Corporate monopolies might be inevitable, but they also aren’t good
When I held that monkey’s paw and wished for more games to appear on Game Pass, I didn’t meanlike this! I don’t know if anyone has been brave enough to come out and say this, but Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard is… problematic. Even before you consider the serious and unresolvedallegations of workplace misconduct at ActiBlizz, there’s no easy “this is good, actually” point of view to have here.
We recently made a topic tag to, ahem, consolidate our articles about the ongoingconsolidation of the games industry, and boy has it been ramping up in the past year or so. With this new acquisition, Microsoft becomes"the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony.“Koticksaid in an interviewabout the acquisition that “there’s more competition than we’ve ever seen for games” because, I guess, Facebook want to do games now? But…
And make no mistake: this is a shitshow. In the short term, you’ll get more games showing up in your Game Pass library. Happy days. Maybe Microsoft will remaster some weird old retro game that ActiBlizz had the rights to but had forgotten about in favour of making endless Call Of Duty games. Something you liked when you were a kid. Something that’ll get you to sign up for £1 / $1 first month to Game Pass - and then you’re in the ecosystem.
Big companies are often more risk averse, too, leading to less innovation. Decisions are made to strengthen the market position they already have, because in a monopoly you don’t need to innovate or take risks to try andgainposition. This isn’t going to free up a bunch of developers to work on weird new IP passion projects for ID@Xbox. They’ll need some games to fill up Game Pass, sure, but look me in the eye and say Microsoft is going to bankroll a load of cool experimental stuff that has a 50/50 chance of flopping. You can’t! They’ll stick to sequels of middle sized games likePsychonauts 2andHellblade2 that they know will represent decent ROI based on prior performance. But I worry how it will affect the diversity of games we’ll get in the future. Will Obsidian be able to make the neo-classic RPGs they like when Bethesda is whirring away on The Elder Scrolls andFallout? Surplus developers are more likely to shuffled into the big blockbuster mines over the ideas lab, because Microsoft will probably continue to make a Call Of Duty game every year until the heat death of the universe.
I will eat my words if Asobo suddenly announce that they’re ditching A Plague Tale and have hired some unknown devs to make a hybrid card battler/meta platformer set in space, or something. But I reckon I’ll still be having pizza and chips for my tea. Yum yum.
Thus, the bar for what is creative or innovative or even what isgoodis collectively lowered. Don’t take my word for it, just look at cinema. I like Marvel films, but I don’t likeeverythingbeing a Marvel film now. It has created a cultural context where people can watch Eternals - a film comprised almost entirely of characters stating their motivations out loud because it couldn’t figure out subtext despite a two and a half hour run time - and somehow think it is genuinely very good. The games industry is already too good at driving franchisesso far into the groundthey could be extracted as a fossil fuel, and consolidations like Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard is likely only going to make it worse.
