I've been listening/reading/watching a number of different sites rank their top games of the year over the last week and it appears that given the platitudes that these dudes are serving up to the gaming industry that I'm in the minority. This year was not a good year for games, gamers or gaming. A number of terrible gaming trends emerged, many big games shipped that were clearly unfinished or even broken - heck even the two new consoles that shipped stumbled (barely) out of the gate. Many of the 'best' games listed were either annual releases of the same old same old games (I'm looking at you Ass Creed IV and BF4 and COD 14) or they were smallish indie type games that made it to the top of the best game charts in part because the major studios suck.

Alright, that last bit sounded a bit irate, but bear with me. Let's look at some of the major trends: Full priced games that ship with in-app stores. This is a horrible, horrible trend and it's a path toward game monitization that results in either forcing gamers to pay more for the same old games, to acquire ridiculously priced 'premium' versions at $80 or more (I think I saw one at $150!) or to purchase 'season passes' to get content that really should be part of the experience. Even Fire Emblem Awakening - a 3DS game - has an in game store looking to serve you little maps for $10 a pop! Let's face it once we buy a Season Pass - they have our money in their bank account - what incentive do they have to actually spend the time and money to make that content compelling? I know of more than a few gamers that are still waiting - in some cases half a year or more - for content from a game that they're no longer playing. Paying full price for an alpha version of a game (I'm looking at you DayZ) is only slightly behind this trend in the crap trends of the year list followed only barely by paying full price for a game via Kickstarter that isn't even in development yet! At this rate, by the end of 2014 we're going to be paying to educate developers before they hit grade school followed by paying for developer sperm looking for donor eggs for games that will ship in 2035.

Here's another trend that emerged this year: Shipping broken games. SimCity 5. Battlefield 4. COD Ghosts. It seems as if some of the biggest franchises of the year were shipped before they were ready to meet budget. SimCity 5 is still broken - and what's worse even if the servers are up and running the game was broken so horribly, likely by the suits in the back - in order to create a DRM filled always online small city environment in which to sell us more crap that we don't need. BF 4 is so broken that it destroys save files - and it's broken across every version of the game. Not sure if Ghosts is broken or whether it just sucks. Whatever the case, please stop doing this.

Finally, let's take a look at some of the 'terrific' indie games that made the top lists. Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, Garry's Mod, FTL, Rogue Legacy, Papers Please and all of the rest are interesting new games by the indie community - and maybe some of them deserve to be on our top games list for the year - but to the extent that they are, it highlights the total dearth of major games and our relative lack of interest in the new trends, the crappy stories, the nickel and diming and the total ass that has become the major game publishers. EA, Activision, Ubisoft in particular, are slowly eating the soul of gaming as an art and creating golden arched versions of our favourite franchises. A pox on all of them. Good riddance that this Annus horribilis is over.