Craig Beers PC Video Editor

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Santa's Lighter Load

I've been defending this year long enough. I saw tons of forum posts complaining that this year sucked for gaming. I kept scratching my head when I read these and responded, "Hey! No it didn't!" But now that the game of the year awards are behind us, I can see why people would be thinking that. There were lots of good games, but it was still sort of a sorry year for gaming. A bunch of highly anticipated titles got delayed, thus leaving a whole crop of good but not outstanding games. This is really a shame because everybody loses when this happens. Gamers think back on the past year and have trouble remembering what they even played. I don't know about you, but my time is pretty valuable. Forgetting what I even did with such a precious commodity makes me angry. Playing games like Enter the Matrix makes me even angrier.

There's just so much excellence to be found on the GBA this year.

Gaming journalists lose because we spend countless hours trying to finalize game of the year awards. Some categories are easy, especially GBA awards. I can honestly say that I've played my GBA more than any other gaming platform this year. I think I have more than 50 hours clocked on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance alone. But most categories were difficult this year because there wasn't anything that really stood out. Lots of research was required, thus bringing us back to the "value of time" statement above.

Game retailers lose because the holiday season is huge for revenues, and it's been a lackluster holiday season for games. I personally haven't bought anything in months, which is severely depressing, considering this is the time of year when I should be losing entire paychecks to new games. I don't know how the holiday season will shape up in the final month, but we recently posted a news article about November sales, and analysts projected that growth would be much lower than expected. It's not surprising, considering that six months ago we all expected games like Half-Life 2 and Halo 2 to be out by now. Quite literally, everyone wants to get their hands on these games, so you can imagine what sales would have been like if they made it to store shelves this year.

The pinky demon is probably going to be eating less flesh since it won't be out this year.

Lastly, game publishers lose out. Perhaps they lose the most because next year is going to be crazy. If Halo 2, Doom 3, Half-Life 2, and Unreal Tournament 2004 all come out around the same time, which are you going to play? I certainly can't play all of these at once and neither can any sane person. Some of these publishers are going to be dependent on high sales so they can post good numbers when it's time to report quarterly results. You certainly aren't going to sell as much as you could have if you release Doom 3 next to Half-Life 2. Can you imagine how much money Vivendi missed out by having Half-Life 2 delayed? I don't mean for it to sound bleak, because, either way, tons of people are going to buy it. But after years of development, I would want to maximize my returns if I were a major video game publisher, and that simply can't happen now.

I suppose the point you should take away from this is that individuals can make a difference. I'm sure that each of the developers who delayed a game was thinking that its game will do fine next year because the competing products are still coming out at the end of this year. The problem is that everyone probably thought like this, so now we will have everyone competing against one another at a slower time of the year. I guess the moral of the story is to go vote--or something.