The 5 events that shook the video game industry in 2012 (Frank Cifaldi)
I can't help but shake the feeling that 2012 is the start of the most major disruption to video games since the crash of the early 1980s. All year long I felt like we were on the precipice of something, some major fundamental change (or, more likely, combination of changes) that is forever going to change the way we work in this industry.
I can't wait to see what it is.
We've already gone over the trends that defined the year, so what I want to do now is whittle the year down to five distinct moments, the five events that shook us the most in 2012.
When 38 Studios imploded
The mere existence of 38 Studios was one of my favorite things about the video game industry. That a man could make his fortune being an all-star baseball pitcher and use it to jumpstart a video game studio, hire his favorite people, and make the kinds of games he wants to play was proof that even the wildest adolescent fantasies can come true.
Unfortunately, the dream didn't last. While still in the midst of developing its ambitious MMO (codenamed Copernicus), 38 missed a loan payment to the state of Rhode Island, which helped get the company going with a $75 million loan (in exchange for operating in the state).
And that was just the start. 38 kept its employees working, without pay before laying them all off and declaring bankruptcy leaving developers -- many of whom relocated, only to find that 38 never actually paid for their relocation as promised -- stuck with no money and no severance in an area not exactly known for its thriving game development community.
When the doctors left the building
It didn't exactly come as a shock to us when BioWare founders Doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk (pictured above) resigned from the (now EA-owned) company they founded -- we'd been hearing rumors for the better part of the year, in fact -- but it still felt like a blow when it happened.
Both claimed that they felt like they'd accomplished what they'd wanted and that it was time to move on, but with the struggles of The Old Republic fresh on our minds, it was really hard not to draw a connection.
When the world hurled money at the little console that could
I had a meeting with Ouya founder Julie Uhrman before its Kickstarter went live and, skeptical as I was about how it would solve the ever-oppressive discoverability problem, I knew developers would flock to support a new kind of game console allowing basically anyone to make a game.
I didn't think it would go this far, though: at $8.6 million in pledges, Ouya is still the highest-grossing video game-related project in Kickstarter history.
The Ouya is obviously speaking to a desire that a whole lot of game developers have: to be able to self-publish games of any scale to a home television console that uses a real controller.
When #1reasonwhy made us all angry
As my boss Kris Graft pointed out yesterday in The 5 trends that defined the game industry in 2012, 2012 seems like it could go down as a turning point for diversity and gender inclusiveness in the video game industry which, sadly, is still around 90% male according to our independent research.
The issue hit a crescendo on the night of November 26, when several women working in the industry took to Twitter to explain "#1reasonwhy" they don't feel comfortable working here.
We're certainly no strangers to the issue around here, but never before was there such a concentration of horror stories, ranging from being groped at conferences to studios not hiring women because they're "more trouble than they're worth."
When professionals screamed for blood
This year's E3 was a weird one for us -- as you may have read previously -- but one particular moment sticks out, and is something we're still talking about.
During Sony's big annual press conference, with cameras rolling and the internet livestreaming and major media documenting what's new in the video game industry, we were all shown several minutes of gameplay of Naughty Dog's upcoming adventure game The Last of Us. It's an impressive game that, frankly, looks like it'll be great.
However, at the end of the demonstration, our protagonist -- who, granted, has been defending himself from enemies who would see him dead -- points a shotgun straight at a guy's face who literally begs for his life before being blown to pieces.
And in the crowded room full of video game professionals, the audience erupted in applause. I saw some people stand up in excitement. One guy threw punches at the air, unable to contain his joy at having seen this.
It remains to be seen if this moment is going to have any impact on the rest of the industry, but I think Gamasutra changed at that moment. All of us were frankly bored and a bit disgusted by the endless extreme violence we were seeing at the show earlier that day, but that moment really turned us off of triple-A video games for a while.
Here we are in an industry creating some of the most beautiful works of art that have ever been seen, literally redefining how humans interact with the very world they live in, and this is how we're represented at the largest trade show of the year?
