2021 in Review: Winners and Losers - Article
by Taneli Palola , posted on 02 January 2022 / 5,345 Views
Here we are again. Another year's worth of video gaming behind us; some of it quite good, some of it just kind of there, and disappointingly a lot of it bad once again. This was somewhat true in years past as well, but this time it's even more so the case. It was so very easy to come up with a massive list of losers for 2021, but it took some serious digging to fill out the winners column, almost as if the video game industry has a lot of issues to work through at the moment. So, let's take a look back at the best and the worst 2021 had to offer us in the world of video games, and see if there's a silver lining somewhere.
Winners
Great Games
Despite all the horrible stuff I'm going to talk about a bit later on in this article, there were still at least a pretty decent number of great games released in 2021. From big flagship titles like Forza Horizon 5, Deathloop, Metroid Dread, Tales of Arise, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, to smaller releases like the long-awaited Psychonauts 2, Kena – Bridge of Spirits, Chicory – A Colorful Tale, and It Takes Two among others, this year gave us some genuinely excellent games to play.
The variety among high quality releases was also very high, and it's always great to see smaller studios thrive in an industry that often isn't the most accommodating towards them. Basically, whatever platform you chose to spend time on in 2021, you probably had plenty of great, new games to play throughout the year.
The People Actually Making the Games We Play
These are the people who have to endure extended periods of crunch, burn out, harassment, abuse, and actual death threats from fans who apparently have trouble figuring out the difference between fantasy and reality. They work in an industry which more often than not gives them no respect and will without a moment's hesitation toss them aside for short-term gain rather than create a healthy working environment where they aren't constantly on the verge of burn out.
For many of them, making video games is a passion, something they love doing in spite of all the horrible things that are happening in this industry on a practically daily basis. Even with all of that, and even with so many so-called fans attacking these people for things they most likely have little or no control over, they still keep making the games all of us play and love. Simply put, they deserve better, both from us and the industry as a whole.
Phil Spencer Voicing Support for Legal Emulation as Game Preservation
The video game industry has an unfortunate tendency of ignoring and forgetting its past, which leads to situations where huge portions of a given console's library are unavailable to play through any legal means. The fact that many are so quick to disregard the history of an entire medium is baffling to me, and in a lot of ways shows that video games are not yet regarded as equals to other, older forms of entertainment like movies and music.
One way to change this perception is to preserve and respect the history of video games; to conserve the games that came before and paved the way for everything the industry is today. Xbox's Phil Spencer fairly recently talked about this issue in an interview and stated, among other things, that “My hope (and I think I have to present it that way as of now) is as an industry we'd work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game."
Accessibility Options Becoming More Common in Video Games
This is an aspect of modern gaming that is a genuine improvement compared to what came before, allowing people who previously couldn't do so to play an increasingly wide variety of games. These can range from obvious things like difficulty options and control remapping, to more inclusive elements like colour blind options, UI scaling, and closed captioning.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has a lot of really useful features, Microsoft in general has done a lot to make its games more accessible over the last year, including in the likes of Forza Horizon 5. On the indie side of things a number of games did great things on this front too, one example being Chicory: A Colorful Tale, which has a wealth of different accessibility options.
The fact that these features are becoming more of an industry standard is a wonderful thing, and gives so many more people the chance to experience some of the best games available today. Hopefully, as the industry moves forward, accessibility options become one of the things that all developers and publishers adopt as a general policy for as many games as possible.
Losers
Physical, Mental, & Sexual Abuse Throughout the Industry
The seemingly industry-wide culture of harassment and abuse is utterly vile and reprehensible, and every single person and company responsible for enacting, condoning, and otherwise allowing these things to happen should have no place within the video game industry. Nothing excuses this; there is no situation in which any of this is acceptable, and no game is worth the sheer human cost that this practically systematic abuse of workers within the AAA video game industry has resulted in over the years.
