While players around the world are suffering in Eldon's Ring of Law, on March 3, SE "quietly" launched its latest multiplayer co-op action RPG game, BABYLON'S FALL, which was first announced at E3 2018 and developed by Platinum Studios.
Arguably not surprisingly, The Fall of Babylon is very dismal. The game has been mixed in several rounds of testing before the release of the game, SE also chose to launch a $60 price in this time period, while there are a large number of microtransaction products in the game, this series of operations in the eyes of outsiders is somewhat confusing.
"The Fall of Babylon" on the first day after the launch of Steam at the same time the highest number of people online is only 650 people, although the follow-up has increased, but it has just broken through the thousand, reaching 1188 people, Steam 158 players only gave the game 51% praise, the game Metacritic media average score is only 41 points, the average player score is as low as 2.2/10 points, word of mouth sales double hit the street.
In fact, if "The Fall of Babylon" is just a simple failure project of a large factory, the author will not actually have much interest in it, after all, last year has witnessed a lot of products that have been laid out by large factories, but behind the game is a relatively rich experience in the European and American markets, whether it is research and development or distribution, se, and the other is a well-known "foundry" Platinum Studio that has cooperated with Microsoft, Nintendo and other companies.
The last collaboration between the two companies was the production of "Neil: The Age of Machinery," which was recently announced to be animated, a well-known and well-sold work.
Unlike "Neil: Age of Machinery", which has a strong flavor and distinct artistic style, from the perspective of the theme and release strategy of "The Fall of Babylon", Platinum Studios and SE's positioning of the game seems to be an RPG game that specifically caters to European and American players and Japanese companies "going to sea".
According to SteamDB data, the current release of the game is mainly concentrated in the Americas and Europe, Asia only China Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and Japan and other countries and regions have been launched, the most popular multiplayer and RPG games Chinese mainland and South Korea are not eligible for this product.
From the former "unintentional willow shading" to the current "good intentions do bad things". The failure of "The Fall of Babylon" is not only tragic, but also has certain reference value.
Here's the promo for The Fall of Babylon:
The positioning is not clear for the game
Although the title of the game is The Fall of Babylon, this cultural aside, the game has little to do with Babylon.
The story of the game is set in a seaside city after the fall of the Babylonians, and under the influence of the mysterious blue sun, a plague begins to spread from a huge "Ziggurat" to the city, and "Gallu (the demon of the two-river civilization religion)" occasionally escapes from the tower, causing a scourge to one side. "For the legendary treasure", rather than building a tight defense system like the historical Babylon, the entire city chose to stay where it was and fight the enemy until the blue sun was closed and the treasure was obtained.
As an RPG game, the story of "The Fall of Babylon" is not very exciting, coupled with the game's unpunished medieval oil painting style, which pulls the game's screen perception back to more than a decade ago, directly reducing the texture and value of the game. Although it is not as serious as the "game of the PS2 era" in the gamers, "The Fall of Babylon" does not look like a product of the same era compared to MMOos such as "New World" and "Lost Ark" in the same period.
But SE also seems to know that Platinum's biggest selling point is not in the graphics and story, the game also played the "new multiplayer cooperative action game created by Platinum Studios using their acclaimed unique fighting style", "Babylon Fall" in the combat system if it can continue platinum glory, I believe many players will still buy it.
In fact, looking at the combat experience of "The Fall of Babylon", many players still gave the game a positive evaluation. "The game's combat feels smooth and the feedback is very timely and intense", "Although the combat experience does not reach the level of Pei Jie, it is still fun".
Unfortunately, the most directly related weapons and crafting systems in the game are not satisfactory. Directly pull down the experience of the game.
Last month, SE had released a demonstration video of five weapons, and platinum official website also said that players can use up to four weapons at the same time when there are three attack modes of "standard, strong and technical", and can also release different moves, theoretically, the player's freedom of operation and the upper limit of fun of different combinations are very high.
But in the game, the combat experience of Babylon Falls is, in the words of the player, "extremely monotonous and boring" after the first two hours of excitement. The game's four weapons do not allow for smooth combos or special chain effects, and due to the characteristics of bosses, many combat players can only use specific weapons to complete the level, rather than switching and matching freely.
Although The Fall of Babylon designed a variety of weapons and attack modes, Platinum Studios used the game mechanics to separate each other into independent existences, which can be said to be half the work. On this basis, the game's poor equipment development system is even worse.
According to the player's comments, although the game can drop equipment in the early stages, after opening the construction system, the reward for each mission will drop sharply, "the reward of the treasure chest will drop by 50% to 60%, and only 1-4 required items will be dropped per mission, but the player may need 20 items to craft one equipment".
This kind of direct elongation of the player's growth cycle in the free online game is beyond reproach, placed in the buyout system of single-player games, many players who like to brush brush may not care, but "Babylon Fall" in the price of 60 US dollars at the same time, is also a pass, shops and other readily available, long-term operation of the online game.
