2012 saw the gaming industry undergo a remarkable transformation with crowdfunding, indie games and free-to-play games all coming to the fore. What other trends did we see in the past 12 months?
Rise of Kickstarter
2012 was the year that crowdfunding came of age, letting us, the consumer, decide what games we want to see made rather than relying on large publishers to decide for us. The successful funding of Tim Schafer’s Double Fine Adventure (one of our most anticipated games of 2013) in February paved the way for countless other small developers to try out Kickstarter as a means of obtaining finance for their projects.
Next year will be crunch time for crowdfunding. There will undoubtedly be disappointments, where funded titles see long delays, don’t meet the lofty expectations that donators held, or don’t materialise at all.
So far, FTL is perhaps the only Kickstarter funded game to have released and achieved critical success, and it continues to feature high up in Steam’s sales charts several months after its release.
Kickstarter has given another boost to indie developers, so let’s hope that further high-profile success stories like FTL emerge over the next few months and continue to show that crowdfunding really is the future of the gaming industry.
Zombies, zombies, and more zombies.
The Walking Dead, DayZ, Deadlight, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Resident Evil 6 and ZombiU: it seemed like 2012 was the year that zombies sprang up and took over the gaming world. At this rate the next SimCity will have a zombie apocalypse amongst its usual array of disasters (actually, that would be awesome).
With the second season of The Walking Dead games on their way next year, in addition to a first-person shooter based on the TV series, plus huge titles such as The Last of Us, Dead Island: Riptide and promising open-world game State of Decay, the zombies are just going to keep coming.
Are you bored of zombies already? Well, hopefully not, because it seems like they’ve found a home on consoles and computers everywhere.
The end of subscription fees
Here’s one video game trend that we’re particularly pleased about: 2012 was the year when subscription fee MMOs all but died out. Sure, some of the old guard are left standing – EVE Online (<500,000 subscribers) and World of Warcraft (10 million), for example, but even these are offering lengthy free trials.
Of the three largest MMOs to launch this year, Star Wars: The Old Republic went free-to-play less than a year after its release, and The Secret World also dropped its sub fee but still requires new players to purchase the game, following the same pricing model that Guild Wars 2 released with.
In the following twelve months we hope to see new MMOs spring up under free-to-play and buy-to-play pricing models. Players have become smarter, savvier, and expect more for their money, and most consumers simply can’t justify paying sub fees anymore. The fall of subscription fees also shows that we aren’t willing to spend our lives married to a single title – gaming is just another form of entertainment, and shouldn’t feel like a contract. The move to F2P also allows more casual players to try out MMOs, hopefully ensuring a larger consumer base in the long term.
PC gaming
After nearly a decade of service, the current generation of consoles are coming to an end. As developers hold back new games for the Playstation 4 and the Xbox 720 (please, Microsoft, come up with a better name for it), we’ve seen a lull in fresh new games for the 360 and PS3. Up steps the good ol’ trusty PC.
By its nature the PC is an open platform, and the recent resurgence of indie games accentuated this advantage that it holds over the consoles. Anyone can make a PC game, and if it garners enough support, it can be put on Steam by the power of the community alone, through Steam Greenlight, launching it into a market that millions of people browse daily.
The modding community continues to flourish, and allows PC gamers to experience graphically superior versions of games, such as Skyrim, that were originally developed to run on less powerful consoles. DayZ, a mod for ArmA III proved so popular that its developers are releasing it as a standalone game.
2012 has shown that the PC gaming market is all about the power of the community: crowdfunding, mods, consumer influence. These past 12 months have been great ones for PC gamers.
We can’t wait to see what the next console generation brings – but we’re not going to be abandoning our PCs, not by a long shot.
Studios shutting down
It’s been a tough year for everyone, and the gaming industry has seen its fair share of visits from the administrators. The first of the two highest profile development studios to run into financial trouble was 38 Studios, whose RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, fell short of its investors’ expectations after being released in Skyrim’s lengthy shadow. 38 Studios were also developing an MMO with a working title of Project Copernicus, but following the studio’s downfall in May, it is unlikely that it will ever see the light of day.
More recently, THQ filed for bankruptcy. A bundle of THQ games went on sale through the Humble Bundle webpage, gathering millions in funds, but only days after the sale ended, THQ folded. Having published and developed such prominent games including the Saints Row franchise, and the upcoming title South Park: The Stick of Truth, THQ was definitely a big name. It is likely that the development of these larger titles will continue, possibly under the THQ name, as they are now working with a private equity firm to sell off their assets.
There are far too many other casualties this year, including Rockstar Vancouver (Max Payne 3), Big Huge Games (Rise of Nations) and Black Hole Entertainment (Heroes of Might and Magic VI). Elsewhere, we’ve seen jobs slashed from almost every studio you can name.
Let’s hope that 2013 is a healthier year for the gaming industry.
What else?
What were the other gaming hot topics of 2012? Here’s a few:
- Is a constant Internet connection a fair form of DRM?
- Does every game need multiplayer?
- Is sexism still an issue in video games?
- Are video games art?
Be sure to check out Hypable’s other end-of-year gaming coverage. We counted down our top five games and our top five indie games of 2012, plus we chose our most-anticipated titles of 2013.