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breakingarrows · 5 months

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Ratalaika Games, Trophy Bait, and Storefront Gatekeeping

Prior to Sony updating their PlayStation Network trophy levels in late 2020 I was what the internet, in its eternal and mature approach to naming conventions, would call a “trophy whore.” Essentially this meant that there were games in my library that were bought and played purely for the trophies. During high school I was a loyal PlayStation fan, refusing to give in to the costs of an Xbox 360 (a console where the online functions required a subscription and the wifi was an additional adapter??) and was finally rewarded in the summer of 2009. After the trade in credit of a bunch of my old hardware and software being given to Game Crazy (RIP) was combined with the cash gained from my birthday I was finally able to purchase a used PlayStation 3 console. This was only a month before the slim version was announced at a lower price point (RIP). I wasn’t mad, I was happy to finally have a machine to play the games I had purchased prior to even owning the console: SOCOM Confrontation (for that sweet Bluetooth headset), Resistance 2, Infamous, and I think Killzone 2. Thanks to the PlayStation 3 dominating my adolescence, and the dominance of the PlayStation 4 over the market during my time at DualShockers, I accrued quite a large library of PlayStation games, all of which were, post-2008, mandated to have trophies. The correlation meant I was top of the ladder amongst my friends when it came to our trophy levels. Occasionally someone would threaten my standing but I would break out the excel spreadsheet and jump ahead to secure my position. Due to this there are some oddities and “Trophy whore” games in my library that wouldn’t exist there if not for their easy-to-earn trophies. For the OG Podcast Beyond fans, I have yet to add Hannah Montana: The Movie: The Game to my library and sadly probably never will now that the trophy fever has long since left my system.

Ratalaika Games S.L. is a publisher infamous for helping put many, many games onto the PlayStation storefront which serve as easy ways to earn trophies. During the final trophy fever I purchased and got the platinum trophy in Burly Men at Sea, Deep Space Rush, Jack N' Jill DX, Mochi Mochi Boy, Super Weekend Mode, Mekabolt, Milo's Quest, and My Name is Mayo. Of these, 75% were published by Ratalaika. Each takes under an hour of playtime to earn the platinum, which by itself earns you 300 points in the PlayStation Network trophy system, exponentially more than a bronze trophy and over three times as many as single gold trophy.

The Platinum Trophy was one of Sony’s contributions, and improvements, to the meta-game system started by Microsoft with their Xbox 360 Achievement system. Players on the Xbox 360 would earn “achievements” worth varying levels of numerical points and obtained after accomplishing specific tasks within a game. Some were tied to story completion, others were merely a number to reach in terms of kills or headshots, and some required outside-the-box thinking and made you play the game in a way you never would have if not for the carrot-on-a-stick of earning an Achievement. A single Xbox 360 game had 1000 points in Achievements to distribute, but players who earned all 1000 had no additional acknowledgement besides the 1000/1000 displayed next to the title when viewing your online profile.

Sony dragged their feet when it came to replicating this system, finally introducing trophies in July 2008 and eventually making it mandatory for every title released on their platform the following year. Pretty much every game simply replicated their Achievements and Trophy lists, the only difference being trophies were assigned grades: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, the last of which was only obtained if you earned every other available trophy. The platinum icon became a badge of honor for PlayStation gamers and became shorthand for 100%-ing a game. “Did you get the platinum?” “Are you going to get the platinum?” “How are the trophies/achievements?” In addition to the platinum, Sony also had the trophies earned feed into an RPG-like display of your trophy level. This level system became a quick reference to understand just how hardcore a particular gamer was. Given that I grew up within the PlayStation trophy ecosystem, I’m not sure if the Xbox 360 system of a singular number count of all Achievements was as quick to understand comparatively. It was the devaluation of this leveling system in their 2020 update, extending the levels from 100 to 1000, that entirely killed any trophy hunting enthusiasm that remained within me. Despite my personal burnout late in the game, an entire genre of YouTube video was born out of the chase for Achievements/Trophies. Naturally commercial incentive to put out games with easy trophies as a way to draw in that crowd for a quick cash injection followed.

Some of the early “easy trophy games” were art titles such as .detuned and Linger in Shadows, two games I’ve written about earlier this year and noted that part of their appeal was that they were short and the trophies were easy. This was before games distributed solely on the PlayStation Network digitally could give out a platinum trophy, but nevertheless their cheap cost and low time investment required made them magnets for trophy hunters, myself included. I may never have actually purchased and played these two titles were it not for their constant mention on lists of easy trophies, and I can’t help but think many others likely followed the same route I did in purchasing and playing them with a trophy guide for a quick increase in trophy levels.

Others subjected to trophy fever look down on this method of trophy hunting, as it requires no skill and is mainly a cheapening of what is supposed to be, in their mind, a pure tradition of completing challenging requirements to score that sweet platinum. Which is to say, it's a perception issue, an not a real problem afflicting those who game. These titles are just as readily available for them as they were for me, but they are convinced it's wrong, and that publishers and developers putting out breezy games with platinums that can be earned in under an hour are somehow making the platform worse.

