In this era of constant updates, games leave closed beta on a regular basis. They don’t often re-enter it. However, like a groundhog emerging to un-see its own shadow, Amazon’s team-based shooter Crucible is no longer a fully released video game.
Crucible‘s post-release beta comes previously laid out.
The main goal of this unprecedented un-release is to more closely evolve the game in line with community feedback. “We’re setting up a community council, made up of beta participants of all playstyles from casual to highly competitive players, who we’ll be working especially closely with,” said Johanson. “One of the biggest changes you’ll see is that we’re going to schedule dedicated time each week when we as devs will be playing with the community and soliciting feedback.”
This means that if you’re not a Crucible player already, you’ll soon have to sign up through the game’s website in hopes of gaining access. If you’re already a Crucible player, Johanson said, the game will “stay pretty much the same while we’re in beta.”
All of this makes sense, to an extent. I don’t think there’s a game developer alive who wouldn’t try to give their flatlining game a second lease on life if they had Amazon’s resources to fall back on. But it’s still wild that a game released by one of the biggest companies on Earth ever found itself in this position in the first place. In the year 2020, you can’t just launch a middle-of-the-road multiplayer game and expect players to abandon hundreds of comparable options and deliver themselves straight to your doorstep ” even if you’re Amazon.
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7 responses to “Amazon’s Crucible Flopped So Hard It’s Being Un-Released”
The game is fine, but that’s the problem. It’s fine.
Maybe if they weren’t designing based on metrics and committees they’d have something that people care about, but at this point it feels like everyone thinks of it like a revenue stream and not a thing they care about making.
Also, franchise manager… There’s one game and it hasn’t been released.
I really think developers / publishers need to ask some pretty serious questions of themselves before they even start making a new shooter these days. There are so many of them that are already deeply entrenched that even if you make a GOOD one you’re probably not going to get any traction. There is really no reason to make another one unless you are bringing something radically new and different to the table.
Spot on. It reeks of execs wanting a piece of the pie. But we’ve already eaten the pie. It was great. Now we want a sausage roll.
Anthem should have been a big lesson for the industry. If you release generic iterative shit – it will fail.
Anthem had this core little nugget of awesomesauce, though. It’s just so much fucking fun to fly around and blast shit. The writing worked fairly well in terms of establishing distinct characters, and the dakka is strong. It’s just… that’s literally all there is to it. The dakka doesn’t change. The writing just… ended. And you can’t just have that stuff without some tasty sauce, in the way of achievable and targeted goals to progress in power beyond spamming a pull of the pokie machine-level randomizer. Imagine eating sausage roll after sausage roll after sausage roll, all without any tomato sauce. That’s why it failed.
Did you have a stroke before typing your last sentence? There was absolutely nothing generic or iterative about Anthem, the entire reason there was so much hype surrounding it in the first place is BECAUSE of how unique it is. They just didn’t quite stick the landing, and I for one am very excited to see what they do with fixing it because there aren’t many modern options out there for playing co-op with my husband.
Go back and watch the reveal and launch trailers. Generic as hell. Most people were calling it as a massive flop before it was even released. It’s great that you like it but the fact remains it failed and won’t be an ongoing I.P.
Games for Co-Op with husband that aren’t fully mainstream- Sea of Thieves, Lego Ninjago, Halo MCC, Minecraft Dungeons. I can recommend Sea of Thieves. Its like 1$ on game pass for the first month. Its cross play So one be be on Xbox and one on PC if that suits you and they have a great community of Pirate Legends looking to help new players navigate the seas ( lots of new players who got it recently when added to Steam so its super easy to make friends who are also recently new to the game. A sloop is 2 player, a Brig is 3 player and a Galleon is 4 player Incase you got a few extra friends who want to play!