Please Stop! awards for 2015 (Trends in games)

I think we can still put "Ship broken games" as an all times favorite. I know there are only a few examples this year (with Batman being the biggest by far), but it is never acceptable. Besides, the year is not over, there is a new Assassins Creed, a new Bethesda game and an new DICE game in the horizon. For my money (and given their legacy), some of them will be a technical clusterf*ck...

@hermes: Fallout will probably be broke as hell, but the only people complaining will be playing on PS4.

I nominate the Shitty Youtube Promo Deal now that the FTC has forced a lot of channels to disclose their kickbacks.

I can't tell if this is a joke..

punching trees

so many vr machines, none of them are out!!!

Damn esports stickin' their nose where it don't belong in a really forced cringe worthy manner.

I am a huge fan of Dan, but I must admit he tends to overhype things. Not saying he is wrong in finding those things great, but that he goes too far with his words. Things he is trying to talk about are far more effective if he lets them speak for themselves more, instead of having to verbally say how certain things are the best things ever or trying to find bigger and more over the top words to describe things.

I think this is often seen in the Metal Gear Scanlon stuff. There is a lot of great things in there, but when he is talking about how every little thing is the most amazing thing that ever existed, which honestly a lot of it kinda is at times haha :P, it lessens the impact. Similar to cursing. When someone curses or uses curse words as adverbs extensively, when a legitimate cursing situation happens there is less of an effect. There is just at certain points little that can be done to top it. Also, when words are overused in these ways they become effectively meaningless. Take the word awesome, or amazing. Those words used to mean something, but now they pretty much mean "somewhat better that mediocre" in common language. Or even "incredible". It has basically gone from meaning "not worthy to be believed" to a proper "awesome" or "amazing" to the new meaning of "awesome" or "amazing" where they mean basically "cool" [not in the temp sense].

But basically, he just undercuts his own point by his language choices. He needs to slow down on the adverbs, and say what he really means more with his language. He is an intelligent guy, but just needs to slow down a bit and think more about what he says. Too much general verbal filler when talking about things he likes. Also, perhaps a little bit more description on why he likes things. Maybe make phrases common to him like "this was ******* amazing"(this is the type of sentence I mean he uses too often) to "I was really moved by this scene" or "it was impressive how he did ___[whateveritis]_____

Not everything is the greatest thing ever, and the way many people speak you wouldn't know that.

Except for the top of the ship in MGS4, nothing can lessen the impact of that.

As far as video games: I say wrap it up video games are done stop it all. Loljk but sometimes I feel that way.

I honestly am just sick of feeling like every game is trying to entice me to nickel and dime myself to oblivion. Even if I never purchase anything, I am getting just sick of everything having microtransactions in it. I understand the economics of it, but it doesn't mean I support it. I know a slippery slope is a logical fallacy, but it really is getting to that point as well with gameplay stuff, in so many games.

Even with paid cosmetics I do feel in some other ways they detract from the total game experience, but these things are normally not something one would often consciously realize. However, that is a much longer discussion than can be got into here.

I am have purchased some microtransaction stuff here and there, but I am at the point of deciding to commit to never doing such a thing again for how sick of it all I am, and if I feel without spending those microtransactions I am not getting the game I want, then I can move on. I am really at the point of just effectively considering the entire content of games to be everything without the microtransactions [which you often find breaks more games than you would think], and pretending they do not exist. I do exclude of course larger transactions such as significant DLC, as those are generally more akin to expacs classically.

This is especially messed up in MGS5. That FOB stuff could have been great. It was some great ideas, but all the money stuff around it are just super stupid, and with the latest patch... forget THAT I am glad I finished that game early. I was going to go back and play some more to unlock a few more things but nope nvm done with that.

Also, I will throw in pre-order stuff, but honestly that stuff doesn't seem to be as bad these days. Short of that deus ex thing. Maybe that is because I mostly just get discounts from preorders on steam [which is nice] and just do not care about the rest anymore :) since it is all so stupid. Maybe it is still bad, but not caring sure helps that!

@j_unit2008: Isn't that just the "Hottest Mess" category though?

Putting a gargantuan level of marketing behind a handful of big budget games, and next to nothing behind smaller stuff.

If I hear this one more time I may just snap.

Game developers making a game and then publishers pulling it apart to sell as a season pass dlc ie battlefront

Please stop delaying games to 2016 and/or making announcements that the company has no set timetable to release a game.

@dandyboyapples said:

Why...? Who does this hurt? They're all fantastic

Well, the official list is out: http://www.giantbomb.com/articles/giant-bombs-2015-game-of-the-year-awards-day-four-/1100-5319/

Winner: PLEASE STOP Real Money Card Packs / One-Time Use Items

2nd place: PLEASE STOP Still Shipping Broke-Ass Games

3rd place: PLEASE STOP Extremely Forced eSports

I haven't listened to the podcast yet, so I haven't heard the other nominees. I'm interested in that because I've heard the lists from 2012, 2013, and 2014 (and yesterday I finished transcribing the nominees from each year, along with a few "corollary" items that were brought up in discussion, one of which made it as a nominee in a following year).

I agree with "PLEASE STOP Real Money One-Time Use Items" because it's started to become a trend in games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Payday 2, and perhaps Killing Floor 2. And this all started from TF2 (the "Mann Co. Supply Crate Key", available via trade or purchase in a system that was started in 2010) and DOTA 2 (Treasure Keys). So yes, we have Valve to thank for this disgusting trend.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/08/13/crate-expectations-cs-go-getting-tf2-style-drops/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-26-payday-2-developer-defends-introduction-of-microtransactions

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-11-24-killing-floor-2-developer-defends-decision-to-add-microtransactions

From the business side, the publishers want to create more recurring revenue in their product. This is true across all lines of business, regardless of what product you're selling. For video games, the classic recurring revenue stream of repeat business is slowing down, so they're starting to turn to darker methods of revenue collection, especially methods that involve emotional attachment. Since the industry is getting more desperate, it feels like the methods are only going to become worse.

To that end, my video game purchase habits have drastically cut down, as I drew a line in the sand: No More Slimy Commerce Methods In Games. This pretty much means that I bought almost no games this year, and stuck with playing the classics. I played a lot of Quake 3, Doom, Doom II, Unreal Tournament (1999), Fract OSC, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Gunman Chronicles, and so on. I don't have a lot of contiguous free time to play games anymore, now that I lift weights (which has been one of the best activities I've taken up in the past year).

As for the games I did buy this year, it's pretty much down to 140 (I'll never finish it, but it looks awesome), Thomas Was Alone (ground to a halt; I pretty much wanted to see what the hype was about firsthand, but my personal PLEASE STOP is "narration mechanics in video games"), and Quake 4 ($5 in the Steam sale, for a game that I don't have installed on my Windows 7 gaming PC, and probably isn't installable off of the disc in Windows 10 due to the Macrovision SECDRV.SYS disc check DRM that can't be installed in Windows 10). I'm also waiting for the final version of VA-11 HALL-A to release; I really like the music and characters in the Prologue and PAX East 2015 build.

I might have some "PLEASE STOP" entries of my own, once I review this year's list. One thing's for sure: the PC First Person Shooter market is about as dead as the Adventure Game genre was back in 2000 (but for different reasons, obviously). Aside from the Call of Duty railshooters, no publisher seems confident in green-lighting a self-contained single-player experience with player agency. Well, no one aside from Devolver; the Shadow Warrior sequel is pretty much the only FPS game on my radar, because Flying Wild Hog is about the last FPS developer left who knows how to make these games (I passed on Wolfenstein: The New Order because that game would have been a gigantic download, along with a gigantic day-one patch.)