As the wall separating game creators from the audience grew smaller and smaller as digital distribution platforms became larger and larger, so too did the influx of “shovelware,” particularly when it came to Valve’s de facto monopoly on PC distribution via Steam. Due to a higher cost and more stringent certification process required to be published onto Sony and Microsoft’s platforms, the PlayStation and Xbox marketplaces haven’t become quite as full of asset flips or bear the stink of Steam Greenlight’s worst offenders. With critics of Ratalaika you get close to the same mindset of those that cry out against platform holders' lack of quality control for their platform, but does it really matter?

Complaints lobbied towards companies such as Valve are mainly that they allow just about any game to be published on their platform. Valve originally would not allow and remove games featuring prominent nudity and sexual content, a policy which picked up in mainstream attention in 2018 as it seemed visual novels were being specifically targeted more so than any other type of game, even if they had already been modified to fall in line with Steam’s vague guidelines.

Valve eventually relented and began allowing all ranges of nudity within games to be published onto Steam, much to the chagrin of some online forum posters.

[MuForceShoelace]: It's not sex as a general concept that is annoying. It's steam going from relatively well curated to all the feeds being full of clearly junk level shovelware that people download because it's all "anime hentai sex girl feet simulator"

[Zombiedrd]: Absolutely with you there. The shovelware isn't just porn, that is just what catches your eye. Turn off all filters and look at new. There is so much cheap shovelware trash. Steam needs a much better QA.

[deleted]: I've got the opposite take. I'd rather Steam/Valve be as hands off about what's on their platform as possible as they've shown serious inconsistencies in the past. Give a robust series of preferences for people to pick and choose what they want to see and allow for external curation or recommendations.

Comments such as the above are pretty common when it comes to complaints about Steam, and over time, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo’s digital storefronts being inundated with “cheap shovelware trash.” What actually determines whether a singular game is “cheap shovelware trash” is a subjective determination. There are oddities, such as the infamous saga of Sterling v. Digital Homicide, but is a significant portion of Steam’s userbase being tricked into purchasing games such as those? There were 55 games listed as released on November 23, 2023, over a week ago as of the time of this writing. Of those, only 5 have more than 30 reviews, a decent indicator that more than 1,000 people have purchased/played it. Sand:box (267), Cyber Avenger (50), Easy Red 2: Ardennes 1940 & 1944 (47), Retro Commander (181), and Metal Breaker (30). A large majority of releases had none, or less than five, reviews listed, and a very small, or simply nonexistent, user base. Does any significantly sized group browse Steam by their “All Products sorted by Release Date” page? And for those who do, how many are engaging with anything beyond those that have been assigned the thumbs up icon, indicating mostly positive reviews? An icon which can easily be hovered over to view a pop up of exactly how many reviews have been posted for said title.

As user vedder charts using MobyGames API, there are now more games being released than at any point in the past, with the drop off post 2017 not being the result of less games being released but so many that the website cannot keep up with all of the new releases. With this increase in volume so too does the increase in games many will refer to as shovelware, but this is not a real problem. Filters and storefront curation means that only the most marketed, most reviewed, and best selling titles are going to be seen by a majority of people browsing the storefront. Only freaks like me keep bookmarks for the new releases for each platform out of curiosity of what might be the Next Big Thing, if I’m even paying attention at any given time.

People become irrationally angry and annoyed that Valve and other store owners refuse to do anything about all the “crap” clogging the store, even though its something an insignificant portion of their overall user base cares about. Even if they were to attempt to curate and filter out the “crap”, how would they do so? Crap games are subjective affairs, and we have seen time and time again how the general internet userbase will manipulate and skew aggregated reviews in petty protest. There is also the problem of quantity of releases: you simply can’t keep up with the amount of games being released. Valve was already criticized for failure to keep to any standard when it came to their prior implementation of banning nude games, especially when it came to those that featured no more and less explicit nudity than those seen in much more popular titles that would never be threatened with removal.

The introduction of smartphone storefronts and the dissolution of any barrier to publishing a game on PC did not introduce anything new to the industry when it comes to “shovelware”. People complaining about this topic have existed forever. The hubris of corporations, not the lack of quality control, is what led to the video game crash of 1983. Nintendo’s “Seal of Quality” during the NES era meant jack shit to the quality of the game and simply meant it was officially licensed by Nintendo to work on their system. Certification on current consoles is a system to ensure the game won’t brick your console, though recently we’ve seen even that process can be exempted from larger publishers.

