Toast On Jam: Could 2015 Be A Vintage Year In Gaming?

Year in and year out we’re delighted and entertained by games throughout those 12 months. Perhaps without quite realising it, there’s scarcely a ‘bad’ year in gaming, rather just one that isn’t as great as other years. Then there are the years that stand, years burgeoning with greatness.

These are what you might call vintage years – a 12 month period of exceptional quality. With an already solid amount of quality behind us, could 2015 turn out to be a vintage year?

It may behoove us at this point to leave no ambiguity with regards to what constitutes a vintage year. On a vineyard one wouldn’t regard it as a vintage year just because one bottle turned out to be exceptional. No, it’s a vintage year if a large volume of it is exceptional. Games work rather differently to wine because in amongst the quality stuff there is always a dizzying amount of flotsam and mediocrity. To redefine it then, let us consider a vintage year in gaming as one in which a number of what one might consider classics released. Games of exceptional quality which we still look upon with high regard.

Two years in recent memory which stand out in particular are 2007 and 2011. These two years were crammed full of fantastic games and even more good-to-great games.

2007 – God of War II, BioShock, Halo 3, The Orange Box, Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Super Mario Galaxy, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Rock Band, Crysis.

2011 – Batman: Arkham City, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Portal 2, Gears of War 3, Forza 4, Uncharted 3, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Rayman Origins, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dark Souls.

I’ll give you a minute to let the memories of those games wash over you.

Those are two years of extremely high quality with upwards of 10 titles each which can claim to be at least great games. In some cases they set a benchmark or redefined a genre or were simply just superb at what they did.

Throw in an ‘h’ somewhere and you’ve got 2014 in a nutshell.

Could 2015 then count itself among these vintage years a decade from now?

Thus far we’ve already had such excellent releases as Bloodborne, Batman: Arkham Knight, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Mortal Kombat X, Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain and so… many… remasters. That last one, regardless of quality, is being filed under flotsam I’m afraid.

The thing is, we’re effectively only halfway through the gaming release calendar as I see it. In terms of major releases January to September is typically equivalent to October to December. Still to come then we’ve got Star Wars Battlefront, Fallout 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Forza 6, Hitman, Rise of the Tomb Raider and maybe even Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate. Scratch that, I’d rather put my faith in The Wachowskis than in a Ubisoft game.

If the games still to release turn out to be excellent, and they very well could, then we may be looking at another vintage year.

The trouble is whether these games will be remembered as such. Academically 2015 may well go down as a vintage year but will people remember it as one? The brain is an uneasy place and one that warps experiences. 2014 was loaded with great games but what comes to mind for me is ethics, #GamerGate, #NotYourShield, politics and so much controversy. Yes, some of these things are important (and I’m not going to say which) but when they overshadow and undercut the games we’re all here to enjoy isn’t that a sign that there’s a problem in where our focus lies?

It took conscious effort for many of us on the EGMR team to rekindle our passion for gaming and to start enjoying our games again.

In Dishonored you had to enhance your powers before you could do that.

What will 2015 be remembered for? Arkham Knight maybe remembered for its shocking PC version, MGS V for Quiet (not in a good way), Hitman for its business model, Rise of the Tomb Raider for its timed Xbox One exclusivity and the list goes on.

The issue is two-fold then. In what seems an effort to appear more proactive and conscious of industry issues people are reacting in the most knee-jerk fashion to anything a developer or publisher says without a thought spared for the context. Furthermore, nitpicking has become rather rampant. In many cases it is perfectly valid. By all means, put Square Enix under a microscope for its peculiar business practices but don’t take Bethesda to task for announcing a Fallout 4 season pass. They’ve proven themselves time and again with post-release content.

It’s all about context.

The flipside is that publishers do themselves no favours. Why did Warner Bros. not address Arkham Knight’s issues on PC? Why did Square Enix see the need to make Rise of the Tomb Raider a timed Xbox One exclusive? They do their games a disservice and ultimately they are remembered for the wrong reasons.

Perhaps it is because I was a lot younger or because I look back on 2007 and 2011 through rose-tinted spectacles but I do not recall any of those games being overshadowed by such controversy.

A double-edged blade is the elasticity of the collective consciousness in gaming. People are quick to forget and because of this there is scarcely context to the collective response to something. The Last Guardian received uproarious adoration at E3 despite having been stuck in development purgatory (always a worrying sign) and looking very much like it still belonged on the PS3. Meanwhile folks are excited about Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’s Jack the Ripper DLC despite the fact that it could have been included in the base game and is locked away behind a season pass. Meanwhile Bethesda is vilified for merely announcing a Fallout 4 season pass.

Some may say it’s double standards and it may well be but I think it may be something a little less explicit and more obvious: people are idiots. Indiscriminate judgment and criticism combined with inconsistency is easy. It’s difficult to teach a baby something with clauses and caveats so you just tell them to never open the fridge or to never touch the stove.

Ultimately, what will 2015 be remembered for and will it be remembered for the right things? The onus is on all of us. Those who play the games, those who write about and report on the games and those who make the games.

Alternatively we could remember 2015 as the year SJW got added to the Oxford Dictionary.

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