Ubisoft's history of abuse and work culture of harassment have been known about for over a year now, and no changes of significance have taken place to address any of it. It's not just disgusting, but also completely unacceptable. Ubisoft has literally spent years protecting and promoting abusers, and far too many people seem perfectly content with just brushing these issues aside so that they can continue happily playing shiny new games without having to feel bad.
Bobby Kotick not only knew about the harassment allegations within his company for years before they came to light, but also took part in it himself. It's not exactly a surprise at this point that Kotick is a horrible person, but it's nice to have the confirmation nonetheless. He literally sent a female assistant a voice mail where he threatened to have her killed. Can we rid him from this industry already? Of course, the Activision-Blizzard board has announced its continued support for Kotick going forward, because the two had promised to enact company wide changes combating the abuse within it. This happened roughly a month before Kotick himself was revealed to be one of the abusers. For some reason, I can't quite muster a lot of faith in these changes ever taking place.
In my mind, incidents like the above taint the games these studios have created and are creating, and makes bringing them up in a positive light much more difficult - and in some ways questionable - as it feels like I'd be ignoring the suffering that so many people who worked on those titles went through while they were being made. This is something a lot of people have an unfortunate tendency to do, but it isn't much less harmful than the actual harassment and abuse that the victims had to endure, because we're just letting horrible people and companies off the hook for free. But hey, at least they said they were sorry, as if that actually means something at this point. No game is worth this.
Predatory Microtransactions Aimed Specifically at Children
This issue is exemplified by Nintendo's Pokemon Unite, but certainly not limited to it. Microtransactions are already harmful and I've talked about them plenty in the past, but when aimed specifically at children in games targeted at children then the problem is massively amplified. Preying on impressionable kids with the kind of psychological methods that even many adults have trouble dealing with is quite frankly disgusting.
Not only is the game pay to win, but the cosmetic microtransactions are incredibly expensive as well. So, here you have the worst kind of microtransaction, combined with prohibitively expensive cosmetic items, aimed directly at young children. It seems that microtransactions are (unfortunately) here to stay, but it would be nice if developers and publishers exhibited at least some level of restraint when designing them. That might be too much to ask though.
Patenting Game Mechanics
Warner Bros. finally succeeded in patenting the brilliant Nemesis system (featured in the Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel), to the detriment of the video game industry as a whole. Patenting game mechanics and systems in general is scummy and makes the industry as a whole poorer. It sets the stage for a scenario where developers can't improve and iterate on great ideas because they're locked behind an exclusive patent for a single company.
The Nemesis system isn't the only example by any means, but it's among the more notable recent ones. There have been many examples of patented game mechanics over the years, from Sega's patent for the Crazy Taxi arrow, Nintendo's sanity meter from Eternal Darkness, and Namco's loading screen mini-games, and all it ever does is stifle developer creativity and prohibit the use of clever mechanics in other companies' games.
The Game Awards Announcing it Wasn't Taking Sides Over Activision Scandals
Geoff Keighley quickly followed this up by stating that Activision wouldn't be a part of the awards show itself, but this was a completely meaningless gesture without any weight or purpose beyond trying to save face and keep the awards show out of the controversy surrounding the publisher. Activision still had nominations in two different categories, giving the company publicity, regardless of whether it won or not, rendering the statement of impartiality inconsequential. For me it was a question of which mattered more: money or people's well-being. The answer was fairly obvious.
The Rest of the Losers (Because There Were So Many)
Nintendo Locking QoL Features Behind Amiibo Purchases in Skyward Sword
Improved fast travel in Skyward Sword HD is only available by purchasing an Amiibo. The cheapest I can buy the game in Finland at the time of writing is 50 euros, and the Loftwing Amiibo would run me an additional 35. I guess that's one way to gate off features from players.
Twitch Hate Raids
The fact that certain specific sections of the gaming community are bigots and/or idiots is nothing new, but it feels like recently things have gotten even worse. Whether it's because they are people of colour, belong to a sexual minority, or for any number of other reasons, numerous streamers have been dogpiled by racist, sexist, and misogynistic idiots using so-called hate raids.
