Video games range from silly toys for babies to life-changing works of art, all of which form an industry that rakes in billions of dollars a year. Of course, the endlessly consumerist nature of the company can't help but stir controversy, and 2023 had its share of milestones.
Let's look back at some of the most dramatic video game controversies of the past year.
THE LEGACY PROBLEM OF HOGWARTS LEGACY
Image: Avalanche Software/Warner Bros. Games
Hogwarts legacy on paper was a dream come true for gamers of a certain age. But thanks to Harry Potter author JK Rowling's constant ire for her views on trans politics, the open-world adventure was controversial as soon as it was revealed. As such, dissatisfaction with Rowling's connection with Hogwarts legacy simmered beneath the surface for years until it became a rolling boil when the game finally arrived in February 2023.
The ensuing debate was ugly and chaotic, consuming social media for months, despite the game, by most accounts, having little to offer anyone who wasn't all in on Harry Potter nostalgia. Despite Hogwarts legacy Being one of the biggest blockbusters of the year, the controversy just kind of faded away after its release…. The game received zero nominations at The Game Awards and for the most part everyone has moved on to other, more engagement-lucrative skirmishes on the seemingly endless culture war battlegrounds of the internet. Let's all hope that publisher Warner Bros. has decided to wash the whole thing off instead of ringing the bell for the second round.
UNRECORD DRAWS UNCOMFORTABLE COMPARISON WITH REAL-LIFE POLICE BODYCAM FOOTAGE
French developer DRAMA lived up to its name when co-founder Alexandre Spindler set social media ablaze with just over two minutes of gameplay from the previously unknown studio's upcoming first-person shooter. Cancel recording in April 2023. The video was (and honestly still is) an impressive demonstration of the power of Unreal Engine 5, which Cancel recording team created evocative, hyper-realistic graphics inspired by police bodycam footage. The visual quality was so far above what people expected from a small developer that some version of “this is fake” was a common response.
The controversy here isn't that the video was a hoax, believe it or not, but how Cancel recordingThe lifelike images made people feel. Because similar-looking images of police officers and mass shooters shooting innocent people have become so widespread in recent years, many viewers felt uncomfortable with the idea of an interactive video game that emulated the aesthetics of that footage. DRAMA eventually released a statement explaining this Cancel recording “is not concerned with any foreign policy and is not inspired by real life events,” but it remains a hard sell for Americans who are threatened every day by law enforcement in their country.
SIX DAYS IN FALLUJAH LEARNING LIFE
Image: Highwire Games/Victura
A video game based on the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies already felt like a bad idea when Konami first announced Six days in Fallujah in 2009, so it was surprising to see someone revive the ill-advised project after another fourteen years of dealing with the abject failure and untold tragedy of the so-called War on Terror.
“There is definitely entertainment to be made from contemporary scenarios,” Dutch-Egyptian developer Rami Ismail told Polygon earlier this year, “but the country that was waging an illegal war made a game about that illegal war in collaboration with people who were from that illegal war While it erases the humanity and environment of the people who died and (suffered) in that illegal war, while they are fully committed to erasing the actual history down to the store page description, that's just not the same . That is not entertainment, that is propaganda that you have to pay for.”
NEW UNIT COSTS Stain ITS REPUTATION
Photo: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Unity, one of the most prolific video game engines in the world, made waves in September 2023 when it announced a revised pricing model that, among other things, would charge developers every time a user downloaded and installed a game. The decision was immediately criticized by small studios and solo creators who could not keep up with these additional costs. Some developers even threatened to boycott the product altogether. It was an unmitigated disaster for everyone involved.
Although Unity attempted to roll back some changes and eventually replaced controversial CEO John Riccitiello, the company has yet to fully recover from the quick and tumultuous blow to its reputation. I think we now have a better idea why Grasshopper Manufacture is a villain which many believe is a reference to Riccitiello in Travis strikes again and then have players beat him up at the end No more heroes 3.
