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Everybody’s Golf (2017) box art
What was most surprising about Death Stranding was its player interactivity. Without sight of each other, players collaboratively built a world that makes Sam Porter Bridges’ job easier. It’s a nuanced means of communicating its often suffocatingly direct message about connection and is an elegant means of creating a “live game” without being a Battle Royale with a season pass system. Now that the sequel is on the horizon, it begs the question of how can I game on the forefront of a “live” experience continue with the same gameplay and artistic vision once it no longer is live?
Everybody’s Golf (2017) is a revival of Sony’s console spanning franchise that first started on the original PlayStation and has had multiple entries on all their platforms since and marked a turning point to being a live game for the series. It perhaps serves as the most apt warning of what the twilight of a live game looks like.
The reboot of the series still maintains its essence of ‘three-bar’ golf gameplay that spurred the existence of Mario Golf, but now takes the “Everybody” in its title to a new height, with open courses that allow you to freely drive around with friends and stop to fish whenever. Sure, you can play golf exclusively but there is no urgency to do so, it provides a pace and style for everybody, a simple game to relax with friends listlessly. If you go to the PlayStation store, you’ll still see this advertised as a feature, definitively the largest new feature of the franchise. However, as of September 30th, 2022, due to the servers shutting down, it is entirely unplayable.
Driving in an an open course, something no longer doable after the server turnoff
Yes, the core singe player gameplay is still fun, but a core component is noticeably gutted from the experience, something that players are likely to be particularly sore about when they see the huge gates still advertising it on the game’s hub world, Golf Island. What remains could be considered a different game entirely, a stripped down no bells and whistles golf game that is still playable but lacking its soul, especially considering the now absent franchise tie ins such as a live Chocobo as a golf kart. Now you are taunted with a pathetic racetrack on golf island to test out golf karts with none of the memorable functionality of riding with friends they were intended for, and a minuscule fishing compendium that will never see completion due to many fish being locked behind the Open Golf mode.
Fishing in Everybody’s Golf, now only possible and non-completable in the hub world
What’s clear is that developers have most certainly learnt that once a live game shuts down, it should still maintain some level of functionality; it’s only fair to the consumer to ensure that, and nowadays games tend to achieve at least that. However, it remains to be seen how a developer might ensure the longevity of all the content the game was built to have, not only for fairness, but to ensure their art doesn’t decay into something else entirely. Is Everybody’s Golf redundant then? Hardly. But its hard to say if its really Everybody’s Golf.