Hilton Webster Takes A Look Back On Another Great Year For Gaming(‘s Profits) | Winter Spectacular 2023
What’s in a year, anyway?
January
I think we should start ranking games based on vibes so Ghostwire can win every year
Christmas ended, the new year started, and I learned I was losing my home.
It wasn’t exactly a New Year where I had time to catch up on my backlog playing games. I was desperately looking for a new place to live. Funny enough, I actually really wanted to play Forspoken, but with a €80 price tag, I made do with people making fun of the Marvel-esque dialogue. It was cringe, but I kind of appreciated it.
Oh, and then Dead Space Remake came out. I hadn’t played any Dead Space game at this point so it wasn’t on my radar, but seeing it release to critical acclaim after Callisto Protocol would make Dante Alighieri proud.
February
Most wild Sebastian moment.
Back around July or August 2021, I entered into a manic state that manifested itself with me playing every 2D Metroid game. I even used a Metroid writing sample to land my first job in games journalism. When you try to go back and play older Nintendo games and don’t have the money or patience to find, set up, and buy a NES, SNES, GBA and 3DS you quickly realise that emulators are actually morally correct.
So consider my manic state reawakened by Metroid Prime Remastered’s release in February, and I couldn’t play it. €40 doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but when you’re paying exorbitant rent, you start counting pennies. So once again, I lived vicariously through the internet. The praise of diegetic design, the allure of the areas, that white woman jump-scare whenever Samus’ reflection popped up - I experienced it all second hand.
Man, I really wanted that game. My Valentine’s dinner cost less than it.
March
That's a mighty fine horse you got there in the distance, pardner
Maybe it’s controversial to say this, but I think Team Ninja, when it comes to a pure combat perspective, are better than Fromsoftware. Nioh is the greatest Soulslike that isn’t a Souls game, so I was super excited for Wo Long!
Then the reviews came out which were…not immensely generous. Except for just one I distinctly remember from a writer I really liked. The rest of the internet was kind of down on it though, so I never really saw much more from it.
March also happened to be the month in which what I am calling The Year Of The Twink began. Leon S. Kennedy stormed onto the scene in the Resident Evil 4 Remake. Yes, it was stylish. However, I’m of the debatable opinion that this game basically just Resident Evil 4 again but with even more focus on action, somehow. It's not a bad thing, just not exactly ground-breaking either. But it was also Leon at peak Twink, and this is not something I am open to debate on.
Ungodly thoughts tempted me to part with €70 for it, but I resisted. Those cool trick videos helped to tide me over.
April
I tried to make Jaden Smith's character from Neo Yokio. I did alright
So at this point, I’d accepted that I wasn’t going to find a new place to rent and would be moving back in with my mother. Also lost my retail job, which didn’t exactly boost my self-esteem. So what was my reaction?
Financial irresponsibility, internet hype, and The Year Of The Twink getting the better of me. I pre-ordered Tears of the Kingdom, convincing myself that this would culminate in more articles I could write to justify the price…
And I just really wanted Tears of the Kingdom.
Dead Island 2 came out too, which was better than anyone really expected from its decade in development hell, but also didn’t really break any new ground. It was just schlocky zombie-murdering mindlessness. Meanwhile, Ghostwire Tokyo got a big new update as it arrived on Xbox that I adored, but it wasn’t popular enough for there to be any guides I could have written on it to get picked up. Even the game’s Reddit remained a bit of a ghost town.
May
Korok delivery service.
This is D-Day. Or D-Month, I guess. I had to be out by the end of the month. I was low on funds and uprooting my whole life. At the same time, Vice Media laid off a bunch of employees. Then more and more layoffs happen. Then more. I started to get worried that my job was next in line. The games industry trudged onwards.
I want to preface this by saying that Arkane is one of my favourite studios out there. Dishonored is the product of genius minds that understand the genre they are working in better than anyone else in the industry. While Prey is space horror at its creative peak. Redfall (or Redawful, as some on the internet so poetically put it) is fucking dreadful.
Watching the reviews was bad enough, but video after video flooded social media about how fundamentally broken this game was. Sparse enemies, broken AI, repetitive tasks, a comparatively bland world to Arkane’s other games. It didn’t even have a stealth takedown animation at launch! That’s like a fundamental thing you need for stealth! So yeah, I’d seen enough to know I wanted to save my money on that one. I couldn’t afford a PC strong enough to run it anyway.
Then Nintendo waltzed along as Tears of the Kingdom continued to take over the internet, and the scant bit of free time remaining in my life. The Year Of The Twink is well and truly in full swing with this little guy and his bizarre flying contraptions, broken homemade battle tanks, and thingamajigs.
Turns out, maybe due to TotK extremely long tail and continued community fervour, I got those extra articles I convinced myself I could get. Discovering the mechanics of the world along with my work Slack was something I hadn’t felt since the release of Elden Ring. Yes, we all shared videos of war crimes against Koroks, but being able to feed someone else’s knowledge and advice into my articles felt so damn rejuvenating. Oh, and one of the first videos I remember seeing after the game’s release was a self-destructing dick machine with a flame emitter. Yeah… Video games are good.
