One game should work on the Xbox Series X, and any PlayStation 4 game should work on PlayStation 5 by default – including titles like Grand Theft Auto V. So there’s no need to spend time and money reworking a seven-year-old game for new hardware; existing versions will work just fine.
Both next-gen consoles will be backwards-compatible with current games by default.
If the upgrades were going to be free, allowing players who own a current-gen copy of the game to experience the tweaks and changes on new hardware, I don’t think anyone would mind. In fact, players have praised companies like CD Projekt Red, whose 2015 title The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is receiving such a free upgrade. But Rockstar – and other companies too – plan to re-release their old games and get gamers to shell out more money for the next-gen version. It feels decidedly anti-consumer.
Even though I’m not a big online multiplayer person, I recognise the appeal that Grand Theft Auto V has as an online experience. But after seven years I feel that online experience has run its course, and most players will be ready for a new challenge. Those who want to stick with what they already have can either continue to play on Xbox One/PlayStation 4 or can even bring their existing copy of the game to the new consoles; there’s no need to buy it all over again.
Grand Theft Auto V is getting a next-gen re-release in 2021… eight years and two console generations later.
Another company that has been roundly criticised for its approach to next-gen is 505 Games, publisher of Control. This is a game I’ve been looking forward to playing, as it has great reviews, but it’s another example of next-gen upgrades being denied to existing fans. The only way to play Control will be to buy it again on the new consoles, and to many fans the small upgrade seems like a big expense.
The Last Of Us was similarly criticised at the beginning of the PlayStation 4 era for being re-released in a “remastered” state less than a year on from its PlayStation 3 debut. At the time I was genuinely shocked by the gall of developer Naughty Dog; how can a game less than a year old be remastered already? But The Last Of Us sold very well on PlayStation 4, cementing this business model in the minds of executives as one that works and will rake in cash for comparatively little effort.
The Last Of Us was re-released on PlayStation 4 mere months after its PlayStation 3 premiere.
At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about. Money. Re-releasing a game with a few minor upgrades and hardware-specific tweaks is relatively inexpensive and offers companies huge financial rewards. It should be no surprise to learn that a big company wants to make more money, and I get that we live in a society where profit and growth matter. It’s just that it feels so anti-consumer, and even big companies need to be aware of their reputations. It’s easy to dismiss criticism and backlash as coming from just a whiny minority of hardcore fans, but companies like Electronic Arts have found – to their great cost – just what can happen when they push players too far.
It’s only in the last console generation that the idea of cross-generation releases has been such a big deal anyway. In the days of the SNES and the Nintendo 64 the idea of a game from one system being ported wholesale to new hardware just didn’t exist. There were ports, but they tended to be things like Super Mario All-Stars, which was a compilation of several games instead of a single title, and offered players good value as a result.
There weren’t many ports in the SNES era, and those that did exist were bundles like Super Mario All-Stars.
But if you’d told me in 2005, when the Xbox 360 was launched, that the original Halo game was just going to be straight-up ported to the new system and that players would be expected to “just buy it again” I’d have been absolutely gobsmacked. What a nonsense idea that would have been even as recently as 2005! We’ve come to accept some of these things in the fifteen years since, but even by today’s standards, some of the proposals for next-gen re-releases are drawing well-earned backlash.
Though it wasn’t possible to predict the impact of the coronavirus pandemic even a few short months ago, the changing situation in the world should be something companies take note of. There’s a good chance that many folks are going to have less disposable income at least in the short-term, and being asked to re-purchase a seven-year-old game on a new console is definitely not something that should be considered under current circumstances. Even were it not for the pandemic, I think this practice would still be inappropriate and anti-consumer. But given where things currently sit, it’s even worse.
This is the kind of practice that can start big companies on a slippery slope to reputational damage and more widespread criticism, and I would advise them to tread carefully. Rockstar – or any other company engaged in a similar practice – could garner a lot of goodwill today by announcing that the next-gen version of whatever game they’re working on will be free to anyone who currently owns it. Or, on the flip side, they could continue to draw criticism and ire for their greed and lack of care.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, developer, and/or publisher. Some screenshots and promotional artwork courtesy of press kits on IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
No, not piracy on the high seas. We’re going to take a look at copyright infringement, and this is a contentious topic so let’s be clear up front: in practically every jurisdiction around the world, piracy is illegal. I am categorically not encouraging it nor am I condoning it. This column aims to be an honest discussion on the moral and ethical implications only, not the legal ramifications.
The journey to writing this column began in July, when Star Trek: Lower Decks was announced. The announcement came with a US/Canada premiere date and weekly release schedule, but nothing for the rest of the world. Trekkies like myself who aren’t from North America held our breath and waited. More information about the show came out, but no international release date. Then a trailer was published, but again no international release date. Star Trek’s Comic-Con panel approached, and I considered this the last reasonable chance for news of an international broadcast. But again, fans were let down.
Lower Decks premiered on the 6th of August, but only for North American viewers. ViacomCBS not only chose not to broadcast the series internationally, they haven’t made any public statement on the issue. And don’t get this twisted around saying it isn’t the company’s fault because of coronavirus or some other issue; they are in full control over when to broadcast the series in the United States, and if they couldn’t secure the international broadcast rights for whatever reason before the 6th of August, it was entirely within their power to delay the series until they had come to an agreement with an international distributor or broadcaster. It was thus ViacomCBS’ decision – and their decision alone – for Lower Decks to be split up and shown to some fans but not others. And it is undeniably their decision not to address the problem in public.
In such an environment, is it any surprise that Trekkies outside the US and Canada turned to piracy to access the series? If it’s literally unavailable any other way, and there is radio silence on when it may become available, what choice to fans have? The answer is that there is no choice, and ViacomCBS made it that way. They practically invited piracy of Lower Decks not once but twice: first through the utterly moronic decision to segregate the show by geography, and secondly by not even giving lip service to the problem. Look at any social media post from official Star Trek pages in July and early August – each one received many comments asking about Lower Decks’ international broadcast, and every single one was ignored.
We can set aside my usual arguments about how this harms ViacomCBS’ own negotiating position – assuming they still plan to sell the show internationally – because that’s something I’ve covered repeatedly and it isn’t what this column is about. Purely from a moral and ethical standpoint, is it wrong to pirate Lower Decks?
When a television series, film, or video game is made available to the general public, I think most people would say that piracy is not acceptable. Most of us agree that the actors and behind-the-scenes staff deserve to be paid for their work, and the investors in the company who bankrolled the project deserve to see a return on their investment. We can talk at length about how some large media corporations make excessive profits for a select few shareholders and managers, but as a general rule, most people agree with the principle of paying entertainers for the entertainment they provide.
This is the reality of how entertainment works. Companies producing a television series, video game, or film need to raise money to create their project and see it to fruition, and somehow they need to recoup that money as well as make a profit to fund their next title. Nowadays there are myriad ways to do this, including streaming platforms online. If everybody engaged in piracy, it would be very hard for any company to make any new work of entertainment, because they would have no way of making their money back.
So when a work of entertainment is made available, most people stick to doing one of two things – pay to enjoy it, or don’t participate.
But that argument is only valid in cases where content is available via lawful methods. Lower Decks, as we’ve already established, is only in that category if you’re lucky enough to live in the United States or Canada; the two countries combined are home to less than 5% of the world’s population. So if 95% of the population are denied access to something, what options do they have? Wait an indeterminate and possibly unlimited amount of time? It’s been over a month since Lower Decks debuted and in that time ViacomCBS has said precisely nothing. How long are we supposed to sit on our hands?
In the case of another recent series that made this mistake, waiting became incredibly problematic. We could argue from the point of view of “hardcore” Trekkies that nothing in Lower Decks has been a massive spoiler. There isn’t one character or one moment to point to – at least, in the first six episodes – which if it had been spoiled ahead of time would have majorly ruined our enjoyment. But in some shows that isn’t the case. Disney+ launched in the United States months ahead of the rest of the world, and one of its big draws was the first ever live-action Star Wars series: The Mandalorian. The end of the first episode contained perhaps the biggest twist in the entire first season: the Mandalorian’s target is a child, nicknamed “baby Yoda” by the internet.
Baby Yoda was everywhere in November and December last year. Screenshots and clips were all over the internet, and baby Yoda was in so many memes! Friends and family members of mine who don’t know the first thing about Star Wars had seen baby Yoda – so imagine being a Star Wars fan, unable to watch The Mandalorian simply because of where you live, having that massive reveal and the emotional core of the series spoiled months before you could see it.
Before the dawn of the internet it wouldn’t have mattered. In the 1990s, when I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation and the other shows of that era, the fact that we in the UK were getting them a couple of years after their American premiere wasn’t something I ever noticed. Even within Star Trek fan clubs and at Star Trek fan events in the ’90s, there were no spoilers. And yes, I went to numerous such meet-ups and events at the time.
But in 2020, companies can’t get away with that any more. Not because of the tiny minority of people who take a kind of twisted pleasure in deliberately spoiling something for others, but because social media and the internet in general becomes awash with spoilers. If you follow Star Trek’s official social media, as I do, you’ll have picked up numerous spoilers for Lower Decks, as their social media channels throw out plot points, lists of Easter eggs, and all manner of other things almost daily. And that’s not to mention fan-run pages and groups. In short, if you’re a fan of anything in 2020, chances are that, in some way, you go online to engage in that fandom, and that’s a breeding ground for spoilers.
In the case of The Mandalorian, baby Yoda hit the mainstream such that even the most careful fan wouldn’t have been able to avoid seeing or hearing about it. And when you’ve been burned by spoilers once or twice, it’s very easy to get upset and annoyed – and to turn to piracy.
When it comes to shows like The Mandalorian and Star Trek: Lower Decks, I think what I’d say is that piracy may still be legally wrong, but it’s much harder to claim that it’s morally wrong. We live in an interconnected, globalised world, where the internet means people from everywhere can be connected to each other and to the franchises they love at all times. Companies like ViacomCBS have actively encouraged this kind of globalism because it means a bigger market and more profit. But creating a global brand comes with a responsibility that extends beyond national borders. In the global, interconnected world that these massive corporations have encouraged, the least they could do is make their content available. ViacomCBS has been keen to promote Star Trek as a brand outside the United States, even setting up events in Europe like Destination Star Trek where actors and producers routinely draw huge crowds.
The franchise, at ViacomCBS’ behest, has become a global brand. There are Star Trek fans from the Falkland Islands to Timbuktu, all because the company has chosen to sell Star Trek and its merchandise to every country it can. But it seems that ViacomCBS only cares about its international audience for as much money as it can wring out of us, because as soon as there’s a tiny bump in the road they’re quite happy to cut us off and not share their most recent creation.
Star Trek doesn’t belong to Americans. It depicts a future where humanity is working together to learn and grow together to build a better world, something which seems the complete antithesis of a major American corporation cutting off its overseas fans with no information thrown our way.
With ViacomCBS being so disrespectful to its international audience, is it any wonder that Lower Decks has become one of the most-pirated shows of the last few weeks? I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone, because when there is no other way to access the series, piracy – by definition – becomes the only option. Anyone with a computer and even the tiniest inclination can find out how to download or stream Lower Decks, and when you consider that for 95% of the people around the world – including many Trekkies and casual fans of the franchise – it can’t be lawfully accessed, from a moral and philosophical point of view I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t.
Piracy is definitely against the law – but in this case, that doesn’t make it wrong.
Downloading and uploading of copyrighted material (“piracy” for the purposes of this discussion) is against the law in practically every jurisdiction around the world. This column should not be interpreted as encouraging piracy or copyright infringement for any television series, film, video game, or entertainment franchise. The Star Trek brand – including Star Trek: Lower Decks – remains the copyright of ViacomCBS. This column contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
By sheer coincidence, I replaced both my keyboard and game controller in August. And also by coincidence – or at least, not by design – both of my replacements came from the Microsoft Store. This short review will detail my experience with each of them; rolling two items into one article is certainly a rare example of efficiency from me!
First let’s look at the controller. This one, I have to admit, is a bit of a luxury. I’d had an Xbox One controller for years – it may have been the one I got when I bought an Xbox One at launch in 2013. Now that was a bad decision if there ever was one – the console may have improved somewhat in the years since, but at launch it was bad value and offered precious little to play! But we’re off-topic already; you can read more about my Xbox One experience by clicking or tapping here. I decided that it was time to replace the controller – one of the thumbsticks was loose, making it harder to make very precise movements in some games, and in addition its vibration/rumble function didn’t seem to be working right. It still vibrates, but it does so in a much more clunky way than it used to.
