Back in 2015, I did a silly little infographic analysing TF2's situation in the face of a lot of hype for Blizzard's assumed heir to the throne, back when Blizzard were vaguely respected. It got a lot of Reddit Karma and Tumblr Notes, for what that's worth (not bloody much, following a period of hyperinflation that would make even the Weimar Republic raise an eyebrow).
Since having a bunch of text in a tall image isn't something people like anymore for lame reasons like "it doesn't work with my screen reader" and "you have a website, literally just use HTML dickhead" and "You still have all the source PSDs, just copy the text out, you don't even have to transcribe shit", here's the whole thing in Normal Human Words format, updated a bit with some of what happened since.
Battlefield Heroes (EA Dice/EAsy, 2009)
Battlefield Heroes was a fresh new look for DICE’s ever-gritty Battlefield series, being the first Free 2 Play game to be released by EA (beating Valve to the punch by a considerable margin!) and sporting low system specs and a pleasantly light-hearted visual style to maximise its target audience.
However, it simply failed to really make a mark. A change to weapon pricing shortly after launch made getting new items a much grindier affair, and every attempt to generate hype for new content with trailers and comics fell flat in comparison to Valve’s efforts on TF2.
While the game remained technically under active operation and development until 2015, it more or less flatlined. The thirteenth and most recent map was released in 2012, the newest weapon in 2013, and everything after that was cosmetic items and crates until its sudden, entirely-expected shutdown. Fan-run servers have risen and fallen over the subsequent years, with the coming and going of the tides.
Brink (Splash Damage, 2011)
Built by the studio behind the fantastic Enemy Territory, Brink made itself distinct in the lead-up to release with a beautifully unique setting, a cool-looking parkour system ala Mirror’s Edge, a number of all-star level designers from the heydays of TF2 and Counter-Strike, and promise dripping out of every pore.
Unfortunately, promises can be broken. The unique setting was under-utilized, the few maps were too reliant on chokepoints and running down timers on static objectives, weapon variety barely exists, and bugs were rife (especially on ATI GPUs). All this at full retail price!
The player base vanished seemingly overnight, and a single, contractually-obligated DLC pack followed before Splash Damage moved on to Dirty Bomb, a few mobile games and contract work developing multiplayer back-ends for other, more successful games like Batman: Arkham Origins.
Brink was suddenly, unexpectedly made free to play in 2017. No additional microtransactions, they just removed the price tag on Steam and threw the doors open. It still operates to this day, to an average daily audience of ten people. Splash Damage has continued a long and prosperous career making extremely mid games, and also Gears Tactics, which was pretty good.
Super MNC (Uber Entertainment, 2012)
The sequel to the popular console-based third-person MOBA-y thingymajig Monday Night Combat, Super MNC showed a lot of promise throughout development, fuelled by the praise for the impressive PC port of the original and promising new classes and more varied environments.
However, the game was launched in an unfinished state, there were no player-ran dedicated servers, skill-based matchmaking could be politely described as “non-existent”, the developers helped cultivate a poisonous community culture that scared off newer players, and all that was before they introduced an optional Bitcoin miner that promised in-game items in exchange for burning years off the life of your PC hardware!
Uber promptly dumped the game like an unwanted child and moved onto its next project, the Kickstarter-funded and thoroughly mediocre Planetary Annihilation. The servers were kept online until 2018, at which point it was shut down due to an inability to update the long-abandoned game to comply with the GDPR. Uber went on to rebrand as Star Theory Games and kept going until 2020, at which point they shut down after losing the contract to develop Kerbal Space Program 2.
Loadout (Edge of Reality, 2014)
Loadout looked extremely promising from the beginning, with a gross-out sense of humour, a deep weapon customization system, and a number of unique gameplay modes. The game only looked to get better as time went on, with Edge of Reality launching an updated version of the weapon system and a full-fledged co-op horde mode in Beta. The future looked bright for this one...
...and then the PS4 version was released, and everything went to hell. The aforementioned Beta content was removed from the PC version, the PC dev team was fired, and the matchmaking servers (remember: no player-ran dedicated servers!) were slowly shuttered one-by-one for lack of activity.
So while the PS4 port had far more content, the PC version (which was used to test the content!) was rapidly abandoned for all time, possibly setting a land-speed record (that would sadly get beaten multiple times in later years) for going from releasing a F2P game to full-on colony collapse of a community and studio. It’s actually rather impressive, when you think about it!
The sole remaining employee of Edge of Reality was able to keep their servers online until 2018 before shutting down due to an inability to update the game (on account of, again, the studio now just being one guy) to comply with the GDPR. The game moved to a paid "Premium Edition" in Asia, which stayed online until 2020 until they simply couldn't afford to keep the servers online.
And The Future (as of 2015)
Recently the TF2 community has been looking hungrily towards Overwatch, an upcoming FPS by Blizzard. While Blizzard has quite the pedigree of quality titles, there are a number of alarm bells ringing in the echoing distance when viewing interviews done by the development team - no modding, no FOV customization (apparently that’s modding now?), no community hosted servers, and hints of the grim spectre of player progression (levelling etc.) loom overhead and offer considerable cause for concern.
Is Overwatch the new heir to the hat throne? Or is this just another case of the grass briefly seeming greener on the other side of the dustbowl? We’ll find out once the game reaches an open testing stage sometime in 2067, but for now we have plenty of bitter arguments between the clinically burnt-out to enjoy.
So, what happened next?
Overwatch, much to the surprise of all, did not manage to kill TF2.
TF2, despite lacking in updates and support in recent years, continues to stay online and active some 17+ years on, which is more than some more recent games can do.
I still haven't figured out how to get Battlefield Heroes (or other pre-Frostbite BF engine games) models into Blender with their rigging intact. Any ideas? Hit me up.
