By Nelson Schneider - 12/28/24 at 10:57 PM CT
Well, the world didn’t end last year, in spite of world politicians’ overwhelming levels of hubris and stupidity. Unfortunately, that means the MJ Crew had to come up with a year-end list including 5 things that didn’t completely suck about gaming and nerd culture in 2024… Hey, we tried. At least coming up with complete gaming disasters was still easy, so that’s a plus, right? (No, it’s not.)
Top 5 Fails
5. Square-Enix Makes No Money from Traditional Games
Oh, me, oh, my! While everyone in the MJ Crew loved Square-Enix at some point in the past, we’ve all come to feel a great sense of disdain and betrayal from the former titan of Japanese RPG publishing. We thought the company might get back on track after getting rid of its Western, non-RPG-related studios, but, alas, it was not to be. In 2024, Square-Enix revealed that they make next to nothing from “traditional” games – the type that used to be their bread and butter – with most of their revenue coming now from MMO subscription fees and microtransactions in mobile games. I suppose we can’t fault Square-Enix for following the money… but we CAN fault them for releasing a series of absolute DUDS when it comes to their traditional gaming output. Between the mix of retro-throwbacks that utterly fail to capture the charm and simplicity of the RPG Golden Age of the ‘90s, and new games that completely betray long-running franchises by transforming them from turn-based, party-based RPGs into ‘God of War’ or ‘Devil May Cry’ knock-offs, it’s not hard to see why Square-Enix isn’t making much money from such “traditional” efforts. It’s a shame that MMObile games are so damned addictive, as the constant stream of revenue from such titles and the continuous flopping of tone-deaf or low-effort “traditional” games means the skid down the slippery slope will only speed up until it becomes unstoppable. Hopefully they have at least one more good game in them in “Dragon Quest 12.”
4. PlayStation 5 Pro Launches, World Says, “HOW MUCH?!”
You’d think that Sony would still be a little self-conscious about how expensive it makes its hardware after the PlayStation 3 launch debacle… but you’d be WRONG, because in spite of being immortal, corporations have the memory and self-reflective ability of an amoeba with Alzheimer’s disease. So, naturally, when Sony decided to release a mid-gen refresh of the PlayStation 5 – a console that isn’t old enough or popular enough to warrant a mid-gen upgrade anyway – they figured they’d charge a reasonable price for it: $700! Not only is the PS5 Pro the most expensive console in history, it’s one of the most useless upgrades a 9th Generation Gamer could buy for themselves. I mean, seriously: If you’re going to blow that kind of money on hardware, just grow a pair and switch to PC gaming!
3. Ubisoft’s Return to Form
Oh, dear. We knew back in February that Ubisoft was setting itself up for a bumper crop of pain this year, but seeing it all play out was hard to watch. Basically everything Ubisoft released in 2024 flopped hard (and predictably), while everything it didn’t release was due to the cancelation of projects which had already turned into giant money pits. To make matters even worse, the one upcoming title they expected to save them was the next historical Sandbox take on ‘Assassin’s Creed,’ this time set in feudal Japan and starring a samurai as the main character… but Ubisoft apparently didn’t get the memo that these historical Sandboxes need to be accurate enough for players to suspend disbelief… a concept the company completely ignored when they decided to base the game’s samurai protagonist on a Black African slave who may or may not have been on friendly terms with the Shogun of the era. Needless to say, gamers hated this idea, while Japanese gamers REALLY hated this idea.
Between its past, present, and future failures, no other Big Gaming company even wants to acquire Ubisoft to save them from themselves. The saddest part of this whole display is that 2010s Ubisoft was at a high point the company had never reached before, releasing a long string of absolutely amazing titles that the MJ Crew really enjoyed. Alas, the good years of Ubisoft have turned out to be the aberration, as the French bastards have returned to form for what we would have expected of them in their early years.
2. Xbox (and Microsoft in General)
After its massive buying spree of the past few years, Microsoft took the Xbox Division to the butcher shop to cut out a bunch of ugly fat. The result is not exactly a slimmer, stronger Xbox Division, but some sort of mangled, mutated ghoul, hanging onto its metaphorical life by a mere thread. The parent company made a host of blunders itself in 2024 – not least of which was the widely reviled Windows Recall – while the powers that be rebranded some of Xbox Live and Gamepass in order to muddy the waters and make it unclear just which service was actually making money, while also making it unclear to end users just what they were subscribing to.
