Your hopes for the year ahead?

[Chris Evans]

Just wondering what everyone is hoping for in the gaming industry for the year ahead? Not talking about what specific games you are looking forward to most, but what events you hope to see?

Couple of mine are that Sim City is actually a success:

EA are bringing their classic city management sim out of the archives with the release of the new SimCitytitle in March. I greatly enjoyed my limited hands-on time with it back at last year’s Eurogamer Expo and saw a lot of potential to fill our days with city management woes and fears of horrific meteor strikes destroying everything. I just hope that it remains true to the series and doesn’t turn into another game likeCities XL which overreached and fell apart. The connected cities idea in SimCity sounds promising, but the requirement to be constantly connected to the EA servers, even for singleplayer concerns me. I don’t want to see a repeat of Cities XL; I want SimCity to be a wonderful PC title not dragged down by awkward DRM. I’m just hoping that things turn out for the best with it.

And another big hope of mine stems from the #1ReasonWhy event from last year, and that is to see a much greater level of equality between the genders both in games themselves and in games development:

My most genuine hope lies within gender equality. I, like many, am tired of female characters in games following the same old pattern of simply being there as eye candy. I want to see an increase in strong female lead characters this year, but I see things only really changing if sports games can get on board. After the amazing year of sport in 2012, it is impossible to ignore the achievements made by women, yet sports games largely ignore or push women to the background. This was most evident for me in the London 2012 videogame where there wasn’t an equal balance between male and female sports. Further, I wonder how difficult it would be women’s teams and league to be included in FIFA or Football Manager.
I also hope to see an increase in gender equality in game development; this was brought to light with the #1ReasonWhy Twitter discussion last year. If more female developers are given the opportunity to influence the direction games take during production, maybe we will see an improvement to in-game equality as well.

Quotes are from my article on this topic on The Reticule.

[DaftPunk]

Actually i don't hope for anything,i go with the flow haha.

[Gorzan]

Actually i don't hope for anything,i go with the flow haha.

Pretty much, really.

[Sketch]

I hope GTA V gets a PC port this year.
I hope all THQ ips make it out ok.
I hope Prey 2 is still alive and kicking.
I hope Kickstarters start to deliver en masse.
I hope STALKER 2 somehow appears in good shape and being worked on.
I hope we hear news of Half Life.
I hope we get new consoles this year.
I hope Ground Zeroes is released this year on PC.

World Peace would be alright too.

[Mohorovicic]

My most genuine hope lies within gender equality.

Thanks for the laugh.

There is still hope for Mechwarrior Online. I also hope to move to a place with proper goddamn Internet so I can really get into some online games.

[jnx]

+1 for Simcity. Really hope it will deliver. Promotional material has been good for building hype, but I'll see reviews on this one.

[soldant]

More blood! More violence! More WARFACE!

Or to be serious:
1. I hope for a good SimCity, because it's been too long
2. I hope for news about Half Life 3, because it's been a trillion years
3. I hope we stop calling attention to the trolls and treating them as entertainment
4. I hope Australia's new R18+ rating isn't going to be an empty gesture
5. I hope new consoles come out, but I don't hope that it ignites a new upgrade cycle treadmill (I'm comfortable right now)
6. I hope authorware packages like Game Maker Studio and Unity keep improving and see more widespread adoption, perhaps with more visual scripting solutions for non-programmers

Also to play the bad guy (because it seems to be my reputation on RPS lately), I kind of hope that one of the major Kickstarters fails to deliver. Not just because I like to see failure, but because it'd introduce a healthy dose of reality to Kickstarter, highlighting that it isn't a massive dreamfactory where we always get exactly what we wanted, and that caution is still required.

I also hope the social game sector implodes, because Zynga suck.

[NathanH]

I hope we get some good quality non-action RPGs, there haven't really been any of note, even average ones, for a while. I hope that Towns implements an easy way to give items to Heroes, because that is really annoying. Apart from that, I have plenty of good games already so I'm just hoping for a few good games that do interesting things to keep things fresh.

