Deathbat's Computer Gaming Predictions for 2019

This list falls in to two categories: the first is "industry changes" I want to predict (for fun). The second is "my own habits" I want to predict (also for fun). Here goes!

Industry Predictions for 2019:

1. Epic Games will get some legs

Steam has been dominating the PC marketplace online for a decade and a half. It has in the last five or six years become well known for being an immense pit of despair when it comes to shopping for games, thanks to a series of increasingly poor policies on what games they would allow on their platform; short version is; too much garbage, and too hard to sort through to find the gems. They have in recent months gone to great lengths to try and refine their store....but I suspect for many it is too little, too late.

So with that in mind, Epic Games now has its own game store, and while it a bit anemic it does have some gems. More importantly, it has Fortnite for PC, and is therefore essentially already installed on millions of PCs. I've already grabbed the free copy of Subnautica and will likely look to future purchases depending on how things develop. Epic is poised to conveniently be a major contender to Steam right out the gate, all thanks to Fortnite. Remember when Steam ended up on all PCs thanks to Half Life 2? Yep.

2. The Next Call of Duty will have a Campaign 

The rationale is that Activision wouldn't have more than one of its three studios developing CoD games try a Battle Royale mode, and that they also would be suspicious that this isn't just a fad right now, or possibly that they are too late to market. Therefore, based on their traditional design schedule, I predict that the next Call of Duty from Infinity Ward will probably be a conventional offering with a campaign, and also I bet it's either a sequel to Modern Warfare or Ghosts (shudder). Probably the former.

3. Bioware will announce a new Mass Effect or Dragon Age game this year.

This doesn't seem far-fetched, but I bet when they announce it the reveal will include a lot of apologetic marketing to appease the disenfranchised fans and also that the actual release date will coincide with the next generation release of game consoles.

4. Fortnite will be replaced by some new hotness......in 2020

We'll see the manifestations of this sometime in 2019, and Fortnite will continue to do fine, having captured it's market share, but I have a seven year old in the house and I can see how this sort of thing works; the millions of kids playing Fortnite will eventually get tired of it and force their parents to find some other video game to babysit them. You'll know Fortnite has descended to the realm of "popular has-been" when the twitch streamers start playing As Yet Unreleased Hotness X.

(Yeah this might contradict prediction #1 above but I say no! The new hotness could after all manifest on Epic's own platform).

5. There will be a new Alien Game announcement (and possible release) this year

The official channels are hinting at it, but unlikely we will see a movie release until Disney finishes carving up Fox's corpse, so I bet the hints are about new tie-in material, including a game. A game has been mentioned in 2018 titled Alien Blackout, but I bet thanks to CoDBlops4's mode they will have a different title when it is properly announced.

6. Ubisoft may actually give Assassin's Creed a break this year

This actually seems unlikely to me, but if Odyssey didn't sell well then I get they give a two year hiatus to the franchise again to let it rejuvinate a bit....and with any luck they fill that gap with a new Watch Dogs game (but I predict that won't happen....maybe by March 2020?)

7. Another obscure corner of gaming from around 1998-2005 will come back in style

Here's the rationale: as computer and video gamers move into their early thirties they tend to start pining nostalgically for the games they loved in their formative years. This is a similar phenomenon to what happens in tabletop, but I don't think tabletop gamers start doing this until their forties or fifties (when the kids are off to college, usually)....but video games ellicit a different response, especially for thirty-somethings who suddenly find that their dexterity, time, and ability to dedicate dozens of hours a week to gaming are all on the wane. Usually, a baby is in the mix and the desperation is for a game, some game --any game-- to play between diaper changes. The Switch understands this!

But the current crop of thirty-somethings in 2019 were around age 10-15 during their formative period, which was dominated by PS1, Dreamcast, early Xbox and Nintendo64. At least part of the current trend is to pop out retro consoles, usually in miniature (easy to hide/store in apartment) filled with memory-laden titles. Sony recently released and semi-botched their own effort, but not really; this is the generation that started with polygon-based gaming that looked amazing for its time, but has aged incredibly poorly (and quickly). As a result, they want to play games like they remember......but they will also want it to look better.

Most subgenres and types of gaming from 20 years ago are still around....so what game type is due for a revival? My suggestion: Myst and Riven style games! We've had a lull in pixel bitchers for a while, and the current trend is for very user friendly titles ala the late Telltale Games' titles. I bet we start to see a new crop of "Souls Like" Myst-inspired titles soon.

(Out there, but if there's one trend you can always predict in gaming it's that diehard subculture that needs games to punish them or they can't tell if they are having fun!)

