Originally posted by Gallifrey - CSSC Gaming Founder:

In fairness compared to the political eruptions around the world - Brexit, soon to be President Trump, Syria where what had started out as a liberal democratic uprising got brutally crushed by Russian military power - developments in gaming were likely to appear even more trivial than most years. Still 2016 hasn't been uneventful.

1) The rise of the "whiny gamer".

This phrase got repeated so often this year it was as if some pro posters had it delivered as part of a meme pack.

That said for the last four or five years we have lived in a world where the bulk of our entertainment and news has been delivered to us free on demand. Music certainly has been instant access. TV programmes and films have not been difficult to find on the internet and most times have been on "legitimate" sites, not the dark web. Consumers have got accustomed to getting their kicks for free and it's unsurprising that in that atmosphere large price hikes, games where core material has been withheld as DLC, overpriced DLC and, most insiduous of all, microtransactions in AAA games have lead to friction with the community.

I don't think there is an obvious and easy solution. Personally I prefer straight price ramps (Civ VI launching at £50 for example) rather than the more sneaky skullduggery (I shan't be even considering buying Deus X Mankind Divided until the microtransactions are removed).

2) The rise of prices

Now this isn't scientific but I have had far more difficulty finding decent games at under £5.00 (now about $6) this sale than I have previously. There are various factors on this. Brexit has crippled the pound's exchange rate. But far more decisively I think that non sale prices of games just aren't dropping from launch. A £40 game discounted by 75% costs more than a £15 game discounted by 50%. "Elite Dangerous" and "Tabletop Simulator" are games I've been tracking waiting for them to come into my buy zone, so far unsuccessfully.

It's also been a weird year for Creative Arts pricing who snuck out Empire Total War and Rome Total War at massive discounts in the weekly sales - far more than in the Autumn and Winter sales shortly thereafter. The lesson is clear - the best deals on Steam are no longer consistently in the BIG sales and some prices (CS:GO) are now higher than they were in previous sales.

3) The Awards

Overall good. I appreciated only having to look through two discovery queues to get the card drops and the drop from ten cards to nine cards to make a badge, and the extension of the card life out to the second of February was humane and thoughtful too.

I repeat my earlier accusation - that Steam bottled the awards by not having a "Most Wanted of 2016". You couldn't have a meaningful "Best of 2016" because no more than one Steam gamer in, wild guess, ten thousand would have bought and played all the five nominated games which would lead to a huge row. "Most Wanted" at least couldn't be disputed.

4) The Year that "sequelitis" became a pandemic.

Look at the games challenging for best games of the year this year - X Com 2 (itself a reboot of an older series), Civ VI, Gears of War IV. To which could be added Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2, Titanfall 2, Mafia 3, Fifa 2017, NBA 2K 17, Football Manager 2017... I could go on. Of course 2016 followed 2015 where the big games were Witcher 3, Fallout 4, and GTA V. It's good that Steam supports a vibrant and diverse indie market because it looks like all the big studios are playing it safe with franchises.

5) The Year that Steam stumbled.

It hasn't been a disastrous year for Steam by any means although I do wonder whether this sale will match expectations. And it was a stumble - not a collapse. Steam remains the dominant force in PC gaming. But it hasn't been smooth sailng : -

5.1) Steam's foray into the film market. So Steam has tried to enter a saturated market by trying to sell fims at four times what they'd fetch in the Walmart bargain bin which would be their natural home (those that could even get into Walmart). Sorry, NOT sell. RENT. How did that work out for you ?

5.2) Digital Homicide. Some of us have been warning Steam for a long time that they need to reinstate some basic quality control into Steam. The Digital Homicide fiasco was the expensive accident both in terms of Steam's reputation and legal fees waiting to happen.

5.3) The year's best games not being on Steam. Battlefield 1 and Titanfall 2 are E.A. exclusives. But it's Blizzard's "Overwatch" that should hurt. That game is effectively the sci-fi/ fantasy version of TF 2 that fans have been requesting for years. Together with Battleborne any Valve entry to the market now will have heavy competition. Steam will be damaged in the long term if it doesn't have half the top games but is just overburdened with crap.

5.4) The year that Valve failed to release a non VR game AGAIN. We now need to go back to DOTA 2 in July 2013 for the last new release. I'm really not bothered about Steam posting really abstract hints of new games that never come to pass. If you've got it, publish it already. The longer the delay the better any new release will have to be to match expectations.

5.5) The year that Valve appeared to outsource all it's customer handling to bots. It used to be that particularly pre-refunds Steam actually cared about customers games working and actively intervened to sort out problems. Now customers just get passed from bots at Steam to bots at the publishers and back again.


6) The year of disappointed customers. That "No Man's Sky" appeared to have only the most passing resemblance to the promised game. And the release of paid for DLC in the case of Ark: Survival Evolved before the game had left EAG caused a lot of unhappiness.

7) The year of the man with the dream. The man being Eric Barone and the dream eventually becoming "Stardew Valley". I think the key fact on this was that Eric worked on the game for four years prior to its release - he being about as far as it's possible to get from some of the really sloppy low end stuff on Steam. But this was true romance - someone so in love with their idea that they were prepared to work on it for four years with no guarantee of any payback at the end of it. I wish him well in his success.

So to 2017 - a year shaping up to be a chance for us all to play Fallout 4 - the one on super tough mode with no respawns. I just need to Google - where's my nearest vault ?

S.x.