[Chris Evans]

Also to play the bad guy (because it seems to be my reputation on RPS lately), I kind of hope that one of the major Kickstarters fails to deliver. Not just because I like to see failure, but because it'd introduce a healthy dose of reality to Kickstarter, highlighting that it isn't a massive dreamfactory where we always get exactly what we wanted, and that caution is still required.

I've got to agree with you on this, right now my feeling is that some groups of developers are seeing Kickstarter as a simple way to get the funding they need without really giving the full consideration to whether they will eventually be able to deliver on all of their goals. If something big failed, it might make things a bit more realistic. Not that I want something to fail really, but it might be for the best in the long-term.

[Strutter]

I hope carmageddon doesn't suck and they add a ton more content to firefall, which is looking quite promising to me in it's current beta state. And personally I plan to finally get good at that dota 2 game.

[duff]

In general I hope that the kickstarter games come out reasonably on time, some delays are inevitable, and on the whole feel polished and content complete. The whole "kickstarter will stop publishers forcing us to rush games" argument will unravel quickly if kickstarted games don't launch in a relatively polished state. I'm thinking specifically of Obsidian here.

[b0rsuk]

I hope all casual gamers are put into a rocket and launched into the sun!

[Mohorovicic]

That would include most of RPS forums.

...make it so.

[DaftPunk]

That would include most of RPS forums.

...make it so.

Oh haha,and what makes you so hardcore ? :D

[Shooop]

1. Kickstarter won't overheat because of some people's unrealistically high expectations
2. People will finally tire of yearly expansion packs for FPS games sold to them as full-price games
3. The rampant misogyny, racism, and general asshatery that permeates the "gamer culture" continues to be reported and publicly shamed instead of swept under the rug
4. Valve releases Source Engine 2
5. CryTek and Epic stop trying to make games because they can't make any worth a damn anymore and focus on their excellent game engines instead
6. Valve's "game box" doesn't make as big a splash as they'd hoped because that last thing the world needs is another Xbox/Bungie debacle
7. nVidia's GeForce Experience helps less technically savvy people make sense of the sometimes cryptic world of ini files
8. THQ lives on in some recognizable form and drops the sugar packet sized DLCs they did with Saints Row 3
9. CryZone23 is released since the STALKER team is not doing anything worthwhile
10. MMOs finally die an agonizing and more than well deserved death
11. Someone takes the fascinating world of Guild Wars and makes a decent game with it
12. Australian politicians suddenly drop dead for unknown reasons and completely sensible trade laws are put into effect, finally putting an end to games selling for $90 each
13. Ubisoft's executives are revealed to actually be prank comedians a la The Yes Men and actual executives are hired to replace them

[HappyStreet]

1. Good RPGs.
2. Gabe do something wrong so that people can stop choking on his junk 24/7.
3. THQ manages to stabilize.

[Xercies]

Ubisoft actually gets there act together and finally becomes a publisher I want to buy their games from because they genrally seem to be the only bigger publisher making itneresting game.

Mirrors Edge 2 comes out and it is the greatest game ever and gets many many sequels.

[DaftPunk]

I'm bored so let me pick few things i think it would be nice to happen,since SC went to shit and now new MGS game is in development i hope we really get it on pc and that the port will be good,true port for pc.

Then i would love to see at least a fucking hint for new Half Life game,i don't know what kind of logic Gabe have to think that being quiet when fans are demanding any news on the series..


Also Doom 4,last year there were some leaked concept art/alpha stage screenies,i hope we get at least some teaser this year,and that it will return to its roots. Can't remember where i read it but Carmack said Doom 4 is going to be remake of second game,and it will play like second as well,not sure if i misread it though.

[Kadayi]

2. Gabe do something wrong so that people can stop choking on his junk 24/7.

I think I can get behind that one. The amount of hubris that came off the 'Valve handbook' made even Apple look modest.

[Oshada]

Only two relating to games themselves really:

1) GTA V PC port of quality comparable to or exceeding that of LA Noire
2) Dragon Age III being the best game ever