This is the shittiest upcoming Holiday Season in the history of gaming.

[Malakili]

Some people are tired of playing the same game over and over again; certainly tired of paying $60 every year for the privilege. YMMV.

Especially when the old ones actually tend to be better games.  CS 1.6 stuck around for so long because Source was garbage and no one else can make a half way decent twitch shooter.  Call of Duty is popular exclusively because it was the first to do a competent job making a shooter for consoles.  They are decent shooters, but they are hardly  deserving of what they've become.  Same with Halo. Good games elevated to greatness because of the poverty of options.

I'm still waiting for a game I can replace Quake 3 (now Quake Live) with for christ's sake, but no one has managed to make a deathmatch game as good as that in nearly 15 fucking years. 

[Sky]

If there were an annual, updated version of a popular football franchise made available for the PC, I would buy it annually. Even when there was an annual franchise release, it was years behind the console version.

I'm sure it probably wouldn't sell much because people don't really watch football.

Have I mentioned I'm still not over EA sewing up exclusivity for their mediocre football game?

[Jeff Kelly]

That people actually coined the term "PC master race" and use it unironically and in earnest tells you all you need to know about the state of games in 2014 and why the business is as shitty as it is. The fact that this label is not only offensive and tone deaf but also mainly highlights the somewhat superficial and subjective technical aspects of PC versions of multi platform games is deeply disturbing yet par for the course for a fan base that is in large parts as morally corrupt and cynical as the executives that fuck them on a regular basis.  As if cynical fucked up messes full of money grabbing bullshit and disdain for the consumer - like AC:Unity - suddenly became better games just because they now crash and burn in 4k with 16x FSAA.

That they use the label to claim moral superiority and essentially dominion over all gamers and that they claim to support better games than the "console peasants" while spending inane amounts of money on the privilege of watching a preordered $70 mess of a game crash and burn in "glorious 4k resolution" and shitting on everything that doesn't fit their definition of being a "game" deeply offends me. Because right now a game like crossy road or desert golfing is probably better than all the AC: Unitys or Halo MCCs of the world because those games actually work and are fun instead of being utterly broken barely playable monetization schemes.

That Nintendo probably had the best lineup of fun AAA games on the Wii U and the 3DS, unarguably the least powerful platforms of them all, is so deeply ironic on such an universal level that I can't help but laugh at the absurdity that is the video game business in 2014.

[schild]

 

[Jeff Kelly]

A lot of really great games came out in 2014 that everyone ignored or loudly complained about before ignoring them while a lot of the same people willingly spent thousands of dollars on the privilege of getting screwed over by EA and Ubisoft yet again.

Yet we let people get away with stupid and offensive shit like PC master races and gamer gates or let them get away with loudly declaring what is and isn't a game, who is allowed to make games and who isn't and who is allowed to play games or not.

Excuse me for being angry about that but there's not just cynical and morally bankrupt executives giving us bland and broken retreads year over year but also the shitheads that enable them and I hope they both go away or at least grow the fuck up in 2015 because otherwise it will be just another shitty season.

[Rendakor]

Psycho.

[Lucas]

Whoa.

[Jeff Kelly]

Maybe.

On the other hand nothing exists in a vacuum and going over a whole lot of top ten list I realized that there were actually quite a few really great games that came out this year. Games that have been largely ignored while people bitched about Destiny and how broken Unity is.

It makes me wonder if you can really claim that 2014 has been shitty just because of the big publishers when that year also gave us gamer gate and made shitty labels like PC master race reach mainstream usage.

Let's face it 2014 has been shitty because there are so many shitty people on both sides being involved in games

[Soulflame]

What are those great games that everyone ignored?

[Yegolev]

You can set your prescriptions to auto-fill and be delivered to your home.

[Soulflame]

I swear I am not mentally ill.  Probably.  Although I guess almost no one who is mentally ill is aware of it.

[Paelos]

Let's face it 2014 has been shitty because there are so many shitty people on both sides being involved in games

2014 was shitty because the economy improved and consumers have enough free cash to blow it on unfinished crap. So publishers learned they can release and make money on unfinished crap.

It has nothing to do with the people involved in games, other than the fact they learned that their customers are mostly stupid with their cash.

[Yegolev]

It doesn't have a lot to do with the PC Master Race people, as far as I know.  That's a different sort of ailment which I mainly attribute to people being bad with thumbsticks.

[Phildo]

Also, "PC Master Race" is a six year old term from Yahtzee's review of The Witcher.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0dXtOVi2yo

[WayAbvPar]

It doesn't have a lot to do with the PC Master Race people, as far as I know.  That's a different sort of ailment which I mainly attribute to people being bad with thumbsticks.

Which has more to do with thumbsticks being bad rather than any particular failing of the user. 

