2017 in gaming: Winners and
Losers
Another year has come and gone, and
what a year it’s been in the gaming universe. We’ve seen an incredible amount
of stuff happen over the course of these last 12 months, both good and bad.
We’ve seen developers release some truly legendary games that both kickstarted
new franchises and revived dormant ones. On the flipside, this year also saw
the shady underhanded moneygrabs publishers constantly tried to pull reach
critical mass, accidentally landing themselves on a world stage.
So I thought we’d do something fun to
wrap things up (since I’ve got a Christmas themed article planned for Christmas
Day). I’ve picked out 4 winners and 4 losers from 2017, and we’ll be going over
the best and worst things we saw from video games this year.
Just to be clear, this isn’t my
Best/Worst games of the year list (that’s coming around New Year’s). This is
just a fun way to look back over the year and see how gaming can improve for
next year. So with that being said…
WINNER: Ubisoft
This might come as a surprise, but
Ubisoft truly had a banner year. While they still haven’t completely shaken
their identity as an equal player to the likes of EA and Warner Bros, this year
was a clear step in the right direction for the company.
Things were looking good starting with
E3, where they went back to the drawing board and took inspiration from Sony’s
2015 and 2016 conferences. The skits, unfunny humour attempts and lengthy
interviews that plagued their shows for the last few years were no more,
replaced by games, games and more games. Ending the conference with a teaser
for the long awaited Beyond Good and Evil
2 was a great idea, even if the game is still a ways off.
But E3 can only get you so far.
Thankfully, Ubisoft’s biggest releases this year were all met with success. Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle was a
delightful surprise for Nintendo Switch owners, Assassin’s Creed Origins was a fun reimagining for the stale
franchise, and South Park: The Fractured
but Whole gave fans of the show exactly what they wanted. Here’s hoping they
keeps up their act in 2018.
LOSER: Valve
You’d think a game developer who
doesn’t make games anymore would pay a little more attention to what they were doing.
Having unofficially retired from game
development, Valve has spent the last few years spending all their manpower
keeping Steam up and running. Despite this, they’re still refusing to hire
someone to manage quality control on the storefront. While things were looking
up when the company announced they would finally be closing the much maligned
Steam Greenlight and replacing it with Steam Direct, the latter program only
made things worse.
Over 6,000 games were released on
Steam this year thanks to Direct, which turned out to be essentially the same
as Greenlight except without the option for users to vote on what games they
did and didn’t want to see make it to the storefront. With that gone, the
floodgates have officially been opened in full, allowing whatever jerk with
$100 and basic coding ability to have their shoddily cobbled together games sold
alongside stuff from the big name publishers.
Also Half-Life 3 is never coming, but Valve refuses to officially cancel
it outright. What a fall from grace this poor company’s had.
WINNER: Indies
Once upon a time indie games were
little more than small, little known titles you could find on Steam. You
usually only discovered them through a Let’s Play or an article talking about
the game. But with tons of success stories coming out of 2017 and major
publishers finally taking notice, indie developers have truly become an
integral part of the industry, with many declaring that they only want to play
indies anymore after some of the shenanigans the Triple-A developers pulled
this year.
Easily the biggest name this year was
Canadian developer Studio MDHR and Cuphead,
which finally released this year to critical acclaim, receiving awards aplenty
and even being congratulated by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on
Twitter. Similarly, former Devil May Cry developers
went independent this year, releasing Hellblade:
Senua’s Sacrifice. That game inspired a lot of discussion among gamers,
especially as it was a game of quality level comparable to the biggest titles
from Sony or Microsoft, except it was made by a small team and was being sold for
a much lower price.
I get the feeling that indie games are
going to become a much stronger cornerstone in the industry in a few years,
especially with console-makers like Nintendo and Microsoft making pushes to
include more and more indies on their storefront without oversaturating them
like Steam does.
LOSER: Warner Bros.
Speaking of Triple-A developers
messing with games…
Warner Bros. was one of the first big
names to arrive with a product this year filled with microtransactions and
shady business practices, and as such they’ll be recognized for it here. Middle-earth: Shadow of War, the sequel
to 2014’s big hit Shadow of Mordor,
was a singleplayer game with a fee-to-pay economy for some reason.
The game allowed you to pay money to
buy loot boxes with a chance to add new orcs to your army…in a game all about
adventuring far and wide to gather orcs for said army. I guess playing the game
you paid for to play as intended just was so boring that Warner Bros had to
give you a way to speed it up.
Even worse was that the ending to the
game was essentially locked behind a paywall. If you want to get to the final
boss you need a massive amount of orcs in your army, which would require hours
of grinding to acquire in-game. Unless you fork over some more cash to keep
playing the game you spent $60 for up front, the game becomes a chore. How fun.
WINNER: Singleplayer games
It’s funny how in a year where a few
big name publishers and news sites were crying apocalypse for singleplayer
games constantly, they ignored the fact that this was one of the best years
ever for games that didn’t have any online support whatsoever.