I considered a few different controller options, including the Hyperkin Duke, which is a reimagining of the classic Xbox controller from 2001. That controller was one I greatly enjoyed using during the original Xbox era, but unfortunately the new version is difficult to get hold of here in the UK. I found one on Amazon, but at quite a mark-up. So I decided to check out Xbox’s Design Labs website, where Microsoft sell customised controllers. I went with an all-blue design, with a metallic D-pad, black Start and Select buttons, and black A, B, X, and Y buttons with the proper colours for the letters. I’m sure some people feel that removing the coloured letters and replacing them with a grey or black design looks more sleek, but the colours can be a great visual reference when it comes to things like quick-time events or any other occasion where split-second button presses are required.
My new controller.
Microsoft stated when I bought the controller that it could take up to a month to arrive, so I wasn’t expecting it much before the beginning of September. To my pleasant surprise, though, it arrived much sooner – on the same day as my keyboard, no less! The design was just what I’d chosen – which it should have been, of course – and so far I’m satisfied with it. Was it worth the extra money to get a different colour compared to buying a standard controller? I don’t play that many games any more, so I guess you could argue that it wasn’t. The control pad is fundamentally no different from a standard Xbox One controller; unlike the Xbox One elite controller it doesn’t have swappable parts or extra buttons, and its construction is wholly plastic instead of the “rubberised” feel of the elite. But the elite controllers are twice the price! For around £20 more than a standard controller, Xbox Design Labs offer a huge range of colours, and different areas of the controller can be different colours. They brag about millions of colour combinations – most of which you’d never want, of course – but all of the main colours are there, and they have a couple of “fades” and “camo” options too.
Controllers can also be engraved – though to be honest, that’s a pretty impressive-sounding term for what seems to be just laser printing. But for someone who wants their gamertag on their controller – or to make a fun gag gift, perhaps – it’s nice that the option exists.
The Xbox One controller was very similar to the Xbox 360 controller, which was itself not massively different from the second iteration of the original Xbox controller. So I’m not really reviewing the controller from that perspective. I already know I like it as I’ve been using something similar for years! The Design Labs experience was solid. There were a number of options, the website worked smoothly and was well laid-out, and the colours on screen match perfectly with the product I received. Add to that the quicker than expected delivery and it’s hard to find fault.
The Xbox S controller from 2002 or 2003. The “S” may have originally meant “small”.
As someone who has never really been a “PlayStation guy”, I think I’ll always prefer Xbox’s controllers than those made for the rival console. They feel chunkier and more substantial in my (admittedly oversized) hands, but at the end of the day once you get used to a particular design you want to stick with it. That’s presumably why the Xbox Series X’s controller won’t be a significant departure from the current design.
Up next we have the keyboard.
I write almost every day, not just for this website but for other projects that I have on the go, as well as typing messages to friends and the like. For the last three years or so, I’ve been using a Corsair Strafe mechanical keyboard. The variant I have has a red backlight and Cherry MX blue mechanical switches – the “clicky” kind. I bought this keyboard on the recommendation of several tech reviewers who said that the blue switches were great for typing.
The Corsair Strafe.
This keyboard has been fine. It was interesting at first to go back to a keyboard that, for all its modern aesthetic, had a very retro feel and sound. It reminded me of the kind of keyboards I first learned to type on when I was very young. I actually remember the first time I ever used a computer, being concerned that the keyboard only had capital letters when I wanted to type something in lowercase! That was when I was at school, and the “computer” in those days was little more than a word processor. And of course there was no internet. How things have changed, eh?
Although the typing experience has been good overall with the Corsair, after very long typing sessions it can get a little tiring on my old fingertips. The space bar in particular has a strange, almost rough texture to it, and I often find that my thumb – which I use to hit the spacebar almost all of the time – can start to not exactly sting, but rather notice this texture in an unpleasant way after longer typing sessions. The mechanical keyboard has also proved a nightmare to keep clean, with deep chasms in between the keys that seem to attract dust and cat hair like magnets! Finally, several of the keys have started to wear down, and the backlight shows through on the edges of several of them now. Perhaps that’s simply the result of heavy use, but for something I haven’t owned that long it seems like it shouldn’t have happened so quickly. Regardless, the keyboard doesn’t look as nice as it once did, and while it does still work I thought I’d try out a replacement.
I don’t need backlighting on a keyboard, as I can type from muscle memory – something that will happen as you spend more time hunched over your computer! And my computer setup is in a well-lit room, so on the occasions where I need to look down to see what I’m doing I don’t need the keyboard to be its own light source. The keyboard I ultimately bought as a replacement is not backlit, and I don’t consider that to be a problem at all.
After looking at several options, both mechanical and non-mechanical, I opted for the Microsoft Surface bluetooth keyboard. I’ve used a Microsoft mouse in the past (though my current daily driver is a white Logitech G305 wireless mouse) and I’ve always considered Microsoft’s hardware products to be solid and of decent quality. After ruling out a few other options for a variety of reasons, I chose the Microsoft Surface.
The Microsoft Surface bluetooth keyboard.
Initial impressions were good. The packaging was premium – as the Xbox controller’s had been too – and I was very impressed with the look and feel of the keyboard. It has almost no give to it when pressure is applied; it’s very solid. The keys, despite being low profile, have a satisfying press, and unlike the loud “click” of the Corsair, are relatively quiet.
The keyboard also has a full number pad, which is important to me as I often use the right Enter key when writing. It takes AAA batteries instead of being rechargeable via USB, which for some people may be offputting, but it’s a feature I really wanted to have. AA or AAA batteries last ages in devices like mice and keyboards. I used to use a Logitech MX Master mouse, and that thing needed to be charged every few days, which was incredibly annoying. In comparison, a mouse I have in my bedroom which takes AAs has been using the same pair of batteries for at least a year – probably longer. And since I replaced the MX Master with the G305 I’ve gone through precisely one battery. Why anyone would favour rechargeable devices that have such a short battery life over devices that take AA or AAA batteries that last months or years is beyond me. But we’re off-topic again! The battery cover is magnetic, which was a very neat feature. The magnet seems strong enough to keep the battery compartment closed, which is important for obvious reasons, and I like the modern touch it offers over an older-style plastic latch.
I did have an issue with the keyboard – but it’s one that seems almost unique to me that anyone with a modern setup should be able to avoid. The keyboard connects via bluetooth. Duh, right? It’s in the name. But my PC doesn’t have bluetooth connectivity built in, as several years ago I didn’t see any need to spend extra money on that additional feature. Most wireless keyboards come with a dongle so you can plug them into your PC, but presumably Microsoft’s expectation is that the Surface keyboard will be paired with a Surface PC – which must all come with bluetooth as standard. Like I said, this is a minor gripe that probably won’t affect anyone else who buys this product, but if your PC lacks bluetooth connectivity like mine, you’ll need to buy a separate dongle to be able to use the keyboard.
As with many things I’ve accumulated over the years, I could have sworn I owned a USB bluetooth dongle – but I haven’t the faintest idea where it is. I had to get a replacement on Amazon – not a big deal as they aren’t expensive, but it meant waiting an extra couple of days after the keyboard arrived before I could use it! It reminded me of the Christmas where I got a Nintendo 64 – I was all set to play with my new console when there was a power cut! The N64 sat in its box for what seemed like an eternity, unable to be played because the electric was out. Decades later and I’m back in that position. Life is funny like that sometimes.
Ah, memories.
When the dongle finally arrived, pairing the keyboard was easy. From the settings menu in Windows 10 – for which the keyboard has a designated button – it’s possible to see the device’s battery status. The keyboard is also in the standard UK layout – which means that a few symbols are in different places than on a US layout keyboard – which is obviously important to me as that’s how I’m used to typing. I’m on Windows 10, but the keyboard should be compatible with Windows 8.1 – or indeed any device capable of using bluetooth.
The typing experience is pleasant. As mentioned, the keys have a satisfying press, and they also have a slightly soft feel that’s definitely nicer than the hard plastic keycaps of the Corsair that I’d been using. It feels closer to typing on a laptop – a premium, high-end laptop – than any desktop keyboard I’ve ever used. Microsoft promises a whopping five million presses per key over the lifespan of the keyboard – so let’s put that to the test over the next few months and years! Unlike in the picture above, the Return/Enter key is full-size, which is something else I greatly appreciate. A single press of the Function button switches between the F-keys (F1 for help, F5 for refreshing web pages, etc) and a variety of other functions. The aforementioned settings button is one, and there are also keys to control the volume, media player keys to play, pause, etc. and even screen brightness controls. I don’t use such keys that often, but the additional functionality is nice, and not having to hold down a second key to use them is also a neat feature.
Of all the “premium” keyboards I looked at, the Microsoft Surface seemed like the best option for me at this point. I was ready for a change from the clicky mechanical switches I’d been using for the past few years, and as someone who does a lot of typing I wanted something I’d be comfortable with. So far, the Surface has accomplished that and I’m happy with my purchase.
It’s hard to make product recommendations, because I don’t know your circumstances. If you have a spare £20 burning a hole in your pocket and you like customised things, get the Design Labs controller and show off your unique style. But if you’re on a budget, skip that and just get a standard controller. Or better yet, find a pre-owned one or a 360 controller and save even more money.
Likewise for the keyboard. If you write as much as I do on a daily basis and want something solid and premium, the Surface could be a good option if you don’t want a mechanical keyboard. But it’s impossible to deny that you can get a perfectly functional keyboard with a number pad – wired or wireless – for a fraction of the price. I just looked on Amazon, and one of the top results was a Microsoft wired keyboard for £10 – a full £80 less than I paid for the Surface. So the question is – what do you want from a keyboard? If you don’t type a lot – or even if you do but are on a tight budget – save your money. Nothing the Surface does is essential and you could get identical functionality far cheaper.
Speaking for myself, though, I’m happy with what I got. Sometimes it’s worth spending the extra money on a higher-end product, and sometimes it’s worth splurging a little on a cool-looking or custom product just for the fun of it. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide what best suits your setup and where you want to invest your money.
The Xbox and Surface brands are the copyright of Microsoft. No sponsorship was involved; these are products I purchased for myself with my own money and the article comprises my genuine impressions regarding them. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The blogosphere and YouTube have been ablaze the last 24 hours or so, following news from review website Metacritic that some titles will have user reviews blocked for a short period of time (about a day-and-a-half) after they’re released. At present this seems to apply only to video games, but I suppose it’s possible it will be rolled out elsewhere on the site. The decision has attracted a lot of criticism and some support, and I wanted to take a moment to think about the pros and cons, as well as consider some of the wider issues involved.
Metacritic describes itself as a “review aggregator”. It provides each each title with two scores – one is an average of reviews from professional critics writing for a variety of publications, and the other is from Metacritic’s own users who can write and publish reviews directly on the website. The Metascore – i.e. reviews written by professionals – is unaffected by this change. It is only the user score which has this 36-hour delay.
We should begin by considering why Metacritic has decided to make this change. In short, it seems to be designed to prevent review-bombing: the practice where users will deliberately leave overwhelmingly negative reviews as a form of protest. A number of titles across different kinds of media have been subject to this, not only on Metacritic but on sites like Rotten Tomatoes as well. The official explanation is that Metacritic wants players to have actually played a game before leaving a review, which on the surface doesn’t seem like an unfair request. But is it?
Metacritic has stopped users writing reviews immediately after a game is released.
To answer that question we need to step back and think about some pretty big issues. The first one I want to tackle is the concept of censorship. Specifically, does this change mean Metacritic is trying to “censor” reviews? And if it does mean that, does Metacritic have the right to do so? These questions seem easy enough – no it isn’t censorship, and Metacritic is a private website so they can publish or not publish whatever they want within the bounds of the law. Concepts like “freedom of speech” don’t exist in this context. As someone who runs a (much smaller) website myself, I can say to you – as my reader – that you have no right to write anything here, and if you submit something to me and ask me to publish it I have the right to refuse. Am I censoring your opinion if I do so? Of course not. Finally, Metacritic has not prohibited users from writing reviews at all – this is a delay between a game’s release and the opening of the review-writing section. Reviews can still be written and published as normal after the 36 hours have elapsed.
So that seems simple – it’s not censorship. But the truth is less black-and-white. We’re in a grey area when it comes to publicly-accessible web forums, and Metacritic has made a name for itself in part because it allows users to write reviews and provide their own feedback on the latest releases. The fact that sometimes those reviews have been used in a way the site’s designers may not have originally intended isn’t a problem – it’s part of what got the site to where it is. While on a technical level this isn’t censorship and it certainly doesn’t violate any laws, many people will be looking at it as a petty, small-minded, and unfair reaction, and it has the potential to damage Metacritic’s standing in the long term.
