2019 in the world of video games has had many positive stories, in the Top, as we would say, as well as some disasters. Every month new high-quality games have come out, E3 was full of announcements, Super Smash Bros has received characters that are worthwhile as DLCs ...
But not everything is positive, and for every positive news or moment, we must remember negative moments. Why focus on this? Because we must also learn from mistakes, both ourselves and the industry itself. Here we list ten of the "top" stories from the world of video games that 2019 has given us and from which we should learn.
Table of Contents
The Game Awards promises but disappoints
The gala The Game Awards It has established itself as a great date for the world of video games. They come out the equivalents to the Oscars of the video game, and simultaneously many announcements and news are promised. How was this year?
Saving some prize that smelled of consolation, and that Untitled Goose Game did not win any prize despite being the best of the year ... Let's say that the announcements were brief. Bravely default II for those who liked the original is fine, games based on League of Legends that at most will interest those who are already interested in the game, and Hellblade II as a surprise is fine. But the pace, uninteresting ads like Godfall for PlayStation 5 and Epic Games Store, and the Fast and Furious one killed all the excitement of the gala. Let this tweet from a humble servant who lived the gala live speak for itself.
Disappointments: Crakdown 3, WWE 2K20, Rage 2…
This year has not been exempt from bad games brought by studies that are not very competent or that were not prepared to do even a medium project. But we are not talking about small games, we are talking about games that have had a certain hype and clear intentions to have good sales such as the rules that we put to the consoles in our Top 10 consoles that failed.
We could practically make a Top 10 of disappointments of 2019, but it would be to dedicate a lot of time to games like Crakdown 3 for barely approved after years of waiting, WWE 2K20 being a huge disaster, Rage 2 going through with more pain than glory, Ghost Recon Breakpoint crashing the live game market, or Jump Force spoiling what could have been a good crossover fighting game. And if they are in this position it is because there are games that failed or made us much more angry.
Nintendo and microtransactions on mobiles
Nintendo has for years been a company that has been wary of bringing its franchises to mobile phones. Had a bad experience with Super Mario Run, but with Fire Emblem Heroes they discovered the money machine that is using gacha mechanics like the giant that is Fate grand order.
With Dr. Mario World they created a Candy Crush clone with gacha that was even tolerable knowing that it was free to play. But with Mario Kart Tour they surpassed themselves by putting micotransactions so expensive and shameless that even a twitter account laughs showing what you can buy with the money you would spend at Diddy Kong.
And shortly after they put a paid subscription to access multiplayer, and Animal Crossing Pocket Camp two years ago they put them to put improvements to Quality of Life that should be. We understand that something has to be taken out of free to play, but everything has a limit, especially when you can get full games on Apple Arcade for less than the Mario Kart Tour subscription costs.
The new Pokémon are not up to the task
Is Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield one of the best games on the Nintendo Switch? May. But all the untapped potential fails it a lot when we talk about it being the first major installment on a desktop console. We did not count Stadium or Colosseum because they were not installments that featured a new generation.
What problems did they have to be one of the biggest disasters of 2019 in video games? A long list of things that should be solved with one more year of development. But everyone else involved in the franchise could not wait a year for the new generation to come out because they spoiled the anime, the cards, the stuffed animals, the figures, the toys ... Yes, we have new installments but with little content beyond the cut of Pokémon in the Pokédex. It shows a lot in the details, which are not few, that the game was not ready to go.
Fallout 76 is still a mess
Yes, a game of 2018 is one of the biggest failures and disasters of 2019. It is what the idea of games as a service has, that they do not stop making us talk about them for better or for worse. And in the case of Fallout 76, badly enough, that they got rid of it anyway.
The failure that was their launch is already known but in 2019 they were crowned. The game did not stop giving constant errors. What did Bethesda do about it? Put a paid subscription to have elements and functions that should be in the base game and divided the players between those who pay and those who do not. And besides, those add-ons didn't work at all and were even getting worse. A great story of how to end the public image of Bethesda that even professional saboteurs could not have done worse.
Nicalis, one of the worst companies to work for
It is common for the tops to put some input on a personal level. This entry is because Nicalis was a company that I had some respect for. Thanks to her I got to know Cave Story, a great game that everyone should play, and she was key in bringing more The Binding or Isaac.
