The Worst in Gaming 2014

Steve Anderson : End Game
Steve Anderson
The Video Store Guy
| The video game industry has gone from a mole hill to a mountain in no time flat, Chris DiMarco is your Sherpa as you endeavor to scale Mount “Everquest”

The Worst in Gaming 2014

It may sound like the worst kind of cynicism and defeatism to look at the worst that gaming had to offer in 2014, but for my money, it's not a bad idea. Why? Because as a great cartoon mouse once noted, it's a meticulous analysis of history that leads to greatness. Seriously, it's on YouTube; it's “Pinky and the Brain” if you don't catch the reference offhand. Should you go, brace yourself for singing. Anyway, meticulous analysis of history; it's what will make us great as gamers, and studying history is the best—some might say only—way to get that oh-so-necessary understanding. So now, let's run down the horrors of the year in gaming for 2014, and see if maybe we can take home a lesson or two into 2015.

Gamergate

Oh man...you can't talk about 2014 in gaming without talking about Gamergate. It all but ruled gaming for months, and even product announcements were just shot in the face of this ongoing rush of constant indignation from both sides. It underscored issues of gender in gaming, it dealt with issues of ethics in gaming coverage, and it overshadowed reasoned discourse on every side. You'll notice that I played Switzerland on this particular front, and stayed wholly neutral. There was entirely too much emotion running through that whole concept, and so I stayed most determinedly out. But still, it was a topic that brought out the worst in a lot of gamers, and one that will raise just as much discussion in how to keep such a thing out of our 2015.

Loot Caves

It was perhaps one of the strangest events of gaming, and alternately, one of the worst points gaming had to offer. Specifically, it relates to the release of Destiny, a game that some were regarding as broken due to its comparatively stingy nature in terms of rewards. In the Russia map, there was a certain cave that allowed users to park themselves in front of it, fire in the general direction of the cave's mouth, and reap a bounty that would have taken much, much longer to do the standard way. It was boring, it was ludicrous, but for many gamers, it was the best idea to get the things needed to advance in the game as it was being doled out so sparingly elsewhere. When gamers would sooner shoot into a cave to advance than actually play the game to advance, it's safe to say there was a problem.

Bethesda's Buttoned Lip

2014 has come and gone with a shocking dearth of actual news out of Bethesda. With a Christmas card that's little more than a rehash of already-released titles, and three game shows now—E3, the Tokyo Game Show and the VGX event—come and gone with no word about future releases, both Fallout and Elder Scrolls fans (who are often the same people) are left wondering just what will happen to their favorite franchises. With the Elder Scrolls Online proving less than overwhelming, and not much in the pipeline vis-a-vis news, it's getting to be a rather grim picture indeed as far as the next few months go.

So that was a pretty good set of candidates for the worst in 2014 for gaming, and while it was hardly a meticulous analysis of history, it was an analysis nonetheless. How to improve? Not so tough to consider; we make a more concerted effort to get more of a broader focus in our character base, we focus more on story in gaming, and we get some actual word out of Pete Hines. Only 2016 will tell what happens in 2015 in gaming, but with so much to come, I can't help but think it's going to be a good year.



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