Today is the final day of 2008, and if there's one word I can describe the entire year as, it's "Surprising." I mean think about it...
-We played a Smash Bros game with Sonic in it.
-Final Fantasy XIII will appear on the Xbox 360.
-Jack Thompson got disbarred.
-Activision merged with Blizzard to become the biggest American game company.
-EA was focused on giving us new IPs.
So now that 2008 is over, what is there to look forward to in 2009? If you ask anybody else they'll probably talk about the next AAA titles and start making predictions on what games everybody is going to love. Basically, the good stuff. Me? I've making a list of predictions on all the bad stuff that's going to happen mainly because of all the bad things that went down in 2008, so this is like a review/preview column of sorts.
It's time to bring down your hopes and prepare for the worst. These are the events I believe will come to fruition in the year of 2009.
A NEW IDIOT SHALL RISE TO BADMOUTH THE GAMING COMMUNITY
Cooper Lawrence proves stupidity doesn't end with Jack Thompson.
Early this year a conservative named Kevin McCullough ran an article about how Mass Effect had explicit sex scenes in the game when he was obviously wrong. In fact, he seemed to no nothing about the video game at all except that there was a sex scene in it and his description is so inaccurate it might as well be an Uncyclopedia article. Fox News picked up the story, and by doing proper research about the game and the article, ran a story about how Mass Effect was being persecuted for something it wasn't by having knowledgeable people talk about the situation in their report.
Oh wait, no they didn't. They ran the story as true, brought on some chick (Cooper Lawrence) that writes books about celebrities and how to get a date, treated the one guy that knew what he was talking about (Geoff Keighley) like shit, and then talked to three random people who condemn the game based on something an idiot made up, one going so far as to call Mass Effect "Star Wars meets Debbie Does Dallas." You know, I make mistakes all the time in my work here at 411Mania, but Fox News is supposed to be a TV network consisting of journalists that get paid to do what they do and people believe actually tell the truth. Their slogan is "Fair and Balanced," and that report they aired was anything but fair and balanced. Those kinds of screw ups can not be acceptable on the professional level that Fox News is supposed to be. Plus, they never bothered to retract their mistakes (Cooper Lawrence did after getting an Amazon bombing), meaning they ran a story to attack gamers and the game industry based on no actual facts.
Speaking of those not knowing what their talking about, how about Professor N'Gai Croal thought the game Resident Evil 5 was racist and made remarks such as "Clearly no one black worked on this game"? Yes, a white guy does kill black people in that game. But it's not because their black; it's because their zombies or whatever those RE4 villagers were called and they're trying to kill the white guy. Speaking of RE4, based on this professor's argument, that can be seen as racism because a white guy is killing Spanish people. But he says "The imagery is not the same. It doesn't carry the same history, it doesn't carry the same weight. I don't know how to explain it more clearly than that." So according to him, White people killing Black people is more significant than White people killing Spanish people. Who's the racist now?
Gamers around the world were happy to hear that Jack Thompson was officially disbarred because of his ineptness over the past several years in cases both dealing with and having nothing to do with the game industry. Unfortunately, if you thought 2009 was going to be a lot better because Thompson was disbarred, it's won't. I believe a new idiot shall rise and start bashing the community based on the same old shit, and we'll be hearing a lot from this particular idiot plenty of times throughout 2009. More specifically, I predict this idiot will be a right-wing conservative who will appear multiple times on Fox News.
ONLY ONE OR TWO 3RD PARTY WII GAMES WILL BE WORTH GETTING
No more good Wii-exclusives either.
When it comes to naming good 3rd party Wii games released this year, the only ones I can think of are No More Heroes, Boom Blox, and Blast Works: Build Trade & Destroy. Everything else on the Wii were either Nintendo games (like Smash Bros), mediocre casual games (like every damn Wii Sports clone), ports of games from other systems (like Okami), or the typical shovelware crap (like anything by Data Design Interactive).
I used to think that the Wii was going to do something really new like the DS did with the touch screen. With the DS touch screen, we got great new titles like Trauma Center, Ouedan/Elite Beat Agents, and Jump Superstars. This year we really didn't get a lot of that for the Wii, and for the games we do get, it's like gamers don't actually give a damn. The developers don't seem to give a damn as well either. It seems the developers are thinking that the Wii's controllers are more of a hassle rather than an innovation, because after over two years since the Wii's release, I can't think of one good 3rd party game that's done something really different with the Wii controls outside of Zack and Wiki. Is it because they're waiting on that MotionPlus to come along to fix the controls, or did they just stop caring?
