Back in December, I wrote that 2022 would be a banner year for video games. We had Breath of the Wild 2, we had Starfield, we had Redfall, we had Kill the Justice League, we had Kerbal Space Program 2, we had Homeworld 3, we had Replaced and we had Stalker 2. Now all those games belong in 2023 .We still have Elden Ring ready and waiting to collect the year-end awards, and the interesting indies will always be there (Venba and Immortality feel like two to watch from Tribeca), but the tail end of what should have been a very meaty year now it looks dried out. Gotham Knights and Hogwarts Legacy must now carry a lot more weight than expected from Warner Bros. games, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet may not get the usual pass for other Pokemon titles, and God of War Ragnarok still doesn’t have a launch date. Leaks point to September, but also point to October. And November. December is also mentioned. And heffleteenth and julember.
Trust me though, I learned my lesson. I went too early with 2022 and didn’t take into account that most of the games I talked about only had vague release windows. This time is completely different. Everyone knows that games are late once, and then they’re released on time and are practically perfect in every way. Also, you should win things by watching! So I’m ready to declare, as we reach the halfway point of 2022, that 2023 is actually going to be a great year for video games.
We’ve spent a few years in the wilderness, players. The pandemic and the launch of new consoles didn’t help matters, plus the general point that our current way of making games is unsustainable. Traditionally, development cycles have doubled in time and cost with each generation, and they were already too expensive and took too long in the PS4/Xbox One era, so it seems something has to give. The GOTY nominees at The Game Awards 2020 were legendary. The Last of Us Part 2 offered technical brilliance, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Ghost of Tsushima were huge crowd pleasers, Hades is timeless for the indie scene, and Final Fantasy 7 Remake reinvented one of the greatest games ever with spectacular creativity. Oh and Doom Eternal was there too.
2018 and 2017 were also great years. Look, I had fun in 2021. There were some good games for sure. But the six-member lineup of GOTY nominees (Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Resident Evil Village, Deathloop, Metroid Dread, Psychonauts 2, and eventual winner It Takes Two) just doesn’t come close to the 2020s. In 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, God of War and Celeste went head to head. Right now, 2023 looks like it could bring back that level of consistently high quality releases. That’s before we even get into the titles that will likely be revealed at Gamescom and TGA (or just, you know, in a regular tweet or whatever) that will help wrap up 2023.
Games are as profitable as they’ve ever been, even more profitable, but there’s been a shift in profits driven from people buying games to people buying things in games. Naughty Dog, one of the best developers on the planet, seems to be spending all their time remaking the game we all said was perfect and a real live shooter in the same universe that was supposed to arrive in 2020, and now they’re going to win. don’t even discuss it until 2023.
If for no other reason than my own personal enjoyment, 2023 seems like a vital year for gaming. If most (ideally all) of the upcoming titles arrive in 2023, plus the rest we haven’t even heard of yet, then the industry will seem to be back on track, back to creating hits and delivering titles at a reasonable pace. If 2023 turns out to be empty again, and if these titles and their peers decide to head to 2024 instead, maybe that will finally prompt us to look inward and stop the graphical space race and promises of hundreds of hours of gameplay with thousands of planets to visit. Maybe we can just make fun games that we play for a while and then they end and that’s fine. If we keep trying to be bigger, bigger bigger, better better better, it will only lead to crunches and delays.
I hope 2023 is a great year for video games. But if it’s going to help fix the mess we’re in, I wouldn’t mind if it was a terrible year instead.
Next up: Avatar and Hellblade Missing Summer Game Fest was a colossal waste