Players from "The Fall of Babylon" can not easily experience the same price level, similar to the fun of "AAA game", but also face the SE suspected kryptonian operating methods, naturally will respond with bad reviews.
Looks like a PS2 game. Play like a free-to-play game. But it's as expensive as The Eldon's Ring of Law.
Lessons from the service game
The Fall of Babylon can be a big disappointment for many reasons.
If you pay attention to the recent series of operations of Platinum Studio, such as the change of president at the beginning of the year, Hideki Kamiya publicly called out to Microsoft in an interview, hoping to restart "Dragon Scale Avatar", "Phil! Lets do it together!", and the explicit statement that the company is "happy to be acquired" as long as the price is right, this series of practices seen by players as a side-knock on Microsoft side, it is not difficult to guess that something may be wrong within the Platinum team.
This may explain why some of Platinum's action systems in Babylon Fall are quite mediocre, but it can't explain the failure of the game as a whole, so many players have pointed the finger at service games.
Whether it's Platinum Studios or SE, this isn't the first time this awkwardly positioned service-oriented game has fallen for the first time.
First of all, Platinum, as early as 2014, Platinum had announced that it had cooperated with Microsoft to start developing "Dragon Scale Avatar", and in 2017, for reasons that had not been disclosed, after three years of research and development, the two sides announced the cancellation of the plan, when there were rumors that it was because Microsoft wanted to make "Dragon Scale Avatar" into a multiplayer online service game, and Platinum 's technology was limited" that year.
While in addition to Dragon Scale Incarnation, Platinum released five other games in three years, including Neil's Mechanical Age.
As for SE, the news that Marvel's Avengers performed so poorly that SE lost more than $48 million is still fresh in mind, but yosuke Matsuda, the president of SE at the time, also made it clear that the company would not give up service games. Although SE's loss on "The Fall of Babylon" may not be as good as "Marvel's Avengers", at present, SE is also almost in a state of no-grain.
Now that both IP derivative and original games have failed, it has become a question of how much confidence SE still has in service-oriented games and whether it will return to its comfort zone.
But the author believes that instead of blaming the fault on service-oriented games, it is better to say that the traditional stand-alone manufacturers such as SE and Platinum have not been completely transformed and will not do service-oriented games, and the most direct representative is to want to make money through in-app purchases, and also sell for $60, maintaining the traditional AAA set of business thinking.
However, more importantly, the production capacity of SE and Platinum obviously does not have the requirements to maintain the high-intensity and high-quality updates of service-oriented games, whether it is "Marvel Avengers" or "Babylon Falls", in fact, it was once difficult to compete with the boring fate.
It should be known that the comprehensive quality is quite excellent, maintaining stable updates and investing in many large-scale stand-alone games and even AAA service-oriented games, such as "The Lost Ark", "Fortnite", etc., but they are free products. Free means that players will have great tolerance and patience with the game, and for $60, players naturally have the freedom to judge the product by the standard of nitpicking.
Looking at the micro-transactions of companies such as EA, the eyes are red, there is no EA's production capacity and operational capabilities, and at the same time, they can't put themselves down as a stand-alone old factory, and repeating the same mistakes can be said to be predictable results
epilogue:
Platinum is not capable of playing well, whether it is "Neil Mechanical Age" and other former products, or Platinum's past that every time platinum falls to a low point, it will have a big factory to pull a hand, in fact, it is enough to prove the ability of the studio. Is that the reason for SE? Naturally not entirely.
The author believes that this is more like a kind of confusion in the face of the general trend of the industry and the pain that must be experienced when transforming. Japan's status as the center of the game industry has long gone, but fortunately at the beginning of this century, although the center of the game industry has shifted, online games have also risen, but the content that the traditional stand-alone manufacturers are good at is still strong, but 20 years have passed, and stand-alone machines and buyouts have also come to an important node.
On the one hand, Nintendo, Capcom, etc. have found their own unique models, and the wind direction in the industry has changed rapidly, and I have not moved; on the other hand, Sega, Bandai, etc. have also seized the opportunity of other aspects of mobile games or ACGN.
Foundry list for Platinum
But SE and Platinum are slightly embarrassed, the latter OEM for more than ten years, what original IP inventory is almost nothing, SE although the family is solid, but also in the expansion of new IP has repeatedly hit a wall, canceled many projects including "Prelude Rune". The Fall of Babylon is actually a common attempt by Platinum and SE.
For platinum, even if you want to sell yourself, I am afraid that you need to find a way to prove your value with original ability and high-quality products. Looking back at the history of Platinum, mobile games have been unhappy with CY cooperation; single-player took Microsoft's money and ended up online except for Microsoft's games; on the online game, the "Babylon Fall" cooperated with SE hit the street; is platinum relying on Hideki Kamiya and "Hunting Angel Witch" for the second half of his life?
As for SE, although the author also believes in the future of service-oriented games, I can only say that SE really needs to sort out the positioning of its own service-oriented games, and it cannot continue to take money to float in the water.
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