[Yegolev]

It doesn't have a lot to do with the PC Master Race people, as far as I know.  That's a different sort of ailment which I mainly attribute to people being bad with thumbsticks.

Which has more to do with thumbsticks being bad rather than any particular failing of the user. 

Thanks for continuing my logic for me by way of example.

That said, did I mention that I'm too old to play Smash Bros?  I'm not too old to play Destiny with a thumbstick, but my reaction time and accuracy are probably holding me back.  Then again, I was never great at games like Unreal Tournament or Quake deathmatch.

[Lucas]

It doesn't have a lot to do with the PC Master Race people, as far as I know.  That's a different sort of ailment which I mainly attribute to people being bad with thumbsticks.

Which has more to do with thumbsticks being bad rather than any particular failing of the user. 

Thanks for continuing my logic for me by way of example.

That said, did I mention that I'm too old to play Smash Bros?  I'm not too old to play Destiny with a thumbstick, but my reaction time and accuracy are probably holding me back.  Then again, I was never great at games like Unreal Tournament or Quake deathmatch.

Or, maybe you need a bigger stick.

I mean, I was and I'm still good at handling this kind of stick:


But this?...Oh god, I never learnt what I'm supposed to do with this:


Definitely too small for my tastes.

Yeah.

[lamaros]

Are you making some sort of sexual joke?

[Samwise]

I think Lucas is saying he doesn't know how to please a woman.  

Jeff is saying he accidentally Bob's meds.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'm not even half as angry as I come off here. Also my meds are fine, I'm currently on my second glass of a 20 year highland single malt that was more expensive than I care to admit 

I just consumed a lot of game of the year stuff and due to Steam's holiday sale (and the fact that I'm on holiday and have the time) caught up on a few smaller titles everyone recommended.

This has made me sad for two reasons. Firstly because not even the sites that put those games on those lists really talked about them that much in a "this was one of the ten best games this year we never really talked about" sort of way. Secondly because of the incessant whining on steam's forums about basically every aspect of those games from price to "this is not a real game".

This made me suddenly realize that a hobby where people complain about really good games costing $10 yet still preorder $70 monetization schemes from companies that fucked them over multiple times has bigger issues than just having a bad year.

The juxtaposition of experiencing a great game like 80 days or the fall or banner saga or Valiant Hearts and people that supposedly "really like games" shitting all over them for bullshit reasons because it apparently doesn't validate their purchase of a dual 980 gaming rig is jarring. Yet after my second glass of whiskey more bearable.

[schild]

Why are you typing so much about nothing? I don't understand.

This year sucked. There's not really an argument to be made unless your standards are shit. In which case, the argument is "My standards are shit, 2014 was great for me."

[Yegolev]

That was my basic argument a few posts back.

[Kail]

Secondly because of the incessant whining on steam's forums...

Ah, I think I found the problem.

[Samwise]

A friend was collecting ideas for "best game of 2014" and the best I had was Monument Valley, which is a wonderful little piece of artwork but it's not much of a game.  Very few of the games I played and enjoyed this year were new releases.

I'm not sure where this $70 AAA new release and PC gamergate frothing is coming from, apart from Jeff stealing Bob's drugs and/or pricing working differently in Europe.  Who pays full price for PC games any more in the first world?  The main reason my PS3 is gathering dust is that for anything that's not a console exclusive, I can pay $60 for the PS3 version or I can pay $20 for the PC version during a Steam sale.  (Regardless, I don't understand what this has to do with ethics in game journalism, but I long ago gave up trying to make sense of any of that.)

[WayAbvPar]

Seriously. One benefit of having more games than time is I can afford to wait on pretty much everything and get it at a serious discount. New MMOGs and FIFA are the exceptions  

[Phildo]

Speaking of the game, I just lost it.

[Samwise]

God dammit.  I think I had a multiple year streak going there.

[Sky]

I like to think of myself as an optimist.

2014 was a banner year for old men yelling at clouds.

[Khaldun]

Evidently. Invest now in Old Men Yelling at Clouds, I like its prospects in the coming year.

[Sky]

Pays dividends for those with the butt plugin. For teh browser, I mean. Or whatever, I'm not the cops, plug it if you want.

[rk47]

*updates his Jeff Kelly.txt*

Jeff, we need more pearls of your wisdom.
I might start printing them out and stick them on the wall.

[HaemishM]

I see that Jeff Kelly was late for the Festivus Airing of Grievances this year. 

[Sophismata]

I think the idea that rk47 keeps txt's on everyone is kinda . That's old school.

[MahrinSkel]

Pretty sure "PC Master Race" was always a self-mocking label used by and for people who are thoroughly tired of the Platform Wars. I don't think I've ever seen it used un-ironically before Jeff's Godwinning rant up there.

--Dave

[Merusk]

Less intelligent members of /r/gaming use it unironically all the time.