2018 Was a Bad Year for Gaming — Here’s Why
This year, there were undoubtedly a lot of good titles that released. Overcooked 2 and A Way Out were two of my favorites that I feel definitely belong as some of my favorite games to date with how much passion was put into them and how much the developers cared for the experiences. On the other hand, there were many much more significant blunders that were shown this year that will undoubtedly have an effect on the gaming industry in the coming years.
As one example, let’s look at how much of a disaster Fallout 76 is and has been over the past while. The game released as a disaster of a title, stomping on what was previously a heavily praised IP. Mind you, Fallout 4 wasn’t exactly regarded as revolutionary and didn’t surpass the praise that Fallout 3 received. It was riddled with many many problems but at the root of it, it still felt like a Fallout game. The community, myself included, was able to look past the endless bugs and enjoy it for what it was. It was still a very enjoyable experience and garnered much critical acclaim.
Fallout 76 though, made those problems look like a mere minor issue as the game possessed many more issues even outside of bugs. The removal of NPCs made the environment feel very shallow and incomplete, the quests were uninteresting and repetitive, and to top it all off it was riddled with bugs that broke a lot of the game’s mechanics. With a 2.6/10 score on Metacritic, the game undoubtedly was seen as a disaster and garnered very low sales to the point of having discounts only a week after launch.
Since launch even, the game and its business practices have been an absolute joke. From canvas bags being replaced with nylon, ludicrous micro-transaction methods, and even revealing consumers personal information by accident, it’s impossible to say that the game’s launch and proceeding weeks have been any sort of success. Compared to previous titles of theirs like Fallout 3 and Elder Scrolls: Skyrim it has been extremely negative for them, something no one would’ve expected from such a beloved company like Bethesda.
On top of that fire, Activision Blizzard also had their own set of unexplainable and inexcusable issues this year. For starters, Diablo Immortal’s reveal was an absolute disaster. They stomped on fan’s expectations of a new entry into the Diablo franchise into a mere mobile entry that could never live up, then responded saying they were working on the same thing for all of Blizzard’s various IPs. It was an absolute disaster and they undoubtedly deserved all the backlash that was coming at them over it.
On top of that, they had their own issues regarding Heroes of the Storm and the downscaling of its development team. This was a major blow to the game and something that undoubtedly would never have been expected from a company like Blizzard. Even on top of that, they had a massive disaster with WoW’s Battle for Azeroth expansion being lackluster and their very questionable methods of getting staff to leave the company. These types of things we would’ve never expected them to do a few years prior and even a year prior, but the core philosophy of Blizzard is changing drastically and is causing these things. Undoubtedly, it has been a bad year for Blizzard as well, at least as far as PR matters go.
There are many other lesser known but notable issues going around as well. From the issues Battlefield V faced and the PR that followed it, to the disastrous release of Atlas and how incomplete and utterly broken it was, and even Telltale’s closing and how much their management caused issues for the employees that had to take the fall for it. Even outside of those two major events, these ones are just as important.
There’s one thing that a lot of these have in common (excluding EA but I don’t think I need to go into that), and that’s that even the most beloved companies can fall to the evil of greed. Before this wasn’t as big of an issue as greedy business practices were left to the lesser known or already disliked companies but in the past year, its spread to the bigger and more respectable companies meaning it can and will spread across the industry in a much larger scale. It’s a very scary thing to think about. Bethesda before this was regarded as a top-tier company and now they’ve gone and done these kinds of things out of nowhere. It’s quite sad to see honestly.
I think all of us need to be scared of what is to come. Things in 2019 are undoubtedly about to get a lot more rampant and games with good or even mediocre business practices are going to be considered very rare and absolute gems. That may seem good at first, but it’ll only lead to much less variety in games out there and will lead to more cookie cutter versions of games strictly to make people a quick buck over the player experience.
It’s a sad year we’re in for people.