What makes Metacritic so valuable to many people is that it collates and averages out review scores. It’s like the RealClearPolitics average of opinion polls in the political sphere; one poll may be an outlier, but aggregate dozens together and you get a closer picture of what’s happening. Metacritic does the same with reviews. Reading a single review from one publication or one user may not provide a fully-rounded look at a title. Reviews vary, with different reviewers holding differing opinions on a title’s merits and faults. Metacritic presents itself as a wholly neutral space where its readers can see that rounded picture they’re often looking for. Anything that detracts from that sense of objectivity damages the site, and any opening for people to accuse it of bias and censorship undermines its entire existence, which is built on being a neutral space.
Metacritic is valued in the entertainment world for the same reason as RealClearPolitics is valued in the political realm.
Populism is a concept in politics that has gained traction in recent years. It pits the “people” against the “elite”, and generally speaking, anyone – be they an individual or an organisation – that can successfully claim to speak for the people against the elite can be quite successful. In contrast, being accused of being elitist can be catastrophic if the accusation sticks. By seeming to prioritise the opinions of professional critics over those of amateur reviewers, Metacritic opens itself not only to accusations of bias and censorship, but also of elitism. At a politically-charged moment, where people-power is manifest in myriad forms, the one thing nobody wants to be seen as is elitist. By preventing users from writing reviews during the most crucial hours of a game’s life, Metacritic is as the very least being a gatekeeper.
Reviews from professionals, many will argue, are no less problematic than those from amateurs and Metacritic’s own users. Accusations of paid reviews abound, and while I don’t think it’s ever been successfully proven that a professional critic was flat-out bribed to write a positive review, there are certainly perks for writing positively – and there can be drawbacks for writing negatively. Several critics have spoken out about how they were pressured into writing positive reviews by threats of revoked access to future titles. Being denied a pre-release review copy of a game can be a huge problem for professionals – without access they can’t write or publish their reviews until after a game has released, at which point interest rapidly falls away. A title like, for example, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey can easily take over fifty hours to complete, meaning a post-release review could be published at the very earliest three days after the game launched – assuming the reviewer did nothing else but play and write. Even in those three days, interest drops, clicks on a website drop, and of course advertising revenue drops as a result. In short, being denied access to pre-release review copies can be very costly – and games companies know this, and are known to use it to their advantage.
There are other perks games companies can use too, such as paying for critics to attend big “events” promoting a game, where they’ll be wined and dined as well as shown off a working copy of part of the game in its best possible light. I wrote recently about such an event that I attended while working for a large games company. I’ve seen for myself the lengths some were willing to go to to market their latest titles. These events don’t come cheap, and often the objective is to provide critics with a positive impression of the company – so that when a review copy of the latest game comes around, opinions will soften. Thus we can see a “carrot-and-stick” approach: all-expenses-paid trips, freebies, and other expensive experiences offer a positive incentive to keep a company happy, while on the other hand the looming threat of revoked access (and no more freebies) actively threatens a critic’s livelihood and the profits of whatever organisation or publication they may represent. Some organisations become big enough that they may feel the latter doesn’t apply to them – but most aren’t in that category.
YouTuber Boogie2988 spoke about how some games companies use access in a video on this very topic.
So when it comes to gatekeeping and elitism, Metacritic has certainly opened itself up to a whirlwind of criticism – some of which may be easier to justify than the rest. But now let’s consider a different side of the argument.
What is review-bombing? Is it justified? If so, is it justified in all cases, and is it justified even from people who haven’t played the game?
At its simplest, a review bomb is a large number of usually negative reviews (though there can be positive review bombs too) targeting a specific title. Many review bombs are started for a specific reason, and those reasons may not always be related to what’s happening in the game. Some titles are review-bombed for reasons to do with their publisher or parent company, for example. In the case of Star Wars Battlefront II, it was the game’s lootboxes and microtransactions. Review bombs are a way for people to express their dissatisfaction with a title, and as we’ve recently discussed, people’s experiences are subjective. But review bombs can draw attention to an issue with a title, and it’s up to everyone to decide for themselves whether or not that issue is a problem.
Review bombs can be used to target titles which have all sorts of perceived issues – and sometimes those issues can be story-based or even related to the politics or tone of a title. Some of the criticism of The Last of Us Part II, for example, was anti-LGBT, as that game has several LGBT characters. Other games have been criticised for political themes, and of course many titles are criticised for story failures. The film Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi was review-bombed for its storytelling decisions, for example.
This leads to the next point – what is “valid” criticism? And who gets to be the arbiter of what does and does not constitute valid criticism?
Metacritic’s homepage.
If a user’s only criticism when they write a review is that a game was “too political” or that it “forced an LGBT agenda” on players, is that okay? We’re back to questions of freedom of speech – which doesn’t apply in a legal sense, of course – as well as what Metacritic is and how it’s perceived. If Metacritic wants to remain a neutral space where everyone can express their opinions on entertainment titles – no matter what those opinions may be – then it has to accept not only review bombing, but also single-issue reviews, irrelevant/off-topic reviews, and everything else shy of legally-defined hate speech. Failing to do so will result in accusations of bias and censorship, which is exactly what we’re seeing in light of this decision. On a personal level I don’t agree with criticising a title for having an LGBT character, nor with many other reasons people have chosen to criticise titles over the years. But I’m just one person with one opinion, and in a way the whole point of the internet in general – and Metacritic specifically – has been to provide people with all kinds of opinions a space to express themselves.
Some critics have suggested that in some cases, users participating in review bombs haven’t even played the game in question, and are simply piling on. They say that this undermines the site’s user score and makes it problematic. To that my answer is: “so?” Metacritic invited users to review the latest titles. There have never been qualifications or criteria imposed on those reviews – and that means sometimes people will review something they don’t know a lot about. That’s people for ya… this is the internet, after all. The problem is that there’s no real way to prevent that – either people are free to write a review or they aren’t. And when Metacritic has for years shown itself off as a public space where anyone can submit a review, revoking that right, even for a short time, undermines the entire concept.
On a much bigger scale, Facebook and Twitter have taken a lot of flak over the last few years for their stances on “fake news”. Both sites claim to be spaces where people can gather together to discuss anything and everything, and both have become important for politicians too, many of whom now campaign using social media (especially during the coronavirus pandemic). But both sites have had issues as a result, with politicians of all stripes calling them out for “fake news” and “censorship” depending on whether a decision went in their favour or against them. And it comes down to a deceptively simple question – with huge websites like this that have a lot of power to shape opinion, who gets to be the judge of what opinions are allowed and prohibited? Metacritic, and the entertainment-based issues we’re dealing with along with it, may not be as life-changing as some of the political decisions taken by Twitter and Facebook, but it’s all in the same wheelhouse. Perhaps we’ve just traded one group of censors for another.
Who gets to be the judge of who can and cannot write a review or share an opinion?
Metacritic has to decide what it wants to be. Is it a public forum where anyone can review the latest titles? Is it an aggregator of critical opinion – and if so, is that exclusively professionals’ opinions? Or is Metacritic itself going to step into the discussion and decide who can review a title, and perhaps even what their review can and cannot say? This isn’t the site’s first rodeo. In the past they’ve been accused of deleting negative reviews during review-bombing campaigns, and that alone means that they’re not wholly neutral. By opting to further restrict user reviews, particularly in a game’s most important hours on sale and during which many purchase decisions are made, Metacritic is inflating the value of professional opinions and removing what has been for many people an important factor in researching a game and deciding whether or not to make a purchase. Time will tell if the decision is met with a sigh and a shrug, or whether it will have lasting consequences for the website.
I don’t think it’s fair to accuse Metacritic of “censoring” opinion. Because this decision applies to positive as well as negative reviews, that case is impossible to make. But what it will do is make professionals’ voices louder, as in the absence of amateur opinions theirs will be the only ones available. To me, that seems anti-consumer. While it’s true that some reviews can be off-topic, with players taking out their frustrations on a game for reasons I may not agree with, review bombs are a legitimate form of protest, and one of the few ways people can band together to express their opinions. Occasionally they may even prompt a response from game publishers and developers, as we saw in the case of Battlefront II in 2018. Review-bombing wasn’t the only tactic used by irate gamers, but it was a factor. If we’d only been left with critic reviews at that time, we wouldn’t have known the extent of the game’s microtransaction and lootbox issues – in that sense, the torrent of negative reviews saved many people from buying a game they would not have enjoyed, and contributed to a wider backlash that ultimately forced Electronic Arts to scale back the in-game monetisation. The scale of that backlash may even lead to legislative reform to tackle in-game gambling – an issue I covered recently.
Metacritic has built a reputation as a neutral space that collates opinion rather than steps in to provide its own. Many people find that valuable – far more so than the opinions of a lone reviewer or one publication. It isn’t wholly unique, as there are other websites which aim to do something similar, but as one of the largest such sites on the web, many people rely on Metacritic for an unvarnished opinion of the latest titles. Taking steps away from that may seem justified, but in the long run will only undermine the site’s unique selling point. If too many people become dissatisfied and decamp to another site that offers what Metacritic used to, the site will disappear like MySpace did as Facebook rose to prominence. In fact, Metacritic would do well to learn from failed websites like MySpace – the lesson is that in the digital world, things can happen quickly. A fall can be just as fast as a rise, and when you’re dependent on crowds, you better keep the crowd satisfied, because there’s a whole web full of up-and-comers and smaller sites who will poach your users if you don’t treat them properly.
An example of a game whose Metascore and user score are slightly different.
From the moment Metacritic opened itself to amateur reviews, review bombs and other practices its owners may disapprove of were inevitable. They lost the opportunity to be an active participant and an arbiter of content when they positioned themselves as a neutral space offering as close to objectivity as it’s possible to get. It’s too late to change now; Metacritic can no longer insert itself into the discussion without losing the very thing that draws people to it in the first place. Sacrificing its unique selling point may solve the problem of review bombs – but it risks everything the site has tried to build in the process.
People have the right to an opinion, and to express that opinion somewhere for others to see. Metacritic doesn’t have to be that space; it’s a private company and it can do what it wants with its own slice of the worldwide web. But having appeared for a long time to be that public forum, and having made a name for itself and attracted millions of users on that basis, it will be impossible for the site to step away from that role without drowning in criticism. It’s absolutely true that not all reviews are equal or equally relevant, but it has to be up to readers to decide for themselves what they think. If a game has glowing critic reviews and negative user reviews, instead of just looking at the number out of ten, taking a few minutes to read some of those reviews on both sides of the debate will be at the very least informative. And that’s where we stand – reading reviews is just as important as writing them. By taking one group of reviews away – even for a short time – Metacritic is saying to its readers that it doesn’t trust them to form their own opinions. It feels they’re too stupid or too lazy to properly understand what’s being said. It ranks professionals’ opinions higher than everyone else’s, and will push them on its readers as much as possible. I don’t think either of those things are wise.
While the move to delay reviews may seem minor, in some ways it really isn’t. Not only does it block amateur reviewers who want to make their voices heard, it does a disservice to Metacritic’s audience – the readers who rely on the site being independent and neutral. It’s also elitist at a time when the public’s tolerance for elitism is at an all-time low. And finally, it undermines what Metacritic says it wants to be and how it positions itself as a somewhat unique offering on the web.
Is it censorship to limit reviews? No. Does that mean it’s a good idea? Definitely not.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective companies, developers, publishers, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Quite possibly my biggest pet peeve when reading or listening to reviews and critical opinion is when a critic asserts that a film, video game, or television series that they personally dislike is “objectively bad”. This is something I’ve seen both amateurs and professionals do, and it absolutely needs to stop. It’s the single fastest way a commentator can invalidate their own argument and credentials, and it’s got to a point where it’s been proclaimed so often that any time I see or hear the phrase “objectively bad”, I stop reading or listening. Any critic making such a statement has lost my respect and lost the argument.
To briefly define the terms, “objective” refers to something definite and factual, whereas “subjective” refers to an opinion or personal taste. Specifically, the word “objective” – and its adverb “objectively” – should be used to describe only those things which are not influenced by one’s own opinion or personal taste.
The creative arts – including cinema, television, and gaming – are by their very nature subjective. Storytelling and narrative decision-making in particular are incredibly subjective, perhaps being second only to individual musical taste. Every single aspect of a film, television series, or game – from its narrative to its aesthetic to its editing – is 100% subjective, and anyone who tries to claim otherwise doesn’t understand the meaning of these terms. There are certainly established ways of doing things, but refusing to follow these routes is not only not “objectively bad”, it’s the only way there can ever be innovation. Even in a title which is universally panned, there is still a huge amount of subjectivity – this is why some poorly-received films go on to be cult classics, and why there’s a market for re-releases of B-movies like Return of the Killer Tomatoes.
George Clooney starred in this film early in his career. I’m not making that up.