THE GAME AWARDS PROVOKES DEVELOPERS, ITS OWN FUTURE CLASS
Image: The Game Awards
Gaming's 'biggest night' always seems to draw criticism from critics, and so does the Game Awards 2023 was no different.
But this year's broadcast provoked even more reactions from the developers it was supposed to be celebrating. In addition to the usual high-speed presentation of multiple awards without fanfare in between lavish advertisements, the few recipients who were given time to address the audience were rushed by an off-camera monitor and asked to wrap it up after just one take. 30 seconds. This felt particularly insensitive towards winners who gave heartfelt speeches LGBTQ+ inclusion and deceased colleagues.
Also the Game Awards came under fire by his own Future class, a group of “inspirational individuals who represent the bright, bold and inclusive future of video games,” for not responding to pre-show calls for a live condemnation of Israel's ongoing war against Palestine. Geoff Keighley and Future Class members are apparently still working to resolve the issue, but the initial silence raised questions in the industry about what the group's purpose is beyond a superficial attempt to make The Game Awards more progressive corpses.
THE DAY BEFORE DISAPPOINTMENT THE DEVELOPER DISAPPEARS
Image: Fntastic/Mytona
After becoming one of the most highly anticipated games on Steam following a promising reveal trailer released two years ago, The day before dropped in early December 2023 with a sickening thud worthy of the clichéd zombie premise. An avalanche of negative user reviews pilloried the open-world MMO as a bug-filled, crash-prone mess with almost none of the promise or polish that had originally brought so much attention to the project. And somehow things just got worse from there.
Less than a week later, The day before developer Fntastic announced its closure, citing financial failures and apologizing to anyone who purchased the game. The same day Valve pulled The day before from Steam for working with publisher Mytona to refund tens of thousands of purchases. The game's servers will be shut down on January 22, 2024, shutting down the gray market that has developed around unsold and unused keys for the game and layoffs The day before to the annals (or perhaps annals) of history.
THE RISE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
In 2023, tech-worshipping entrepreneurs fled massively from the crumbling city-states of cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens to the latch on to a new flashy thing: AI. Despite the fact that reasoned individuals rightly claim that this is the case little intelligence in the current crop of so-called artificial intelligence projects, it didn't take long for AI emissaries to convince themselves that artists were a thing of the past. This did not sit well in an industry like video games, where accusations of hostility toward employees are commonplace.
Despite criticism of the technology, companies like Ubisoft have not hesitated to develop AI tools that have the potential to take humans out of the game-making process altogether. A program known as Ghostwriter, the studio announced in March 2023, will eventually help Ubisoft developers write “barks,” or all those little bits of dialogue characters shout during action scenes and the like.
“I have no doubt that the writers who are currently working with the tool and tailoring it to their needs will enjoy it or find it useful,” video game writer Janine Hawkins said of Ghostwriter in a interview with The Verge earlier this year. “But all it takes is a director to say, 'Our writers can now bark twice as much, so why do we need the same number of writers?' so that it would endanger scarce writing jobs.”
A boom in the gaming industry is ending with layoffs
Illustration by William Joel/Polygon | Images: Shutterstock
2023 may have been considered one of the best years in gaming by everyday people buying and playing video games, but it was also a year when companies were reeling from big investments and risky bets made during the COVID-19 pandemic . And when companies lose money (or in some cases simply aren't profitable enough), employees take a hit.
Embracer Group, a Swedish conglomerate that for a time seemed to gobble up every mid-market developer and publisher it could get its hands on, bore the brunt of the blows, but was far from the only casualty. Microsoft, Bethesda, 343 Industries, Bungie, Sega, Ubisoft, Epic Games, BioWare, CD Projekt, Electronic Arts, Unity, Amazon and more contributed to an estimated 10,000 layoffs.
A push for unions in the sector is driven by the hope that these situations could be easier for the workers involved, but they are still held back by having to operate within the economic incentives of conglomerates. Ultimately, the way in which change comes about can be in the hands of the employees involved.