In your opinion, what was/were the worst year(s) of gaming?

[MeatMachine]

Pre-NES days aside, I'd say today. While we still have several outstanding things going for us:

-The AAA industry is insultingly horrible. Deceptive, corrupt, and self-serving to the core, too many devs opt for quick cash-ins on misleading, hyped-up train wrecks of games, then retreat, apologizing profusely while squatting over with a hand behind their back to catch another shat-out steamer to wrap up in a Christmas present adorned with a 60-dollar price tag.
-The mobile games market and Steam market. 99% of the content is some combination of the following ailments: broken, plagiarized, unfinished, asset-pasted, pay2win, pay2advance, scam, inferior clone, has stupid amounts of wallet-burning optional features that bankrupts participants and abandons misers.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

The old crash, obviously, but also 2003-ish to 2013. There was a seemingly sudden shift to human protagonists, or humanoid ones, thanks to graphical improvements, and the vast majority were straight white and male which fueled a lot of the representation talks today. 2014 was some improvement, then 2015 feels a lot better.

Christ you have to be pretty picky to choose a solid decade worth of games as the "worst" years. When in that time we went experience 3 different generations and hundreds of simply amazing titles.

Then again, gaming is totes only fun if it's non white tranny aliens, right folks?

Yep. Blame the industry for sticking to the straight white guy checklist with little variation for that long. I won't deny there were some decent games, hell, I had to play something, but I really got jaded towards the blandness of the characters I had to play as when I wanted some escapism, and immersion.

Really hard to take you seriously with a finishing line like you threw out, though.

 

[RelexCryo]

I would say everything up until the snes was the worst year for gaming. I am going to elaborate: In the old days, games were just obstacle courses that tested reflexes and memorization. While there were a few text adventures, most of the them did not strive to truly create narratives like modern rpgs and horror games do. Personally, I am not interested in running obstacle courses. I am interested in the idea of interactive narrative, of the ability of video games to provide an narrative structure that movies and books simply cannot provide, based on how the audience interacts with the game world. Seeing a horror protagonist go into a basement is very different from doing it yourself.

But it wasn't until the snes era that this idea of exploring narrative with interactivity really took off. This was when chrono trigger and similar games entered the fray. And although I don't think the formula for interactive narrative was really perfected until the xbox/ps2 (Silent Hill 2, KOTOR, Jade Empire), those early games paved the way for a focus using the interactive of the medium to present narrative in new ways, like how when you were put on trial it was brought up if you chose to eat an old man's lunch. That is the stuff I want to see from games. I hate the pure obstacle course design most games had in the NES-and-everything-prior eras.

 

[Strelok]

You're seriously telling me that the year that the revenue for teh entire gaming industry as a whole literally dropped 97% was a good thing. The event that almost killed gaming in North America because retailers concluded that widespread consumer access to videogames was a fad that just ended was a good thing?

The fuck are you smoking? Because I want some.

EDIT: Furthermore, it wasn't just consoles that were effected. Plenty of home computer manufacturers went bankrupt too thanks to the crash.

ROFL at the bold part, you are just spouting the Wikipedia, typical of someone who was just told that this is the worst thing to happen in gaming history, the made up statistic is a nice touch too. Next you will tell me it is entirely E.T.'s fault for the gaming crash, nothing to do with Pac-Man or any other industry blunders at at all.

Also it really only affected North America, and in particular the North American console industry. PC was booming in Europe and started to grow in NA with Commodore 64, Hmmm Wikipedia doesn't really mention that does it?

Outside North America, though, the Crash made little impact. In Europe, eight-bit home microcomputers (predominantly the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the C64) already dominated the gaming market. An outrageous number of one-person coders wrote and released games for the far cheaper tape-distribution system, which helped those machines flourish and become the backbone of Europe's gaming industry for the next decade. These "bedroom coders" received status labels ranging from "cult hero" (Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith et al) to "legend" (Bell and Braben, the Oliver Twins) from their fans ? but that didn't prevent a number of talented developers from making enough stupid decisions to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (Imagine Software ? see here for info, with a big example of an Orwellian Editor as a bonus). Even with the missteps, the European gaming industry remained solid. (Nevertheless, a similar crash affected the home computer hardware market in the UK in 1984, causing a lot of the less popular machines like the Dragon 32 and Jupiter Ace to disappear entirely and causing Sinclair and Acorn to be taken over by Amstrad and Olivetti respectively).

