T w e n t y S i d e d
I’ve always assumed that the point of these end-of-year lists is to look back and appraise the year as a whole. Was it a good year for games? Any new trends? What was good? What was bad? What are we looking forward to?
That’s a good thing to do. The problem I’m having this year is that I didn’t play very many titles released in 2017. A lot of the games I played this year are actually more than two years old. I put a lot of hours into old favorites like Kerbal Space Program and FactorioWhich won my #1 spot last year., and I spent a lot of time chipping away at my Steam backlog.
Which brings me to a question that’s been bugging me for the last few months:
What’s the cut-off date for a “game of the year” list?
If a game comes out in December 2015 it’s obviously too late to make the 2015 list and should belong to 2016. But where do you draw the line? Or is the entire concept of annual delineation an archaic leftover from the days of retail and our end-of-year lists should just focus on what we played that year, regardless of release date?
The idea of games belonging to a specific year is the result of a world where games have firm release dates for retail sale, and that’s not the world we live in anymore. Sure, that’s how AAA titles work, but since the one-two punch of the indie revolution and the retro revival, AAA blockbusters don’t quite have the dominance they used to. These days you might play a game for a year before its official release date due to Early Access. After release, the game might get numerous patches and free content updates that might keep you around for two or three years after launch. On top of all that, on the PC you’ve got Steam sales that discount games and pull in new players even after all the mods, updates, and expansions have come and gone.
So our relationship with a game is no longer anchored to a single release date, but spread out over a period of months or years. So I’m thinking it makes sense to relax the rules about what games can make “the list”.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Dénouement 2017: The Year of the Loot Box”
