Was 2023 the Greatest Gaming Year of All Time?
Was 2023 the Greatest Gaming Year of All Time?
From ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ to ‘Tears of the Kingdom’ to the same-day drop of ‘Marvel’s Spider-Man 2’ and ‘Super Mario Bros. Wonder,’ 2023 has been a fantastic year for gamers. But where does it stand historically in the GOAT gaming year debate?
No, not even remotely. The biggest game of the year was an antiquated cRPG, followed by a bunch of sequels and remakes. The industry as a whole has been rocked with scandal after scandal, with the most recent being the large, widespread Christmas layoffs. Innovative gameplay is now something that completely eludes AAA studios, who only seem to know how to regurgitate trends popularized by better games.
2023 was another shite year for gaming, and rewarding it with brain-dead articles like this is why 2024 probably won't be any better.
"Antiquated" is certainly not a word I've heard anyone describe BG3 with until now. Personally, this is the first year in a long time that AAA has spoken to me, because they haven't been catering to me much for the past number of years.
I mean, Larian isn't even a AAA studio. They're still technically an independent studio, though with the success and polish of Divinity I think most would have considered them AA even before BG:3. Also you'd need a lot of evidence to convince me that any cRPG isn't a product of antiquated design, there's a reason the genre completely died off. From my experience playing it, even Larian couldn't figure out how to make combat with 20+ enemies feel fun, a problem nearly every cRPG has had for years.
I didn't really see anything in BG3 that was antiquated, but I also didn't see anything innovative. It's DOS2 in Faerun.
What made BG3 "antiquated" to you? Just the nature of it being a cRPG? I thought it had some really good modern game design.
To me, it fell into the same trap basically every cRPG falls into; late game combat is a chore. Once the number of enemies and skills you have to juggle gets high enough, you can't realistically use real-time on the harder fights, but you can run into so many enemies that turn-based takes forever.
I don't even really mean that as a criticism of Larian, since nobody else ever managed to fix that issue either. It's a big reason why the genre died off for so long.
Biggest game of the year for me was Terra Nil. What a fantastic experience
oh shit this game looks awesome, thanks for the suggestion.
I have read and used the term "The Jackpot" to describe the current era of human life because of the overwhelming choice of every movie ever, every show ever, every song ever, every play ever, every game every everything being available all the time in my domicile plus many of us get get to pooh indoors which is nice/antibiotics.
Unfortunately people don't seem any happier.
Because somehow despite our society's overabundance of wealth and power, we're all working more hours/days than most humans in history.
You can thank a combination of Hedonic Adaptation and the Paradox of Choice for that.
Nah. Lots of great games, but I think there's a bit of recency bias. 2001 or 2004 would be my pick for greatest year(s) for gaming.
I mean you've got Ocarina of Time, Baldur's Gate 1, Half Life, Banjo Kazooie, Final Fantasy VII, Resident Evil 2, Panzer Dragoon Saga, Sonic Adventure, Pokemon Red and Blue (in the US, Yellow dropped that year in Japan), Goldeneye 007, Metal Gear Solid, Spyro The Dragon, Starcraft, the first Thief game, Xenogears, Unreal (as in Unreal Engine), Crash Bandicoot 3, Gran Turismo 1 (in North America and the EU), Tekken 3, Beatmania, Marvel Vs. Capcom, Mario Party 1, Tribes 1, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit (aka the first good one), Fallout 2, Gex: Enter The Gecko, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Castlevania: Symphony of The Night, Jazz Jackrabbit 2...
Suffice it to say that a lot of wildly important game franchises started that year, and several older ones were reborn in 3D for the first time.
2004 would have my vote. For the lazy:
- Halflife 2
- Halo 2
- World of Warcraft
- GTA San Andreas
- Counter Strike: Source
- MGS3
- Fable
- Star Wars Battlefront
And a bunch of other bangers
How do you list counter-strike:source and not hl2: deathmatch! You're crazy.
You had me at HL2
Games wise, very likely. There are way too many 2023 games that I bought (that's on sale) that I haven't even touched yet, and still more heavy hitters that I'm waiting for a bigger discount (e.g. Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Yakuza Gaiden, Spider-Man 2, etc). It's not only newer IPs, there are many games based on older IPs that are well received, e.g. Dead Space, FF16, RE4, Armored Core 6, etc.
Game devs wise, it's probably one of the worse. There'a already more than 9000 layoffs, with many studios shuttered. Half of them probably came from Embracer Group. We are probably gonna be seeing a rapidly shrinking number of mid-size games within the next 5 years.
Was this written by AI? Like no one in their right mind would ever think 2023 was the best year in gaming.
there are people in this thread who are putting forward the argument that it is--i'm not sure why we need to pretend someone who says this is a Degenerate AI User peddling clickbait or any other number of goofy charges.
Lol wut? Almost all of the comments in this thread are saying that it isn't.
Plenty of people in their right minds are calling it the best year in gaming, or pondering the possibility because it's at least close.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Remember for the first half of the year every new release competed with the last to be "the worst release of all time". The second half of the year was spectacular though!
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And there's never been a worse time to be making them.
The industry keeps consolidating and there were a ton of layoffs, despite great profits.
This year was great, but sad.
No 1998
Sure?