Must we weep because an industrial giant is struggling to come back? The north subcontinent giant, the impetus of the gaming industry, the place where all the terminally obsessed stare at pixels more than the average Americans do? Yes, the US of A is slowly losing their crown.
A number of things has to be factored in, from the post-pandemic effect, to the current economic recession, market shift, and job insecurity. Also, A.I., yes that new big bad on the horizon. But after seeing the game awards, and how people have been viewing the modern games developed from the west, including from team blue and team green themselves, there's a reality check in place.
Both Japan and Europe (Eastern Europe) released heavy hitters this year. But where as some of the Japanese games could have easily won, they were thwarted by two big games, Alan Wake 2 and Baldur's Gate 3. The highly praised and best-selling RPG took home 6 awards, which is a lot.
As always, the Japanese consistently maintain their pedigree of releasing good games that refuse to follow any of the egregiousness known in modern gaming. Several titles like Hi-Fi Rush, Final Fantasy XVI, Street Fighter 6, and Legend of Zelda: TOTK won various awards.
But from the Japanese side, that's counting around 8 awards. When you tally the awards from these two games, the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 even won for Ongoing game, and Cocoon for Indie Debut, that's around 11 awards. I know the discussion is getting geological, but let explain where am going.
It's been said before, time and time again that single-player games find ways to outlive live service or primarily online games. All the game awards did was prove that point in testament. I could have counted Forza as another European game, but that's from the UK. In fact, as much I loathe that one for myriad of reasons, it won two awards. So, technically it would total up to 13 awards.
But Forza, Starfield, Jedi Survivor, and myriad of other western developed games have been plagued with problems. Lack of content, terrible servicing for legacy players, poorly designed worlds or gameplay loop, technical issues, and it goes on. This year, it seems the tides have shifted.
The Gravy Train
It's not exactly a big loss for those that didn't win, there are plenty of award ceremonies out there. Like D.I.C.E., Golden Joystick, GDC, and so on. They can take their chances there. But, it won't change the perspective shift that has currently taken place in the video game landscape.
At the end of the year, we're making fun of scummy games like The Day Before and Payday 3, but let's look at just how bad things have really gotten. Especially from the American developers end. Activision Blizzard had the worst year for games with Modern Warfare III, Overwatch 2, and Diablo 4.
The company sold itself to Microsoft, and seemingly threw the worst Hail-Mary of releases this year. Starfield realized to be Bethesda's worst game to date. And the funny thing is, games like Jedi Survivor and Dead Island 2 have been well-received, yet their popularity faded quick. Apex Legends slowly lost players after peaking 500K players, and yet Battlefield 2042 had a comeback again.
It doesn't fix the messy class system it has, and sure as hell not earning the token of redemption. No, that's going to Cyberpunk 2077, just 3 years after release, they brought out an expansion, and revamped half the gameplay. But still, "releasing it broken, fix it later" is not an ideal trend to follow.
And then there's Ubisoft, what this company does is beyond comprehension at times. Last AC title came out in 2020, before Mirage did, and 3 years of time gap what we got was a short game with a portal kill gimmick. I am sorry, but OG AC knew boots on the ground. This wasn't it. The new Avatar game is out, and again falls short, nobody is expecting any different for the new Prince of Persia.
I couldn't forget Square Enix for the life of me as well, their best-game, Final Fantasy XVI still didn't meet their expectations with over 5m units sold. But oh no, they expected much more from Forspoken. What about Symbiogenesis, BlockChain, NFTs, Web 3.0?
No one cares. Yet still, they did try something different. Because few games like the Live A Live remake, Octopath Traveler 3, and Star Ocean Second Story R, seems to be their renewed incentive towards single-player games. Good for them, more IPs to revive hopefully next year.
Paradigm Shift
Ok, I am doing a terrible job talking about this, but what is my overarching point? The numbers Mason. Look at the numbers. The era of live service, crappy trend of online multiplayer, and triple AAA circle jerking might be dying. The thing that western games have thrived upon for so long.
Konami is still a terrible company, and I have started to notice that Sega is sort of leaning on the greedy side a bit lately. Thankfully, Capcom did well again this year. They've returned Street Fighter to its rightful form. Making good games do pay off, least they all get that somewhat.
The Japanese gaming industry just doesn't want to fallback on the practices of the western market, they did that the last time and we all know what Keiji Inafune did as well. There's still a lot of grounds for improvement, but they're better where they are now.
We live in trying times right now, the advent of the A.I. gold rush is putting people out of their jobs, wage issues leading to strike and boycotts. People can still get scammed over buying a bad game, but the scammer isn't reaping as much rewards as they thought they would. Due to ongoing practice of caution from struggling economy and price inflation. Even then, Sony couldn't help themselves.
And I am going to also give props to the Chinese, Star Rail somehow managed to even convince my close friends, long detractors of Gacha games from that market. Even I had to see closer to look at how much good-will the game has earned to make the Gacha thing work.
Eastern European, as well as Asian gaming market have recently been emerging lately with a lot of success. While, to be fair, rest of Europe hasn't been doing well since they cut oil supply from their biggest beneficiary. But, ah, I guess better luck next year? I mean, Payday 3 is from made by the Swedes. Same with this year's The Finals, I expressed my distaste for its progression system before.
Indie games have been on the rise, especially from the US. One game such as Lethal Company, stole a good portion of MWIII's playerbase and hype train, earning its success as an early success with feverishly high popularity. Something attributed by a lot of streamers playing.
2023 has been quite the year, I hope we don't have a repeat of. Except for some games, this was a strong one in that department. Heck, even Halo Infinite came back. On good track, it could be better. I don't have much to expect for next year, because at the rate am going, I might not afford food.
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