Unfortunately, that seems to be nothing new with Nintendo these days. Ever since the Nintendo 64 era companies have been jumping ship to greener pastures that was the PlayStation. The Gamecube was even worse as the system died when all the major 3rd parties stopped making games for that system. Now the same crap seems to be happening for the Wii. Unless Nintendo strikes a deal with some 3rd party company to make something incredibly awesome, the Wii is going to have a horrible 2009 for people who want to play games not made by Nintendo.
I really think Nintendo needs to become the evil company it once was back in the late 80's and early 90's. Remember the Nintendo that forced companies to release games only on their systems, only release a handful of them a year, and make sure they earned that Nintendo seal of approval? If Nintendo took a couple ideas from back in the day and applied them today, I guarantee the amount of unplayable shovelware taking up GameStop shelves for the Wii would greatly decrease.
YOUTUBE WILL FUCK GAMERS OVER
Chris Bores: Making YouTube suck worse on a daily basis
The problem with YouTube these days is that it's reached the plateau of "Popularity Over Quality," where no matter just how crappy that site is, people will continue to use it only because it's more popular then everyone else, just like iPods for MP3 players and MySpace for blogging (is MySpace even considered a blog anymore?).
One thing that YouTube is known for is deleting several accounts over the use of copyrighted footage. People would immediately bash YouTube because the use of the copyrighted footage falls under the Fair Use act, but YouTube, instead of actually doing research and standing up for it's users, decides to bow down to the corporations and delete any video that somehow stops these billion dollar companies to make even more money. There are many cases where a popular person on YouTube gets deleted because of this crap. People try to defend YouTube by saying it's the corporations that we should really be mad at, and it seems like a plausible defense until you find out that YouTube is now paying people to steal copyrighted footage, and the proof is the James Rolfe wannabe pictured above, Chris Bores.
See, Chris Bores' "Irate Gamer" show became very popular thanks to the whole "Angry Gamer" craze going on across the world wide web. In case you have no idea what the craze is about, basically, James Rolfe does reviews of really bad old games. His trademarks are basically swearing a lot and wanting to drink his problems away, but he also gives a lot of keen insight on why these games were so bad and brings up facts that not a lot of people would know about. A lot of people copy him by doing their own angry rants on games. Some are good, some are bad, but the Irate Gamer is just the absolute worst. Sadly though, YouTube is full of dumbasses, so of course the Irate Gamer becomes so popular, YouTube decided to partner with Chris, meaning that Chris now gets paid for the work he does.
Work that includes STEALING COPYRIGHTED FOOTAGE!
The above image is from the very first episode of the Irate Gamer where he reviews Back To The Future for the NES. As you can see, Chris uses footage from the Back to the Future movie in his review. He only uses it for a few seconds, but YouTube has banned people over seconds of footage before (even on footage they actually OWN). But why not Chris Bores? Because YouTube loves Chris. So much so that they'll remove any video on YouTube Chris does not like because of Chris' company Y2B Productions over copyright claims, even though the videos in question do not contain any copyrighted material whatsoever. So now YouTube is deleting people who aren't even breaking copyright laws while keeping the ones that do, thus negating the whole "blame the corporations" defense.
So what does pointing out the hypocrisy of YouTube have anything to do with video games? Instead of Chris Bores and Y2B Productions, imagine if YouTube became butt buddies with video game companies who suddenly think that your footage of speed runs, cut scenes, and Guitar Hero hacks was now considered copyright infringement. Actually, you don't have to imagine, because I'm pretty sure that this year, YouTube will be taking down thousands of videos because some game company and their lawyers have sticks up their asses. They're already doing this sort of thing with Guitar Hero: World Tour and LittleBigPlanet. What's to stop them from doing it to those on YouTube? Meanwhile, Chris Bores will continue to make money from the idiots who actually think he's a gamer.
MORE 3RD PARTY COMPANIES ARE GOING TO BE BOUGHT OUT
Any day now...
One piece of news that seemed to take up the most spots in every weekly news report I've done was the talk of mergers. EA tried to buy out Take-Two because they wanted the money GTA4 would make and Activision merged themselves with Vivendi Games to become Activision Blizzard. Tecmo also announced merging with Koei rather then Square Enix, but that looked minor compared to the 600lb gorilla known as Itagaki suing the company for not getting paid the bonuses he wanted. Then rumors and speculation keeps popping up about Ubisoft, considering that EA owns 20% of the company from buying their stock. Meanwhile, Midway was sold off for cheap and is on the verge of going out of business, and Eidos, who have had some hard times in the past, are being looked at by EA, Square-Enix, and Warner. Factor 5 is said to have been shut down for good after the company's financial problems were made public.