Even on the more technical side of filmmaking, an aspect one person may find annoying – like incredibly fast-paced editing – is someone else’s idea of a stroke of brilliance. Setting aside those few video games that are released with so many glitches that they’re unplayable, the same is true there too. I remember reading a novel a few years ago called Cold Mountain – since made into a film – which had a really annoying writing style. There were no speech marks used to indicate dialogue, and the author appeared to be aware of precisely zero synonyms for the word “said”, using it over and over again for almost every line where a character spoke. I found these things to be incredibly dumb and gimmicky, yet when I spoke to a friend who’d recommended me the book, she thought it was masterful; a postmodern way to write.
While I’m sure people have been misusing “objectively” for years, where it came to prominence for me was in the discourse surrounding the 2017 film Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. Many Star Wars fans disliked the film for a number of reasons, and while I personally enjoyed it, by and large I can understand the criticisms many folks had. Some decisions taken by Rian Johnson and others at Lucasfilm seem to have been almost designed to be controversial – and anything like that will always result in split opinions. But nothing in The Last Jedi was “objectively bad”, as many critics claimed. Whether someone liked or hated things like Luke Skywalker’s characterisation, the Admiral Holdo and Poe confrontation, the side-mission to Canto Bight, Snoke’s fate, or the hyperspace ramming manoeuvre, none of them can be said to be “objectively bad” storytelling decisions. Even if a significant part of the film’s audience felt some or all of those points failed, that’s still a subjective opinion on the part of those individuals. Picking on a single narrative element in a story – such as the way Luke’s character was handled – and deeming it “objectively bad” not only is incorrect, but it undermines one’s own argument and makes having a rational conversation on the topic impossible.
Even the most controversial parts of The Last Jedi were not “objectively bad”.
I don’t want to turn this essay into a critique or defence of The Last Jedi, because it’s hardly the only title in recent years that has seen “objective” bandied about and used incorrectly by critics. While I liked The Last Jedi overall, that isn’t the reason for my saying it can’t be called “objectively bad”. There are titles I personally didn’t like, even projects I felt completely failed, that I would make the same case for. Game of Thrones’ eighth season was not “objectively bad”. Nor was The Last of Us Part II, despite my saying recently that 3/10 seemed like a fair score for that game. Not even The Rise of Skywalker, which had myriad problems with its story as well as its pacing, could be described as being “objectively bad”. I greatly dislike or had serious issue with all three of these titles, but I could never say that about them because there simply is no such thing as an “objectively bad” narrative. They all have major issues and failings in my opinion – an opinion shared by many other people in some cases, but a subjective opinion nevertheless.
What a critic is trying to do by clumsily using the word “objective” is to shut down dissenting opinions. By asserting that their belief is “objective” and thus purely factual, they’re saying that no other opinions on the topic can exist, and that anyone who tries to make a counter-argument is automatically wrong with any points they make being invalid. This isn’t how criticism and discourse are meant to work. Setting aside the fact that the word is being used incorrectly, the implication is that the person making such an assertion is closed-minded. It’s a consequence in part of social media bubbles and YouTube channels feeding the same opinions to people repeatedly.
YouTube critics aren’t the only ones who make this mistake, but it’s something I hear frequently on that platform.
In the aftermath of The Last Jedi, this was taken to extremes by some of the film’s detractors. While some of these people would begin a discussion by saying something generic like “I respect your opinion”, often what would come next is plenty of evidence to the contrary. It wasn’t good enough for them that most folks they spoke to didn’t like the film, they wanted everyone to hate it just as passionately as they did, and any contrary opinion was taken as a personal attack. The reality is that there will always be a range of opinions on practically any film, game, or television series, and trying to convince oneself that everyone needs to share the same opinion will not lead anywhere positive.
The conversation around The Last Jedi became so aggressive, unpleasant, and toxic that I stopped engaging with the film’s critics. It was clear to me that most of them weren’t interested in a conversation nor in hearing any other opinion besides a differently-worded version of their own. Some of these folks seemed to be tying their whole identity to being anti-Disney or anti-Star Wars, and any difference of opinion was perceived as a challenge to their newfound sense of self. That appears to be at least part of the reason why we started to see the phrase “objectively bad” crop up more and more often in relation to that film.
Luke Skywalker’s characterisation in The Last Jedi may have been controversial and disappointing to some fans, but nothing about it was “objectively bad” – or “objectively” anything at all.
Calling something “objectively bad” – or indeed “objectively” anything else – has a finality to it. It seeks to shut down the debate and block off any chance of someone offering a different opinion. But it simply isn’t correct, and by taking even small steps to broaden one’s understanding of a work of fiction, it’s easily possible to see that there are a range of opinions. Some critical works may even cause a rethink, reframing the discussion or bringing up a point others have failed to mention. Even if these don’t cause anyone to change their mind, they are at the very least evidence that a title is not “objectively bad”.
In most of the titles mentioned above, there were choices made by the creators and storytellers that I wouldn’t have made. These choices made the stories less enjoyable – or completely unenjoyable – for many people. Whether we’re talking about cinema, television, or video games, stories can be poorly-written, and indeed the whole point of media criticism is to point that out. But even the most well-read academic or the most prolific storyteller is simply expressing their own opinion when they make such a point. If you’ve ever taken a creative writing class or subjected your fan-fiction to internet critique, you’ll know that. Criticism is an expression of one’s own thoughts and opinions on a subject. By the very nature of the medium, criticism is subjective, not objective.
I did not enjoy The Last of Us Part II, and criticised some of its storytelling choices. But I would never be so arrogant as to say my opinion is a fact and that the game is “objectively bad”.
Some people may be misusing a term that they don’t understand, in which case further education is needed. But unfortunately, many critics who are fully aware of the difference between subjective and objective use the wrong word on purpose. Occasionally it may be little more than hyperbole, but even then this kind of exaggeration does nothing to elevate the discussion around entertainment and media. Often it’s a cynical attempt to shut down debate; to attempt to discredit dissenting opinions by stating one’s own as cold, hard fact. I find this incredibly offputting, and the inclusion of the phrase “objectively bad” – unless clearly sarcastic or meant as a joke – is enough for me to click off and read or listen to something else.
There are some aspects of life which can be black-and-white, and where it makes sense to describe something in such clear-cut terms. But entertainment isn’t one of them, and never can be. Its very nature means that there will invariably be a range of opinions, and if we haven’t found any differing points of view, that in itself is a great argument to get out of whatever social media bubble we find ourselves in and seek them out. At the very least, let’s endeavour to stop calling films, games, and television shows we don’t like “objectively bad”. They aren’t – we just didn’t like them.
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, publisher, distributor, broadcaster, etc. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
There are plenty of projects in recent years that I took issue with. When passions run high, it’s natural to want to find an outlet for whatever anger or frustration we might have about a film, game, or television series. Just in the last few weeks I’ve looked at three big titles that I felt didn’t work for one reason or another – Game of Thrones Season 8, The Rise of Skywalker, and The Last of Us Part II.
All of these titles, and many more besides, have something in common: fans have set up online petitions to erase, edit, or rewrite them to fit what they think should have happened. Some of these petitions can get tens or even hundreds of thousands of signatures on websites like change.org – but what’s the point? Even if a petition got a million signatures, does anyone seriously think that Disney and Lucasfilm are going to say “oh okay then, I guess we’d better remake The Rise of Skywalker”?
The Last of Us Part II is the latest in a long line of titles to receive a petition demanding changes or cancellation.
Fan petitions can be a legitimate way to protest a decision in an entertainment product that you don’t like, and in that sense they arguably serve a purpose. I can understand the desire to make one’s voice heard – my website, after all, serves a similar purpose for me. Did anyone at Lucasfilm or Disney read my tear-down of The Rise of Skywalker? Doubtful. Even if they did, would it make one iota of difference? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t stop me writing. I’ve always loved to write, and I run this website just for fun.
As long as we remember to treat fan petitions in the same way as we might treat a YouTube comment or scathing Twitter post – i.e. by not expecting anything to come of it – perhaps it’s a harmless phenomenon. I think it’s comparable in that respect to review-bombing (the practice of leaving large numbers of negative reviews on sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes). As fans and members of the audience, we want to make our voices heard, especially when we feel a title has been disappointing. And similarly to review-bombing, seeing that hundreds or thousands of people share your opinion can be a good feeling. The desire to complain is as old as humanity itself; one of the oldest extant examples of writing is a complaint about poor-quality copper from ancient Sumeria! So it shouldn’t be a surprise that people in 2020 are using the internet to make their voices heard and to take complaints directly to those behind the shows, games, or films that they feel didn’t succeed.
The issue can be that some people take petitions very seriously. They consider their opinion to be the only one that’s acceptable and valid, and will attack anyone who disagrees, often viciously and offensively. In the aftermath of 2017’s The Last Jedi this happened a lot – many of the film’s detractors insisted it was “objectively bad”, as if that were the only opinion and the end of the discussion. The Last Jedi was not objectively bad – they just didn’t like it. In their subjective opinion. Nor can The Rise of Skywalker or The Last of Us Part II be said to be “objectively” bad. Storytelling is always going to be subjective, and there will be a range of opinions from the overwhelmingly positive to the horribly negative depending on the individual.
Lucasfilm and Disney aren’t remaking The Last Jedi.
Some of this comes with age – as you get older, you meet more people and get to see firsthand a variety of opinions on every topic. Getting out of a bubble is important – if you only ever talk to like-minded people and never try to get an opposing viewpoint or broaden your understanding of a topic, you’ll never have a chance to grow. This doesn’t just apply to entertainment, but to everything else in life too. Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and the like can amplify these bubbles – creating groups and networks where only one side of an argument is discussed and where only one opinion is acceptable. Often, at least in the context of entertainment, this is a negative, critical opinion, but not always.
Companies care about their bottom line. In practically every franchise, hardcore fans are a tiny fraction of the overall audience, and as such, companies can flat-out say that they don’t care what you think. At the end of the day, if their product is making money and has been successful, the opinion of a tiny number of people who disliked it or who felt its narrative choices were wrong does not matter to them in the slightest. And often, what you’ll find is that controversy can be turned into a selling point. A fan petition gets more people to hear about the title in question, and some of them will go on to pick it up to see what all the fuss is about – resulting in more sales, not fewer.
William Shatner once told Star Trek fans to “get a life!” Luckily this was a joke, but it illustrates how entertainment companies can view their franchises’ biggest fans.
I don’t sign petitions on entertainment topics as a rule. I have, very occasionally, lent my name to petitions on other issues when I felt strongly about something, but never on an entertainment subject. Before I founded the website I would usually just keep my opinions to myself or perhaps discuss things with friends, but of course nowadays I have this outlet! However, I don’t want to say you shouldn’t sign a petition if you feel you want to and that it warrants your time and attention. Just don’t expect a response, and especially don’t expect your petition to accomplish its goal of having that episode or film you hate struck from canon.
There are some very specific cases where fan feedback in a more general sense has led to changes. The one that springs to mind is Mass Effect 3 in 2012. After releasing to huge controversy for its pick-a-colour ending, EA and Bioware released a free piece of downloadable content – the Extended Cut – which provided some more dialogue, expanded some cut-scenes, gave more explanation to some story points, and generally padded the ending a little. This wasn’t in response to a single petition – though there was a popular one at the time – but rather it was a response to broader feedback from reviewers and fans that was practically universal. The changes they made through the Extended Cut didn’t fundamentally change the game – or even really address the basic issues people were complaining about – but at least fans felt that their feedback had accomplished something.
The Extended Cut of Mass Effect 3 was initially offered as free DLC and is an example of feedback resulting in a response.
Overall, though, one success story does not count as proof of concept. Fan petitions are ignored by big companies, and often mocked online as people ask: “do those whiny fans really think their petition is going to make a difference?”
Partly the reason why is that a petition is just a collection of names – in online petitions, often patently fake names like “Deez Nuts” or “Anony Mouse”. It takes almost no effort to lend one’s name – fake or real – to such a petition; most participants must merely write two words and then click or tap off the petition. When I see critical comments on social media, while many of them can suffer from poor spelling and grammar and be silly, nitpicky, or even rude, at least the individual writing the comment has made a basic attempt to string more than two words together to make their point or express their dislike. In that sense, fan petitions rank even lower than social media comments or short posts on Twitter. If they take so little effort, it makes sense why they’re so easily dismissed, and why it takes an exceptional case of negative feedback – which may or may not include petitions – to convince any big company to make even minor concessions, such as in the case of Mass Effect 3.
I’m not in the business of telling people what to do. And if you want to create a petition or sign a petition calling on a company to change or cancel a film, series, game, or episode, that’s your call. Nor am I saying that petitions in general are a bad idea – in the sphere of politics and when dealing with other issues out there in the real world, a well-constructed petition on a specific issue can be effective. They just tend not to be when it comes to entertainment companies. At the end of the day, most people don’t take things like Star Wars or Star Trek as seriously as we do.