Was it an overreaction? Maybe. But looking back over everything we wrote in 2012, I can't help but notice subtle changes to the way we covered this industry starting from that moment. We've been returning big publisher PR phone calls just a little bit less often, for better or for worse, and have retrenched a bit to focus more on what makes games great, as opposed to what games are selling the most.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6gLmcS3-NI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpFk5F-S_hI
I'd like to note that i'm not taking a side by posting this.
Her point remains valid, that women are not represented well in games generally. The same is true across all cultures, especially in the US, where she's based. Look at our Congress (a record number of women serving, to be sure, but only have 17% representation there (compared to being 51% of the population).
Her project shouldn't have been controversial in the least, but there's a small, vile minority on the internet that gets so offended that someone question the status quo that it spirals into attacks just by getting said. It's also safe to say that no one who made those attacks even bothered to look at her point. Because for every decent game that portrays a woman (say, like Alex in Half Life 2), there are a dozen Bayonettas fighting nearly naked, Princess Peaches getting trapped in castles, or pretty much anything in the Hitman series.
The fact that it's radical or abrasive to go "wait a second" is just part of the problem, a much bigger problem.
Read carefully what i said.
"(...) criticism being targeted at her."
If you want to argue about sexism in general, then talk to someone else. My point is that while a lot of things that she's saying speak directly to a lot of people, she may not be the right person to be the face of the issue of sexism in video games and the industry, because what she considers sexism tends to be far too overreaching. The reason why a lot of people got so angry at her is because Anita represents a view that all female nudity is bad and that everything that appeals to a heterosexual male is bad. This shows in the videos on her channel, or in the ones she deleted, like the Bayonetta video. The whole issue is being presented in a polarising, black and white fashion, that she stands for equality, while everyone who get angry at her are brainless trolls that treat women like objects.
From a gaming point of view, it's the difference between Bayonetta and, say, Morrigan in Dragon Age. One is most certainly caricature, and while the other has a great deal of sexuality pressed into the character, she has much more than that (opinions, personality, things that have nothing to do with the sexuality of the character).
I'd suggest watching the TEDx talk that Anita gave for a good response from her to the critics, or the interview she gave on Destructoid in response to it (http://www.destructoid.com/interview-anita-sarkeesian-games-and-tropes-v s-women-
230337.phtml).
Disagreeing with her points is perfectly valid. Discarding them because you don't like the speaker only serves to add to the black and white.
Again, read carefully.
"The whole issue is being presented(...)"
I'm talking about how the issue of the internet's response to her is presented, not how she presents her point. The rest is, again, not arguing anything i said.
1. They started out as 4chan browsers intrigued by this single image: http://static4.fjcdn.com/comments/Katawa+Shoujo+is+based+off+this+image+some+dud
e+called+_cbd31990e706045aa241ee08abdd88d9.jpg
2. They developed this game internationally, taking five years of do-overs and developer drama.
3. Regardless of opinion, 4LS' final product defied everyone's expectations, providing a surprisingly tasteful game about love, teen angst, and disabilities. This sort of subject matter still rarely gets addressed in gaming.
4. They made 4chan cry. Enough said. http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/309586-katawa-shoujo
Their efforts had all the signs of treating F2P as a simple cash grab and not a legitimate business model for success (which it most certainly is). They turned the game into a crippleware demo, at best, and at worst, managed to alienate their current and former subscribers. There are plenty of MMOs that have managed the F2P model with great success (Star Trek Online and most of SOEs catalog come to mind), so to see EA bungle it so badly shines a light on how far out of touch they are with their consumers.
The most worrying thing to me is the pain that medium titles are seeing, and how being a "disappointment" is now related more to forecasts and the expectations of a company than the actual success of a title. Darksiders II was a victim of being owned by THQ more than being a poor performing game.
Hopefully the growth of Kickstarter and top-talent developers coming directly to their customer base to build a game (ala Star Citizen or Project Eternity). Unfortunately, like any fledging market, it will only take one or two bad eggs (like, say, Black Isle) to ruin the marketplace going forward.
But it's a promising sign to see developers and gamers alike embrace the model of supporting development. Perhaps the mid-tier can find new life on efforts like this to cover part of the cost, or taking a more graduated development cycle for features and content.