But behind the constant delays of their console games taken from indie developers, there was a long history of omission of help to developers with whom they had worked, mistreatment of employees, crunch ... The company that at the time was a key piece for the games indie hit consoles. And it is a shame that it has fallen due to the mismanagement and mistreatment of the employees of its top manager Tyrone Rodríguez, according to Kotaku, and that it has worsened the already disastrous image of the company that helped more people know Cave Story.
One of the biggest failures of 2019 must already be great if a company that generated suspicion now generates pure hatred and many people are asking for the rights to Cave Story to be returned to its original creator. And it's a shame because Cave Story is one of the best games that has ever existed and the improved versions on the console are appreciated, but that would mean giving Nicalis money.
Blizzard succumbs to China
Blizzard… We used to love it and in a few years it became almost as hated as its parent company Activision. The sloppiness with Overwatch content by using an engine that barely allowed improvements, Diablo III meeting few expectations, Heroes of the Storm leaving its competitive scene ...
But they don't compare to defending China's interests and expelling and taking away the award from Blitzchung for defending the Hong Kong protests. Blizzard was more interested in pleasing the Chinese market with its millions of players than in defending free speech. A few days later, at Blizzcon they gave a statement that could have been used for any other case and did not openly say the problem.
Personal story, again: Blizzard demonstrated the power of conviction that their franchises have because while they started the Blizzcon broadcast with that statement, people were quick to forgive them by announcing Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, and the new World of Warcraft expansion. One of the biggest public relations and image flops of 2019 and the decade that just ended, forgiven for announcing games, and one of them won't come for a long time.
Nobody likes Google Stadia
Does the Simpsons line “Nobody likes Milhouse” from the episode where Lisa falls in love with Nelson ring a bell? Replace “Milhouse” with Google Stadia. And the “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme? Put the Stadia logo and change “kids” to “gamer.” That’s how Google Stadia’s journey in 2019 can be summed up.
But let's face it. Google had all the potential to launch its own console even, and playing streaming, with the best connections that there are today, was inevitable. What went wrong. We list it now:
- To access you need to buy yes or yes the founders package that costs 130 dollars and they did not guarantee that you received it on the first day of the service
- Less than 30 games in the catalog
- Only an exclusive and they already warned that it would be able to come out on other consoles
- No crossplay with other versions for online games
- Canada, the United States, Australia and more countries do not have a flat internet rate, so they eat up your data plan
- Buying the games was not cheaper than on other platforms
- Latency issues
So far, we haven't been given a reason to play any games on Stadia. And it's a shame because Google and streaming could be the ideal competitors for the rest of the companies in the sector to have competition.
Anthem and the possible end of Bioware
After Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age Inquisition and Mass effect Andromeda, Bioware had one last chance to prove that they are still the kings of the western role. Anthem was his September exam, and he failed.
Criticised for its lack of content and for not containing any of the “Bioware magic”, Anthem became one of the biggest disasters of 2019 on the very day of its launch… And it only just came out, because what came next was the icing on the cake. Bioware barely updated the game with the promised content and fans fled in record time. Anthem could be found for ten euros within a few months.
Now it is speculated that they are going to do a huge rework to try to save the game. Lost cost fallacy in the face of an impossible game to save? Possibly. Only time will tell what belongs to Anthem and its future.
Crunch up in the soup
It seems that in 2019 we begin to tolerate crunch less and less in video game development. What is it? It deserves its own article one of these days, but to put it laconically: months of unpaid overtime and poor working conditions. We knew it existed but not to what extent.
At the end of last year we learned of the extreme case of crunch in Rockstar Games to release Red Dead Redemption 2, PTSD suffered by the developers of Mortal Kombat XI, from the constant crunch at Epic Games to have something new every week in Fortnite… Three of the stories in this Top 10 include or possibly include extensive crunch development. Even people were shocked when apparently a bad translation of a Kojima tweet indicated that Death Stranding was in the process of crunching.
It became news that games were developed avoiding the crunch itself and did not perish in the attempt. And there are stories that, after poor working conditions were made public, companies improved the treatment of their workers.
We don't think it's the end of the crunch, but we can imagine that more and more stories will come out. Now, if that were coupled with a noticeable drop in sales as a wake-up call, that would be ideal. Red Dead Redemption was one of Rockstar Games' biggest hits despite having its workers put in XNUMX hours a week according to Kotaku reports.
