The Top 10 Game Industry Disasters of 2013
07. Death Discovers Gaming
OK this is not really a disaster in the sense that the other items in this article are a disaster, but when you consider the fact that the creative genius and the adventurous light that has contributed so much to the games industry and its many games communities has been snuffed out, well yeah, that is a disaster.
In fact it is fair to say that it is a disaster of epic proportions because these creative people gave so much of themselves to our chosen lifestyle -- and then there is the larger picture to be considered here: as a community and as a lifestyle we are not used to the idea that death can happen here that is not inside one of the games we play.
September 2013 marked the loss of Nintendo's Hiroshi Yamauchi -- the man who, as president, transformed Nintendo from a small hanafuda card-making company to a multi-billion dollar video game company. His instincts for what the public wanted in terms of electronic entertainment are legendary, and they begin with the Famicom / NES and go from there. Yamauchi understood the natural partnership between console maker and game company, and went to pains to ensure that his consoles were easy to code for. The rest is history.
You may not recognize the name Normand Corbeil but you have probably heard -- and enjoyed -- his art. A BAFTA Award-winning Canadian composer, Corbeil composed the soundtracks for the games Heavy Rain, Fahrenheit (AKA Indigo Prophecy), and Beyond: Two Souls. Death came for him in the form of Pancreatic cancer in January of 2013.In May 2013 Andrew Scott Reisse was just 33-years-old when he was killed in a California crosswalk by a Dodge Charger in a high-speed chase with the police. The driver of the Charger, a 21-year-old suspected gang member named Victor Sanchez, was fleeing a fatal police-shooting when he took the life of Reisse, who co-founded Oculus VR -- you know, creator of the Oculus Rift? The future of gaming?
The disaster of death did not single out just the creators in our community, as games journos also felt its icy grasp.
July saw the passing of Ryan Davis, former Gamespot editor and co-founder of Giant Bomb, whose death though by natural causes left an unnatural hole in our community that he used to occupy. Just 34-years-old, Ryan was known for his integrity in reporting and reviewing -- he left Gamespot due to the controversy of Jeff Gerstmann's dismissal over his refusal to modify his review of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men after being pressured by the corporation. Ryan joined with Jeff in founding Giant Bomb. He was a good friend and a great games journo.
David Dreger, a freelance games journo who wrote for Rooster Teeth -- but probably best known for his work on the YouTube Achievement Hunters videos -- passed on sometime between May and June of 2013, his body being found in Ambleside Park in West Vancouver, BC, Canada. It is not entirely clear what happened or why, though David closed his Twitter and Xbox LIVE accounts shortly before disappearing...
Andrew Rooney said that 'Death is a distant rumor to the young' and though he was not talking about death as the disaster it is for our favorite industry, he hits the nail on the head. Gaming has always been a world of the young. We have not even come close to reaching the point where the creators have lived full lives in the industry, though clearly it is not so young that we could not feel the disaster that it is. So here is the plan: Nobody die this year.
DRM should be a crime. Publishers need to realize that ownership is what capitalism is all about. People move, have friends, share with their friends, and PC's and consoles die. Hard drives crash. No one should be punished for having to deal with an already horrible situation, ie: catastrophic HD failure.
DRM also creates more piracy that it stops.
I personally was sad to hear about the loss of THQ.
But thankful that the Warhammer franchise was bought over. For all of their terrible games, their Dawn of War and Space Marine IPs were solid, fantastic games!
Will Sims freeplay be a contender for 2014 given the uproar of their new update? Should be its been bsit and switch. A real time game where sims live 42 days! Disgraceful.
"The fact that the vast majority of the content that was being targeted legally qualifies as fair use under the current interpretation of the law considered"
That's where a lot of people have a misunderstanding about Fair Use. Their vids might be seen as Fair Use but ONLY a court of law can make that decision no one else can. Also Youtube isn't at fault here, they are doing only what the law says. If someone files a copyright claim against a vid Youtube has to take it down or they may face legal action from the content owner.
Youtube has been sued multiple times by companies and other people over copyright infringement. Youtube was actually going to shut down do to all the legal troubles until Google bought them.
I took a gamecube to Iraq as well. Eternal Darkness was the kind of thing that made war seem not so bad.
Considering the Steam OS, I personally think that was a very big announcement from Valve and as you can see, lots of game developers thought the same.
Linux is going to be the future, like it or not.
Great list. On a positive note for us non multiplayers The Last of Us single handedly saved the single player game 2013.
Who cares about THQ. In the long run something else will fill the void. And the Xbox one is hardly a failure as they are still selling strong and making microsoft money. They told us before that it will be a gaming system AND a multimedia system. People just need to understand that.