We've reached the end of another year in the videogame industry and there is still much work to do. The game companies are busy indiscriminately flooding the holiday market with dozens of rushed and potentially buggy games. The fanboy videogame media are racing each other to get generous reviews posted faster than the competition. The videogame retailers are calculating the minimum trade-in value consumers will tolerate for barely-used formerly-$50 games. Finally, the gamers themselves have engaged in epic flamewars across the great message board battlegrounds to determine whether Half-life 2 or Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or Halo 2 should be the game of the year.
I wouldn't be doing my job if I chose to take part in this carnival of cupidity. Instead, it falls to me to enumerate the disappointments of the past year, to point out the sad state of this whole enterprise (as I did last year).
Now, I know some of you are going to finish this and think "Hey, but he forgot THAT EVENT THAT ENRAGED ME!" Well, fine, I can't do it all. Use the comments section at the bottom to add your own suggestions. Thanks.
- EA means "Eternal Agony" - Late this year the story broke, via a weblog purportedly by an employee's spouse, that Electronic Arts was running a set of Dickensian sweatshops to produce games, not the idyllic cottages of creativity, love, and free flowing Mountain Dew that most of us had imagined. Of course, the 80+ hour work-week is a justifiable sacrifice, when you see what EA has managed to produce at the expense of those broken human souls.
For example, the Medal of Honor series has been a shining example of mediocrity for the entire industry. Starting with Allied Assault in 2002, which scored an average of 92% in reviews, the Medal of Honor series averaged 86%, 77%, 69%, and 69% in reviews of its next four titles! Bucking the trend, Pacific Assault earned an average 84% on reviews. Maybe EA spouses should consider what a huge improvement they got from those 80-hour work-weeks before they go spouting off on blogs, eh?
Truth be told, it isn't just the Medal of Honor series which has shown more hours does not imply higher quality. Check out the James Bond licensed games from EA which averaged 76%, 81%, 85%, and 61% in reviews of the last four outings. I don't know about you, but those kind of results would make me happy I'd missed dinner with my wife for months on end.
The developer Maxis, despite their Sims Online (average review: 74%) misfire, did produce the acclaimed Sims 2 (average: 91%) and has reaped the rewards of working hard and doing well: an opportunity to stay with the company, as long as they pull up roots completely and relocate to Redwood Shores. I have to confess I don't really understand why some staff chose severance packages instead of continued employment under EA's benevolent rule.
In the end, however, the benefits of this strategy are obvious: EA has over $2.4 billion in cash reserves and a steadily climbing stock price. So what if someone's needy spouse got all bent out of shape? As long as the gamers get their sequels and the investors get their capital gains everyone's happy!
- DRIV3R 5C4ND4L - That's "Driv3r Scandal" for the B1FF-impaired. This summer the intensely hyped game Driv3r, third in a series that started famously on the PSOne, was released amid much controversy over early reviews which gave it notable high scores. Once consumers got their ungreased palms on a final version those scores seemed outrageously high given the bugs and sub-par gameplay, perhaps even too high to be on the level. Had someone been bought to give a gleaming review? Or was this just a case of reviewers who were also fans, working with a pre-release version and accepting the company line that bugs would be fixed before release? Regardless of which theory you believe, the industry clearly needs an ombudsman.
- Sony's Hardware Prowess - First there was the PSX. No, not the original PlayStation, but the nigh-mythical living room convergence machine every idiot market analyst annualy predicts is right around the corner. It's a PS2, a DVD recorder, a Tivo-style digital video recorder, and a media hub. Except it didn't actually arrive at the market in the form everyone had expected. It wasn't able to play DVD+RW discs, as promised. And it had MP3 functionality removed. The image viewer wouldn't display a GIF. Oh, and it couldn't even read CD-R discs. Well, for only $900, what do you expect, right? After selling out initially, the disenchanted market yawned and Sony had to cut production later this year.
Then there was the PS2 hard drive upgrade, launched with the PS2 version of Final Fantasy XI, the online RPG from Square-Enix. How serious was Sony about pushing this hardware? So deadly serious that within a matter of months they launched a new version of the PS2 (now called the PStwo) which is incompatible with the hard drive upgrade. I might have to rethink my stance on Sega being the king of dead-end hardware upgrades.
Which brings me to the Sony PSP, the handheld that launched in North America amid much fanfare at the end of 2004. Er...I mean...launched in early 2005. Wait, wait. I meant to say mid-2005! Or later. I think this just goes to show how pointless those Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP arguments were: by the time the PSP comes out here, Nintendo may have already put the Nintendo DS on a back burner and launched yet another GameBoy-branded handheld.
If anyone doubted that Sony could put together a solid hardware launch of the PS3 by the end of 2005, let them doubt no longer!
