Please Stop! awards for 2015 (Trends in games)

DLC announcements/trailers for games that aren't even out yet. Assassin's Creed: Syndicate is the best example I can think of with "Jack the Ripper", but others have happened.

I'm not opposed to season passes necessarily or having add on DLC that actually adds to the game (though I seldom buy DLC anyway), but come on, the game's not even close to out yet. Even if you've got the DLC ready and in the bag, just stop fucking marketing the extra bullshit so early. It's like Christmas decorations coming out in September (oh wait, that totally happens)

Templated games. The old "...it's another Ubisoft open world / Batman Arkham / etc game, but this time you're a car / smartphone-man / mercenary-dude / ghost-lord-of-the-rings-guy / mad-max-man."

@wizardlysquid: What games have done that this year?

Hmm, how about people complaining that any and all criticism is censorship?

Square Enix changed a male characters design because it made men uncomfortable, developers don't give a fuck about "censorship" or artistic integrity!

More seriously, I also nominate Game of War because fucking hell

Early Access games that never seem to leave Early Access.

More than anything, I'm very much behind the "Stop releasing broken games" trend.

Just sayin'

@muppio: They themselves already said they would stop.

Yeah, that's more of a Please Continue. I feel like the rage towards Konami is the thing that needs stopping. The shutdown has been on the cards for years and it just happens to have blown up in 2015 with Kojima at the helm of two projects that:

Would still be in development (MGS V)

Never would see the light of day due to a director that takes his sweet time and money, another director who has never had a game project come to fruition and now another horror luminary was interested in being involved (Silent Hills)

The last straw right there.

Looks like Tony Hawk will be a contender this year.

love you boys for sayin this :')

I'm gonna agree that "Augment Your Pre-Order" and "We're launching this as a 'platform'"/"please buy eighty dollars in DLC before release to play Evolve/Arkham Knight" is insane enough to qualify. EVOLVE, YOU GUYS!

1. Fee-To-Play: Microtransactions that are non-cosmetic have zero place in 60 AAA releases. Period.

2. Youtube Corruption: Machinima getting spanked by the FTC hopefully might put "influencers" on notice that engaging in borderline payola with developers and publishers is bad for your bottom line. Yes, this was a slap on the wrist....but a positive precedent has been sent. Please support Youtubers who do disclose ties with publishers are aren't mouthpieces for corporate interests.

3. Scamstarter: Hello. I'm a former AAA developer who wants to strike out on my own and make a "spiritual" successor to that franchise you've been whining about me to make for years now. Can I have some money please? Oh.....the game's now delayed another six months and I've started another Kickstarter. We're cool, right?

4. Polygon Still Sucks: This press event at this rooftop party is just so dull and boring. Can I have some more champagne and free catering please? I know I'm paid to write about video games of all things, but my real passions are Filipino politics and social justice issues. And crying harassment when people call me an aloof, out-of-touch dick on Twitter.

5 :Konami: Are these guys actually controlled by the Yakuza? No seriously, I want to know.

Please stop: manufacturing consoles.

PC releases, digital downloads, living room friendly soft/hardware.

Please Stop:

Characters speaking entirely in quips or one-liners. Stop. One liners and quips can be funny but having that literally be every other sentence out of their mouths is not dialogue.

Come on. The Uncharted games are pretty good.

Two Gals, One Cuphead. knock this nonsense on the head now, before it turn nastie.

@cheappoison: Just the 2 Mortal Kombat X (which I did not play) and Arkham Knight (which I did play, run fine on my rig, but that configuration menu sure is a joke). I heard that Mad Max(did not play either) is good.

Phone games, please stop ruining it for proper handhelds.

People rather play on a shitty phone without any buttons than a proper handheld made for gaming. I have never been able to get into phone gaming except for very simple games. The focus should be on Vita which has all the buttons and sticks you need to play games. Sure you can connect a controller to a phone but who does that? Bring a controller with you to plug into your phone? And who is going to hold your phone while you hold the controller? We need proper handheld gaming again!

