I’m once again here to say that 2023 was one of the best years for video games in history. I can only say it so many times before the words lose all meaning. Too many bangers, not enough time, blah, blah, blah. While it’s likely that we won’t see the same volume of incredible games this year, and the slate isn’t full to the brim like it was last year with so many more announcements and reveals to come, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing good on the horizon. There’s plenty to be excited about, if you’re not jaded like I am.
It’s not that these games don’t look good – they definitely do. I’ve been keeping a running list of games I want to check out this year so that I don’t let quite as many things slip past me as I did in 2023, and it’s been getting longer and longer as the first week of the year drags on. There are 27 games on that list right now. It’s only going to get longer as release windows get confirmed.
But I’m not really excited. I don’t really believe a game is real until it’s already in front of me, because games are constantly under threat of delays by virtue of lack of financial support, a desire to avoid crunch, a poorly planned timeline, and more. Last year,Alan Wake 2was delayed by ten days,Star Wars Jedi: Survivorwas delayed for six weeks,Goodbye Volcano Highhad a two-and-a-half month delay,Starfieldlaunched in September instead of the ‘first half of 2023’ window planned, on top of a previous delay of a full year… I could keep going, and going, and going.
The majority of these delays are relatively minor – what’s a few weeks or even months? – but then there are cases likeSuicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, which was pushed from an already delayed May release to February this year, andSkull & Bonesgot delayed again to February 2024, to absolutely nobody’s surprise. And my belovedStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republicremake is in development hell,possibly cancelled.Factions 2, meanwhile, was finally cancelledafter countless reports detailing its troubled development.
Skull & Bones legallyhasto release because it received heavy subsidies during development from the Singapore government. As a Singaporean, knowing how government grants and scholarships work, I can only laugh and say they should have known better.
I want to play these games, but I refuse to let myself expect them. It’s like when you’re a kid and you tell your parents you want something for your birthday, but you know that you probably won’t get it and that hoping is just going to lead to your feelings getting hurt, so you’re only allowing yourself to be happy when it’s sitting right in front of you. That’s how I feel about games now – it looks cool! I want to play it! I don’t actually believe I’m going to get it at the promised time, or ever!
This isn’t really the developers' faults. With smaller studios it can just be down to personal issues, like withRevenant Hill, which was cancelled as various members of the team tried to deal with health problems.Hyenas was cancelled by Sega before it had a chance toprove itself. Sometimes,as with The Wolf Among Us 2, delays are to ensure that team members don’t have to undergo crunch. Having to wait to have games put in my hands, or being unsure that I’ll get them at all, is an incredibly minor inconvenience in comparison to the terrible working conditions that developers are often subjected to in the course of development. I’m not mad about it, by any stretch of the imagination, but the announcement of any game’s release date now gets a shrug and a “Sure” from me. If it reaches me, it reaches me. If not, I won’t be disappointed – I didn’t believe it was real anyway.
