In the last few years we have seen a multitude of games released in beta or in an unfinished state. Games like No Man’s Sky, Fallout 76 and even the highly anticipated CyberPunk 2077 were all lackluster on release. They were filled with bugs, server problems and had just a lack of playable content for a player.
All of these games suffered a huge blow to their communities before their games even had a chance to form their communities. Typically, the first two weeks after a game is released is when you will see the majority of traffic from new and current players. Games like Destiny (the original, but Destiny 2 did have the same issue at launch) witnessed a huge decrease in player counts after that initial time period, only to pick up more traffic after a new DLC or content release.
These games are generally seen as failures in the eyes of the general gaming community, even though almost all of the games mentioned above are actually thriving or are on track to be thriving soon.
So a lackluster release of a game could influence a games community in both active players and general likeability of the game. Making a game look like a failure at first, then maybe making a comeback years later. Which, in some regards, is fine. No game is ever truly perfect. But, could you imagine the hype around those games if they had a positive reaction from the gaming community, right from the start?
There are actually many great examples of this happening. But, it’s rare to see something like that happen in real time. That is where a small game known as Valheim, which was released in early 2021, enters the scene; and against all odds, this small indie game became one of the most beloved and played games of 2021 (so far).
Valheim was released in February of 2021 to a very small crowd of fans. Valheim is a viking survival game that can be played in a multitude of ways: a player can hunt, build, collect lore and fight various monsters around a randomly generated world. But, the most interesting thing in the game is the boss system that allows a player to gradually be introduced to new gameplay mechanics while providing something a player can grow towards.
As the game premiered it started to spread throughout gaming streams and YouTube. Gamers loved the hard and brutal gameplay while also getting the feeling of accomplishment from growing a small hut into a sprawling viking village.
On one hand, the game is very fun to play solo or by yourself. But, the multiplayer aspect of the game is what really set things apart from some of the game’s competitors. With multiplayer, both in the form of private and public servers — the community had been given the spark it needed to grow into something unique.
There are a few downsides to letting players have this much freedom though — griefing, trolling and toxicity will become very apparent if it is never addressed. Toxicity can become a death wish for any game, let alone a newer, indie game that is still in development.
But, something else shined through all the grime and dirt. In games like Destiny and Fallout 76, a person can play the game and form friendships with things like Voice Chat and in game text chat. Most likely, that is how most of the people in these games will form friendships and alliances. But for the first time im 20 years of gaming, I have made a whole slew of new friends outside the game. Facebook groups, Telegram groups, Reddit posts and Discord servers seemed to pop up overnight to revolutionize the way people were communicating about the game.
At first most of these groups were just chatting about how to do certain things in the game: how to build an awesome house, how to find certain ore or just questions about things that happen further in the game. But, soon those posts changed into many different things like amazing building accomplishments, weird strategies, people showing off mods and advertisements for servers that are starting to create villages with shops for players to own and rent.
There is a brewing scene of new content coming from these players, in which only a game like Valheim could provide. Because, unlike the other games that came out this year — or in the past few years, Valheim was polished enough to create a confident and content community.
Could you imagine, the creations that a community could have built around a game like Fallout 76 if it was as polished as a game as Valheim? Sure, there are several factors that play into why Fallout 76 is not a well received game. In fact, I recently picked up the game and noticed that some of those issues (bugs, money grabbing techniques and lack of fallout aesthetic) are still very much part of the Fallout 76 experience.
In comparison, the Fallout 76 community is very passionate about the game. Tom Robots, owner of the Robots Radio network was one of the few people that stayed loyal to 76 during those early days of the game’s release. It’s evident that there is a thriving community, because his podcasts that are centered around the game are extremely popular and are among the top viewed content created for that community.
But that's the Fallout 76 community now; 3 or so years after the game was released. Valheim has the same amount of content and fanfare as 76, within only a few months of being released. In fact, I would venture to say the majority of major gaming channels on YouTube and Twitch have already played and/or released content about Valheim extensively.
There are a lot of factors when it comes to games and their communities, but one thing that always reigns true when dealing with games that fail at launch: the cynicism that the game faces will always persist. Fallout 76, once again, is a great example of this. Although the game is now a way better game after the developers fixed, well, literally everything; but many gamers still hold the game in low esteem. So much so, that instead of the game being revered as a success story, a majority of gamers still use Fallout 76 as a meme or joke.
As I sit here waiting for the next Valheim update, dubbed the “Home and Hearth” update, I cant help but wonder what will happen to this community as time goes on. Will they develop a modding community similar to Minecraft, where servers can mod the game so much they bring a whole new experience to the base game? Or will the game be more like Rust where anarchy and griefing reigns supreme?
Valheim is still in its infancy, so we have no idea which way the game will go. It could be a breakthrough game, or it could be a success story in reverse. But, after all the fun my friends and I have had in this viking universe; I think Valheim will still be a success story we can look back at, a decade from now.
Until then, I will be running Copper from one side of the map back to my main base. Cheers.
Want to chat? Hit me up on Twitter @TimmTV18 . Or check out my YouTube channel here!