If you are interested in any insight beyond Wikipedia:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983?from=Main.TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983

The Crash killed the American home console market for two years: video game sales dropped from $3B in 1982 ($7.13B in 2012 dollars) to as low as $100M ($213M in 2012 dollars) in 1985, which caused a majority of game companies to go out of business.

Was a good two years, can't wait for it to happen again, this time a little more permanent death for consoles. Third times the charm.

 

[Hero of Lime]

On a personal level, I remember 2008 being pretty lame. I remember Nintendo had nothing for the entire year except Wii Sports Resort and maybe a Kirby game. I think Sony just had Little Big Planet and maybe a Killzone for their exclusives. Nothing really exciting from Microsoft and third parties in general. I'm sure some really good games came out, I just can't remember a single one.

I know a lot of people are down on 2014, but I loved it. There were a bunch of games I really enjoyed, which is the most important aspect for determining whether a year was good for gaming in my eyes. 2015 has been OK so far, but kinda dry, but Splatoon makes it a decent year by itself. :3

How was 2008 lame? We got MGS 4, Fallout 3, Fable II, GTA IV, DMC 4, Persona 4, Sonic Unleashed (Although some consider that a mediocre or a bad game, although I disagree.) in that year.

It's great you found 2008 to be great, it just was not the same situation for me. I did like MGS4, but Metal Gear isn't a franchise that I love enough to salvage an entire year. Plus, I did say I may have forgotten what good games came out that year. The games you listed may have little impact on me, but I know they are loved enough to make 2008 awesome to other people.

 

[RelexCryo]

You're seriously telling me that the year that the revenue for teh entire gaming industry as a whole literally dropped 97% was a good thing. The event that almost killed gaming in North America because retailers concluded that widespread consumer access to videogames was a fad that just ended was a good thing?

The fuck are you smoking? Because I want some.

EDIT: Furthermore, it wasn't just consoles that were effected. Plenty of home computer manufacturers went bankrupt too thanks to the crash.

ROFL at the bold part, you are just spouting the Wikipedia, typical of someone who was just told that this is the worst thing to happen in gaming history, the made up statistic is a nice touch too. Next you will tell me it is entirely E.T.'s fault for the gaming crash, nothing to do with Pac-Man or any other industry blunders at at all.

Also it really only affected North America, and in particular the North American console industry. PC was booming in Europe and started to grow in NA with Commodore 64, Hmmm Wikipedia doesn't really mention that does it?

Outside North America, though, the Crash made little impact. In Europe, eight-bit home microcomputers (predominantly the Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the C64) already dominated the gaming market. An outrageous number of one-person coders wrote and released games for the far cheaper tape-distribution system, which helped those machines flourish and become the backbone of Europe's gaming industry for the next decade. These "bedroom coders" received status labels ranging from "cult hero" (Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith et al) to "legend" (Bell and Braben, the Oliver Twins) from their fans ? but that didn't prevent a number of talented developers from making enough stupid decisions to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (Imagine Software ? see here for info, with a big example of an Orwellian Editor as a bonus). Even with the missteps, the European gaming industry remained solid. (Nevertheless, a similar crash affected the home computer hardware market in the UK in 1984, causing a lot of the less popular machines like the Dragon 32 and Jupiter Ace to disappear entirely and causing Sinclair and Acorn to be taken over by Amstrad and Olivetti respectively).

If you are interested in any insight beyond Wikipedia:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983?from=Main.TheGreatVideoGameCrashOf1983

The Crash killed the American home console market for two years: video game sales dropped from $3B in 1982 ($7.13B in 2012 dollars) to as low as $100M ($213M in 2012 dollars) in 1985, which caused a majority of game companies to go out of business.

Was a good two years, can't wait for it to happen again, this time a little more permanent death for consoles. Third times the charm.

It is sad the pc market grew. A combination of drm, absurd regular graphics card updates, manufacturers and most reviewers not listing all the differences between individual models made by different manufacturers(the result of nvidia and AMD outsourcing manufacturing to companies like ASUS) and bugs and technical glitches inherent to trying to build gaming machines out of many different parts made by many different manufacturers, using code and libraries cobbled together from many different sources, makes pc gaming a nightmare. The fact that you get more power out of a pc is completely irrelevant, because you can only take advantage of that power if you hire a ton of artists, and that is so expensive that few companies can afford to do it, many go bankrupt trying to produce modern AAA just because it requires so many artists. Trying to take advantage of a PC's greater capacity for graphics would just cost even more artists. This is why many indie games for pc look horrible- they might be made on PC, but the developers simply could not afford to the hire sheer amount of artists necessary to make it look awesome.