A photo I took at Star Trek: The Experience in the UK. Most viewers aren’t super-fans and don’t attend events or attractions like this. Photo Credit: Trekking with Dennis
The desire to express how one feels about something is natural and a fundamental part of the human condition. But there are better ways to go about it than signing a fan petition that will invariably fail to accomplish anything. Letter-writing may be a lost art, but I think many people will find that actually writing out their thoughts and opinions will not only be cathartic but can also be an enjoyable experience. Whether they choose to write directly to the company in question or do what I do and publish reviews and criticism in a publicly-accessible forum is a personal choice – some folks on the more introverted side of the spectrum may find the former is preferable, for example. I’d recommend giving it a try, in any case. Not least because I love stumbling across new blogs and critics to read!
In the days of the internet and social media, it’s easier than ever for fans to critique their favourite franchises, and storytelling decisions in particular. It’s also easier than ever to get sucked into social media bubbles where everyone is expressing differently-worded forms of the same opinion, and to make the mistake of thinking that opinion is objective truth or the only valid position to take. From the point of view of companies, while some feedback can be valuable, and while they undoubtedly take notice of the rare cases of overwhelming backlash online, if at the end of the day their film, game, or series is popular and profitable, they don’t really care. And they care even less about fan petitions. Sorry.
All films, games, and television series mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio, distributor, network, developer, publisher, broadcaster, and/or corporation. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
As I hinted at last time, video game prices may be going up when the next generation of home consoles launch later this year. Currently, brand-new video games cost $59.99 in the USA and £49.99-£54.99 in the UK, but this could rise significantly – potentially hitting $69.99 in the US, with a comparable rise in the UK to £59.99-£64.99. If prices go up in one market, it seems a sure thing they’ll rise elsewhere as well, so we mustn’t be fooled into thinking this is a US-only issue.
It’s felt for a while as though games companies were playing a long game of “chicken” when it comes to being the first to announce a price hike. No company wanted the criticism that would inevitably come with going first, but 2K Games could wait no longer and announced that the price for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of their basketball game NBA 2K21 would be $69.99 in the United States. Now that the proverbial dam has a crack, I expect the whole thing to come crashing down as other major publishers follow suit. While at time of writing only NBA 2K21 is priced this way, it really feels like an inevitability that many other next-gen titles will join it.
NBA 2K21 is the first game to announce a significant price hike for next-generation consoles. More will surely follow.
Video game prices have been static for years. Prices rose when the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were launched, but since then there hasn’t been any change – at least not to the price of the basic version of games. In 2005-06, downloadable content and in-game microtransactions were rare – DLC primarily consisted of large-scale expansion packs, and microtransactions, where they existed at all, were mostly just in massively-multiplayer online games. The gaming landscape has changed significantly since, and many games today – even those that retail for the full-price of $59.99 or £54.99 – still have in-game marketplaces, in-game currencies, microtransactions, single-use items for purchase, lootboxes, and myriad other ways to vacuum up cash from players. Many of these systems debuted in mobile games and free-to-play titles, but they have become commonplace in full-priced games too. So while it’s true that the surface price for video games hasn’t changed in almost 15 years, in order to get a complete game it often costs far more than that initial offering.
Some games take this to extremes. I’ve written before about Civilization VI, a turn-based strategy game for PC that I greatly enjoy. The base game costs £49.99 when not on sale, but in order to buy the complete game including all of its DLC packs – some of which consist of only a single new faction and a small number of missions – costs a whopping £144.91 if you were to buy it on PC without any discounts. And that’s not even the worst example: Europa Universalis IV, another strategy title, would cost over £300 to purchase the full game plus all of its DLC. This issue isn’t unique to strategy games either: Assassin’s Creed Odyssey costs over £95 to buy its “Ultimate” edition, Shadow of the Tomb Raider costs over £80 for its “Definitive” edition, and the “Ultimate” edition of FIFA 21 can currently be pre-ordered for the limited-time special offer price of £89.99. So it’s definitely the case that the “basic” price of video games may have been static, but buying a complete game has cost well over $59.99 or £54.99 for years.
Strategy game Europa Universalis IV costs over £300 including all of its DLC packs.
If you looked at my article about this year’s Steam Summer Sale you’ll recall that I said sales like that make PC gaming much more affordable. And that is true – aside from Animal Crossing: New Horizons and The Last of Us Part II, I haven’t paid full-price for a video game in a long time. It’s only on rare occasions, where a title is an immediate must-buy for me, that I’m willing to consider paying full price. But on consoles in particular, where sales like those on PC are less frequent and less generous, many people are stuck paying full price or close to it for most games they purchase. A £10 increase on a £54.99 title represents a price hike of 18%; a $10 rise on a $59.99 title is similar at over 16%.
If it were a black-and-white choice between paying a higher price for a complete experience versus having to buy DLC and navigate various editions, I think many gamers would be okay with the price rise. It would streamline the buying process, it would mean any game purchased would be complete without needing to buy expensive add-ons down the line, and it would be generally seen as an improvement. But no one is seriously entertaining the possibility of that being the case. The basic price of games will rise, and if we’re incredibly lucky, the prices of DLC packs and special editions will just stay the same. Those things won’t disappear because prices go up. In fact, what seems more likely to happen is that some games will hike up the prices of DLC and in-game content as well.
Gaming looks set to become a more expensive hobby going into 2021.
I’m not unsympathetic to companies who put up their prices after keeping them the same for well over a decade. But video gaming as a hobby has been growing steadily for years, and with it, the profits of games companies have grown too. While the new console generation may seem like good cover for a price hike and even a good excuse, there’s no actual reason for it. Developing a game for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 doesn’t cost substantially more than developing a game for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and when games already bring in money by the bucketload it’s hard to justify a price hike.
After the financial crash of 2007-08, it took a long time for the economy to recover. In the UK, it’s only in the last couple of years or so that austerity policies had begun to be relaxed. The coronavirus pandemic has had a massive impact on the economy all over the world, and some economists are suggesting the longer-term effects will make 2008 look like a walk in the park. Even if that’s an exaggeration, many people are not in a good financial situation at the moment, which makes it an even worse time for an arbitrary and unnecessary price rise.
However, all that being said, if the big companies of the games industry go ahead with plans to raise prices on next-generation titles, there really isn’t much we can do about it. Some have suggested boycotting games using that price, but very few online-organised gamer boycotts have ever accomplished anything. If 2K Games uses this pricing model for its other titles and other big companies follow suit, practically all new games released for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will be in that $69.99 and £64.99 price bracket. People who bought new consoles will have no choice but to buy games at that price if they want to have anything to play, and with sports games like NBA 2K21 in particular being exclusive licensed titles, it isn’t possible to shop around or go elsewhere. If you want a licensed basketball game with your favourite team and players on your new console, it’s NBA 2K21 or nothing. We need only take a cursory glance at history to see how any company that has a monopoly can get away with charging whatever it wants for that product.
The PlayStation 5 will see higher prices for games than the current-gen PlayStation 4.
As the games industry marches ever closer to an all-digital future, that extra £10 or $10 per title will all go straight back to the company. Physical game shops – like Game here in the UK or Gamestop in North America – have been on incredibly shaky ground for years; if the coronavirus pandemic and months of closure hasn’t killed them off they won’t last much longer. With no need to share the extra money their games bring in with shops – as well as needing to produce an ever-decreasing number of physical copies of games anyway – companies look set to enjoy a significant increase in profits on a per-unit basis. If games were profitable at $59.99 or £54.99, they’re now raking in potentially 16-18% more revenue – and that’s all pure profit.
It’s true that a significant amount of money earned by big games companies is re-invested in making new games, and we shouldn’t ignore that as it potentially means bigger budgets for some titles – hopefully leading to better and more polished experiences. But a lot of that money goes to shareholders and investors, as well as to highly-paid CEOs and managers. Raising prices for consumers at a time of international crisis to reward a tiny number of shareholders, investors, and corporate leaders is pretty unfair.
At the end of the day, across-the-board price hikes are going to happen. 2K may have gone first, but sooner or later others will follow. Maybe the backlash – though it seems fairly muted right now – will be offputting in 2020 given all the issues in the global economy, meaning some companies hold off. But even if they wait until 2021 or 2022, the days where games cost $59.99 or £54.99 are numbered.
All titles mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studio and/or publisher. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
This column touches on the sensitive topic of gambling addiction and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
A few days ago, the British House of Lords (the upper chamber of the UK Parliament; roughly equivalent to the US Senate) asked the British government to urgently intervene and regulate lootboxes. The House of Lords Gambling Committee, which is responsible for advising on gambling legislation in the UK, has recommended that lootboxes – in-game mechanics which dish out random rewards in exchange for money – be regulated under the Gambling Act.
I touched on this topic while writing a column on video game addiction a few weeks ago. Not every case where an individual has developed gaming disorder is related to lootboxes and randomised rewards, but the two are more closely tied together than many people realise. For example, I’ve heard anecdotally from some gamers who had been treated for gambling addiction in the past, for whom games had become an escape. The introduction of lootboxes made some games inaccessible to those people, as the lootboxes were triggering the same feelings that they used to get from gambling.
The UK House of Lords.
Some journalists and critics have long argued against lootboxes for this very reason. For several years, the issue didn’t receive much attention. But in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding Star Wars Battlefront II in 2018, lootboxes hit the mainstream media in a big way. Efforts to bring in regulation kicked off in jurisdictions from Hawaii to Belgium and beyond, and it’s around this time that the UK government began to investigate the practice, culminating in the House of Lords Gambling Committee making this recommendation.
I mentioned Belgium, and the small European nation is one of only a handful where lootboxes are strictly regulated. Several EA Sports titles – most prominently the FIFA series of football games – were impacted by this, and had to make changes in order to remain on sale in Belgium, cutting out their paid-for lootboxes. With no disrespect meant to Belgium, a small country with a small population doesn’t really effect a big company’s bottom line in a major way. While EA and others protested the decision, they were able to absorb and essentially ignore its impact, and continue to sell lootboxes in other juriscictions. What is needed is an international approach.
A bigger country like the UK will be far more noticeable, if indeed strict regulation of the practice is brought in. But even so, if it’s profitable to sell these in-game items elsewhere and games can be easily adapted to strip them out for the UK market, companies will almost certainly continue to sell lootboxes in other countries for as long as they can.
Belgium was one of the first countries in the world to take a hard line on lootboxes. Photo Credit: fdecomite on Flickr via Wikimedia Commons
Much of the controversy and argument surrounding lootboxes is whether they should technically qualify as “gambling”. What is the definition of the word? Is the fact that we’re dealing with digital items relevant? If the items can’t be re-sold, do they have any “real-world value”? All of these questions and more are part of the discussion, and there are arguments on both sides. However, in a lot of cases, in-game items obtained via lootboxes can indeed be re-sold, either through a game’s own in-game marketplace or through third-party websites often termed the “grey market”. This does vary depending on the game, but it’s not right to say that the practice of re-selling in-game items doesn’t exist anywhere.
The basic way lootboxes operate is like this: players either purchase a lootbox directly, with their local currency via a credit or debit card, or they must first purchase some form of in-game currency which is pegged to their local currency at a set rate. The lootbox then randomly decides what item is contained within by a complicated algorithm. Some of the rarest and most valuable in-game items can have incredibly small chances to be obtained – in some cases far below 1%. Many items come in sets, with players who aim to complete a set having to purchase tens or even hundreds of lootboxes to unlock everything. Furthermore, many items are only available for a limited period of time, with the clear intention of driving lootbox sales before the time is up.
The legal loophole here, as mentioned above, is that because the items are deemed to have no “real-world value” – because they’re simply in-game items – the process of spending money to gain a random item isn’t “technically gambling”. What the House of Lords Gambling Committee is saying is that this loophole can be closed – today, in theory – without making any major changes to the law. They have essentially said that lootboxes can be regulated in the same manner as other “games of chance”, and because they look and feel like gambling, and trigger the same feelings in players, they should be treated as such.
Lootboxes should be categorised alongside other “games of chance”, according to the House of Lords Gambling Committee.
It’s worth pointing out that the work of the House of Lords Gambling Committee wasn’t focused solely on lootboxes and was in fact a broader report looking at the state of gambling in the UK as a whole. Another issue related to video games that was touched on was the issue of gambling in e-sports. This really does seem like a case where big games companies want to have their cake and eat it too. On the one hand they’ll argue to players and governments that nothing they do is even close to gambling. On the other hand they’ll get in bed with gambling websites and betting shops, bragging to them about how much money e-sports gambling can bring in. Surely they can’t have it both ways!
