What Am I To Do With the Multiplayer-Ficaiton of Favorite Games?

 This year, two games are coming out that I have very mixed feelings about.

One, coming quite imminently, is Elden Ring: Nightreign. The other is FBC FIrebreak.

Both are quasi-sequels to single-player games that I've utterly adored, namely Elden Ring and Control, respectively (yes, Elden Ring, like other Soulslikes, has always had multiplayer elements, but you can easily ignore them).

Both games are made by studios that I have enormous respect for.

And so, I find myself in this weird place:

Personally, I have never liked competitive multiplayer in games. And neither of these are. In fact, even while Nightreign is still a 3rd-person action-RPG and Firebreak is a first-person-shooter, both have similar structures, sending you on shorter endeavors in a team of three players.

I'll be honest, though, I haven't actually been following either game as closely as I would be if these were more straightforward follow-ups. Remedy has already announced Control 2, which will likely take a similar form to the original game, and FromSoft has assured their fans/audience/customers that the studio is still committed to making single-player offerings.

So what I am then left wondering is whether I should play these games or not?

See, despite the fact that my family has always gotten Apple computers (back in the mid 90s, this was a bolder stance than it is now) I'm sort of philosophically against the idea of brand loyalty. Star Wars was a big deal to me as a kid, but I find that there's a certain "fandom" culture online that tolerates no criticism, claiming you can't be a fan of something unless you like every last thing released under its banner (to be clear, there's also a ton of toxicity on the negative side of things that is arguably more prevalent). The older I get, the more I become aware of how branding and marketing tries to shift our brains to grow a kind of dependency on the familiar.

And it's tricky, because on one side, I think that these studios in particular are places where art is created - and I don't think there's anything wrong with having favorite artists. But there's also a powerful economic incentive to take advantage of those familiar stories, or in corporate jargon, those "IPs," (standing for "intellectual properties") in order to get people to buy into something that they might not be as inclined to try if it weren't for the familiarity with that brand.

I guess in both these cases, I really don't have a sense of whether the creative people in these studios had a brilliant idea for a multiplayer game, or if some corporate suit who couldn't care less about how fun a game is just read some data that suggests that this kind of ongoing live-service multiplayer game brings in big bucks, and that they need to get on that bandwagon.

Now, of course, it's funny, because in 1999, I played Super Smash Bros. for the first time, and it, along with particularly its two-year-later, much-higher-budget (I assume) sequel of Smash Bros. Melee, became one of my favorite games, despite the fact that there's no real like, story-progression. I'd play against bots far more than against my friends. So, maybe I'll find a lot of fun in the gameplay loop of these games as well.

I guess this all just boils down to my hemming and hawing about whether I'm going to play these games or not. And the answer is... Maybe?