- The Game Movie Frenzy - As if cruddy shovelware videogames with movie licenses weren't bad enough, the two entertainment industries have realized that what's good for the goose is good for the gander: we now have even more movies based on videogame licenses! Just this summer we had Resident Evil: Apocalypse which followed House of the Dead at the end of last year, presumably because the industry desperately needs more oozing zombie flicks.
The real news was the sheer number of games headed for the silver screen. Eidos, having done well with Tomb Raider and sold off Deus Ex rights, this year reported a possible Fear Effect movie, although they gave no indication on who might play the two live-action lesbians. Prince of Persia, BloodRayne, and even Doom are apparently being worked up into movie format, although I can't imagine they'll really be break-out hits. And what's with this Doom movie? It's about a non-space marine not on Mars fighting monsters not from Hell. Maybe they'll toss us fans a bone and keep an exploding barrel or something.
More befuddling are the choices to make films based on fighting games. Wasn't Mortal Kombat on the big screen bad enough? Do we really need Tekken and Soul Calibur too? I know that Hollywood doesn't actually ask for good stories in their products, but at least pick licenses that have stories, for crying out loud.
There is a rumor that Metal Gear Solid might become a movie, but the potential audience has already sat through Metal Gear Solid 2, so who'd be interested?
- Gran Turismo 4 - In what can only be a brazen attempt to be the Japanese equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever, Gran Turismo 4 has been delayed again. Originally slated for winter of 2003 in Japan, it was later anticipated in summer then fall and then winter of 2004, even getting as specific as a 14 December 2004 release date. It is now slated to arrive in North America sometime in 2005. And when it does go on sale, it won't have an online mode, as originally promised. That online mode will, however, be included in another Gran Turismo game to be released in 2005. Or maybe Sony means 2006.
- Sony's Deadly Demo Disc - A special Holiday Demo Disc given out to members of the Playstation Underground fan club contained a horrible, horrible surprise. Not only did it inflict a Viewtiful Joe 2 demo on the PS2 fans, but it also erased their memory cards in the process. Sony offered a free game as consolation to anyone bitten by the bug, allowing mourning gamers to choose from several derivative sequels mouldering in an overstock warehouse, including such timeless classics as Hot Shots Golf Fore! and ATV Offroad Fury 3.
- Bankruptcy Claims Acclaim - At long last Acclaim ended its pitiful existence, filed for bankruptcy, and sold off its assets. Among the items up for sale: the fog machine used in Turok and several tapes of a nude Dave Mirra that were cut from the final version of BMX XXX. Come to think of it, maybe Acclaim's failure shouldn't have been put in the disappointments column after all.
- Phantastic Phantom - Even if Sony is having trouble getting the PSP out now, they have at least launched two consoles already. Infinium, on the other hand, has yet to launch its first, the aptly named Phantom, but that hasn't stopped it from wasting a lot of resources drumming up press coverage. Heck, they've also skipped the whole launch thing and jumped straight to their first lawsuit. The Phantom may still arrive, but who's going to care when it does? By May we'll all be talking about new consoles from Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony, and there won't be any energy left in all those videogame journalists to talk about the has-been that never was. Besides, Microsoft already tried the PC in a console's clothing, and they chose to create custom hardware for their next system.
- Even the Hype was Hyped - The year was filled with big games which failed to live up to their advertising budgets. Notable examples:
- Killzone, PS2 - Did anyone really think that this would turn out to be a Halo-killer? The average score on GameRankings at the moment is 73%, and dropping.
- Fable, Xbox - Look, when Peter Molyneux apologizes because the game didn't live up to the hype, that pretty much speaks for itself, no?
- Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, GameCube/GameBoy Advance - A Final Fantasy RPG finally comes back to a Nintendo console! Before you get too excited, don't forget the minimum requirements in small print: two people, two GameBoy Advances ($120+), a GameCube ($100), and a few link cables. Oh, and don't forget the game itself, which originally retailed for $50. Of course, you can play through as a singleton and get away with just a GameCube and the game itself, but that's not playing the game the way it was designed, now is it?
Should I list the shorter-then-expected Halo 2 which doesn't include scenes from the famous E3 trailer and has an ending which angers more fans than it pleases? Or the way Half-life 2 and Steam didn't stand up to the launch day stress for which they were supposedly designed? How about World of Warcraft and its launch? Fortunately, the industry has a compulsion for hype which means there will never be a shortage of buyer's remorse.
- Valve vs. Vivendi - Speaking of Valve, there is the nasty little spat between the creators of the much ballyhooed Half-life and Half-life 2 and Vivendi-Universal, the publisher of said games. Here's my thumbnail sketch: they each want more money from the consumer, are willing to cut each other to get it, and the game's price is the same whether you get it in a store or delivered online. Fortunately for these two warring parties, the public was more than willing to give up truckloads of money and will probably do so again when Half-life 3 arrives. Suckers.
Frankly, this is all very depressing, and I could go on with some other disappointments. Instead I'll end with a few personal items and then leave the rest of the shouting to you, the angry mob with torches and pitchforks.