Of course, Microsoft only cares about Gamepass when it comes to the Xbox Division these days (but apparently not enough to keep it from going down on one of the biggest holidays of the year), and made that amply clear in the final days of the year, as news broke that Microsoft will be partnering with third-parties for the next generation of Xbox-branded hardware. As MJ’s Erstwhile Photo/Videographer said, “This sounds a LOT like we’re going back to the era of IBM PC Clones.” And from there, it’s only a hop, skip, and a jump to the death of Xbox. Time to polish up our dancing shoes!
1. Hasbro-Wizards of the Coast Alienates ALL its Fans, Old and New
OOOOOFFFF! You know you’ve got problems with your corporate culture when you don’t just make the list of the MJ Crew’s biggest Fails of the year twice in a row, but also top the list both times. That dubious mark of shame goes to Hasbro Wizards of the Coast once again. After making a string of horrible decisions last year, the subsidiary company that owns Dungeons & Dragons continued to alienate and attack its core audience of “straight white male nerds” (who allegedly “can’t leave the tabletop roleplaying hobby fast enough”), and further alienated its desirable new fans from the “modern audience” by driving away the wannabe actors of Critical Role (who are now making their own games instead of relying on D&D as the vehicle for their narratives), and even scaring away Larian, whose “Baldur’s Gate 3” is the single biggest and most profitable D&D product in decades, who will no longer be creating future cRPGs in official D&D campaign settings.
Top 5 Wins
5. Apple Makes a Complete 180 in Its Stance on Emulation
What the what?! Apple, one of the most draconian, controlling, and IP obsessed tech companies in an industry full of such… “strong personalities,” shocked the world in 2024 by allowing RetroArch (and other emulators) to appear on the App Store for the first time. iFanboys no longer have to jailbreak their phones (or buy cheap, Chinese Android tablets to complement their expensive iDevices) in order to play ROMs of their crusty, old console libraries on the go. Is it possible we’ll see more customer-friendly changes from Apple as they bend over backwards to placate European regulators? Anything is possible, it seems!
4. Woke Games Flop Across the Board
“Concord.” “Dustborn.” These are just two of the most insidious titles released in 2024 that didn’t get the memo that Woke peaked last year and is rapidly going out of style. These games flopped so hard that they broke records of unprofitability, while “Concord,” as a Live Service, was yanked offline and its poor, foolish purchasers refunded in a matter of weeks. Gamers are nerds, and nerds tend to be smart, aware, and ready to defend themselves from unprovoked attacks at any moment. Woke Gaming provoked the nerds, and, as in the classic series of ‘80s movies, the REVENGE was sweet.
3. Exclusive Games Becoming a Thing of the Past, as Epic’s Paid Exclusives Backfire
Over the course of 2024, quite a few first-party games made surprise appearances on competing platforms. Sony, specifically, has adopted Microsoft’s stance on selling first-party titles elsewhere, with PlayStation games making numerous appearances on Steam, and a few token appearances on the Nintendo Switch. Even Vanillaware, the notoriously exclusivity-prone Japanese Indie developer (and MJ Game of the Year 2024 winner) loosened up and made their latest and greatest available on all three 9th Gen consoles. The cherry on top of watching the garden walls start to crumble was when Epic Games’ CEO tacitly admitted that the company’s shenanigans with paying for timed exclusive releases on the Epic Games Store hadn’t actually panned out as planned.
2. Indie Development Shows No Signs of Disappearing or Even Slowing Down
With the huge number of colossal flops and stunning disasters coming out of the big “AAA” (and “AAAA”) corporate publishers of Industrial Gaming, it’s incredibly reassuring to see that small teams or solo developers continue to innovate and garner attention from the gaming public. From meme games to scandalous and flagrant knock-offs to games made with genuine heart, Indie gaming has become a microcosm of what Gamers have always wanted the hobby to become. Maybe once they figure out that they can catch more flies with honey that vinegar, the corporate publishers will be able to get back on track… unless they crash and burn first. So, yeah, it’s Win/Win!
1. Larian Head’s Game Awards Speech
Larian Games, the small-time developer and publisher of the ‘Divinity’ series and of last year’s definitive game, “Baldur’s Gate 3,” has been impressing the MJ Crew for quite a few years now (We’re not sure exactly how many, thanks to the COVID Time Hole, but it’s been more than… five?). It shouldn’t have taken us by surprise when the studio’s director, Swen Vincke, completely excoriated everything about modern Industrial Gaming in his build-up to announcing this year’s winner at the Game Awards (which was “Astro Bot,” MJ’s second place pick). In true Scandinavian style, Vincke pulled no punches, but rather went down a list, bullet point by bullet point, each statement serving as a gut-punch to corporatized gaming that has completely lost touch with gaming as a media, gaming as an art form, and gaming as a shared experience. We doff our hats to you, Swen, raise a mead-filled horn, and shout skol!