With the economy in a crisis (not if you ask me), somewhere down the line in 2009, I expect many businesses to start merging or go out of business. Midway looks to be going out of business, but I have a feeling either EA or Activision will pick them up for cheap just to get a hold of all the licenses they have. I also suspect that Square-Enix will finally buy out or merge with a company in Japan to start expanding themselves. With Warner recently buying more shares of Eidos, they'll likely be the ones to get that company. Factor 5, depending on whether or not they're still actually around, will have their licenses sold off before being shut down for good.
CONSOLE IDEAS WILL CONTINUE TO CLONE EACH OTHER
Wasn't this already released for the PS2?
One of the moments that really stuck out to me at E3 from Microsoft's Press Conference was the casual games they were mentioning. The moment I saw that "You're in the movies!" game where people were jumping around with a camera in front of them, I immediately thought this was no different than the EyeToy Sony used a few years ago. They went on for about five minutes talking about this game and demonstrating it, but I could've summed it up in ten seconds by saying "It's like an EyeToy game, only it's on the Xbox 360." Then of course you've got the new 3D Avatars that Xbox Live uses to represent yourself, and immediately everyone saw the similarities between this and Nintendo's Miis. Odds are Microsoft is already working on a game called "Neighborhood" that is totally not a rip-off of Home and will announce the seriously-it's-not-a-clone-of-Home game at some big event.
Speaking of which, Sony introduced a new feature for the PlayStation Network: Trophies. You get trophies based on what you accomplish in the game, and the better your accomplishments, the higher level trophies you get. To sum it up in one vague and generalized sentence, it's Sony's answer to Microsoft's Achievements. The feature will likely be expanded upon when Home is finally released, which itself seems to be Sony's answer to Second Life. As time goes on, it seems all the new features that are announced from Microsoft and Sony are taken from someone else, mostly between these two.
This year, I don't expect a lot of original ideas coming from Sony and Microsoft. If you see Sony or Microsoft about to make announcement of something brand new, just look at what the other side is doing and odds are you'll already know what it's going to be.
As for Nintendo...
NINTENDO WILL CONTINUE TO SCREW UP THE BASICS
Full screen this image and do nothing for five minutes. That's exactly what playing online is like.
I don't play online games. If I want to have some multiplayer fun, I'd rather do it offline to avoid lag connections and people who cheat their way to top position. Smash Bros. Brawl however looked to be the one exception where I would love to play online. But wouldn't you know it, the game had online problems. I figured maybe it was because the game just came out and these issues would eventually get resolved. They HAVEN'T! Why is it that after being out for over 9 months (in America) Super Smash Bros Brawl still has lag problems?! What's the point in having a feature to play against people from around the world if the only way to get a decent connection is to face people who live in your state?
Then there was the friend codes. Why is it that the friend codes for online Wii games have to be a pain in the ass? Having a friend code for the Wii was bad enough. Needing a separate code for SSBB was worse. Then having to get another code because you just happened to delete your save data because some of the online features wasn't working is bottom of the barrel stupid. Nintendo, I don't think pedophiles are going to be playing Smash Bros.
Unfortunately, online gaming isn't the only area Nintendo is failing at, because now there's the memory storage problem. Nintendo's solution is that they'll soon release a patch that'll let you save more stuff on your SD cards. How come we couldn't get some kind of hard drive for the Wii? These days everyone who uses a computer at my school are carrying those HD Drives that carry hundreds of gigabytes of data. Why can't Nintendo create something similar to hook up to the Wii? You'd think the company that houses one of the most creative designers in this industry would have the knowledge to create something we're all begging for.
Nintendo, I can understand trying to stand out from Microsoft and Sony who are copying each other constantly by doing something different, but there are just some things you shouldn't try to do different. This year I feel that Nintendo will continue to screw up the basics in their quest to reinvent the wheel, which judging by the games they've released, they will do by severely dumbing it down.
EVEN MORE SKUS WILL COME OUT
Now with removable plates so you can make waffles.
I think one of the reasons the Wii is selling better is because people know what they're getting. If you want to buy a Wii, you go buy the Wii (or rather stay outside a toy store for several hours and get a ticket that says you can buy a Wii). If you want a PS3 or Xbox 360, you have to decide if you want the 80GB version or the 120GB version or the one with free games in the system or the one that comes with all the HD cables or the one that backwards compatible or the one with free online service for a year or the one that doesn't have a shitty controller or the super deluxe all-in-one package that comes with a year's supply of Rice-O-Roni if you send the proof of purchase within 30 days. But no matter which model you buy, odds are within a couple months a new SKU will come out to make you look like an idiot for purchasing what is now an inferior model in what I'd like to call the "Ha ha ha you bought the iPod Mini but now there's the much better iPod Nano you dumb fuck" theory.