People Getting Angry Over Certain Character Designs in God of War: Ragnarök
Apparently for some people the idea of Thor having a bit of a belly, and Angrboda being black, was just too much to handle. Monsters, gods, an angry Spartan rampaging through Norse mythology, Mimir having a Scottish accent, and countless other changes to the original myths are all fine, but these were too much. These 'controversies' were nonsense, with certain people trying to paint them as Santa Monica not staying true to the original myths, as if that had ever been an issue for them before this.
Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack
Not only is it overpriced at $49.99 or €39.99, but the added Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games aren't even close to being worth the asking price. These are mostly games that have been released and re-released countless times on multiple different systems over the last 30 years, and it's ridiculous to ask people to pay so much for these titles. If the service had every single 1st party N64 game on it, then it might just be worth considering, but even that'd be pushing it.
At the time of writing (December 17) I could literally go on Steam and buy a collection of 58 Sega Genesis games for €28, including almost all the games in the expansion pack. In addition, of the ten N64 games available on the service at the moment, there are maybe two that I have both never played before and would be interested in playing.
Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition
I don't really even care about Grand Theft Auto all that much, but this was such a brilliant mess that it was impossible to not include it here. Not only is it a failure as a remaster due to myriad technical issues, but Take-Two also removed all other versions of the original games from digital storefronts and even sent cease and desist letters to modders who had improved the original titles, in order to make the remaster a more appealing prospect for players. Shame then that the resulting release was just kind of shit, then, isn't it.
Even 'Definitive Edition' is a somewhat misleading title, since parts of the original soundtracks had to be cut because of song licencing issues. Then, to compound these issues further, those who actually wanted to play the game at launch on PC couldn't do so because Rockstar's pointless proprietary launcher went down when the servers crashed.
Play-to-Earn as a Concept & NFT Games in General
I'm not sure I even have the energy to try and untangle this particular mess - as if publishers needed more excuses to turn their games in grindy, exploitative market places masquerading as video games. Basically, play-to-earn games allow players to play, earn, and sell in-game assets as NFTs on cryptomarkets. So, in other words, turn your video game into another job you can work on rather than having actual fun.
Most of these 'games' barely qualify as such, but this hasn't stopped various websites with names like Bitcoin News and Cointelegraph from singing their praises and calling the emergence of these games 'a revolution', of all things. You can look them up yourself if you want.
Naturally, both EA and Ubisoft are very excited about the prospect of NFT games, just in case you needed more warning signs and reasons to dislike them. Valve, on the other hand, has already banned NFT games from Steam, so that's one positive bit of news at least.
And that's it for 2021. Do you agree or disagree with any of my picks? What are your own winners and losers for the year? Did I miss something obvious? Share your thoughts in the comments if you like.
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Very well written, highlights a lot of how far we have to go unfortunately...
Toxic work environments, predatory monetization, and the proliferation of crypto/NFT scams are the 3 things most concerning me about the industry. Very good to be shining light on these issues
nice and different from this site, more shit like this please.
Good article. I have to say that that the NFT issue seems to be a cyclical thing with certain devs pushing sleazy paractices. We have recently seenthe number of loot box systems in games die down and now we have another dodgy practice to bilk prople out of money. Ironically i think people can now point to the three big console manufacturers (Sony MS and Nin) as their practises seem to be friendlier than most large devs (yes even nintendo!).
Wawesome article!
A good read indeed!
There seems to be a technical issue. My comment was reverted to "Add your reply..." and I have a hard time writing answers because when I click on the add button nothing happens.
Missing the lack of availability for next gen consoles.
Shocked COD Vanguard and Battlefield are not listed as losers
Returnal, Halo as winners
Quote : "Apparently for some people the idea of Odin having a bit of a belly, and Angrboda being black, was just too much to handle."
