My main points, however, have to do with creativity, purity of vision, “accessibility” and community. Soul games, like cryptocurrencies, came and flourished at a time when the creative and ideological bankruptcy of competition was becoming too obvious to ignore. Bitcoin had the financial crisis of 2008 and, later, a growing concern about data collection by Web 2 operations, as useful examples of the malicious intentions and failed ideas of its enemies. The Souls games quietly bucked the trend towards super-slick, easy-to-use-but-lifeless AAA games like Call of Duty and, in particular, mind-blowingly simple "open world" games like Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed series.