Consider that last one my "really weird prediction."

Now for Deathbat's Personal Predictions:

1. I will finally catch up on Assassin's Creed games. I will complete Syndicate, Odyssey and Origins in some order at last. Unity's sour taste is at last out of my mouth.

2. I will enjoy The Divison 2 for a bit but will find it less endearing than the first if Ubisoft doesn't up the ante on the story component (which I bet it instead focuses on multiplayer).

3. I will buy the next Call of Duty because it adds the campaign back in, but then fails to innovate (so far only Infinite Warfare made any headway in innovation) and I will again feel had.

4. I'll be sick to death of Fortnite by March but will still play it with my son out of paternal duty.

5. I will finish The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, sometime this year. Possibly in the last week of December 2019....knowing how I roll....!

Maybe some movie predictions next!

Mass Effects to Come

Bioware Montreal is in charge of and actively producing the next Mass Effect game, according to this news release from Yanick R. Roy, studio director in charge of the program.

So good news: more Mass Effect! I am not one of those who have an issue with Bioware, and in fact I've quite enjoyed their offerings for both Dragon Age and Mass Effect over the last several years; these games have collectively been some of the most enjoyable entertainment in RPGs I've experienced, and I find the complaints and general anger against Bioware by some of its fans to be...ah...interesting and rather telling about the nature of today's gaming audience. Let's just say that if you didn't like Mass Effect 3's endings, you might want to avoid most foreign cinema and anything not sanitized through the Summer Movie filter.

Now, I do tend to put more stock in those who cast a scrutinizing eye on how owner EA's bottom line interests impact Bioware's ability to produce a good game. This can have an accidental benefit (the multi-player in Mass Effect 3 rapidly became my favorite co-op gaming online) or disastrous results (Dragon Age II, which was rushed to completion and its repetitive re-use of assets shows). So the question is: will they leave well enough alone with the next Mass Effect? Will EA apply demographics to this next iteration geared toward homogenizing the play experience to the point that the next game suffers for the sake of snagging a few more CoD dollars? Or will they learn from the bombing of Medal of Honor: Warfighter and realize that on-rails Cod-style shooters are starting to fall out of favor at long last?

I'm personally curious to see how exactly they expand the next iteration of the Mass Effect universe. With such a decisive three-way ending for Mass Effect 3 (go check out youtube if you want spoilers) there's only really three options for a new series:

1. It goes back in time and takes place before the end of ME3. Note that Gears of War is doing this for their next game. I call this the, "Milking our art and game assets for all their worth" method, relying on an existing pool of resources to squeeze all you can out of it. Also called the "Ubisoft saturates us with far too many Assassins and their Creeds" method.

2. It takes place immediately after the end (or close enough) to ME3. This has the problem of having to account for whichever ending one got in ME3, and also what was established in the ending sequence (especially the Extended Cut). My guess is they will avoid this entirely, because there is no way that they can keep all of their rabid hand-biting fans happy in this regard; they either rub salt in the old wounds of the countless butt-hurt fans who are angry they didn't get to blow the Reapers up and retire happily, or who simply felt that Bioware's promises about the volume of content options at the end was unsatisfactory...either way these people will be ticked. Likewise, they'll piss everyone off if they try to restrict to one "official" ending because part of the whole point of the Mass Effect franchise has been watching your decisions from one game carry into and affect the next. So most likely they will go with...

3. It's set far in the future, probably in whatever future time we see the (Um, spoilers) grandparent and child walking in the snowy orchard of an alien world, talking about the Shepard's adventures. Now they can leave the events of the game sufficiently vague, expand the universe to the future, and do whatever new story they want. This seems like the most likely arc they will take, but I am still not at all uncertain we won't see option #1 simply because it's hard to ignore the art assets and material available. However, if the next game is aimed at a new console generation, then #3 is much likelier to happen.

There's an unlikely fourth option, that they do a new Shepard adventure, but Bioware is on record as saying Shepard's tale is done. This seems reasonable, even if the ending sequence implies the possibility of further Shepard tales. And --more spoilers-- let me say that the ending I received could easily lead into a "Shepard return" tale. In my ending Shepard merges with the collective consciousness of the Reavers, turning them around and making them friendly. I chose this ending because it struck me as a false premise that machine and biological entities couldn't cohabitate, that the concept of inevitable conflict was created by whatever species first created the Reapers, and propogated this expectation ever since. Likewise, the idea that only a transmigration of organisms into bio-ogranic life wasn't any better solution, implying that only through synthesis could peace be achieved; also a false premise. So I went with the "we're all going to get along" theme, in which Shepard became her literal namesake. Now, Shepard has already survived death, rather impressively; what is to prevent her from regrowing a body and inhabiting it, if the need arose...or build one mechanically? But of course my premise assumes my ending was the "real" one, because it's not clear Shepard lives through any other ending. I'm working on a male Shepard to see, but I'm still on ME1 with him right now.