Because video gaming always has been a child-friendly hobby, with many games deliberately aimed at under-18s and/or being rated by the industry’s own ratings body as being suitable for children, this report focuses in part on children. Children having access to games with in-game lootboxes has been a problem in some way or other for years – every few weeks another case will hit the news where a child spent an insane sum of money on something like FIFA Ultimate Team or even Overwatch. Many of these games are designed to present lootboxes in a visually appealing way, often with any mention of money in small print or hidden behind the wall of in-game currencies, further detaching players from how much they’re spending. In a world where more and more transactions take place digitally, and where money is little more than numbers on a screen, it can be very easy to overspend, even for adults.
Some of the games industry’s defenders will say that it’s the responsibility of parents and caregivers to supervise children and ensure they don’t overspend or have issues with lootboxes. But this in itself is a tacit admission that such games and such in-game marketplaces are unsuitable for children. How can a game possibly be rated for ages 3+ or 7+ if a significant part of it is not suitable for children? Think about it like this – if a film received a U rating (suitable for all audiences) but contained a ten-minute graphic sex scene, I think most people would agree that even if the other hour-and-a-half of the film was 100% child-friendly, the fact that one significant part of it is not should mean the film as a whole is considered unsuitable and should receive an appropriate rating. In short, if your game requires constant parental supervision due to the potential for children to gamble with their parents’ credit cards, the game as a whole is not suitable for children.
Are games with lootboxes really suitable for ages 3+?
The games industry and their self-regulatory body PEGI disagrees. While they have recently relented and agreed to put warning labels on general microtransactions, the fundamental point that in-game gambling is not suitable for kids is something they haven’t been able to address. And this is part of a broader point – self-regulation in the games industry doesn’t work, as indeed it doesn’t work in any other industry. The reason laws exist regulating, for example, tobacco sales is because the tobacco industry proved unwilling and unable to self-regulate and work to keep cigarettes away from children. Video games are in a similar position, and when an industry is unregulated – as games essentially are – sooner or later governments have to step in.
After much debate, PEGI did eventually agree to warn gamers of microtransactions – not even lootboxes specifically – by affixing a warning label to titles that contain them. However, this was still too much for some games companies, who began to evade even this tiny step toward regulation. By releasing a game without lootboxes, then implementing them later via a patch or update, not only could games bypass the PEGI rules during their crucial first days and weeks on sale, but reviews – which typically mention in-game lootboxes and other microtransactions – would completely omit them. It was sneaky and duplicitous, and proof that some games companies are willing to go to comical lengths to avoid even the smallest amount of regulation and criticism.
PEGI’s “in-game purchases” warning label.
As more and more games are purchased digitally, warning labels on boxes are far less important anyway. Fewer people than ever even see the warnings, and while technically PEGI age ratings are legally enforceable – though they only have been in the UK since 2012 – in practice it’s very uncommon for anyone to be prosecuted for selling a game to someone under the PEGI-recommended age, at least here in the UK. And again, to reemphasise the point, as gaming as a whole moves ever-closer to an all-digital future, where games are bought from home via the internet, there’s no one to prosecute for selling a game to someone underage anyway.
Because of the failure of self-regulation, and the insistence of big games companies on pushing further and further toward in-game economies based on gambling, regulation has seemed an inevitability for some time. Star Wars Battlefront II may have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, but if that game hadn’t come along, sooner or later another title would’ve and we’d be in the same situation. Those of us who follow video gaming more closely have known for a long time that lootboxes are gambling. They behave like gambling, even the games they’re in treat them like gambling, and it was only a matter of time before governments did too.
While I for one welcome this tentative step to regulating lootboxes – if indeed the UK government goes ahead and implements the recommendation – what is really needed is comprehensive regulation of video games in general. An independent body – not PEGI, which is merely an arm of big games companies – needs to have the authority to regulate games properly. And if games companies attempt to get around restrictions – such as by cutting out lootboxes and implementing them post-release via an update – they need to be punished. This needs to be the first step toward proper regulation of games companies and the games industry, to ensure that when lootboxes are regulated out of existence they can’t simply start up an equally harmful practice.
2018’s Star Wars Battlefront II brought the issue of lootboxes to a head.
Lootboxes are more than a mere annoyance. People have seen their lives ruined, with debts incurred to the tune of thousands or even tens of thousands of pounds. Video game companies like to brag to investors about so-called “whales” – an industry term for the small percentage of players who spend a lot of money on in-game purchases. This derogatory, dehumanising term exposes what they really think of their players: not even human beings any more, we’re animals to be exploited. They won’t stop trying to wring every last penny out of their players until they are forced to – which is why I hope that this recommendation is implemented swiftly and in full, putting a stop to companies preying on vulnerable people.
To paraphrase something I said when discussing video game addiction, it isn’t enough to say “well I don’t have a problem with gambling, so it must be fine”. That is a blinkered and selfish way to look at the topic. For many people, including many children and parents, lootboxes are a real menace, and often the consequences are seen far too late when money has already been lost. If you personally don’t buy lootboxes – as I don’t myself – then that’s great. Good for you. But the practice is harmful to many gamers, and there can be no denying that the implementation of lootboxes makes many games worse. In order to make lootboxes appealing, in-game content which could be acquired through normal gameplay – as games of the past offered – has to be cut and hidden behind a paywall and randomised rewards. These are designed to look exciting and to give players a feeling comparable to playing a slot machine or a game in a casino. Winning may feel good – but it often costs a lot of money to buy enough lootboxes in order to “win”. The only real winners are the games companies themselves.
Lootboxes make games less enjoyable.
Because in many cases in-game items can be resold – if not within the game itself then almost certainly via the online “grey market” – the last technical defence of lootboxes falls away. There is something of “real-world value” contained within each lootbox; if there wasn’t, no one would be buying them. The practice is gambling, it’s just taken time for governments to catch up to the reality of the situation. That’s understandable in a way – technology moves fast, after all – but it’s a great argument for setting up proper, independent regulation of video games to ensure that this is the last time they’re able to get away with something like this.
With video games being more profitable than ever – and with prices for games set to rise next generation (check back for my thoughts on that in the coming days) – there’s no excuse for lootboxes. They aren’t necessary to help make games more cost-efficient. Gaming as a hobby continues to grow, and with that growth companies can sell more and more copies of games and bring in ever-increasing amounts of cash. Lootboxes are nothing more than exploitative in-game gambling, and it’s high time we got rid of them permanently.
It took a long time to get here. It’s a story of failed self-regulation, corporate greed, and attempts to suppress valid criticism. I truly hope that now a major investigation has taken place, regulation will follow.
The House of Lords Gambling Committee report referenced in this article may be found by following this link (warning: leads to an external site): House of Lords Gambling Committee. Header image courtesy of the user Tristan Surtel on Wikimedia Commons. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
This column deals with the sensitive topic of addiction, and may be uncomfortable for some readers.
In 2018 the World Health Organisation surprised and upset a number of fans of video games when it formally designated “gaming disorder” as a distinct clinical condition. The reaction was, sadly, predictable, and boiled down to some variant of the following argument: “I’m not addicted to video games! Therefore video games can’t possibly be addictive!” Many commentators and outlets that focus on video gaming piled on with complaints and criticism, and the result is that the subject is still controversial even today, almost two years on from the WHO’s initial decision.
I’m not a doctor or psychologist, but I wanted to take a moment to defend the decision to categorise gaming disorder/video game addiction as a separate condition, because I feel that too many people who don’t really understand the topic had a knee-jerk reaction to attack it. To them it felt like an attack on their hobby, and perhaps what we can gleam from that is that the messaging surrounding the decision could have been better and clearer.
Firstly, the commentators who criticised the decision, even those who work for major publications, are universally not medical professionals. Their knowledge of the subject is limited at best, nonexistent at worst, and quite frankly having a bunch of uninformed people criticising doctors for a medical decision is comparable to conspiracy theories like the anti-vaccine movement or the Earth being flat. The people who made the decision to categorise video game addiction in this way are qualified to do so, and they will have made their decision on the basis of investigations and evidence, all of which has been peer-reviewed. The people who took offence to the decision simply aren’t on that level.
The biggest problem some people seemed to have is that the decision felt like an attack on gaming as a hobby. Many people have long derided games, dismissing them as children’s toys and even blaming gaming for criminal and violent acts, so I can understand why, to some people, this felt like just another attack in a long line. But it isn’t, because the designation of gaming disorder in no way says that all video games are a problem or that all gamers are addicts. The classification of alcoholism as a disease doesn’t mean that the vast majority of drinkers are alcoholics; no sensible person would even dream of making that argument. Alcoholism affects a small minority of drinkers, just as gaming disorder affects a small minority of gamers. And no one is trying to say otherwise.
Something that can become a problem for one person isn’t going to be a problem for everyone. Many gamers – by far the majority – play games in a sensible and responsible way, enjoying their hobby without allowing it to dominate their life. But some people will take it too far, and will allow it to take over, perhaps as an expression of other mental health issues but perhaps simply because they allowed it to get out of hand.
Choosing to classify gaming disorder as a separate and distinct condition means that more studies can be performed in the field, more information disseminated to psychiatrists and other healthcare professionals, and the result of these things is that for those people who do suffer, better help, and help more tailored to their specific problem, will be available. This can only be a good thing, as it will mean more people will have access to specialist help.
In order to meet the criteria for an individual to even be suspected of having gaming disorder, there’s actually quite a high bar. The most important factor is that their gaming is having a detrimental effect on their life. This could manifest in many ways, which will vary from person to person.
When I was a student at university many years ago, I witnessed gaming disorder firsthand. I was living in a rented apartment which I shared with just one other person, and this person (who will of course remain nameless) became addicted to video games. The individual in question was, like me, an exchange student, which is how we met and how we came to share an apartment. He had friends back home who he liked to play games with, and this was around the time that online gaming was just taking off. He would spend endless hours playing an online game, often late into the night, and over the span of a few weeks it began to have a huge impact on his life. He stopped attending classes, which saw him end up in a mess of trouble with the university as he failed every class that semester. His parents found out, which caused personal problems for him with his family, and his failure to pay rent – despite promising me he’d paid his share – almost wound up getting the pair of us evicted. This was in addition to the weight he lost from not eating properly, the destroyed social relationships with other exchange students at the university, and the missed opportunities to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience of living in another country. Ever since then I’ve used his story as a warning, because his addiction to gaming had serious and lasting consequences.
There is a happy ending to this individual’s story, however, and that is that he did eventually get his life back on track and scale down his gaming. When we parted ways we didn’t keep in touch, so I can’t be certain he’s still living his best life, but as of the last time we were together it definitely seemed that he was moving in the right direction. It took an intervention from his family – who flew halfway around the world to see him after he failed all of his classes – and a twice-weekly therapy appointment to get him to that point, though.
Any time someone tells me that they know loads of people who play games who aren’t addicted, I tell them the story of my ex-roommate, and make the same point: “just because it hasn’t happened to you or someone you care about doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened to anyone.”
I hope that nobody tries to use the designation of gaming disorder to attack what is for most people a fun and innocent hobby. That would be counterproductive, and would lead to people who genuinely have issues with gaming addiction finding it harder to get help. But so far, that doesn’t seem to have happened. The designation is just that: a clinical classification designed to help that small minority of people who have a problem.
It’s worth noting that some games, especially in recent years, have gone out of their way to introduce potentially addictive elements to their gameplay. In particular we can look at lootboxes and randomised rewards, which in many games are little more than gambling – often using real-world money. There are frequent news stories, some of which end up in the mainstream media, of individuals who end up spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on these in-game “micro” transactions. In one case last year here in the UK, a child inadvertently spent his parents’ entire monthly wages in a game.
Putting a warning label of some kind on games that have in-game “micro” transactions is definitely a good idea, but in an era where physical sales of games in boxes (where such a label would be affixed) are in terminal decline, that probably won’t be good enough. And as I noted from my former roommate’s experience, which came long before such in-game transactions were commonplace, gaming addiction doesn’t always manifest with titles that have such systems in place.
We also have to be careful how we use the terminology of addiction – and of mental health in general, but that’s a separate point. When reading reviews of new titles, I often see the word “addictive” thrown around as if it were a positive thing: “this new game is incredibly addictive!” That kind of normalisation and misuse of the term can be problematic, as affected people may simply brush off their addiction by thinking that’s how everyone plays the game. I feel that writers have a certain responsibility to try to avoid this kind of language. Presenting addictiveness as a positive aspect could indirectly contribute to real harm. I’m sure I’ve made this mistake myself on occasion, but it’s something I hope to avoid in future.
