When historians look back upon 2013 in terms of gaming...

[Mr.Mattress]

The Year 2013 was the Year Nintendo repeated the 3DS, only this time, with the WiiU. The Home Console launched in late 2012, and while initially selling decently, it had slumped to record low sales for most of 2013. Only around September, when there was a price cut and new releases for the WiiU, did it start picking up sales again.

I'll be sure to come back to this thread and update on whether this is enough to fight off the XBOne and PS4 this year.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I'm going to remember it as "The Year of Console Crisis".
-The Xbox One made a bid for power over the consumer base and people rightly criticized and threw it back in their faces.
-The WiiU proved that gimmick alone can't hack it anymore now that the novelty has worn out its welcome; as of this moment, it is this generation's Virtual Boy.

Only Sony is walking away from this relatively unscathed, and arguably because they waited last to reveal everything.

And quite frankly, I haven't been all that impressed with these so-called "Citizen Kane of Gaming" entries; many of them deliver nicely crafted stories, but at the expense of player agency.

I doubt I will ever see narrative delivered beyond these "semi-interactive novels" given the impracticality of designing such a massive amount of story content that responds to the player's actions...(or the market's demands for such things; Alpha Protocol actually tried to provide lasting consequences for specific actions, but due to its poor gameplay it wasn't well received).

...But I'm open to being pleasantly surprised in the future.

 

[Saltyk]

I think it'll be seen as the year the PS4 and Xbox One came out. I mean, a system is a tad more important than a game.

And yet a system without games is just a box. Which do people talk about more, the og Xbox or Halo? The Mega Drive or Sonic The Hedgehog?

But a console CAN revolutionize gaming. Or are you, j-e-f-f-e-r-s, of all people, not going to claim that the Wii was somewhat significant? I have no use for the thing, but even I would say it has some significance. Same with the Nintendo, the 360, the Genesis, the Playstation, and the Dreamcast. Each brought something significant to the table.

People may talk about Sonic the Hedgehog, but one would be remiss to forget the Mega Drive/Genesis. Even if only for it's game library.

 

[JazzJack2]

As the year where Ken Levine finally completed his transformation from a talented game designer to a complete hack.

 

[Battenberg]

No doubt the new consoles will be the focus when looking back on this year (especially the whole Xbox One backlash) but for me I think it's actually been one of the best AAA gaming years in a while so far with a good few decent games and not simply another year of CoD style shooters. Also, more personally, I'll remember this as the year that I started to get into indie gaming properly (admittedly quite late).

 

[Austin Howe]

2012 and 2013 will be "The times they are a-changin"
A lot of major games for both years have been serious reinvestigations of both form and content.
Spec Ops: The Line mercilessly stripping apart the shooter or The Last of Us taking the rubble that's left and building a game where every design decision is meant to communicate story content primarily rather than having a focus on the overall feeling of play.
Games like Gone Home and The Walking Dead then have both thrown genre conventions completely out the window from the start.
If nothing else, even though games like this have existed for a while, they're getting more attention and praise than ever before, all of which is a good thing.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

'The Year Of The Citizen Kane Of Gaming... Again' or something.

Goddamnit! I was people would stop saying that! Fuck Citizen Kane! Why do we need to compare ourselves to a 50+ year old movie? Why don't we instead strive to make a game that films would want to compare themselves to?

It's not really a comparison, just an analogy. Never mind the contents of Citizen Kane, it's about making a game that's as important to every other game as Kane was important to every other film.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

'The Year Of The Citizen Kane Of Gaming... Again' or something.

Goddamnit! I was people would stop saying that! Fuck Citizen Kane! Why do we need to compare ourselves to a 50+ year old movie? Why don't we instead strive to make a game that films would want to compare themselves to?

It's not really a comparison, just an analogy. Never mind the contents of Citizen Kane, it's about making a game that's as important to every other game as Kane was important to every other film.

Well if that's all it is, we've already had several dozen of those. The earliest of which was back in the 80's, remembering that games ARE NOT films.

 

[irok]

Yeah I'd imagine it will mainly be the console thing, however it has also been arguably the best year for story telling in games, bio shock's ending still makes my head want to explode, I mean it ended with almost half an hour of cut scene , who does that? as well as last of us, fez was also released this year and by the end of it we will also have a beta for star bound, finally path of exile will have entered release funded by a method I've not seen before, its almost like people throw money at them out of goodwill, fancy that.

Oh , also a Pokémon game, that happened

 

[6037084]

IMHO it will be remembered as the year of e-sports and storytelling.
Since the latter has been explained multiple times in this thread I'll explain why e-sports.
You see this year is the year e-sports made it big, with both Dota 2 and LoL bringing in millions of viewers across all continents. The biggest competitions having prize pools in the millions. Just now a Dota2 lan tournament ( starladder ) with a relatively small prize pool was nearing a half a million viewers across all platforms. So like it or not, right now at least it seems that e-sports will become huge and comparable with "real" sports but only time will tell if this trend will continue.

 

[InfernalGrape]

Armored Core: Verdict Day is kinda hidden gem of year cause they failed in advertising it

 

[JagermanXcell]

"The Year No One Wants to Remember, especially Microsoft"

At least we got Rising, W101, and The Last of Us to look back on... wait........... THATS IT?!

 

[Austin Howe]

As the year where Ken Levine finally completed his transformation from a talented game designer to a complete hack.

Wait, he was once a talented game designer?

 

[The Apple BOOM]

It's too early to tell. There are a lot of things that could happen with the consoles in November, and Pokemon seems to be going through a Renaissance. Not to mention GTA V's stupidly profitable sales. Things like polygon man failing to deliver will will probably be something people forget. The whole feminism angle, and ludo sparitive dikratance were big things too.

 

[Souplex]

It's been a pretty subpar year in all honesty.
I guess it will be the year Blizzard cemented the death of PC gaming by making a console version of Diablo III that is considered better in every way.
Umm... Saints Row, Fire Emblem, Luigi's Mansion, and Bioshock: Infinite were good...
Umm...
XCOM: Enemy Within looks great.
I guess the new consoles might be good maybe, but that's really up in the air.
My girlfriend seems pretty insistent that Pokemon is awesome. That statement has never been true before, so I fail to see how it would be now.

 

[Someone Depressing]

The year the industry pushed too hard and had a rectal prolapse, followed by encumbering anencephelia (don't look those things up. Please. Especially not the first.)

Not very good, then. Oh look, out comes generic Call of Duty clone #2031. Praise be to Yehowah.

On the other hand, Steam, Desura, Good ol' Games, and to a much lesser extent, Origins, are slowly growing. And someday, EA might not be such self-absorbed pricks and release something they didn't make themselves. Games are finally being grasped as an art form, which is good, because now the video gaming history articles on Wikipedia won't be pushed to the back, people will debate the issues with the media as a whole, and hopefully, the "omg ur such a ****** and btw i fukd ur mom lol lmfao" people that you find on XBox LIVE like the fucking plaque will start to die out.

Also, who can forget Hudson closing its doors? Thank fucking God. I'm sure we were all sick of Bomberman, Adventure Island and Calling (thought, I did like the creepy messages you got on the dashboard. Those were... always fun).

 

[Gearhead mk2]

Probably "the year that finally got sick of publisher bullcrap", I'd say. Or maybe just "the year after the year Spec Ops: The Line and The Walking Dead came out".

 

[JazzJack2]

As the year where Ken Levine finally completed his transformation from a talented game designer to a complete hack.

Wait, he was once a talented game designer?

He did design System Shock 2 which is one of my most beloved games (with Bioshock Infinite as one of my least.)