What's more, simply producing a game at the same graphical level as a console game is more expensive than the console equivalent, simply because it's so more QA intensive, on account of how virtually all gaming PC's are frankensteins with parts from many different manufacturers, and programming libraries from a similarly large number of different entities. The much smaller range of parts used in a console actually makes life much easier for indie developers, modders and amateur coders, since it reduces the amount of bug crushing they have to do, which would make it much easier for fans to mod games and create indie content, if the console manufacturers would just decide to embrace modding. The world would be better off if the PC market died and consoles became mod friendly, with every console coming with a keyboard and mouse, and access to some of the consoles source code for modding purposes.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Pretty sure I do. No anger PFT I beg to differ. "Then again, gaming is totes only fun if it's non white tranny aliens, right folks?" seems like a rather angry comment to me. Not because of the use of the word tranny, that's just the icing on the cake, but the way you just blew up at a rather mild criticism of the games industry. That's what makes it angry. And the way you decided to add tranny on top of it, well, doesn't paint a pretty picture. I'll stop calling what you said transphobic when it stops being accurate. Oh yeah, IF that actually happened then maybe, MAYBE you would have a point. As it didn't, you don't.

No. I never wrote a thread like the one that you described. Get your facts straight. I have a vague idea of what you're talking about and you have gotten pretty much every little detail about it wrong.

 

[Gennadios]

Hell, for me 2013 and onward were all bad. The only games I pre-ordered in that period were Beyond Earth and Rome 2 and both were massive letdowns.

I got Dragon Age Inquisition during a holiday sale, it wasn't bad but the EAWare magic was gone.

Shadow of Mordor is the only AAA game from the past 3 years I still have installed.

There were up and down periods before but If it wasn't for the indie scene (which honestly has had it's own fair share of recent disappointments) I would be hard-pressed to call myself a gamer right now. I'm over thirty and I can't shake the feeling that I'm too old for the demographic that the industry is targeting.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

But I like 2013-2014! Last of Us, BioShock Infinite, ACIV Black Flag, Dragon's Crown, Ni no Kuni, Wolfenstein, Alien, Mordor...

 

[Hades]

So far I think this year had been very boring as far as releases go. The only games that really catch my attention are the Whitcher III, Majora's mask which came out more then a decade ago and Samurai Warriors Chronicles which I am the only one caring about.

I actually quite like 2014. As a Nintendo gamer I thought it was one of the better years with DK, Mario Kart, Hyrule Warriors, Smash bros and Bayonetta 2.

 

[CritialGaming]

I think this thread is starting to come off the rails from its initial intention and should maybe possibly be locked from here on out. Especially based on the last page or so.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

This thread reminded me that The Escapist is a site for people who don't actually like video games.

OT - The worst years of gaming are all of the years ever. I only play independent games made by one person using a calculator for coding. I hope there is a crash soon so that all the people responsible for all the worst games ever will become homeless.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I take '83 out the equation because I was too young to really remember it.

In modern gaming, I actually think we've rode a storm of very shit years recently, and that the catalyst for them began back in 2011 with the release of Mass Effect 2.

This seemed to be quite a turning point in gaming culture and focus for big players in the industry, and suddenly we'd gone from devs giving us games they loved developing, and games for gamers developed by gamers, to EA's approach of "market research, checklist, release". And being way more concerned about snagging a wider audience, than actually making a good game.

Mass effect 3, Skyrim, Dragon Age 2. etc. etc. - these games totally veered off from what they're predecessors originally set out to embody, and suddenly we had this awful wave of horrible, horrible games which valued user bitching ("not open world enough", "I want to fight a dragon" etc.) over actual core game elements such as story and gameplay.

THis lead to a fairly shite 2013/14, but thankfully the likes of CD Projekt Red seemed to have re-opened the industries eyes as to what you can achieve when you place love and care for something over formulaic development based on marketing checklists.

Here's to the upturn continuing.

 

[Jeremyman]

The year before the first video game came out.

Because we still have access to everything that's been out since then.

Totally agree!

But the next 2016 year will be a real fiesta for everyone who likes VR games! Waiting for new releases so much! Bad times are over!