Given
that the year is ending, many websites will be dishing out their awards
ceremonies and naming their favourite games in any genre. There will be much
debate about the ‘Game of the Year’ with shoe-in favourites such as The Legend
of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Horizon: Zero Dawn and Call of Duty WW2 duking it
out over critics’ favour.
I
don’t want to do such an awards ceremony, but now is a great time to reflect on
some of the lessons we’ve learned through the year. This was the year we saw
controversies over loot-boxes, review scoring and the release of a new console.
It is a very interesting time to be a gamer.
2017’s
gaming year truly got started with Resident Evil 7. Its survival gameplay was
sublime and subtle, a much more understated affair than previous titles in the
series and it all worked to the game’s benefit. As fans had been demanding, for
the first time in many years we had authentic and atmospheric horror that
brought Resident Evil back into the fold as one of the premier titles in its
genre. It both pulled the series back and pushed it forward in the exact ways
that it needed, critically turning around a franchise much in need of
rejuvenation.
It wasn’t long after this that we saw the
release of the Nintendo Switch. As a concept, the console showed a lot of
promise; the actual realisation of gaming-on-the-go as many gamers envisioned
from the moment they picked up a Game Boy. This proved to be a major draw for
customers as well, turning Nintendo into a name synonymous with success once
again and putting an end to the dark days of the Wii U.
Of
course, when the Switch came out, it was almost overshadowed by one of its own
games: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was a masterwork of open world
design, that brought the Zelda Promise to fruition. For the first time, gamers
held in their hands a true adventure title worthy of the original’s ambition,
and despite a few rainy cliffsides, many gamers fell in love with the title.
Controversy
surrounded this game’s review scoring thanks to Jim Sterling of the
Jimquisition. While I disagreed with his review on a few points, his take on
Breath of the Wild, giving it a ‘mere’ 7/10 score resulted in a major backlash
from die-hard Zelda fans. This backlash showed an uglier side to the gaming
community. It was around this time that ‘meta-bombing’ became a word in gaming
vocabulary, referring to the practice of overwhelming a game’s page on
Metacritic with negative user reviews. These were just two of many strange,
toxic gamer trends that occurred in 2017.
By
the time summer had arrived, however, gaming was back in full swing. The
release of Crash N’Sane Trilogy brought a sudden mainstream attention on early
3D mascot platformers. Crash was a game with a lot of nostalgic goodwill and
this surely helped the PlayStation brand, practically sealing the deal for
future HD re-releases. The game’s difficulty was also a popular talking point:
who doesn’t remember the cringe-worthy ‘it’s just like Dark Souls!’ type
reviews gamers were exposed to at that time? It was discussed how central
difficulty was to a game’s overall experience, and the summer of 2017 certainly
had gamers everywhere screaming ‘f*ck the High Road!’
As
we drew into autumn and winter and big blockbuster releases came out, gaming
started to show a little fatigue in the mainstream space. While fan-favourite
indie titles such as Oxygen Not Included certainly entertained, lots of gamers
were placing their attention on other, more nefarious industry trends.
This
was the time of the Loot Box. With the release of Middle-Earth: Shadow of War,
we saw the beginnings of a coming tsunami of Loot Box controversy. Gamers
bemoaned the end-game, with good reason; it was purely set up to be a slog to
encourage gamers to buy microtransactions, in the form of Loot Boxes.
What
came after this was a colossal breakdown in mainstream gaming. While Call of
Duty: WW2 released to critical acclaim, attention turned to Star Wars
Battlefront 2. The game itself was meant to be an apology for EA’s first crack
at the series, which many gamers deemed to be a cynical cash-grab. However,
thanks to terrible consumer practices, Battlefront 2 became the symbol of
everything wrong in the industry.
There
was a massive backlash to the Loot Box practice in Battlefront 2, such that EA’s
stock drastically fell. Even the Disney corporation themselves had to step in
to help pick up the pieces.
The
Loot Box system, as seen in Shadow of War and Overwatch before now, was a
gambling-based microtransaction economy where players paid not for items, but
for a chance to receive an item they
may want (most of the time they would get junk). This was totally exploitative,
if not gambling. Indeed, a few courts even stepped in with their own rulings
that yes, Loot Boxes were gambling and should be regulated as such.
Many
would see this as a bad time for gamers. On the other hand, this controversy
represents the power of gamers as a consumer group. It is amazing that after
years of exploitation by big players entering a now-mainstream industry, gamers
still have power to change things for the better. EA were forced to swiftly
backtrack and their stock was badly damaged for this mis-step. This proved that
gamers don’t have to silently stand by and watch the gaming industry go
downhill; they can instead step in and kick-ass. If anything, Lootgate
represents that the gaming community can still change the course of where videogames
are going.
2017
was a strange year with a lot of major news items. My review of the year isn’t
exhaustive by any means; I can’t go through all the year’s events and cover it
all in the detail it deserves. I left out the release of the Xbox One X and
Cuphead, for example.
But
I think that as far as the lessons we have learned from this last year, I can
say that 2017 has been most informative; franchises can be re-thought with
success, gaming’s community still has major toxicity issues to work out, older series
can be brought back to life with a triumphant bang, and gamers aren’t going to
just sit down and take bad consumer practices.
2018
will be an interesting year. I’m looking forward to seeing announcements on
some big franchises. It may be too soon, but I hope to see the beginnings of a
new Halo, and hopefully an actual sequel to some game franchises that are
stagnating (a new Elder Scrolls? Or even a new Grand Theft Auto announcement?).
In
more concrete terms, however, what I am most looking forward to next year is
the full release of Subnautica. In its current state, the game is well worth
playing and is an extremely interesting take on the survival genre, with some
beautiful underwater scenery to boot. If it gets a proper performance boost and
a full release, I will be very happy.
Thank
you for reading my blog over this past year, and I hope you will have a
wonderful rest of 2017 and an even better 2018!
-Stev3
L
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