HEY KID I'M A CONSUMER

I guess the game can't "die" if it wasn't ever really alive to start with.

...stop all the grab dealin'!

Six years later, that video still doesn't make any sense to me. That said, there's something else that doesn't make sense to me and that's what I feel like I need to talk about today - namely, the handling of MechWarrior Online and the player base that's apparently just slightly more incompetent than the game's management. 

Anyone who's followed this blog since I created it about a year ago should know by now that I love BattleTech. It's by far one of my favorite IPs, and I still have great memories of playing the various games (video and tabletop) all through middle school and high school. The circle of friends I made through it was the closest to a real social life I've ever had, which I'm sure reflects poorly on me to a certain extent but nonetheless should make it clear as to why I hate seeing the property go through hard times. 

MechWarrior Online is thus a very strange beast. On one hand, the game has some of the best core gameplay the franchise has ever seen. The aiming system helps make it feel like you're piloting a giant walking tank with limbs rather than a fighter jet with legs, and the integration of proper BattleTech elements like equipment critical slots in the MechBay and the risk of ammunition cooking off in destroyed parts of your 'Mech that will gut you from the inside out bring back a certain level of depth that was missing from MechWarrior 4, even if certain elements (most notably active/passive sensors) are missing in action. The problem is that instead of adding those features, the developer, Piranha Games Interactive (PGI) seems dead-set on removing things that increase player immersion, all while adding elements that break the game in various ways and asking for more money while they do it.

If you were lucky enough to play the game in late Closed Beta last year, things were much more optimistic. Balance and netcode issues were all over the place, but the game was still relatively enjoyable, and it looked damn good to boot. PGI had a content road map that looked reasonable, and a lot of neat features were coming "soon." Then they took out DX11 support. Features got pushed back further and further. The 1:1 timeline effectively disappeared. Knockdowns were removed. Balance fixes became something that took months on end to even hear rumors of. "Features" that were specifically mentioned in early articles as elements that would never be seen in the game - namely coolant flushes and 3rd person - were announced and planned, despite massive community protest. I wish the list of issues stopped here, but the truth is that this list is only a fraction of the ever-growing list of issues.

Today, the game has an utterly appalling number of problems that continue to hold it back even as the "release" date draws closer, with little to no fixes for major issues in sight. Fixes that are being delivered are done in a rudimentary "band aid" fashion that frequently causes more problems or simply miss the point and exacerbates the original issue. Of course, there's one much, much bigger problem that even competent developers wouldn't be able to fix with back end code - the consumers.

From the so-called "LRMpocalypse" days. MechWarrior Online's player base and "denial" tend to go hand in hand.

For such a consumer-oriented culture such as ours, it baffles me that we have such a poor consumer culture. If you're not aware how this is supposed to work, it's pretty simple:

• Company A produces a good product. You support Company A by buying Product X.
• If Company A chances Product X not to your liking, you stop buying Product X. You may even wish to purchase items from Company B, who makes a product similar to the old Product X known as Product Y. 
• If Company A continues to produce an inferior Product X, people will begin buying Product Y from Company B.
• When Company A realizes they're losing sales because they are not doing what Company B is doing for their target audience, they will likely be forced to improve Product X.
• If the improved Product X is a better value than Product Y, you begin buying Product X again, encouraging Company A to continue improving Product X to maintain brand loyalty.

Given the things that have happened with MechWarrior Online in recent months, you'd think that everyone's wallets would've slammed shut quite a while back. Strangely enough, this isn't the case. I've slowly realized the horrifying truth about the way MechWarrior Online's users think - rather than practicing good consumerism by providing financial incentive to listen to the demands of the players (which I may add is sorely needed and desired by the developers given the game's free to play nature), these players continue to spend more money on the game to fund further development. Their reasoning is that the game is still in development ("IT'S A BETA!"), and thus that constant income flow needs to continue for the game to ever make it to release. 

There might be a tiny bit of truth to that claim, but PGI's publisher has well over $5,000,000 from the Founder's Program bankrolled for development for MechWarrior Online. Even if the rumors that some of that initial investment was diverted to other projects, the combined initial crowdfunding investment and publisher investment should still have had the game's development rolling until recently. This should be an ideal time for the community to take the bull by the horns financially and wrestle PGI's management into submission, but they refuse to. Instead, they begrudgingly continue buying in-game items, giving PGI a sense of financial security that they frankly don't deserve while they seek out the so-called "Twitter audience."

PGI's marketing doesn't seem to be too tactful or effective, so you'd think they'd reprioritize if their current cash flow suddenly dried up in protest.

Altruism does not necessarily create a good product. Market forces do. The story of New Coke is told to business students to this day for a reason. MechWarrior Online's branding as a "beta" product should not be seen as a shield to criticism and a reason to continue supporting the developers financially. If anything, it should be encouraging players to apply pressure on the studio to make positive, logical changes when the results of their "balance experiments" are going to have obviously poor results. 

This can be done by withholding financial support in the form of purchases from the studio, as you would with any other underperforming company. What's more, the game's focus on a persistent online service makes it exceptionally easy to make a statement. If a former Gold Founder (i.e., someone who has spent $120 minimum on the game already) gets all his friends together and continues to play without spending a single additional cent, they receive the best of both worlds - they can still play, and PGI may be forced to listen to people like them as every minute they spend on their servers without spending money is a net loss to the company. The only message being sent right now is "please stay the course despite the fact that we complain about it at every opportunity." Considering the forums have been aflame for months now with no end in sight, why is it that people think they should be paying these developers "so they can make the game better?" 

This is why we can't have nice things. Sadly, it looks like the only way that these people will learn good consumerism is by watching the game burn around them as PGI chases their hypothetical "Twitter audience," no matter how much I try to educate people on how businesses work. Even then, I have my doubts they'll learn their lesson. As the saying goes, money talks, and right now the players are saying one thing while their cash is talking louder.

Practice good consumerism, kids. Things tend to end better and last longer when you do.