There's also always that possibility of a Mass Effect MMO. Until they make such an official announcement I'll hold that expectation in reserve. My expectation is that if F2P Star Wars The Old Republic somehow takes off and starts making money hand over fist, then expect the next Mass Effect to be built from the ground up to be a F2P MMO and cash shop adventure. No matter what happens, expect it to have some form of multi-player with a cash shop; my understanding is that Mass Effect 3's cash shop for multi-player stuff has been very profitable, so much so that they have found it worth knocking out the multi-player expansion content for free, because they're making all their money on item sales. Which is crazy, but unfortunately typical of people in general.

FemShep Cosplay from Crystal Graziano

This is pretty cool to see given my focus on Mass Effect 3 lately: check out Crystal Graziano's latest project right here. She looks like a still from the actual game, pretty impressive:



I've been pretty addicted to the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, methodically working on earning enough credits to unlock all the characters and rare items. It's gonna take a while, but the squad-based "11" wave" approach, while at times annoying (because I sometimes want to play a game for five minutes, not 20+ minutes, and also because if you get in a group with a bunch of crazy people trying to play lone wolf in a squad-based team-tactics game you might as well just call it quits) I am nonetheless finding that the vast majority of the play experience is awesome. I do, of course, play without a mike and all people muted. It's Xbox Live, after all....no good can come from letting the racist homophobes get a chance to speak, even if they're on your side....

In all fairness, I don't reasonably expect that the kind of player who enjoys Mass Effect and also enjoys the team-based co-op multiplayer is the same as the kind of player who enjoys competitive pvp in Halo or Call of Duty, but it's really, really hard to judge such a thing in Xbox Live. When I used to play Halo pvp it was like listening to packs or rabid, racist wolves running wild through the night before I learned how to mute the voice on the 360.

I'd like to meet and talk with my fellow man on the 360, I really would....but up to now, I've had very little evidence that there are any real "men" (or women) worth talking with. I also wish I could just point and say, "racist/homophobic/swearing 13 year olds have ruined it for the normal people like me," but in truth, a lot of the people on there are closer to 31, not 13...

How did I get on this tangent? Well, never mind all that....bottom line is that ME3's team-based co-op multiplayer is very, very good. And that's some good cosplay up above, too.

Random Stuff

Those of you who have kids probably know this song and dance. I've avoided it for more than 20 years now, and honestly my wife and I were probably 49/51 on the tipping point of continuing life childless vs. having at least one kid. of course, we picked option #2, and we're on week 27ish of the pregnancy now...just 13 more weeks to go, yay!

But that said, I've been projecting finances for the next six to eight months, and its not pretty! Its going to be an interesting exercise in budget control and personal restraint....I guess I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of my massive book collection, games and all the other stuff I've accumulated over the years...at least, I will, someday, when I have time again...IF I ever have time again....

But who am I kidding? We wanted this, it's a good thing, and I've little or no doubt its going to be a fun and interesting experience for us becoming parents.

On an unrelated note, I stumbled across this page on ebay. I wonder if people really pay that much for old xerox-made fanzines from the 80's? I feel like I should head back to the old ranch where my folks live and dig around, see if I can unearth any of those old magazines again. Personally, its hard for me to look at them as anything other than an artifact of my youth, a sort of lens upon my life as a teenager, but it's also nice to know that they seem to exist as a component of the greater spectrum of gaming as a hobby from the 80's, too.

So while reading Pars Fortuna some more for a theoretically planned campaign down the road, I thought to look up some of the web links that John Stater references as sources of inspiration. One of them is Chaotic Shiny, a seriously cool site full of creative random generators. If you don't know about it yet, go there, bookmark and have fun messing around.

Strong Female Character of the Week: Femshep!




Admittedly, in the real world armor manufacturers are probably not worried about modelling the bust

Now, I ran out of energy playing straight-and-narrow crewcut-sporting white dudes in space marine adventure games a long time ago, so I play a female Shepard in Mass Effect; but my Femshep is a tough-as-nails takes-no-crap from anyone black gal who looks kinda like this:



Which is pretty close to my own Femshep. Picture from this cool blog here.