You're joking, you're joking: I can't believe my ears!
It's that time of year again. You know, the one that everyone talks about in the songs and things. Even in the songs where they say they hate it, although are still willing to go and croon about it for three minutes straight for whatever reason. The night after the nightmare before. The single contractual working day for immortal do-nothing-slob Tim Allen. The envy of all of Tamriel's traditional celebration festivals, due right on Evening Star. The thing that Master Chief knew he had to get done first before he 'finished the fight'. The time of year when elder old buff gentlemen start falling off rooftops in Cairo just before a brutal massacre occurs in a split second and a 100 year bisexual vampire starts floating next to a teenage Japanese delinquent. The ideal time of year to find New York city policemen crawling around your vents. And that forgettable day for which every resident West of Loathing dons their well aged spittoon hats and joins hands in celebratory fear of the great cosmic death cow invasion force from the heavens. I'm talking about Crimbo.
But Crimbo hasn't come this year without leaving a good twelve months worth of brutal destruction in it's wake, pretty much touching every corner of society. Whilst this remains a gaming blog, however, I don't have to worry about other parts of society and unless that part of society decides to start a cryptocurrency and the talentless, sludge-like hacks over at Ubisoft start pouncing up and down like starving hyenas. And so I'm free to do that most lazy of Christmas blogs and just talk about stuff that went down this year in preparation for the next one in a sort of giant exhale of breath. Just letting everything out at the end of this year before the start of the new one, like any sensible mud slinger should. Like a final grand detoxification, what follows will be a purer year with a better me and less stories about NFTs, please god I can't take them anymore. We good? Let's go.
And first of all we have that classic update on the problem of the current generation. We're about an eighth of the way through this generation and people still haven't had a chance to adopt it widely because of mounting supply chain issues. Playstation 5s and Xbox Series X's are myths of the most annoying calibre, and I think most developers are really starting to sense that. When was the last time you saw someone other than a first party studio excitedly whisper about the future of gaming tech? No one wants to jump forward to sell their games exclusively on platforms where it's going to reach a vast minority of their fanbase and it's leading to this great stall in technological innovation. But then remembering how iffy the experimental years of a next generation usually ends up being, maybe this new status quo is for the best? I'm trying to squeeze my lemons into lemonade, okay; just like Jeff Bezos taught me.
Speaking of Ser Jeffers, his little start-up company got out their first game, didn't they? Well, actually I guess it's not their first game, more like the first good attempt. (Let no one ever forget the abject disaster that was The Grand Tour video game) New World is the new MMO of the year and as much as I hate to admit it, the game did make some numbers when it first launched. Those record numbers have staggered a little now that everyone is chomping at the teat of Final Fantasy XIV, but they proved their little experiment has the staying power to be around for a fair few years, so now we can officially induct another morally bankrupt company in the pantheon of influential video game developers. (I like to nick-name them: The Council of Awful.) Of course, for me they'll be remembered always as the MMO that pioneered such a bad economy that it forced their community to resort to a bartering system, and then turned around and said this was how the game was designed to work from day one. (Keep on making eyebrow crossing-worthy headlines, Amazon, you're great at it!)
This year has to have had easily the worst blockbuster game month of recent memory. Every year we have this crazy month wherein all the big releases try to get themselves out just before the Christmas rush, the end-of-quarter financial report and the award ceremonies. (I'd imagine that last one is the very least of their worries) Typically you'll get one of the big year releases be a mess, I can't remember the last time it was all of them. Battlefield 2042 was a practical joke played on it's audience for how bad it was, Call of Duty has a campaign so bad that people are starting to rethink their stance on Ghost's (the online portion of COD seems deeply split on critical reception, with haters and lovers) and Grand Theft Auto released legendarily bad remaster/remakes of their classic games. At least Halo Infinite dropped an undeniably solid free-to-play online mode- ahh, but the progression is so screwed that the team are having to spend their Christmas breaks planning how to fix everything when they come back. (The AAA's really dropped the ball this year, huh?)
NFTs have been a big surprise reveal this year, for their total co-optance into scam culture the world over. It seems they were spawned from a semi-optimistic idea to makes the art world more accountable and rewarding to artists, but that lasted all of one weekend before everyone started slobbering over themselves to turn this into a multimillion dollar generating JPEG flogging venture. Ubisoft have been kind enough to pioneer in this field for gaming (literally the only innovative concept they've heralded in the past decade, and it's this. For shame.) Ubisoft have managed to springboard from their many controversies, outside of the absolute state of their games, to being the laughing stock of the industry, likely not helping the apparent 'mass exodus' that has been occurring for many top level staff over the past year and a half. Oh, and Josef Fares said he'd rather be shot in the knee than buy into this stupid NFT trend, further proving what an industry treasure that man is.
And last but by no means least, Merry Christmas everyone from the Middle Kingdom because China has officially banned Steam. (They literally did it on Christmas Day) As far as I can tell that's a ban for the international version of Steam and not their own vastly reduced version of the platform, but it's still a blow to the many Chinese gamers who just aren't interested in playing the handful of decent titles that are there (like DOTA 2 and CSGO) and would prefer to get involved in this whole 'global community' thing we've supposed to have going on in the modern century. Despite their assertions to the contrary, China's government has taken an antagonistic stance regarding videogames and it stands to threaten us all eventually. I've said enough on this topic before, so let me just return to enjoying my cultural opium like the addict I am.
Which brings us to the bitter end, the longest stretch of nights just off the eve of the equinox. 2021 bows out with an ominous growl and an outstretched hand, promising new delights and worse lows, but at least it's something different. On one hand there's a bunch of super cool games that are lining up for next year, and some of them aren't even going to be exclusives to the crappy Epic games store! But on the otherhand we seem to be on the cusp of some very cringe-worthy developments on the wider gaming industry that are surely going to become full blown ballbusters as the year unfurls. (And I thought that Steam banning NFTs was a bit kneejerk at first. Now I'm surprised to say that was decently prescient of them.) But what's the point of being alive if you're always fretting about the future, I say; so let's just ignore the bad and focus on the now. Speaking of, I have a wall to go stare at for the next few hours by myself, so imma get back to that. See you next year.
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