This, but that being said....there are several games that if they announced an HD Remake for tomorrow, I'd be first in line.

PLEASE STOP Konami

P.T. getting pulled, shitty working conditions for the people who brought us one of the best games of the year and removing Kojima's name from the MGSV box art and all the digital versions of the previous MGS games.

I think you've already got your wish.

I think I'm one of the few people who likes the HD remaster business. As insidious as it is, I do like seeing older stuff made playable and accessible again without having to drag out the old hardware. It's basically the same shtick the movie industry does every time a new format comes out. You aren't being forced to buy the things but for the people who want them, they're kinda nice.

My please stop is more of a please start. PSN speeds are back to the way they were before I had to pay for PS+. SONY, PLEASE START using the PS4's "Network chip"

Now I stop to think about it, you may have a point.

It would be nice if developers put more money into optimizing PC ports. There is less reason then ever for PC ports to be as bad as they usually are.

@dandyboyapples: I'm still waiting with bated breath for Telltale to finish Borderlands and do Tales from Rapture.

Please stop: Crowdfunding games. Star Citizen, Mighty No. 9, Re:Dash, Double Fine, a freakin' E3 trailer for Shenmue 3...on Kickstarter, studios that took the money and ran. Crowdfunding games is no more different than preordering, it's worse. There is no guarantee the game will come out in its alotted time and there is nothing stopping them from flatout taking your cash and walking away. I gave up on crowdfunding since it has been one bad deal after another.

I'd be ok with it being Sonic every year

I'd like people to take a break from making games next year. Just slow it up, save them for 2017. There's so much great stuff out now, I need time to catch up, so Please Stop Releasing New Games For A Little While

I will fight you to the death. Serifs FOR LIFE.

This category might just have to change to "Most Broken Ass-Game" award since that is still a thing and probably still will be for years to come.

@moonwalksa:I say we go one step further and take a break from video games all together. That way we don't have to hear "nothings coming out", "there's too many games coming out", "not enough indies", "too many indies", "I want video games to be more diverse", "that's not a video game", "games are art", "games aren't art", "why aren't games art?", etc. ;)

Me. I do. Connects by bluetooth and has a clip to hold the phone in place. My phone is loaded with emulators. I see no reason to own a handheld in this day and age and I only ever dust off my Vita when I have a long trip on a train.

Going to have to agree with OP's #1. Devs/ Publisher hyping up the eSports factor of their game before it's even released is cringe-worthy.

@knightdehumidifier: I crowd funded each Double Fine game and Double Fine has delivered all those games. A while ago. So they don't deserve to be lumped in with the others. I suspect their adventures in crowdfunding and early access are over.

Please Stop all the one week Fantasy Football ADS. Not just on the podcast but EVERYWHERE. You can't go anywhere without seeing or hearing an ad for that garbage. They are technically games right? I would much rather fantasize about something else than big burly men for a week.

1. Microtransactions in $60 retail games. Seriously, MGSV, fuck you and your FOB nonsense. I don't care how necessary or unnecessary it was to interact with that stuff; it never should have made it into the game in the first place. This is just the most recent one, but there have been plenty of offenders in recent history.
2. Releasing Broken Games
3. Seasoned Developers Turning to Kickstarter. This might be a bit premature since these games haven't been delivered yet (though in Mighty No. 9's case, maybe that's exactly the point). There's just something about this trend that makes me feel uneasy. Inafune, Igarashi, Ys Net, etc. There's something about them capitalizing on the popularity of old game franchises to obtain huge amounts of funding from their long-time fans that seems a little sleazy to me. Like I said, though, these games haven't come out yet, so who can say if this is actually a bad thing? I just felt I should mention it since I've noticed it happening more and more. Also, if we see a Kojima Kickstarter appear in the near-future for an MGS-like game, I'll be really bummed out.
4. Everything is Open World. Not every game needs to be a huge open world with 80+ hours of gameplay. It's gotten to the point where I don't have time to play like half of the games that are coming out, and that really bums me out on a personal level. Metal Gear Solid V probably could have had like 40 less hours of content and lost nothing from it. Assassin's Creed probably doesn't need to be open world anymore either, but at least that's like a standard 20 - 30 hour game.
5. Crazy Pre-Order Incentives that Require Charts to Properly Understand

Those are all the serious ones I can really think of ATM.

