In your opinion, what was/were the worst year(s) of gaming?

[FakeSympathy]

Everyone has that bad year of gaming, whether due to crappy releases, controversies, etc.
What years of gaming were memorable for you for being the worst?

For me, its 2013 and 2014.

-We had shit games like Destiny, BF4 crashing, COD: Ghosts and AW, AC: Unity, Watch_Dogs
-Microsoft shitted on everyone with the XB1 announcement. Even after taking back crappy features, the console still had bad launch
-Anita Sarkeesian and gamer gate, enough said
-Brazil had baffling price for PS4 (don't know if they dropped the price)
-Wii U had poor sale (This was back 2013! I know there has been improvements with SSB4, Bayonetta 2, Wind Waker HD, etc)
-Xbox one drops kinect. Now, I got kinect-less version during black friday sale 2014, but I feel bad about anyone who got the earlier edition.
-Lizard Squad DDoS attack on both XBL and PSN. Really was annoying when I couldn't even launch games offline
-Paid reviews for Shadow of Mordor and Day One: Garry's incident. Publishers of both games did not allow the reviews to say anything bad about their games. And while SOM did not need paid reviews to be highly praised, DO:GI definitely deserved all the criticism.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Every year is a bad year for gamers. Every year companies cross previously unthinkable lines in shittiness and disrespect towards gamers. Every year brings overwhelmingly more bad games than good games, and almost all good games have major qualifiers or 'buts' written into them.

As of right now, I'd agree 2014 was the worst. Until 2015 ends that is. Then 2015 will be the worst. And so on and so on until the second gaming crash comes.

Make no mistake, the gaming community as a whole is spiraling the drain.

 

[Evonisia]

In recent memory: 2014. I'm sure the obligatory 1983 deserves a mention, but I wasn't gaming in 1983 to really see whether the crash really ruined a year of possibly otherwise good games.

Not for the crappy business practises. Honestly, every year has particularly bad business stuff going on in gaming. Just for the games.

On the AAA side, we had barely anything until the obligatory massive influx of games for the Autumn season, and regardless of quality, Titanfall, Watch_Dogs and Destiny were considered disappointments by many. On the Indie gaming side, a huge influx because of Steam opening the gates, meaning that an uncontrollable amount of crap and literally unfinished products made it to Steam. No amount of gems like Bayonetta 2 or Wolfenstein: The New Order can counter an utter disregard for quality control or the lack of competition in the AAA scene.

 

[Batou667]

I'd say the early years of 32-bit gaming, so around 1996-7[footnote]I'm talking consoles here. The same time period was actually pretty good on PC[/footnote]. It was the transition from 2D to 3D graphics and the new upstart PlayStation heralded in a Wild West of polygonal graphics - and as a result there was some truly AWFUL shite getting released pretty much solely on the merit of being 3D. We went from some beautiful, envelope-pushing sprite-based games on systems like the SNES and Sega CD to stuff that nowadays looks like utter dross and plays likewise. It truly was a mini-Dark Age of gaming. The 32-bit era *did* eventually produce some innovative ideas and franchises that would go on to big things - but most of the originals are barely playable these days, in stark contrast to the beautiful and intuitive 16-bit stuff that the 32-bit primordial soup made "obsolete".

 

[MysticSlayer]

The worst year of gaming was 1903. Seriously, the best game that came out then was Monopoly, and have you seen it? Seriously, when it takes a port just to make it a video game, then you know gaming was at an all-time low as companies chased after low-budget, high-return crap! It even went so far as to plaster its money-grubbing message all over the game and no one even cared. How bad could it be when that happens?

 

[EHKOS]

I honestly feel this year is pretty good, at least for AAA stuff. Sure, we had some hang-ups on...I think it was Arkham Knight, some PC port that crashed and burned. And Steam is just filling with bile and NerdCubed's Hell fodder. But I haven't really been as upset as when the Xbone was announced, or last year's parade of disasters. I don't remember what they were, I just remember them being terrible and being in numbers. Sonic Boom was last year I think. Every year has it's ups and downs, all I know is '04 and '07 were good years. Maybe '07 just because of Bioshock though.

No, there was some port that was RIDICULOUSLY bad. I wish I could remember, I just recall telling people I knew that weren't even into video games what an atrocity it was.

 

[Major_Tom]

2005. The year Team Silent was disbanded.

 

[Leon Royce]

2006: Xbox 360 became mainstream

2013-2014: Like walking through the Sahara

 

[Strelok]

1983. Anyone who honestly thinks otherwise needs way more perspective.

Perspective? Consoles died, the flow of terrible games stopped, only momentarily. I was still playing video games in 1984, on PC. It was a purge that the video games industry needs again today.

-Lizard Squad DDoS attack on both XBL and PSN. Really was annoying when I couldn't even launch games offline

People don't seem to realize they attacked Steam as well, twice, for one attack one of the 15 servers was down for 16 minutes. Big difference in security of personal data between PSN/XBL and Steam.

 

[jklinders]

Bad is a matter of perspective. The crash in '83 was bad, but it sloughed off a lot of crap too. The crash of the late 90s on the other hand destroyed a great many gaming houses and led to the rise of publisher based development. EA, Ubi, Activision all rose from the ashes of the late 90s crash. This was not a good change as we have seen since.

 

[09philj]

2014 is the worst I've consciously lived through.

Maybe '07 just because of Bioshock though.

No, if you look through the releases on Wikipedia it was a real vintage year. CoD 4, the aforementioned Bioshock, Phoenix Wright 2 & 3, Halo 3, God of War II, Shivering Isles, Metroid Prime 3, The Orange Box, The Witcher, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Super Mario Galaxy, and Mass Effect all came that year.

 

[Erttheking]

1983. Anyone who honestly thinks otherwise needs way more perspective.

Perspective? Consoles died, the flow of terrible games stopped, only momentarily. I was still playing video games in 1984, on PC. It was a purge that the video games industry needs again today.

Purge? Try "The entire industry crashed and burned"

And it needs to happen again? Yeah, everyone is more than willing to talk about how willing they are to tear things down, but people rarely seem to remember that after you tear it down you need to have a plan for what you build to replace it.

 

[Strelok]

1983. Anyone who honestly thinks otherwise needs way more perspective.

Perspective? Consoles died, the flow of terrible games stopped, only momentarily. I was still playing video games in 1984, on PC. It was a purge that the video games industry needs again today.

The thread is about the worst year for gaming as a whole, not just PC gaming. The fact that all of console gaming died until the NES came in makes it the worst, regardless of what you were playing on your PC.

The name is worst for gaming not worst for consoles. 83 was good for gaming, it ended the cycle of terrible games. News flash, consoles are not gaming as a whole, and never will be.

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

2014 was surely a year of disappointing games, but no matter how disappointing those games are, they didn't cause an industry crash that left several companies bankrupt and nearly killed the video game industry.

 

[SKBPinkie]

The year before the first video game came out.

Because we still have access to everything that's been out since then.

 

[Rebel_Raven]

The old crash, obviously, but also 2003-ish to 2013. There was a seemingly sudden shift to human protagonists, or humanoid ones, thanks to graphical improvements, and the vast majority were straight white and male which fueled a lot of the representation talks today. 2014 was some improvement, then 2015 feels a lot better.