If you are like that, you are an ist or a phobe, do you got it ?
Quote : "Monsters, gods, an angry Spartan rampaging through Norse mythology, Mimir having a Scottish accent, and countless other changes to the original myths are all fine, but these were too much."
Mythologies are full of gods and monster, and what ?
A crossover of different mythologies doesn't change the mythologies themselves. I don't care if a character have a scottish accent, because I play with french voices.
It's not that thoses changes are too much. The problem is why those changes were made. They were made to promote globalism, immigrationism and all that progressive propaganda. They want to make people believe that Europe is like America, a continent with a strong ethnic mix. But it's not true. For example, the first time my mother saw a black person in real life, it was during her trip to Ethiopia (It's in Africa, I know Americans are bad at geography) in the 70s.
Europe is not the USA, but progressive American-style propaganda has already conquered much of Europe.
There have always been these kinds of changes in movies, series and video games. But before, no one complained because the propaganda was less blatant.
It's not Odin who is obese in God Of War Ragnarok, it's Thor, get your fact straight.
The problem with his is that he had a different design in God Of War PS4. People complained about a continuity problem.
Add your reply...
You realize that none of what you mentioned makes the microtransactions in the game better or less predatory, right? Of course you don't need to buy the skins, nor do you need to buy the stuff that makes you stronger in the game, but that doesn't mean that aiming those kinds of things at children is in any way acceptable regardless.
Here, a quick google search gave these results:
A news story on a kid using their parents credit card:
https://gamerant.com/6-year-old-spends-16k-microtransactions-moms-credit-card-sonic-forces-ios-apple/
A study about children using money on loot boxes:
https://www.rsph.org.uk/about-us/news/over-1-in-10-young-gamers-get-into-debt-because-of-loot-boxes.html
Kids don't need to have their own credit cards to use money, just access to their parents cards, often without permission.
My thoughts exactly. This type of addon content is ubiquitous. Parents need to monitor their credit cards and kids.
But let's face it, it's not like kids are the only ones(or even largest audience) playing Pokemon games.
Just seems like a weirdly specific critique of the game. Writer is the parent of a kid that bought a bunch of stuff in a game?
Yeah, it's perfectly fine to blame the victims isn't it, and loot boxes are clearly so very different from microtransactions. Might want to consider the fact that there are a lot of people who aren't very familiar with video games in the first place, so when those people buy their kid a game they're probably not expecting it to even include the possibility of additional purchases.
I could be wrong, but isn't there just an option to put in your password when you make a purchase? The payment info is still there, but you need the password to actually buy something.
That can't be too much effort, right. I agree that a lot of games try to coerce the player to spend money, but there has to be some responsibility on both sides. So yes, it's wrong for the companies to be doing the practices, but it's also wrong for a parent to complain if they took no measures to prevent it out of laziness.
It would be like if someone is in a car accident without a seatbelt and get thrown out of their car. Even if the other person caused the accident, not putting on the seatbelt wasn't their fault.
I can't remember specifically about psn, but I think it is or was an eShop option. If you want to buy something, you put in your password. But maybe that's more of a security feature because of the portable nature and chance to lose it.
But it's not on the developers. It's on the platform holders. Yes, people are taught about seatbelts, but if seatbelts weren't in a car, it would be the manufacturers fault. So to me, Sony, MS, Nintendo, Apple, etc need to be the ones putting in the seatbelts and teaching how to use them.
Yeah, but it's messed up all through the industry. The platform holders obviously want people to spend more money, so they don't want the seatbelts unless they're getting bad press because of it. But the developers are just monetizing the games based on what people are willing to spend and accept. I'm not saying they're off the hook due to the unethical choices they're making, but that's business.
I guess we can agree that the problems are happening because of every party involved. Plenty of blame to go around. Greedy devs, irresponsible platform holders, and lazy/uninformed consumers. Change any one of those and the situation can start improving.
I get your point, but no skin should ever cost $40.