Then I packed up my entire life and left.
June
Parrots are not free from Phoenix Wright's methods
Here’s a fun fact - I started playing the entire Final Fantasy series because I wanted an excuse to get into Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Twinks sell games, I’m telling you this right now. It got me into Final Fantasy. Anyway, this is all a long-winded way of saying I played a whole bunch of Final Fantasy before Final Fantasy 16 was released.
We often like to debate what makes a Final Fantasy game. Is it a bunch of guys, or a bunch of towns? I don’t think Square Enix really knows either because Final Fantasy 16 doesn’t have any guys following you around (except Zaddy Cid), or any remarkable towns. Yet it is also squarely Final Fantasy. It’s a vibe. It’s a ‘you have to be there aura’. Which, yet again, I wasn’t because video games are expensive - but I’ve seen enough to rate it by osmosis.
I say that despite the game’s glaring faults. True to the Game of Thrones inspirations it pushes to the forefront throughout the game, it is also blindingly white and weirdly sexist. And there are no minigames? That’s the real heart of Final Fantasy! “But it had actual gay people!” you scream. Well, so did Final Fantasy 15. FF16 is one of the first Final Fantasy’s without a twink as the protagonist too, so if we’re being really honest, that’s why it was so easily forgotten just weeks after release.
Atlus also leaked Persona 3 Reload for the umpteenth time, while also leaking a Persona 5 spinoff no one knew about. Which is really impressive, they are getting super good at this, and might have a career as Twitter Video Game Insider/Leaker if they keep up this hard work. I’m not even on the Persona hype train, but I’m honestly happy for this series to keep going just to see Atlus keep revealing its own games early and then get angry at everyone for it.
Fun Fact #2 - I turned 25 on the same day Final Fantasy 16 was released. Late Birthday gifts are appreciated.
Fun fact #3 - Gamestop, the only dedicated games retailer in Ireland, shut down two days after my birthday.
July
Samus in Dread is maybe the most Gender™ I've ever felt.
Lying to yourself is actually really healthy if you can twist it into reality, and The Year Of The Twink is such a sweet lie. Because I got my first ever published feature article out of Tears of the Kingdom. Take that, financially ambiguous decisions! You should read it, btw. It’s very gay. I’m sure people were very normal about it online, I didn’t check.
To reward my poor financial acumen turning a profit, I made another of my famed financial choices and bought a graphics card. Finally, my PC could actually play video games. “Gotta spend money to make money,” Hilton said lyingly.
Pikmin 4 also came out in July, and I distinctly recall my partner saying “I hope all four fans enjoy it”. I haven’t seen a single Pikmin since its release, but apparently, it had the best launch week for the series, so I guess they were kinda right.
August
What we should all be saying.
August started with me needing to get a new phone because Slack was about to stop supporting my old one.
Then Immortals of Aveum came out. It was…so forgettable I almost forgot to mention that it was super forgettable. It sure was an Unreal Engine 5 video game though, I can tell you that much.
Oh hey, Baldur’s Gate 3! Suffering from the same affliction as Hades (prolonged early access), it launched as if out of nowhere to critical acclaim. Ah, the discourse on this one was fun. Is Shadowheart a racist? (yes*) Is the game an indie? (of course not). Is it OK to call a morally dubious vampire babygirl? (always). I haven’t played a single Baldur’s Gate or long-box D&D game from the heyday of PC gaming, so the threequel wasn’t on my radar, but seeing people share the absurdly good mocap and acting, alongside how horny everyone was, made me feel like I was playing it myself.
*Editor’s Note : But I can fix her.
I really don’t know anything about the game though. Who’s Minthara? Why do you all keep missing and/or killing them?
You know what did break my brain in August though? Armored Core VI. I never played any of those either, but I’m trans and mechs are like trans people’s national animal. Guess what though? Buying a phone leaves you pretty damn broke. So just imagine me as Shinji having a breakdown, because I wasn’t able to get into the mech.
I did, however, finally manage to play Wo Long during a PC Game Pass trial, too. It was alright.
September
There is nothing behind this door except the rest of my body.
A really funny thing I notice every year when get to the later months is the wonderful phenomenon of recency bias. At this point you probably forgot Redfall existed even though it came out in the same month as Zelda. But to be fair though, in that case I’ve seen people play Megalovania on stakes in Zelda and not the game with vampires - the community is giving that game a long life.
Think about September yourself while you’re reading this. What games do you actually remember? Because September had so fucking many game releases, and I have seen so little staying power from any of them. Let’s tackle them in order:
Starfield. Man, those reviews sure were positive.
Ever Crisis. In case you forgot, we still don’t know Sephiroth.
Lies of P. The Holy Trinity of The Year Of The Twink is completed.
