Opinion: Avowed Release Blinds You From The Real Issue

Gamers waited for five years for Avowed to be released and when it’s finally here, the gaming community is divided in comment sections on different platforms. There are those who praise the game, though they are quite rare, and then there are those who would like to see Avowed Art Director, Matt Hansen, fired.

The two camps are deeply entrenched and the level of name-calling is staggering. Could it be that both sides are equally right and wrong at the same time? As someone who’s new to reporting on the video games industry, I wasn’t exactly sure of what the issue is with Avowed. Then I started to think back on my days of reporting on finance, business, and politics, and everything boiled down to a simple realization: almost everyone is missing the real issue.

Obsidian Entertainment is owned by Microsoft and doesn’t owe its consumers anything. The company does, however, owe it to its shareholders to increase the stock price – the return on investment. Have they done so? Yes, for now. During the first five days after the game was released, share price increased by 2.16% to $416.13 per share, at the time of this writing.

Of course, with Obsidian being owned by Microsoft, the release of Avowed wasn’t the only contributing factor to the share price increase, for sure. Do I believe the share price will drop? Likely, but not by too much. And here’s why.

Obsidian Entertainment knew fully well that Avowed was going to be included in the Game Pass on Xbox and PC. This Netflix approach to video games means that as long as the subscriber base is growing, and this can happen later by adding other games to the bundle, it doesn’t really matter how good or bad an individual game is. Would you cancel your Netflix subscription because of a few movies you will never watch?

Still, if a game takes almost five years to make, and it looks and behaves worse on so many levels than a game like Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which was released almost 19 years ago, then you have to wonder.

It makes sense if you think about expanding the Game Pass bundle, thus increasing your number of subscribers, which in turn will appease your investors.

The smearing of the game and the staff behind it, and their eagerness to respond to it, blinds you from the real issue. I don’t blame Obsidian for their business approach, but I hope they understand that all criticism leveled against Avowed was to be expected. They knew exactly what they were doing, all the way down to the pronoun selection in the character creation.

Gaming is a form of escapism, a way to take a break from political agendas, and when art imitating life imitating art happens, people pay attention, but not necessarily the attention you seek. While you have every right to make a game however you see fit, kindly note that certain things are better left to adults in the real world, and not adolescents looking for quests and adventures in an imaginary fantasy land.

At the end of the day, companies care most about their investors. So, what’s the solution? If you want to keep your customers happy, give them what they want. If you want to antagonise your customers, give them what you think they need.