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It took eight years, hundreds of people, and millions of dollars to create Cyberpunk 2077, a game that many say is flawed, incomplete and unplayable.
Compared, Among us It’s over two years old, created by just three people, and packed with pixelated characters, blocky animations, and chat windows that look like they were designed for the Internet in 2007. It had roughly 500 million monthly active users in November, according to Nielsen figures. .
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Among Us has been the most important game of the year.
Released earlier this month, Cyberpunk 2077 It has been criticized by reviewers and sent back by angry customers for refunds for regular bugs and mishaps, and for crashing on older Xbox One and Playstation 4 consoles.
Those complaints got so bad that late last week Sony took the drastic measure of removing the game from its Playstation store.
READ MORE:
* Cyberpunk 2077: Despite bugs and glitches, Keanu Reeves’ delayed game from CD Projekt Red is a critical success
* The most anticipated video games of 2020
Among us instead, it is ending 2020 on the top. It has become one of the biggest gaming success stories of the year, loved by streamers and winning legions of young fans who have fallen in love with its simple, addictive and compelling gameplay.
An online social deduction game set in deep space for up to 10 people, players are assigned a role and asked to complete tasks.
If you’re a “crewmate,” you need to empty the vents, fix the wiring, and clean the trash cans.
If you are an “impostor”, your job is to go unnoticed while sabotaging the ship and eliminating the crewmates.
If the crewmates continue, you can be eliminated and the game ends. Among us It has become so popular that its creators, a trio of developers called Innersloth, abandoned plans to make a sequel and have spent the year making sure the original game is the best it can be.
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The simplicity of Among Us is what has kept it popular.
It just won two trophies, Best Multiplayer Game and Best Mobile Game, at The Game Awards, and is in the top 10 on Steam and Twitch.
How did this happen? By not giving up.
When Among us launched in 2018, it was with minimal fanfare and a lukewarm reception. Basically, it failed.
“We stayed with Among Us much longer than we probably should from a purely business standpoint,” Innersloth programmer Forest Willard recently told Kotaku. “We tried to stop smoking and we should have done it several times.”
Rather than give up, Innersloth stood his ground, believed in his game and kept improving it, releasing regular updates to improve animations and gameplay.
They had a stroke of luck when a popular Brazilian YouTuber started streaming their game. As it gained traction, popular streamers started picking it up and it took off from there.
It is most popular in Brazil, Mexico and Korea, reports Kotaku.
Getting kids involved in the game has been its biggest boom: you should know, my son and his friends played Among us every day after school during her final term, taking every available device in the house to yell at each other about the finer points of sabotage and subterfuge.
At first, I was worried that they might chat with strangers online, but after playing a few games, I realized that I didn’t have to worry.
The game is non-graphic and despite the impostors’ ability to kill their crewmates, there are no weapons or bloody bodies involved.
Graphics are too simple for that. No bad language is allowed in chat windows, and my 10-year-old son, whose blue character he called “The Police,” took great pleasure in kicking people out of the game if they didn’t follow the rules.
He banned a player from his game for having the name “Bad Hoe”. It says the game has improved significantly since the ads were temporarily removed.
The Innersloth core team is now taking a well-earned break, announcing on Twitter that they went on their Christmas break on December 19.
By comparison, Cyberpunk 2077 development team CD Projekt Red is faced with an incredibly stressful Christmas as they try to get their game back to the Playstation store, work on regular updates to fix all those bugs, and try to save the share price. company, which has plummeted since the game’s launch. I know which development team you would prefer to be a part of.
* Among Us is now available in the app stores.