Gaming addiction, like other addictions, is a complex problem that is not easily solved. It’s no easier for someone suffering from some form of gaming disorder to “just turn off the console” than it is for an alcoholic to “just stop drinking vodka”. The temptation is always present and it can be overwhelming. Anyone suggesting that it’s a simple case of “just stopping”, as if it were that easy, doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Again, it comes back to the point I made earlier: just because it might that easy for you doesn’t mean it is that easy for everybody. One person’s subjective experience is not a complete worldview; many people find it impossible to break the cycle of addiction without help. This classification has the potential to make more specialised help available, which is the primary reason I support it.
So that’s my take on the subject. Gaming can be addictive, and for a small number of people, that addiction can cause real harm and create lasting problems for themselves and their families. Recognising this reality is a good first step if it means more research can be conducted into the subject as that will hopefully lead to better and more effective treatments for people whose gaming addiction requires outside intervention. I’ve seen firsthand how this can happen, and I have absolutely no time for the argument that goes: “well I don’t have a problem with gaming addiction, so it must be fine for everyone!” That is a blinkered and selfish way to look at the subject.
For anyone reading this who thinks they may be affected by gaming disorder or video game addiction, I’ve prepared a quick checklist of questions you can ask yourself. If you find yourself answering “yes” to any of the points below, I would suggest you reach out to someone who can help – talking to a friend, family member, or someone you trust could be a great first step, and of course professional medical help is always available.
Question #1: Do you find yourself thinking about video games all the time, and planning ways to get back to your game as quickly as possible if interrupted?
Question #2: Have you missed important events – such as work, school, meetings, or other appointments – because you couldn’t tear yourself away from gaming?
Question #3: Do you find yourself unhappy, depressed, angry, or irritated while not gaming? And/or would you say that your happiness is inextricably tied to gaming?
Question #4: Have you ever lied about how much time you spend gaming to cover it up? And/or do you break rules or limits set by others on how much time you may spend gaming?
Question #5: Have you tried to spend less time gaming but failed?
Question #6: Do your friends, family members, or people close to you ever tell you that you spend too much time gaming? And/or do you feel that you have neglected your relationship(s) as a result of gaming?
Question #7: Do you forget to eat or skip meals because of gaming? Do you skip showering or fail to take care of basic hygiene and grooming because of gaming?
While not everyone who answers “yes” to the above questions will be an addict, these points do indicate that something may be amiss with your relationship with gaming.
At the end of the day, if you’re happy with your life and gaming is a hobby, that’s okay. If it isn’t causing any harm to yourself or other people, there is no problem. But for some people gaming can get to a point where it stops being a harmless bit of fun and becomes something more sinister: an addiction. Missing important events, skipping school, neglecting friends, skipping meals, skipping showers, etc. are all points which can indicate an individual’s relationship with gaming is becoming unhealthy, and if you recognise these signs in yourself, I encourage you to reach out and get help.
Yes, gaming disorder or gaming addiction is a real phenomenon. The World Health Organisation did not invent it, all they have done is classify it and formally recognise what many people have known for a long time – that it is real. Far from being an attack on gaming as a hobby, this should be seen as a positive thing, as it has the potential to help affected individuals get better and more appropriate help.
This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Readers outside the United Kingdom may not be aware of the concept of a television license. To briefly summarise: in order to be lawfully allowed to watch live television broadcasts on any channel, every British household must purchase a license. Money collected from the television licensing system funds the British Broadcasting Corporation – aka the BBC. The BBC runs several television channels and radio stations.
This funding method has existed in some form since the founding of the BBC in the 1920s, when a radio license was required to receive BBC radio transmissions. Prior to that, a separate license had existed for radio sets since 1906.
During the Second World War, the BBC suspended television broadcasts, and when these resumed in 1946, the first official license specifically for televisions was introduced. Television ownership increased dramatically in the early 1950s – especially in 1953 as people scrambled to watch the Queen’s coronation. And the BBC has kept this funding method ever since.
In those days, it made sense. The BBC was the only television broadcaster in the UK, and it had to get its money from somewhere. By introducing a separate tax – because the TV license is a tax, no matter what anyone may claim – that didn’t go into government coffers, the BBC could be operationally independent from the government, and thus be free to criticise it without accusations of bias.
TV licensing funds the BBC (1980s-90s logo pictured).
The TV license is a tax on television owners. But unlike almost every other tax in the UK, it’s a regressive tax – that is, it disproportionately affects poor people. Most taxes are progressive – i.e. the more money you earn or have, the more you’re supposed to pay in tax as a percentage. Someone earning £14,000 a year pays less tax as a percentage of their income than someone earning £140,000 a year. But the television license costs the same regardless of income and regardless of wealth – meaning for someone on a low income, it’s a much larger cost proportionally. Therefore the television license hits working class and low-income households hardest.
This problem has existed since the TV license was first introduced. In its earliest days, however, it cost a lot less even allowing for inflation. It was only when colour television was introduced in 1968 that costs shot up close to the levels people are paying today. And in 1968, when colour television was a luxury that comparatively few people had, there’s a certain logic in pricing it accordingly. But unfortunately, even as colour television has become universal, the license’s high cost has remained.
A television license, which is valid for twelve months, is currently priced at £157.50 – that’s approximately $195. And in order to stay on the right side of the law, households must pay the license fee every single year without fail. Refusal to do so – even on legitimate grounds – results in harassment from the BBC’s “enforcement division”. They start by writing threatening letters, with BOLD BLOCK CAPITALS warning of an investigation into your lack of a license. They threaten you with in-home visits akin to having a bailiff show up, and often these people will be pushy, rude, and downright aggressive if they do pay you a visit. Even if you tell the TV licensing people that you don’t need to purchase a license as you don’t watch television, the letters still show up every so often.
My fundamental reason for opposing the license fee boils down to this: it’s out of date. In a world with cable and satellite television offering literally 500+ channels, and with the number of basic “freeview” channels approaching 100, forcing every household in the country to pay a tax that funds a tiny number of channels – which many people may not ever watch – is unfair. That’s not to mention the existence of streaming platforms and the internet. In short, the television license may have been well-suited to 1920 – or even 1970 – but there is no justification for it in 2020.
The BBC is a bloated organisation, too, and many of its financial decisions are questionable at best. Public service broadcasting in 2020 needs to fill a niche – it needs to offer something that commercial services aren’t due to those things being non-viable. Strictly Come Dancing, The Great British Bake-Off, Match of the Day, and many, many other shows simply do not fall into this category. Other television networks can – and do – make comparable shows, and the BBC doesn’t even do these shows better than the competition. Even a show like Doctor Who would be snapped up by another network if it were for sale. The cost of some of these programmes runs into the tens of millions of pounds – and that’s taxpayers’ money. Tax money, collected from people who can ill afford to pay the inflated rates, is being used to fund mediocre entertainment shows in 2020. I can’t be the only one who finds that utterly obscene.
Strictly Come Dancing is one of many shows that can and should be produced by other networks.
In fact I’m not – and there’s a growing number of people who, like me, opt not to pay the television license. In my case the decision was a simple one: I don’t watch live television any more. I haven’t for a number of years, and I have no plans to start again. When Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, and other services exist, there’s almost no point. The kinds of shows I like to watch are readily available to me via streaming platforms, and if I want to catch up on the news I can read the headlines any time I like online. Several newspapers offer paid subscriptions to their content, and honestly I’d rather pay that than pay the television license. The last BBC show that I was close to being a regular viewer of was Doctor Who, and as I’ve explained in the past, I gave up on that show as the quality declined.
BBC shows are often sold to other networks outside the UK. The money raised from selling the rights to some of the organisation’s most popular series, like Top Gear or Doctor Who, gives the BBC an additional source of funding – demonstrating clearly that some of its content is commercially viable, and providing another great argument for scrapping this unfair tax.
The issue of abolishing the television license seems to face three hurdles: the first is nostalgia for the “good old days” when the BBC was the only game in town, the second is fear of what will happen to its content, and the third is that currently the BBC doesn’t run any commercials, which is something people appreciate. While nostalgia and brand loyalty can be difficult to overcome, the second two points are easily solved. Firstly, the BBC’s content will still be made. As happened with The Great British Bake-Off, other channels and networks will buy up the best properties. They may even keep the same name, logo, format, and even presenters. Some minor shows may fall by the wayside, but the best ones will be snapped up. Secondly, one of the options for the BBC’s future will be a paid-subscription model, and in such a case it may not need to have ad breaks. Even if they choose not to go down that route, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, and other online streaming services don’t run ads, so there are great options for ad-free viewing. I think as more people try out one or more of these services and see how easy they are to use and how much content is available, that last hurdle in particular will melt away.
Some people have claimed that the BBC’s news output – and the BBC World Service in particular – is somehow vital and alone is worth the cost of the television license. The World Service is a separate entity, broadcasting on shortwave and often being received in parts of the world where international news is difficult to obtain. But again, as the internet and smartphones become readily available in the World Service’s main markets, like central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, this is getting harder to justify. Secondly, there’s no reason why the World Service couldn’t continue in some form, funded directly by the government through general taxation. As for the BBC’s main domestic news broadcasts, well let’s just say there’s a reason why television journalists are about as popular as stepping in dog shit. There are a number of other news broadcasters in the UK, as well as international broadcasters whose output can be received via cable or satellite. Nothing the BBC does, not even its news, is essential any more. And to burst the last bubble, the BBC’s news output is no less biased than Sky, ITV, or other major broadcasters. They haven’t been impartial for a long time.
The logo of the TV Licensing organisation.
The question of the BBC’s future crops up if we talk about abolishing the television license. I wouldn’t expect the organisation to simply be shut down, at least not immediately. It would likely try to continue in some form, either by using the aforementioned subscription model, or by implementing commercial breaks. It would be a change, but if the BBC could trim the fat and downsize, producing less content but becoming more specialised, there’s no reason it couldn’t stand on its own and be financially viable.
The BBC charter – which includes the television license – is renewed every ten years. The last renewal was in 2017 and will thus expire in 2027. There is ample time for the BBC to make extensive arrangements to find an alternate method of funding. There are seven full years for the necessary arrangements to be made, allowing the license fee to cease to exist in 2027 in a way that is fair to the organisation. It would be a minor upset to some people, sure, but the way entertainment has shifted online in the last two decades shows no signs of slowing down, so by 2027 I think it’s not unfair to assume that more and more content will be consumed that way. Thus the BBC will be even more outdated than it already is. It will require some bold action from the government to swing the axe, so to speak, but it will be worth it in the long run. Abolishing the license fee is actually a popular policy position – whenever the public have been polled on the issue in recent years, abolishing the television license altogether has been by far the most-preferred option.
This regressive tax, which hits the lowest-income households hardest, needs to go. It’s simply not fit for purpose any more, and in 2020 there’s no longer any reasonable justification for it. Our media landscape is so diverse now that there isn’t any need for the BBC in its current form. It’s high time to scrap the television license.
Watching live television in the UK without a license is illegal, and I do not condone failing to abide by the law. There can be legal consequences for non-payment if payment is determined to be required. This article is designed to be informative about the practice of television licensing, and to argue that the tax should be abolished altogether through lawful means; it is not advocating non-payment of the license fee where payment is necessary, nor should anything said above be interpreted in that manner. This article contains the the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Just to get this out of the way, when I say “football” I mean “soccer” – that’s what we call the sport here in the UK.
Football is one of the world’s biggest forms of entertainment. Top professional leagues regularly bring in huge television audiences, and the quadrennial World Cup is viewed by billions of people around the world. While we have yet to really feel the impact of the coronavirus pandemic in the world of televised entertainment – aside from a few shows like soap operas which have either cut down their episodes or gone on hiatus – football has seen the biggest, most immediate impact. Cinema is of course affected too.
Here in the UK, many questions have been raised about how football clubs have handled the pandemic. Some Premier League teams, which are highly profitable and employ players making hundreds of thousands of pounds per week, have been justly criticised for placing non-playing staff on leave, with British taxpayers expected to foot the bill for their unpaid salaries while the pandemic goes on. Some of these clubs have since reversed their decisions, motivated, no doubt, by the outpouring of public anger at the move. Others have not, and will continue to furlough their staff for as long as they can get away with it.
The Premier League is the top division in English football.
Many of the Premier League’s top clubs are owned by individuals or business consortiums which have literally billions of pounds at their disposal, which is why people have been so angry at them. At a time when everyone in the country is expected to play their part and work together to overcome an event that is unprecedented since the Second World War, some super-rich clubs are behaving as though that’s somehow beneath them.