Releasing different models for systems isn't new, but back then it made a lot more sense. When a new model was released, it did basically the same thing, but it was improved upon either by reducing the size or changing the way you inserted the games to protect them better. Also, they didn't release so many new models at such a short amount of time. But ever since Microsoft decided to release the Xbox 360 in the Premium and Shit Core packages, it created unnecessary confusion. Plus, the cheapest SKUs of the bunch were so worthless that they should've marked down the price a lot more then $100 for all the crap it was missing. As of this writing, Microsoft has released four Xbox 360 SKUs with one being discontinued and Sony has released five PS3 SKUs with three being discontinued.
Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to end this year. This year I expect Sony to release a 250GB or 320GB PS3 package, and Xbox 360 to get rid of the Pro and have an SKU that's more powerful than the Elite, which I will unofficially dub the "Master." As for Nintendo, there has been speculation that they were going to release a new Wii called Wii-HD. I doubt they'll be releasing that, because that would indicate that Nintendo is somewhat caught up with the times.
PC GAMING WILL GET WORSE
Over 1,070,000 people got this game. About 40,000 actually paid for it.
Ubisoft decided to not release a PC version for Endwar because to them, there's really no point in releasing PC games unless you want to lose money. This statement came sometime after they sued the man who leaked the PC version of Assassin's Creed which lead to 700,000 downloads of the game. According to one consumer however, the copy protection on Assassin's Creed was horrible. The game constantly had to register an IP address to Ubisoft's headquarters every 75 seconds, so many gamers had to play the game by turning off their internet connections. Gamers say it's ridiculous DRM like this that causes them to start pirating. For the PC version of Prince of Persia they decided to release the retail version of the game with no DRM protection. With so many people complaining about DRM, community developer Chris Easton says this will show just how truthful PC gamers are, but he highly doubts it.
On the gamer side of the fence, you've got the gamers who are pirating PC games to hell and back and then the gamers who throw a huge tantrum over copy protection. Spore became the most pirated PC game of 2008, and the number one excuse (if the Amazon bombing was any indication) was that gamers hated the SecuRom DRM protection that Spore had. Since then EA has somewhat lessened the restrictions on Spore and the game is available through Steam.
On the developer side of the fence you've got the developers who are getting screwed by pirates and think games need to be more strictly protected in order to actually make money. Sometimes they get so strict about it that they put copy protection on demo games! Bioshock caused a big stir back in 2007 when the demo game installed SecuRom. Why the hell does a demo game need to be copy protected?! Despite the consumer hatred for SecuRom, EA will keep on using it.
This year, I think the piracy issues with PC gaming is only going to get worse. Prince of Persia may not have any DRM, but it'll pirated just as much as everything else, which I guess shows my faith in gamers. The only solution to end piracy is if EVERYBODY started using digital distribution services like Steam, but I doubt that solution is going to happen this year.
GAME COMPANIES WILL BULLY WRITERS EVEN WORSE
Here we see Triple H in a vulnerable, defenseless position.
It's no secret that online and magazine publications get paid a lot of money by game publishers to run ads for their games, and that they will get pissed off if you wind up saying something bad about their games. They will threaten to take back their ads as if they are the only ones who will supply these publications with money, even though the moment they do pull out their ads, another company will jump right in and take their place. That's capitalism for ya.
This year however, game companies seem to be doing more then using the pull ad threat to get what they want from writers. THQ sent out memos to anyone previewing the latest WWE Smackdown vs Raw game that they weren't allowed to show screenshots of wrestlers using weapons, wrestlers bleeding, and the most absurd request of all, not showing Triple H in a vulnerable or defenseless position. Fighting Spirit Magazine in the UK replied by printing the memo and showing digital Triple H getting beat up. Okay, not wanting magazines to show certain screenshots can be understandable (I.E. if they spoil something), but this was completely ridiculous and makes it look like Hunter Hearst Helmsley was on a power trip.
Earlier this year, Konami was telling several reviewers that they couldn't mention certain things about Metal Gear Solid 4 until it was actually released. While it was never made public what the full list of things were, one item that was made public was that they couldn't mention the length of cutscenes or how long it takes the game to be installed. Was Konami afraid that nobody would actually buy the game because of cutscenes that lasted as long as movies and took a long time to install on your console before you can actually play the damn thing? By the 4th game in the series, I'm pretty sure those who are going to buy it already made up their mind the moment they beat Metal Gear Solid 3.
