On Oct. 9 this year, Amazon’s first game, named “Crucible,” ceased development after a rocky beta.
Since the beginning, “Crucible” has had a difficult development. A free-to-play shooter that initially launched in May, then put back into beta in June, then finally completely stopped development on the ninth of Oct. The lukewarm and occasionally hostile reaction to the game’s initial launch is well documented and well known amongst the people who followed the game. Replicating elements from all over the industry from MOBAs to FPSs, “Crucible” had ended up pleasing very few people in its launch in May of this year, pressuring the team behind it to revert the game from its release to a closed beta: a historically rare move in the games industry. The team had made a statement that development would continue in hopes of salvaging what was left of the game. They created a roadmap showing their planned progress and had a list of highly requested changes to the game that were being implemented. The addition of voice chat, regional matchmaking and additional playable characters were only some of the countless changes made to the game after it was put back into closed beta.
However, that wasn’t enough to save the game. In a statement made Oct. 9 of this year, the team behind “Crucible” made the following statement: “We’ll be discontinuing development on Crucible.” This decision was made after an evaluation regarding the response to the updates made to the game. “Ultimately we didn’t see a healthy, sustainable future ahead of ‘Crucible.’” The team behind “Crucible” appears to have been shifted to work on the next Amazon game, “New World,” an MMO RPG set to release in spring of next year.
While Amazon’s “New World” is gathering a plethora of positive attention, many have been put off from Amazon’s games due to their first stumble. The lack of many essential features on launch left many people skeptical and worried about the potential lack of content once this new game is released. The reception for the game so far appears to be rather mixed with certain Steam curators like Older Gamer saying: “Although not one for MMOs. Not hard to tell that this one is oozing a certain class that most fail to achieve.” And another called The Awesome Duo saying, “‘New World’ at first glance looks like a solid game on the surface, but after several days of play is really just an unimaginative grind fest with needless fetch quests.”
While at least a warmer reception than what “Crucible” got, it is apparent that this game will also have the trappings of the previous with the MMO genre as a whole infamous for rocky starts. While the game may be getting improvements over time, we now have evidence to believe that if the game doesn’t do well at launch, it may share the same fate as “Crucible.”
“Crucible” no longer allows its players to make any cash purchases in the game and their servers will be closing on Monday, Nov. 9, 2020 PST.
Edward Park is a third year student with a BsED writings track. EP909767@wcupa.edu