The players themselves aren’t much better. Many players, including some at the top clubs in the Premier League, aren’t excessively wealthy, and the income a player can expect to make decreases the further down the rankings their club is. But some players do earn mega-bucks – hundreds of thousands of pounds per week, often with bonuses on top of that. And so far, the Premier League’s players, both individually and collectively, have chosen not to take a pay cut. There was talk a couple of weeks ago at a laughable 30% cut, which seems to have recently been revised down to 25%, but thus far even this has not been enacted and many of the league’s top stars are still drawing these eye-watering salaries as the season enters its second month of being suspended.
As with the clubs themselves, some of these players seem to think that there’s one rule for the people of the country and another for them. At a time when everyone is having to make cutbacks and sacrifices, players and their association are not willing to do so. Some individuals have made contributions to charity, but by no means all of them have. A voluntary charitable donation, however nice that may be on the surface, is not the same as taking a significant pay cut to allow their clubs to retain non-playing staff and to reduce the burden on taxpayers and the country’s debt.
Public anger at these clubs will continue to grow, and clubs should not expect all to be forgiven when play can eventually resume. From a PR point of view, they need to get a handle on this immediately to avoid long-term damage to the reputation of not just individual clubs, but the leagues and sport themselves.
As we see in the United States in particular, some people are becoming impatient with the ongoing suspension to normal life, and we have already begun to see individuals and businesses campaigning for restrictions to be lifted – even though the pandemic and the dangers it poses to individuals and the healthcare system has not abated. We could talk all day about the merits of closing large parts of the economy, and while there’s nothing wrong with asking questions, we have to be prepared to hear answers we don’t like. We also have to understand and appreciate that, under circumstances such as these, not all opinions are equally valid. A researcher who is an expert in virology is going to be far better-placed to answer the question of how and when to ease restrictions than a football club executive who’s concerned about his club’s bottom line.
At time of writing, the lockdown in the UK is expected to last a minimum of three more weeks. Personally, as someone with health issues, I’d been advised by my doctor to stay at home and self-isolate for twelve weeks, and the earliest I could expect that advice to change would be in late June or early July. The lockdown presents football with a huge problem – with the season around three-quarters complete, what should happen?
Thus far, they have opted to kick the can down the road and say that they will simply resume the season when they believe it would be safe to do so – and most analysts expect this would take place with no spectators present. But with no end to the lockdown imminent, and a need to complete the season by the end of June for contractual reasons, football is in a bind. There are major contracts between both players and clubs and the leagues themselves and television companies. These contracts involve vast sums of money, and no one wants to be out of pocket. Many clubs also have sponsorship deals which begin and end on the 30th of June.
A football stadium.
While there are several options, all of them have downsides. Recommencing the season before it is safe to do so would go against government advice, and quite probably the law. Even if it were deemed safe to restart play in May, this would mean players would have to fit in many more games into a far shorter window than they are used to, which could arguably affect the outcome of the season overall. Continuing the season past the 30th of June and into the summer would not only be a huge issue due to the contracts mentioned above, but would also mean clubs would have to cut out lucrative foreign tours which, for some teams, are a significant part of their annual revenue. Players would have little to no time to rest between seasons, and despite what some people feel about these players “only playing 90 minutes a week”, the amount of training and effort required for a player to perform at their peak when it comes to match day is intense, so they do need a break sometimes.
Another option would be to cancel next season altogether, and simply resume the current season in the autumn/winter months, perhaps with more friendly matches or a new tournament to make up the difference in the number of matches. This poses a number of issues for legal and contractual reasons, and doesn’t seem to have been seriously considered at this stage.
If the season has to be abandoned, the big issue that comes into play is fairness. For Liverpool, riding high at the top of the Premier League where they’ve been all season, not being declared champions is unfathomable. Yet a club like Aston Villa, currently battling to escape relegation, would surely argue that if the season had been able to finish they would have had a chance to avoid that fate. Money is also a huge factor – Premier League clubs get a huge amount of money each season from selling the television rights to their games, rights which are worth far less in lower divisions. So a club on the brink of promotion to the Premiership, like Fulham or Leeds, would want to see the season conclude with every team being allowed to move up or down in accordance with their current standings.
In the case of an abandoned or incomplete season, the choice between declaring it “null and void” or using current standings to promote and relegate clubs is huge. The Premier League may opt to try to fudge things, accepting promoted clubs from the Championship without relegating anyone, but this would only serve to further complicate matters.
How someone feels about this is undoubtedly going to be coloured by their favourite team’s status. Those hoping for a promotion will be wanting their team’s current league position to count, and those desperate to avoid relegation will want the whole season expunged if it can’t be completed. My club, AFC Wimbledon, have spent most of the season dancing just above the relegation zone in League One, so from a selfish point of view I’d be happy if the season were declared finished at this point!
The club I support – AFC Wimbledon.
The problem is that there’s no way to satisfy every club. In a normal season, everyone knows the rules and the playing field is as equal as it can be in a sport where money matters. Some individual clubs may complain about a match not going their way because of bad refereeing, but generally speaking they all know the rules and they all accept the outcome: win or lose, promoted or relegated. But this situation is not only unprecedented, it’s one which the Premier League and the Football Association seem to have had no contingency plans for. If they did, all they would have to say is: “if the season can’t be completed, outcome X will happen”, and point to the relevant section in their contract or rulebook. But no such rule exists, and it seems to be something which will be decided at the whim of executives and the clubs themselves, which can only lead to bitter feelings and recriminations.
Football needs to learn two lessons from the pandemic. Firstly, clubs must behave like they’re part of society and the country they inhabit. Their players may be mostly foreign, they may make a lot of money from other countries, but if they’re based here they need to remain aware of that, and at times of national emergency they need to behave better. Secondly, every major football league needs to establish clear rules for contingencies where a season cannot be completed. They could have one blanket rule, or they could make different rules depending on various factors, such as how far into the season the cancellation occurs. The rules would need to be agreed on by every club, and would thus become a part of the game. That way there would be no crying foul; everyone would know what they signed up for and things wouldn’t have to be decided on the fly by executives and clubs who all have a vested interest in getting a specific outcome to the current season.
These things apply to other sports too, and with leagues and competitions in sports around the world being cancelled, suspended, and postponed, it’s important for all of them to have a coordinated response which, as far as possible, is fair and doesn’t provide anyone an unfair advantage or disadvantage.
We will get through this pandemic and the lockdown will eventually end. It may not end quickly enough for some people, however, and it may be too late for the current football season to end in time. Sooner or later, big decisions will have to be made about what to do, and those decisions should be codified into the rules of the game for the future. As depressing as it may sound, this is unlikely to be the last ever pandemic, nor the final time the football season may have to be paused, postponed, or cancelled. Establishing what to do is important, and making sure that everyone who participates knows what to expect under such circumstances is vital for the integrity of the game.
Speaking for myself, I feel that if the season cannot be completed in its entirety, the fairest thing for the majority of clubs is to annul it and to begin next season without any relegations or promotions. Every club would remain in their current division, and no championships, medals, cups, etc. should be awarded. Next season would begin where this season began, and could hopefully be completed without interruption. Even though a number of matches have already been played, if the season cannot be played in its entirety it would be unfair to award titles and to promote or relegate teams based on where they currently sit. Some clubs may have had an easy run so far, and would be enjoying a higher league place, where others may have played all their tough matches and be hoping to regain lost ground against easier opposition. If there were only one or two matches left to play, perhaps ending the season based on current standings would be okay, but not with over a quarter of the season left to play. If an individual match had to be abandoned at the three-quarter mark, the current score would not be taken as the final score. Instead the match would be rescheduled, and if that were not possible then no score would be recorded. The same principle should apply to the season, even though I can understand the counter-arguments.
However things may currently look, it’s my hope that the season can be completed. If it can’t, it won’t be good for anyone as there is no way of satisfying everyone with the options available. However, as with everything else in these highly unusual times, the decision to restart play cannot be a financial or business decision and must be made by scientists, medical professionals, and government officials.
So I know this has been a big change to what I usually write about here on the blog. I try to keep things focused on the world of entertainment, but I feel that football does at least come close to that category! I may talk about football-related topics in future if and when I have something to say, as it’s a sport I follow and have an interest in.
Until next time!
The logos used above are covered under the “fair dealing” principle – for more information see my copyright policy. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
The growth of the internet has meant that anyone can be a critic or reviewer nowadays. This website is, in a way, testament to that. I never trained as a journalist or critic, and while I took classes both at school and university on subjects like literature and creative writing, and have been a writer in my career, I’m by no means a professional critic. Nor are most bloggers, YouTubers, and others in the digital world of media criticism. While some online criticism can be of a lower standard as a result, the broader picture is that there’s much more diversity in the way we approach and think about media, with reviewers now coming from many different backgrounds instead of all being journalism majors from a select few universities. This is a good thing.
But some online critics, especially when they start to get a following, can be tempted down a deeply unethical path by companies willing to pay for positive reviews and attention. This is especially prevalent on YouTube, but the reality is it can happen anywhere, and we must all be careful what we read or watch online.
YouTube is a great place to find independent media reviewers, but some videos are adverts disguised as criticism.
This article was prompted by a video I spotted on YouTube, and while I will spare the YouTuber’s blushes by not mentioning them by name, I feel that it encapsulates a wider issue that seems to plague discussion surrounding gaming and technology in particular. The video was titled: “Final Fantasy VII Review #ad” (or words to that effect) and was a paid promotion for the newly-released remake of Final Fantasy VII posing as a review. While, to his credit, the young man did put the “ad” hashtag, calling this piece of work a “review” is unacceptable. This is, sadly, something that I see regularly and there are many examples on YouTube and many other websites, apps, and social media platforms.
Let’s be clear: a piece of work can be a review or it can be an advertisement. It cannot be both.
I’ve written adverts and reviews in my career as a writer. I started out writing marketing content for a large games company, working primarily on their website. Later, while working as a freelancer, I wrote for many different companies, often with the intention of selling their products. I know how marketing works, the kind of language used, and how scripts and articles can be written specifically to sell products. I also know, thanks to this website, what it’s like to write from the other side and express a legitimate opinion as an independent critic.
No one pays me anything for writing here on Trekking with Dennis. I paid for this website, its hosting, and its domain name. This isn’t my job, it’s a side-project for fun and to give me a small creative outlet. Not only that, but if I were ever approached by someone and asked to promote a product or service, I’d tell them that if they wanted to hire me to write for their website I’d happily take it under consideration, but that no paid-for article will ever be published here. This website exists purely to express my thoughts and opinions on the subjects I’m interested in.
Trekking with Dennis will always be independent.
There is a solid line between a review and an advertisement, and crossing that line destroys any integrity a self-proclaimed critic may have. It also damages the brand that is paying for such a promotion, as it demonstrates that they have no faith in their product to receive positive reviews on its own merits. It’s a tacit admission that their product is sub-par and that a financial incentive is necessary for anyone to look upon it favourably.
Companies count on most people ignoring the small print and simply watching the video or reading the article and seeing the product receive unadulterated praise. And the truth is that it works – many people don’t recognise or understand the difference between something paid-for and a genuine review in which the critic is able to express his or her own thoughts. Companies get away with this because they nominally comply with the rules which state a critic must be up-front about paid-for “reviews”, but they can do it in very subtle ways that mean most people don’t even notice. On YouTube, this means using the “ad” hashtag. That alone is good enough for parent company Google – the video itself need not state anywhere that it’s a paid promotion. On a blog or website, it might be included somewhere in the small print underneath the main body of text, making it easy to overlook. This is duplicitous, sneaky advertising, and on a website like YouTube, whose audience is disproportionately comprised of young people, it’s deliberately designed to be as subtle as possible so that many of them will not even be aware that a video purporting to be a “review” is in fact an advertisement.
You may have recently heard of a mobile phone game called Raid: Shadow Legends. Many YouTube channels carry ads and sponsorships for this game, and while it has come in for criticism for the way the company behind the game handles its paid promotions, they are at least clear that the game is being advertised. They make no attempts to disguise the fact that video segments dedicated to discussing the game are sponsored, and while there may be legitimate criticisms of the stilted script or the dishonesty in some of these paid promotions, they are at least clearly paid promotions and not attempting to pass themselves off as genuine criticism.
This isn’t a dig at one specific YouTuber – though I am no longer subscribed to his channel – nor even at the platform in general. People want to make money, and I understand that – especially in the current economic climate. But we need to make sure that the line between advertisement and criticism remains solid and does not become blurred, lest people lose faith in any and all forms of online criticism. For a critic to pen an article or produce a video claiming to be a genuine review while receiving payment is unacceptable, no matter what hashtag or small print they use. No one is saying they cannot produce an advertisement for that company or that product, but it must be labelled as such and not lie and try to pass itself off as something that is is not and never can be. Integrity matters.
All properties mentioned above are the copyright of their respective studios and/or publishers. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 