It is not in the commercial interest for publishers to start trimming the quantity of content form their storefronts as well, considering they accrue a hefty income amount by getting a cut of every sale on their platform. The transition from physical to digital was a boon to developers as they no longer had to engage with publishers for the complex and expensive process of retail and could instead simply upload their game to the PlayStation Network or Xbox Live Marketplace. This also meant that those digital store owners could better control and collect money on products sold. This is similar, and more controllable, to how developers and publishers had to pay the console owner a license fee to get their discs printed and working on that console. However with digital stores, the owner gets a larger cut than they do via licensing. The standard revenue split is taking 30% of each purchase, the exceptions being Itch.io which is 10%, and Microsoft who changed theirs from 30% to 12% for PC sales in 2021. This was following in Epic’s footsteps as when they launched the Epic Game Store it was with a 88/12 revenue split as a marketing strategy to attract developers, and therefore users, to its new platform. Due to this, why would any of them reduce the amount of games being published on their platform? As every purchase gets them some funding, and if the server costs of maintaining an old platform becomes too much they can just shut it down forever (or walk back their announcement like Sony and the PlayStation 3/Vita storefronts).

Twitch recently conjured an entirely new competitor due to their content moderation policies against gambling. In October 2022 Twitch updated their policy prohibiting gambling from being streamed on their site. Due to the lucrative nature of being sponsored by gambling sites, a lot of streamers were unhappy about this and Kick was able to wiggle its way onto the streaming market by being a much less regulated platform. Taken from a recent New York Times profile on the platform, “Kick, an Australian company, has flourished thanks to an unusual business model. It offers eyebrow-raising multimillion dollar contracts to top streamers and takes just 5 percent of all streamers’ earnings, compared with a 50-50 split on Twitch, helping lure away both top Twitch stars and rank-and-file content creators who say they’ve seen a bump in earnings. But the site itself is something of a loss leader for Stake, the online casino backed by the same ownership and frequently promoted on Kick. By offering them sizable endorsement deals with Stake, Kick has also attracted mainstream stars like the rapper Drake.” Where there is money to be made, someone will always be there to reap the cash. Steam banning hentai games isn’t going to eliminate them from the internet, but it would also simply hurt their business, and again, is this really such a big problem? Whereas Twitch’s banning of gambling is a moral good given how evil the gambling industry is, the previous complaint lobbied at Twitch over their “failure” to regulate “hot tub” streamers, was mostly petty men mad that women in bathing suits were “stealing” their views and diminishing the quality of the streaming platform (as if watching people react to YouTube videos was inherently more valuable content).

The only moral obligation the stores currently adhere to are legal ones, mainly applied towards the banning of certain depictions of minors. What is lawful may not always be moral, but regulating content by laws above all else is currently the only reliable way to maintain a storefront today. All other filtering attempts will fall into a subjective trap in which a small group will hold control over what gets made readily available for everyone. We already have a contingent of annoying posters who scream out “censorship!” anytime a game is changed from its original release, even though these changes are being submitted by the creators themselves out of a commercial interest, steadily eroding the power of that censorship claim. Leaving the fate of releases in the hands of a few risks too much given human whims. We all know how unbalanced the scales are when it comes to depictions of violence compared to depictions of anything sexual in nature in both games and other media. And let us not fool ourselves into thinking minority groups wouldn’t be unfairly targeted by these policies. The only morally objectionable content I’ve seen in my time paying attention was the infamous game Hatred in 2014. At the time I believed the best course at the time was to simply not pay it any attention and hold to that today. Instead, it was subject to numerous articles and op-eds and became a martyr for any and all self-described “transgressive” titles. Gatekeeping content being published online is much more trouble than it is worth, and pleasing people is not the sort of policy you want to engage in when your platform exists online and has innumerable users and commentators.

Some will see my platinum trophies for Deep Space Rush, Jack N' Jill DX, Mochi Mochi Boy, Super Weekend Mode, Mekabolt, Milo's Quest in my profile and think these are cheap trophies compared to the real platinum trophies I have for DOOM (2016), Dead Space 2, and Control, but who cares? These are insignificant problems. This metagame that has existed for over a decade has done little to change the landscape of gaming, simply creating a new niche of games being published with the intent not to create a work of art but to entice those with trophy fever to purchase and play them for a quick boost. Is this really that different from games made purely for profit than art? Reddit and their ilk online will always complain about publishers exploiting players, whether through online passes, season passes, microtransactions, loot boxes, gacha titles, battle passes, and whatever the next monetization strategy will be. Some of these are real problems, such as those games which prey on gambling addicts, but a publisher like Ratalaika or those on Steam publishing hentai puzzle games are not worth the time and energy. And on a larger scale, gate keeping releases on a platform level will never be satisfactory, and risks blocking the release of worthwhile titles due to a perverted sense of morality or quality control. We’ve seen the former bear fruit in the form of the Hays Code of the film industry in its early life, and the latter is simply unsustainable. You are going to be okay seeing Zombies Wars and Soulash 2 and hundreds of other titles on the list of Steam releases, we will get through this and be stronger for it.

#video games #writing #ratalaika games #steam #trophies

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