Gamescom’s Opening Night Live is one of three Geoff Keighley announcement events this year. Placed between the Summer Games Fest and The Game Awards, the annual ONL showcase is the clearest barometer of the health of the industry. And it’s not looking great.
Keighley’s trio of celebrations are always stocked with free-to-play games that either won’t see the light of day, or will quickly flitter out after release. Lest we forget the perils of Highguard, Wildlight Entertainment’s short-lived MOBA-FPS hybrid that the internet loved to see fail.
With this year’s Opening Night Live did feature some fantastic games—such as No Law, The Defiant, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, ONTOS, Pony Island 2 and others—it also continued to feel bogged down by gacha games, free-to-play titles, and games that feel more product than most.
In terms of free-to-play games, Opening Night Live featured the following: AION 2, Anata, PUBG Ded.Net, Silver Palace, Petit Planet, Path of Exile 2, and Like or Die. Some of these definitely have audiences, Path of Exile 2 already has a massive established audience and Silver Palace will undoubtedly be made popular by the never-ending gacha fanbase.
While it’s not kind to laser-focus the industry’s problem on any specific game, the rot of modern gaming can be seen in one clear title that took the spotlight at Opening Night Live, the aforementioned Like or Die.
Another free-to-play game, this arena-based FPS game is essentially a clone of Embark’s popular multiplayer game The Finals. Whereas The Finals was set inside a virtual game show and powered by an incredible destruction system, this title is described as a “team-based survival FPS where streamers clash in a fierce battle for survival”.
It is so clearly a clone of The Finals, albeit through the lens of modern Korean influencer culture. Character designs are flawless K-Pop stars and social media influencers, the arenas are modern Unreal Engine 5 locales that simply look like places instead of arenas, and it all feels, well, like nothing.
It’s the ultimate Game Awards fluff reveal, but it’s also the exact type of game that is being prioritised right now. While Opening Night Live does still show the art side of games—Pony Island 2 is the epitome of games as art—it also shines a spotlight on the exact titles that are chucked out at quantity in a gamble to be the next Fortnite.
Right now, shareholders are pumping billions into free-to-play multiplayer and gacha games in a bid to be the next Fortnite or Roblox. An expert single player game can make great returns, yes, but the potential to have the next multi-billion dollar success is worth enough to throw a hundred games out the door in the hopes of getting one major hit. And that’s what Summer Games Fest, Opening Night Live, and The Game Awards are increasingly showing year-on-year.
Not all of this can be thrown at the fault of host and Game Awards creator Geoff Keighley, although some of it can be. As the lead, Keighley’s job is simply to show the games. 15 years ago, the show would be filled with the game’s we know and love. Today, they’re poised to show the future, no matter how unsightly.
Between remakes, sequels, and the trough of live-service, there’s little originality within these showcases. (I mean, a 3D Rayman Legends remake that lacks the nuance and timing of its 2D original? Come on.) However, they do let sparkles of what gaming used to be sneak through.
Pony Island 2, for example, won’t be a game for everyone, but that is a video game. The Defiant might not be great when it releases, but a World War 2 single-player shooter from the Chinese point-of-view has been unseen in the medium. Metro 2039, a gorgeous single-player game created on its own engine in the middle of a war? That’s art, baby.
Even Warlock, an upcoming Dungeons and Dragons game created as part of Habsro’s billion-dollar push into gaming, is a surprise. While it probably won’t light the industry on fire like Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3 did, the upcoming RPG definitely surprised with an inventive, dynamic and inventive combat system.
Unfortunately, though, we’re likely to be stuck seeing the reveal of a new Like or Die, or a handful of them, every time Keighley pops on one of his shows while we wait with bated breath for a title actual gamers care about. Well, see ya in December, Keighley.