But the icing on the cake this year was when Eidos had a PR company who admitted that it was their job to make sure reviewers who did not post a high enough score for Tomb Raider: Underworld not post their reviews until a certain date after the game was released. About 12 months before this, the same situation happened when Jeff Gerstmann gave Eidos' Kane and Lynch a score that wasn't high enough to satisfy them and it got Gerstmann fired from GameSpot. Did Eidos not think that because of what happened with Gerstmann that having your PR company tell reviewers what to do with their scores is a bad idea?
In 2009, I think video game companies are going to go even further to make sure that the reviewers give them the high ratings they desire. Don't be surprised if you hear a big news story how a publication gave a game a great review because they got lots of money in their pockets, and expect even more ridiculous conditions on how we can talk about a game.
MUSICIANS WILL CONTINUE TO BASH MUSIC GAMES
John Mayer: Talented guitarist, total douchebag.
It really sickens me to see gamers get treated like they were third-world citizens, possibly even worse. Much of the flak we get is either not true or unnecessary, and these days more of it is coming from playing Guitar Hero. You'd think Guitar Hero wouldn't be hated as much as games like Grand Theft Auto IV because you can't blame a game where you play with a toy guitar on school shootings, but now we're getting comments from real musicians that bash Guitar Hero because it's not like the real thing, and sometimes they even bash those who like Guitar Hero.
Here's what John Mayer had to say about Guitar Hero fans:
"I don't ever want to be the kind of guy who rails against whatever progress has taken place. But Guitar Hero was devised to bring the guitar-playing experience to the masses without them having to put anything into it. And having done both, there's nothing like really playing guitar. I mean, what would you rather drive, a Ferrari or one of those amusement-park cars on a track?"
Hey Mayer! What are the odds of actually getting to drive a Ferrari in real life? Also, depending on the difficulty, Guitar Hero does take some actual skill to play.
Why is it that these douchebags who can play a guitar have to make it public that they're so much better then those who play Guitar Hero? You don't see professional athletes bash games like Madden because it's not like playing real football. You don't see soldiers bash games like Call of Duty because it's not like being in an actual war. But for some reason, people like John Mayer and the band Nickelback has to constantly remind us how fake Guitar Hero is. To Nickelback, Mayer, and everyone that wants to talk about how playing real guitar is better then playing Guitar Hero: We get it. You can play the guitar. So do millions of other people around the world. Whoop dee freaking shit.
Unfortunately, since music games are going to get more popular in the year to come, we're going to hear a lot more ridiculous statements from more douchebags. I think the reason they bash music games is because the games are starting to get more popular then the musical acts themselves, and because they can't make any money off of it, they whine about how they've got actual talent.
GAMERS WILL WHINE EVEN MORE ABOUT OLD SCHOOL GAMES
Apparently it's now "gay" to like colors other than gray and brown.
If there's one thing I hated about gamers over the past year it was their unnecessary whining about how the games of the past were so much better then the games of today and of the future because of some graphical changes. Personally, I blame Capcom for encouraging these people because of the extremely overrated Mega Man 9, a game where Capcom tried to go so retro that they created eye-gougingly bag box art and not one but two horribly forgettable storylines. With Street Fighter IV carrying over everyone from Street Fighter II and giving a big middle finger to the Street Fighter III characters by making the game take place between the two series, it's like Capcom is bowing down to every command the old school gamers are making, and it seems to be working considering I seem to be the only who thinks Mega Man 9 was not worth the 1000 Wii Points and over 10 years of waiting to purchase.
Blizzard announces Diablo III and a bunch of whiny babies decide to carry out an online petition because the game decided to use colors that looked like World of Warcraft, Blizzard's most successful game they have ever created. Because, you know, god forbid Blizzard tries to make a game where they decide to paint the animation in colors other than emo. They even decided to start altering the screenshots of the game with the way they think it should really look like, using such clever titles like "
Wow Gayness" to describe Blizzard's artwork for the game.
While that's happening a bunch of PC fanboys are crying over Fallout 3 because it wasn't anything like Fallouts 1 and 2 were. Considering that Fallout 3 has sold more copies then both of those games combined, I'd have to theorize that it's nothing but a good thing that Fallout 3 was nothing like it's last two ancestors.
Unfortunately I don't see gamers improving their attitude in the year 2009. In fact when Resident Evil 5 comes out gamers are probably going to start whining that Capcom needs to go back to the survival-horror genre Resident Evil used to be a part of, and knowing Capcom they'll do just that for the release of RE6.