Mortal Kombat 1. It is the 12th main entry in the Mortal Kombat series, not to be confused with Mortal Kombat the first game in the series or Mortal Kombat the ninth game in the series.
Phantom Liberty. Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like Cyberpunk has an incredibly insulated fanbase. I know there are millions of you, I just never see you.
Separate Ways for Resident Evil 4 Remake. If it isn’t the twink tempting my wallet, it’s the femme fatale spy.
That sure is a lot of games, and the one I’m still hearing about most is the one that actually came out back in March, so take from that what you will. That’s not to say those games aren’t shifting units obviously, but we’d hardly call Marvel art for making $1 billion dollars.
However, shifting units does, at least for a little while, mean people start looking up a lot of game-related articles. So this is also the month it became painfully obvious that not having money makes it very hard to earn money in games journalism. If you can’t afford to buy the games, you can’t play the games, and if you can’t play the games, you can’t write guides for the game, and if you can’t write guides for the games, you aren’t getting paid. What a wonderful ouroboros.
October
The best part of Scarlet Nexus is giving gifts and seeing Heart Go Up.
You know that thing people say every year, “This is the best year for gaming”? That’s true if you don’t care about the developers behind those games. I had an article published about that recently. I’d call it coincidental, but it happens every year.
Anyway, Lords of the Fallen (2023), previously The Lords Of The Fallen, all of which is a reboot of Lords of the Fallen (2014) and was occasionally referred to as Lords of The Fallen 2, came out this month. It claimed it could be seen as the second-best Soulslike next to Dark Souls. Notably, it is twinkless and not even the second-best Soulslike of this year. Hardly a coincidence, I think. Despite it releasing this month, I think the last thing I saw of Lords of the Fallen was the trailer at Gamescom in August.
Layoffs kept happening also. Games are selling better than ever, but companies that grew too quickly are beholden to shareholders’ outsized expectations for constant growth. Do you want a little games journalism secret though? People are still looking up articles for every section of Baldur’s Gate 3 - a game that came out months ago.
Alan Wake 2 also finally arrived, the main man writing himself a new twisted tale. I’m happy to say I’ve seen nothing beyond the trailer because people seem to appreciate the sanctity of experiencing the game for yourself. I’m sure I’ll get the chance next year. I keep hearing about a dance number though? No one spoil that on me, please.
Fuck it, let’s talk about another thing a lot of people fail to pick up on - Alan Wake 2 is not ashamed to be itself, and it is loved for it, flaws and all. So is Baldur’s Gate 3. Their fun little secret?
Being privately owned, and thus not beholden to shareholders and stock market vibes.
Konami also further disgraced the memory of Silent Hill with Ascension. If you wanna drop some slurs in the game’s interactive chat, go ahead. Just don’t mention Kojima. That’s a naughty word.
November
Aside from Samus, Leo is the second-most Gender™ I've ever felt
The only Call of Duty game I ever played was Modern Warfare 2. No, not the 2022 release, the 2009 one. Modern Warfare 3 (2023), the sequel to Modern Warfare 2 (2022), was released this month, which is apparently mostly maps from Modern Warfare 2 (2009). Confusion and community pushback don’t make for high profits. To quote the inimitable Metal Gear Rising, “How’s an honest warmonger supposed to make a living?”
In other news, Atlus continued their streak of not understanding the most basic act of releasing a game, launching Persona 5 Tactica a week early on Steam. Oh, and The Game Awards announced their nominees while I was writing this.
Starfield sure did get positive reviews, huh? At least Year Of The Twink is thriving.
Anyway, this was the month that I really wanted to get Baldur’s Gate 3 because people are still talking about it, and I have fallen in love with Astarion despite having still never played the game. Is he evil? No idea, but everyone is calling him babygirl and I’m starting to believe it.
December
This is your reminder to play Pyre, not only Supergiant's best game, but the first-ever perfect game.
From when I’m writing, this is the future, so I’m gonna throw out some predictions:
Tears of the Kingdom will win Game Of The Year as a harkening back to Breath of the Wild’s 2017 win when the Game Awards finally became Gaming’s Greatest Marketing Machine.
Geoff will make a joke about his terrifyingly unsafe security at these events.
We will get ads for war crimes (Call of Duty).
We will have One More Thing that will be Very Unimpressive.
Indie games will be confirmed as an aesthetic that multi-billion dollar corporations can use.
Honestly, The Game Awards depress me because we all tune in every year, watch it disrespect composers, hate it for being completely vapid, and then do it again next year. I hate it, but it’s my job to watch it. I’m not even one of the cool games journalists who get a say in the vote!
So what’s my Game Of The Year? I guess I’ll be abstract and poetic and say ‘The Community’. I have played so few games this year that actually, you know, came out this year. Watching people online, listening to my co-workers talk about new releases, and seeing weird trends and discourse pop up - that’s been my year in gaming.
Turns out a whole lot can happen in a year.
