2008 Thanks For The Memories

With the year coming to an end, we look at what 2008 entailed for us. We reminiscence all the bitter sweet memories of the year, the trial and tribulations, before we finally say our goodbyes. Lets take a look at some of the major news items or talking points of 2008.

January

Mass Effect Sexual Content

2008 started with a bunch of people getting all hot and bothered over Mass Effect. The game was reported to have a non graphic sex scene. The issue blew out of proportion when a Fox News report deemed the game as pornography.

How misunderstood can you get. The people that made these accusations hadn't even played the game. BioWare later cleared things up by stating the game is rated M and the scene was a minor scene that the player might or might not encounter.

Crytek Rues PC Piracy

Crytek beginned the year by making statements that they were disappointment about Crysis getting pirated. Cevat Yerli, claimed that the rate of piracy was like 20 to every 1 person that bought the game.

Many in the enthusiast press went on to rubbish his claims since he didn't have the number's to prove it even though Crysis was clearly heavily pirated in the early days of release(like most triple AAA games).

Cevat later lamented about the PC games market as being constricted by piracy. Which based on sales figures of top AAA games, he had a point. He went on to say Crytek will not be making anymore PC exclusive titles and stated that a tweaked version of the CryEngine 2 for consoles were being worked on.

February

Sins Of A Solar Empire Released

While Crytek complained about piracy, Ironclad captured the headlines with the release of Sins of A Solar Empire. Sins received glowing recommendation from the press and had converted many strategy gamers to loyal followers of the series and its developer.

Iron Clad choose Stardock as their publisher and Sins was released without any DRM or copy protection. No Internet necessary for installation, no install limits, no disk checks. They won kudos from a lot of people for this.

Stardock reported later that Sins has done amazingly well and was very pleased with it. A large portion of sales were from their digital distribution platform.

GDC 2008 - Will Wright And The Russian Space Minute

2008 was the year Will Wright mania reached the peak of everyone's expectation. Will Wright was the coolest game developer in the planet and more importantly, he gave a good and geeky presentation wherever he was invited to give one.

One of these great presentations happened at GDC this year where Will talked about franchises and how he envisions these franchises to span many different segments. Will then went on to give the Russian space minute presentation that detailed the Russian space programme.

An amazing talk from a master presenter.

April

Resident Evil 5 Racism Issue

Resident Evil 5 made news this year for the wrong reasons. Level Up blogs N'Gai Creole made a blog posting that he thought the Resident Evil 5 trailer had too much of a negative connotation.

He said the images reminded him a lot of the painful and bitter images of how native Africans were portrayed as savage beasts by early European explorers. His comments sparked a flurry of Internet discussion and debate (some pretty hot and emotional debate) with some saying N'Gai was too sensitive and that it was only natural that Africa was populated by Africans and he shouldn't be disturbed by those images.

Critics say to a case in point that the Spanish weren't mad at Capcom for Resident Evil 4's Spanish setting with the protagonist killing many Spanish zombies (Guanados...okay not really zombies).

Capcom has since made Resident Evil 5 a bit more multi ethnic to avoid hurting anyone's feelings.

May

GTA IV Released With Record Breaking Sales

Analyst's predicted GTA IV would be a blockbuster and GTA IV delivered. It sold tons of copies off the shelf when it was released. 3.6 million units moved in the first day. There were small grumblings about frame rate of the game on the 360 and the PS3 running just a tad bit better. Either way, they lapped it up.

June

Diablo 3 Unveiled!

Blizzard made a major unveil that they would be developing Diablo 3. Rumours were abound even before the announcements that Blizzard could be working on it. Blizzard displayed cryptic images as hints run up to its Blizzcon event that was held in Paris.

Of course then the fan boys were all up in arms about Diablo 3's colourful and WoW'ish graphics. These fan boys even set up an online petition demanding Blizzard to change the art style of Diablo 3. They said it was not dark enough. Blizzard came out to defend their decision.

Dennis Dyack vs The Internetz!

Prior to the release of Two Human, Dennis Dyack the founder of Silicon Knights started a forum war by challenging forum goers at Neo Gaf that Two Human would be good. He said he would put on an avatar that said owned by Neo Gaf if he lost this challenge. Dennis was infuriated because of the negative opinion from forum posters on his unreleased game and said it could adversely affect how the game does.

Dennis took it upon himself to go up against these critics and was immediately labeled a cry baby and a whiner. Neo Gaf eventually banned him from their forums because he was disrupting them and challenging the moderators.

July

E3 2008 Spawns New E3 Is Dead Debate

E3 this year was held at the Los Angeles Convention Centre. The event was heavily criticised previously when it was held in San Jose and journalists had to travel to different buildings to go to the different press conferences.