From beginning to end this year was
full of excellent games that you didn’t need an internet connection or a second
controller to enjoy in full. Resident
Evil 7, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Nier:
Automata, Persona 5, Wolfenstien II, Super Mario Odyssey, Hellblade and
more all released this year, and that’s just scratching the surface. This year,
despite what some may have you believe, proved once and for all that despite
the rising trend of multiplayer games and games with no place having online
mode inserting one for no reason, singleplayer truly is here to stay.
LOSER: Loot boxes
2017 truly ended up being “the Year of
the Loot Box”. After Overwatch hit it
big while still implementing the concept of kinda-sorta gambling in their game
through finding skins and other cosmetics in loot boxes, publishers found
themselves in a feeding frenzy this year trying to implement them into their
games.
They just missed one crucial detail: Overwatch got away with having loot
boxes because at the end of the day it was a fantastic game, one you enjoyed
playing without the economy getting in the way.
The gambling infested game after game,
particularly in the late months of the year. What should’ve been a slam dunk
for Warner Bros ended up a boring grind, thanks to the loot boxes in Shadow of War. Similarly, a game meant
to be an apology for the previous installment turned out to be even worse than
its predecessor because of a particularly nasty box economy in Star Wars Battlefront II.
Things got so bad with the latter game
that major investigations took place in certain countries about whether the
economies should be considered gambling or not, but we’ll get to that in a
second. Hopefully 2018 will see a lot less of this.
ULTIMATE WINNER: Nintendo
This was an easy choice. This time
last year all eyes were on Nintendo as they were looking to make a switch (ha
ha) in how they were doing things. The Wii U had died a horrible death after a
year with next to no games aside from the dreadful Star Fox Zero, and things weren’t looking great for one of gaming’s
most beloved publishers.
And then the Nintendo Switch showed up
and changed everything.
I can safely say without hyperbole
that the Nintendo Switch has had one of the best launch years I’ve ever seen
for any console, regardless of maker. Not only did it have a steady stream of
releases throughout the year, but every single game was worth your time. From Breath of the Wild to Super Mario Odyssey, while some were
better than others there was no true stinker in the bunch.
Even better was the system itself. The
Switch fulfilled on its promise to be completely portable, with a strong
battery life that I’ve personally never drained. Taking a fully functional home
Nintendo console everywhere with me has been tons of fun, especially with
nearly every first party game released this year being built around the
concept. It’s easy to pick up and play Mario
Odyssey for a bit while waiting in line and leave feeling fulfilled because
you found a Moon or two in that short time.
While we can’t tell what the future
holds for the Switch right now, no one can deny it’s had an incredible first
year.
ULTIMATE LOSER: EA
I mean…was there any other option?
While things might’ve been looking up
for EA last year coming off the big success of both Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1,
this year gaming’s biggest antagonist was back to their old tricks.
Kicking off the year with Mass Effect Andromeda painted a grim
picture of things to come, as the game felt clearly rushed to development with unfinished
animations and an overall underwhelming experience, something not exactly
befitting one of their banner franchises.
Later on in the year EA made the
decision to close down Visceral Games, developer of the Dead Space franchise and helmer of a new Star Wars game. Claiming that they wanted to focus on using the Star Wars license for multiplayer-only
titles, the game was scrapped and Visceral joined the lengthy amount of
developers who EA bought, built up, tore down, and then unceremoniously closed.
Seriously, Google the list of companies they’ve done this to. It’s kinda sad.
But of course, their slam dunk of
terrible this year was Star Wars
Battlefront II. A game initially advertised as an apology for the
underwhelming predecessor from 2015, early players were quick to discover an
economy built on buying loot box after loot box in hopes you could unlock
iconic Star Wars characters to play
as or just something you could actually use to get better at the game.
The fan outcry was so immense that
Disney, the true owners of the Star Wars license
and the people who are probably regretting they didn’t do their homework on
game publishers before allowing EA to make games off of it, stepped in and
forced the loot boxes out of the game…temporarily. I’ve heard they’re back now,
but as I will never set foot in that game I couldn’t tell you for certain.
Battlefront
II quickly become a PR department’s worst nightmare as investigations were
being held to see if the game was truly hiding a gambling economy, and the results
turned up positive. Government officials came out warning parents not to buy
the game for their kids at Christmas, saying, and I quote, “It’s a trap!”
It looks like EA is only interested in
making quick and easy cash off it’s old, beloved IPs these days. Now that
they’ve officially purchased in whole the Titanfall
developer Respawn I have no doubt that Titanfall
3 will be a disaster, which is a real shame after how much fun Titanfall 2 was. That trailer for
BioWare’s Anthem that looked so
promising now looks like just yet another game full of microtransaction and
loot box potential. And don’t even get me started on if Mirror’s Edge will ever get a third installment.
So, yeah. Even after all these years
EA is still at the top of the garbage heap, and they don’t seem interested in
coming down.
Overall I thought 2017 was a great
year for gaming. Yes, EA and Warner Bros and others stirred up some trouble as
we reached the finish line, but we also can’t ignore Nintendo’s amazing
comeback as well as the sheer wealth we got of singleplayer games and indie
titles. Here’s to more of this!
Song of the Week
I decided to do something a little
different here. I made a playlist of songs from my favourite games from this
year instead of just choosing 1 to represent them all. Which of these games
will make my top 10 list though? You’ll have to wait and see…
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