Game:

Crucible (2020)

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Discussion

Duration: 7:13

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Bloomberg Article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-01-29/amazon-game-studios-struggles-to-find-a-hit

Crucible and Breakaway were Amazon Game Studios' first real stab at game development. Despite being a tech conglomerate that has found success in every other part of entertainment, both had failed miserably. No, Amazon is not going bankrupt due to these shortcomings. Your Amazon Prime account is not going anywhere. Still, why did two video games developed and published by one of the largest tech companies in history fail?

In May of 2020, Crucible achieved something rare; It was canceled after being released. Upon release, Crucible received middling to mostly negative reviews, with IGN saying, "Crucible's every-man-for-himself combat and tedious respawn process make this team-based shooter a slog." And Gamespot stating "It's a game that fights itself at every turn, and ultimately is little more than a curious distraction from other players in this space rather than a true competitor for your attention." A few days after its release, it was pulled from online stores and put in closed beta. A few weeks later, Amazon pulled the plug. This was undoubtedly not what Amazon had in mind when releasing Crucible. It also was not the first game that it had terminated.

Breakaway is another project that Amazon Game Studios ultimately canceled. It was meant to be a competitive team-based brawler, mixing Power Stone, Rocket League, and League of Legends, designed to be an esport spectacle. If that sounds like an enormously confusing blend, it was. Breakaway was prime for Amazon's then newly purchased streaming platform, Twitch. It even had Twitch elements built into the game, like the ability for a streamer's audience to bet on the current match with in-game currency. And their match-making system placing multiple streamers into the same game. However, despite having all the ingredients of something great (with Twitch support to boot), Breakaway was canceled a year before its release. The reasoning being that the game was hard to understand both from a player and spectators point of view, with Rock Paper Shotgun calling it "a cacophonous trend-vomiting combination."


Amazon has dabbled in games before these two projects; mobile games, Twitch extensions, and their app store. But, Crucible and Breakaway were their first large projects designed to hit the mainstream in a big way. Yet, both were misses. How did a $314 billion tech company end up with two duds on their resume? Especially considering that Amazon Studios hired industry veterans such as Kim Swift (Portal) and Clint Hocking (Far Cry 2). We've been able to summarize why these games failed in a couple of paragraphs. Breakaway's complex mix of genres made the game confusing to follow. And Crucible merely mimicked the industry leaders without bringing much new in an already saturated market. So how did Amazon not see that? It hired industry leaders, after all. How did they end up with these flops?

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