"Accidentally" "leaking" announcements. Just don't call it an accident and don't say it was leaked. If you want it hidden with the intention of the community finding it, okay, but don't play stupid about it just to try and get some buzz. That tactic just rubs me the wrong way.

Pre-order content locked off from the game just to make it exclusive to some FUCKING retailer. - STOP THAT!

Please Stop Dan Ryckert

I honestly don't know what the big negative trends are this year.

So I am going to say please stop uploading messy Mario Maker levels that could have been made by a fish on Twitch with zero care put into them.

Actually this gets my vote:

1. Microtransactions in full price games. Fuck you if want to put in microtransaction make your game free. DLC is fine this .99 cent shit has to stop.

2. Free to play mechanics in full price games. see above

3. e sports

4. The sheer size of day one patches because shit that stuff is getting out of control.

5. Toys to life. Like really we get it its a neat Idea we don't need 3 games a year with $400 in physical DLC (I'm baised here as I run a retail store and fuck that shit IS EVERYWHERE)

6. Charging Full price for half a game - see Titanfall, Evolve, Destiny, Rainbow Six Siege et. all. Like did no one learn anything from Shadowrun for the 360?

This, prologues before the main menu, microtransactions (but only those which lock out substantial gameplay content, not necessarily "time-saver" or cosmetic items even though it allows portions of the game to be lost to time), the apparent death of AAA local multiplayer, multiplayer-only campaigns, mandated online connections/day-one DLC, the lack of dedicated servers, the stigmatization of cheats and fostering higher yearly expectations of AAA games.

I don't really want blockbuster movies to be interactive anymore, guys, you can tone down the graphical complexity and scope a bit if it means the developers have a decent time making the game and the industry at large is less obsessed with visuals above everything else. Just make the art work with the gameplay mechanics and be scalable and it can be less than 4K or even HD.

I don't want the game to be a complete fucking mess to reassemble into a playable state 10 or more years down the road. We're basically already at the point where preservation of modern games in their entirety is very difficult if not impossible, don't make it impossible for the majority of the offline stuff too. You can also get into a conversation about mandatory updates and revocation of games from online storefronts here, too.

I sometimes enjoy cheats and want to see those return in some sense, for free and hidden within the game, like they used to be. Even cheats in online multiplayer I consider OK to an extent as long as we're talking about an online multiplayer ecosystem where you can run your own server, that way you have alternative options if you're opposed to cheats or need to avoid griefing.

At the same time, I'm the kind of person who grew up between the 5th and 7th console generations where I generally got consoles years after launch and got to see games become more and more sold based on legal technicalities, EULAs and digital access and less based on physical product. I didn't get to play as many games as I wanted back in the 90s (especially then-unfashionably-outdated 80s games) and probably am biased in that I want more games, and development/publishing trends, from that era. (Boy, not all of them, though, as rose-colored glasses tend to be polarized.)

Coincidentally, guess how much time I spent playing PlayStation Underground demo discs? Heh.

+$0.02

Please Stop making my ps4 fans sound like they're trying to lift off during menu screens!

I don't enjoy this category. Focusing on negativity is poop

Developers starting Kickstarters or releasing games in Early Access when their previous Kickstarted project or Early Access game hasn't fully released yet.

Shameless attempts at recreating the 80s/90s through very thoroughly modern looking pixel art. Exceptions would be Undertale or Axiom Verge. The devs here knew exactly how to do pixel art and both the games look brilliant.