However, this years E3 felt generally underwhelming with a lot smaller presence from retailers and developers. A lot of big publishers have had their own press events prior to E3 and scaled things down a lot for E3.

This had led to a lot of murmurs that E3 was dead and that all is not well with the ESA. Many agreed the format had to change if E3 was to be held as a major milestone in the gaming calendar.

E3 2008 will always be remembered for Nintendo ditching the hardcore audience. Ravi drums as the face of E3 2008.

August

Leipzig 2008 Shows Em How It's Done!

Just after the drudgery that was E3, journalists and fans packed their bags and went off to Leipzig. At Leipzig, they were reminded of what a games convention should be. Full of fanfare and excitement, the Liepzig Games Convention was filled with exciting games and performances.

Leipzig was colourful and full of cultural diversity. The convention allowed the press to get two days in before the public. This format was much praised by journalists. It was what E3 should have been.

September

Spore And The Whole DRM Hullabaloo!

Spore was released and what got the headlines wasn't the game, but its copy protection mechanism. It used an online Securom DRM that needed the user to connect to the authentication servers before install and on a weekly basis.

The DRM was cracked literally hours before even the release( the game was sold a day or two before the actual release date by some stores).

To make matters worse, users were limited to three install limits(install on 3 separate machines) that Maxis later increased to five. Amazon user's started bombing the sites game review by giving Spore a 1 star rating, which lead to Amazon cleaning up the review section.

The game received widespread flak from all quarters for this draconian approach to DRM. Many users downright threatened to pirate the game because of this. Maxis has since released a de authorisation tool that will allow users to get refunded an install when they uninstall the game.

Spore nevertheless was the top seller regardless in the opening week and remains one of the best selling game this year.

October

EA Sexes Up Red Alert 3

EA released Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 with much fanfare here in Malaysia with some events thrown in and stuff. EA really sexed up the game with many hot ladies and used some high resolution hot and sexy poster for promotional material (which the kids loved).

The game was offbeat and kooky with corny FMV's. The gameplay was fast and it had a Co op single player campaign that could have been better implemented. A fun little strategy game that doesn't really add much new.

It was also the game former gamespotter Greg Kasavin worked on. Greg was definitely one of the best PC editors in the video game media. I was a big fan of his writings.

November

San Fransisco Gets Invaded By The Undead!

No that's not the title of a song by a goth band, but Left 4 Dead got released. The game had very good press reviews and previews prior to its release. Valve had a massive add campaign that cost USD$10 million. San Fransisco was plastered with left 4 dead posters and billboards.

The undead would take over everything soon. BRAINSSSSS!!!!

LBP Doesn't Quite Sizzle In The Sales Chart

After the massive ad campaigns by Sony to push LittleBigPlanet as their exclusive title and as the face of Playstation 3, the game got released with disappointing sales figures. The hype and good press reviews didn't do anything to improve sluggish sales. It sold 205,00o when it was released.

The sales figure's have been better later on as sales picked up.

December

GTAIV Released For The PC And Does This To It!

GTA IV was released for the PC and it was...Wait, I'm still installing mine. It took a lengthy installation process with multiple account registration and user names and password. After all that effort, the game was downright broken for many with texture issues and crashes.

If you did manage to run it, it runs terribly slow even on a high end machine. Rockstar has made a statement(that is also in the read me) that the high settings were included for future generation hardware.

Many were not having it and some got refunds from Steam. Things are a little bit better now with new drivers and a patch.

The Lich King Corrupts The World!

Blizzard released the long awaited expansion Wrath of the Lich King to the delight of legions of fans throughout the world. It became the fastest selling PC game ever with 2.8 million copies sold in the first day of release.

Since release, Word of Warcraft has reached a whopping 11.5 million suscribers. It turned out to be the top selling PC game of the year. No real surprises. Many lament the fact that PC gaming has turned into an MMO market with no room for regular PC titles.



Sayonara 2008! Hope you all had a great year. I'm very certain 2009 will bring big things for us gamers and big things for this blog. A lot to look forward too. I hope you all had a good year and will have an even better 2009.

Addendum : I will also need to add that 2008 was the year Jeff Green and Shawn Elliot, editors I respect and look up to left the media to join the development side of things. Jeff Green was an industry vet and had been with the media since the glory days of Computer Gaming World Magazine. He then went on to be in charge of Games For Windows magazine(that was closed down by Ziff Davis). Jeff left 1up for EA and cited the closure of GFW as a catalyst to his decision to look for something new.

Shawn Elliot was his co editor in GFW mag and I always valued Shawn's writing as I found it to be deeply insightful and well put forward. Shawn is currently working on an unannounced project at 2K Boston. He was also the clown of the gang and always had a funny story to tell. I will miss these guys.

PS : March was a forgetable month.