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Amazon’s New World has enjoyed massive success at launch, hitting over 700,000 concurrent players on Steam despite the fact massive queues and bricked GPUs are stopping people from finding a server. It also goes a little heavy on harvesting, lacks any mounts (making its open world a chore), and like any new MMO, has more than a few teething problems. Add in the fact that this is Amazon’s first ever game (Crucible? Nah, you must have dreamed it) and all in all it has been a fantastic launch. As much as I don’t want to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt for anything, we can probably excuse the game’s early imperfections given the studio has elected to make its debut in the famously difficult-to-sustain MMO genre. There’s one consistent complaint about the game that I can’t believe wasn’t fixed much, much earlier - how did New World make it to market with such a dodgy name?
The New World was the term used in the 16th and 17th Centuries for the Americas, when European explorers sailed West and discovered new land. Discovered, and then in time, colonised. People lived in the New World. It was not new to them. But it was new to the Europeans, who at that time were gradually seeking to expand their power and reach across the globe. Historians and writers of the era referred to it as the New World, and because of the narrative of history and power imbalance across the world, that name stuck. The people who had lived there for centuries were unimportant. They wrote no books - at least none in languages Europeans could understand. They dressed differently, ate different foods, and, most importantly, had no guns. As a result, white Europeans gradually claimed and colonised their land.
For that reason, the phrase ‘New World’ is fairly loaded. For similar reasons, so is the word ‘savage’. That’s why Journey to the Savage Planet came under fire last year in a similar but smaller controversy. It didn’t help that Journey to the Savage Planet essentially gave you the task of venturing to an uninhabited planet and killing the inhabitants there. Bit on the nose, that.
At least Savage Planet was cartoonish and wacky and, despite its name and general gameplay loop of killing and exploring being indelibly tied together, clearly not aiming for any sort of colonisation comparison. The name isn’t great, but it’s not just the name that’s iffy with New World.
New World could have been set in any era, past, present, or future. It’s set in the Age of Discovery - the age of colonisation. If you wanted to be charitable, you could argue the game itself is not about colonisation. You’d have a tougher time defending it than you would Savage Planet, however. The game is set on Aeternum (this one million percent should have been the name, by the way), a mythical, fabled island explorers have been looking for that you accidentally stumble across when you are shipwrecked. Already, you are trying to colonise a place and end up in a different place by accident. What else would 17th Century explorers be doing? Columbus went to America and reckoned he was in India. Worse explorer than Internet.
Don’t worry though, there are no indigineous people for you to steal the land from. This place is completely empty… except of course it’s not. Aside from the fact that 1,999 other people in your server also ended up shipwrecked on this magical island, there are monsters here. Foul, unfeeling, remorseless beasts you should harbour no guilt over slaying. Oh, kind of like the uncivilised brutes and savages the real-life explorers killed or captured in the New World. They are not technically indigineous locals, no. They are, however, very clearly metaphors for the idea of a helpless explorer, just minding their own business while attempting to steal land that already belongs to someone else, being set upon by beastly savages that just need a lesson in good old fashioned British discipline. Ready the bayonet, Jeeves! This one has a spear!
There are too many dots that line up. You don’t need to actively put people in chains or chase them off their land - it’s a game by a megacorp, set in the 17th Century, about an undiscovered island where you fight monstrous creatures with no remorse. Oh, and it’s called New World. I’m not really interested in a defence of why it’s not a coloniser simulator - there are too many red flags, and it’s just very odd that this went ahead. It’s not the worst thing gaming has ever done, but that the industry at large is fine with something we should be far more uncomfortable about is probably why we’re still not as diverse as we could be. Decent game? Sure. Decent name? Nah.