Raving Rant: The Year in Review 2008 - Features

Raving Army brings us a Year in Review round-up for 2008, which included the disbarment of Jack Thompson, World of WarCraft's 11 million subscribers, and the proliferation of plastic instruments.

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Raving Rant: The Year in Review 2008 by Axel Cushing

Another year is swiftly coming to an end. Hard to believe but it's true. While this is a time normally associated with families coming together over the holiday season and renewed calls for peace on Earth and good will towards men, it's also a time to reflect. A time to look back. A time to wonder how the hell we managed to survive twelve months of madness and what the next twelve are going to be like. With this in mind, I've decided to look back and dissect the top five game news stories from the last year. Keep in mind, your top five might be different than mine, but that's to be expected. On with the countdown.

5. Gamers Sell Their Souls To Rock'n'Roll

Arguably two of biggest hits in gaming this year were Guitar Hero: World Tour and Rock Band 2. They fuelled and expanded the market for musically oriented game controllers to levels that have pushed it beyond "niche product." While other games which have tried to bundle in custom controllers have had mixed success, both Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises have taken off probably well beyond what the developers and publishers. The appeal of the games isn't hard to miss. It's karaoke. With friends. Doubtlessly causing numerous drinking games to be spawned if you fumble a riff or miss a beat. While the downloadable content ensures that both games will still be updated and allow for what is effect

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customizable playlists between different locations, it's still not clear if this remains a fad or a genre that has legs. Already there are copycats coming out of the woodwork. Some of them are possibly not going to have the same mass appeal as the big boys. Some of them are likely going to suck. Another thing to consider is the likelihood of a drop in sales due to the weakening economy. While games

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seem to be surging in sales despite the general downturn in spending, spending a C-note on a karaoke kit might be on the borderline between "safe purchase" and "beyond our means" this holiday season.

4. Blizzard Reaches 11 Million Fans in World Of WarCraft, Screws Almost All Of Them

Yeah, we get it, Blizzard has managed to put a virtual stranglehold on the MMO market. Eleven million subscribers for World of WarCraft are gleefully pouring money in Blizzard's coffers while other MMOs are struggling to add to their numbers. The launches of Age of Conan and Warhammer Online might have pulled attention away from Blizzard's "Mean Green Machine," but the release of their own Wrath of The Lich King expansion has likely pulled focus back towards Blizzard, at least in the short term. However, over the long term, serious questions about Blizzard's customer service remain hanging in the air. Their annual BlizzCon event stands out as probably one of the biggest PR fiascos in recent memory. Or rather, the process of buying tickets for BlizzCon turned out to be a fiasco. Blizzard's developers might be geniuses for knowing how to craft good games, but their customer service department has probably the biggest tin ear in the business, and their web developers might be among the most short sighted people around. The nature of the event itself is guaranteed to cause high demand. Even if only a tenth of your player base wants to go, that's still over a million people. This, of course, does not take into account fans of other Blizzard games like StarCraft and Diablo who are not also WoW subscribers. Judging from the events surrounding the actual ticket sale, it's very likely that more than just a million people were interested in going. I imagine that it was probably several times that number, if not a majority of fans from all of Blizzard's games. Whatever the final number of people hitting Blizzard's online store, the backend was clearly insufficient to the task at hand. Next year, one hopes that Blizzard decides to bulk up their backend to handle massive amounts of traffic, preferably to a level that is greater than what they faced this year. I'm not holding my breath on that.

3. Epic Failures Across The Board

It's been a really rough year in the game space. While several new games have come out, particularly in the MMO field, older titles and a few new ones have died out or had unsuccessful launches. Tabula Rasa flamed out and will be shuttered at the end of January. Hellgate: London will be closing down soon. City of Heroes/Villians has been on a slow death spiral and is close to the point where it's population is no longer sustainable, if it hasn't already reached or exceeded that point. Iron Lore, who gave us Titan Quest, closed down after the last expansion for Relic's Dawn of War series. It's a crying shame when good developers close their doors. Unfortunately, the current economic climate suggests that such events might more prevalent over the next year. While we may not see the sort of numbers that Halo 3 and GTA IV pumped out, there are a number of interesting titles on the horizon. I'm particularly looking forward to BioWare's MMO The Old Republic and Sony's The Agency. Hope always springs eternal.

2. Grand Theft Auto IV Comes Out, World Does Not End

You know that a game has reached a mainstream level of consciousness when the parents groups and other anti-videogame establishments start having their lawyers filing suits before a title is even close to being released. You also know that publishers have made the big time when the trials and travails of said publisher is played out on the pages of Fortune magazine. Because of GTA IV, Take Two had to fend off rumors of mergers with Electronic Arts, as well as weather a threatened hostile takeover bid, while at the same time deal with the usual lynch mob who condemn the entire GTA franchise as the single greatest cause in the decline of Western civilization while Rockstar North fiddles amid the burning ruins. They made better bank than Microsoft did on Halo 3. And from what I noticed while standing in line for my copy (yes, I bought the PS3 Collector's Edition), the average age of the gamers who were ready to plunk down their money looked to be closer to thirty than to fifteen. Wow. Who'd have thought? A game with adult themes being bought by adults. What will they think of next?

1. Jack Thompson Disbarred Permanently In Florida

As I look back through my old articles, even ones prior to my joining Armchair Empire, I keep running into the name Jack Thompson. The guy's been a shameless self-promoter and general ambulance chaser whenever a school shooting pops up. Even as far back as Columbine, when I was writing for my college newspaper, the man just had to get in on the act. As time went on, he just got more and more grandiose, more and more belligerent, and less credible every time he opened his trap. And this was just on the subject of videogame violence. Apparently, the Florida State Bar Association finally had enough of Thompson's antics, not solely on his frivolous lawsuits against videogame publishers but all the other legal work he was doing as well. They moved to have him disbarred, and not one but two judges were all too happy to oblige. Particularly since Thompson went out of his way to antagonize both of them. The bar association originally requested a suspension of ten years, and given Thompson's age, that might as well have been life. However, the presiding judge clearly didn't want to go by half measures and made the disbarment permanent. Thompson continues to paint himself as the greatest living Christian since Christ and is doubtlessly wondering which of the remaining forty-nine states he can get a license to practice in so that he can try to continue his "crusade." Something tells me that the Florida disbarment, and all of the attending records of those proceedings, are not going to make it easy for him. And while gamers might rejoice that Thompson has suffered such a mischief, there are undoubtedly new voices ready to stand up and bellow and make complete asses of themselves for the sake of a sound bite that will likely contain the phrase "Think of the children!" or words to that effect. It seems that the price of gaming freedom is eternal vigilance against loudmouthed lunatics.

See you in 2009!

(December 27, 2008)