Blog:Grust's Top 10 Reasons Why 2018 Was the Worst for Video Games

A lot of people (myself included) agree that 2018 is one of the worst years in gaming history. It's so bad that some including myself think a gaming crash is on the way. There was an article I made on the subject not too long ago but it was deleted by Unnamedgoon who was properly punished when I made him play the Diabolik Lovers drinking game. That out of the way the next best thing to do... make a blog about it. So here are my top 10 reasons why 2018 was one of the worst years in gaming history. Keep in mind for this list, these reasons must have an effect on the gaming industry so while the the Madden Tournament shooting was horrible and happened in 2018, it didn't affect the game industry so I won't be putting it here. Now onto the countdown.

10. Battlefield V:  What, This is only 10 on your list Grust? Yes, but let me explain. First the quick recap since this has been talked about to death. EA and Dice got woke with this project and gamers criticized only to be insulted and told not to buy the game if we can't accept it. Well we didn't. Preorders were 83% lower than other titles coming out forcing a delay in the game. Upon release, physical sales were down 63% compared to the first game in the series and EA lost $350 million on the project. This should technically be an awesome moment, but still EA learned nothing from this at all. They praised the game's flop and someone working on the new Dragon Age said the game would be political and celebrate "diversity."

9. Nintendo cracking down on ROMs:  While this is not enough for me to want to boycott Nintendo, cracking down on ROM sites is not cool. However to give credit where it's due, this likely happened when hackers were able to get a Switch emulator up and running. Okay yes, that I get. The Switch is their newest console and this emulator would cost them lots of money. If I ran Nintendo I'd do the same thing, but I wouldn't go after every single ROM. Many ROMs are the only way some gamers are able to play classics and some even allow English patches for games never officially released outside of Japan like Sailor Moon: Another Story. I can't fault Nintendo for overreacting since their newest console got hacked but this is still a terrible event.

8. Announcement of the video game category of the GLAAD Awards: I've talked about about how I hate LGBT shoved in our faces all the time in my Top 10 reasons I hate SJWs blog and this is exactly what this award is going to do. Now the awards are slated for next year but it was announced in 2018 so it counts. This award is only going to AAA titles due to AAA titles having higher budgets and better marketing. Key word Marketing, getting the word out. And what's worst, this award is only going to make companies create uninteresting one dimensional characters made for pandering than to tell a story. What's sad is I know of at least two games that did gay characters right. Fable 2 and Stardew Valley and what made them do this right is that is was up to the player if they wanted to do it. I've said this on my second anti-SJW blog (which I personally deleted), but shoving LGBT in people's faces has made me more ashamed of being bisexual than any far right prude ever could (and yes I hate the far right as well).

7. Companies still getting woke despite going broke: Many companies are losing money fast because of getting "woke" and pandering to SJWs. It's one of the reasons Telltales went bankrupt, it's a reason Mass Effect: Andromeda failed. And amazingly, when SJWs and their corrupt game journalist allies tried to boycott Witcher 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance both went on to achieve mass success. With this evidence, it's clear SJWs are not the audience game companies want or need. So why keep trying to pander to them? This is one of the biggest reasons why a crash may soon be happening.

6. Announcement of Diablo: Immortal: Blizzard, the people who attended you convention are PC hardcore gamers, they didn't want to hear news of some inferior mobile game. I'm no PC gamer, in fact the PC Master Race keeps me from ever wanting to own a gaming PC due to their obnoxiousness. But still, they were your target audience Blizzard. Hell I even own Diablo 2 (reminder, I don't count PC games as part of my collection) and consider it the best dungeon crawler I ever played despite not being a fan of the genre. Sad to say though, this isn't even close to the worst thing Blizzard has done this year.

5. Donald Trump blaming video games for shootings: Shortly after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Donald Trump was quick to blame the violence on video games. This made many worry that moral guardians (The SJWs of the right) would return after Jack Thompson was barred from practicing law. Trump supposedly even had a meeting with the heads of many major game studios to discuss violence in video games. Umm Donald, one of the reasons I and several gamers voted for you was because we knew Hillary would have attempted this very same thing. The only positive I have to say is that corrupt sites like Polygon thought they could use this to gain back gamers' trust. Umm Polygon, you and several corrupt journalists have insulted gamers, encouraged poor practices like always online gaming, sided with SJWs, praised ungodly crap like Depression Quest, tried to boycott Kingdom Come: Deliverance for petty reasons, and most gamers already know by now that some of your reviews are bought and paid for. Games journalism has lost my trust and the trust of many gamers and that trust is never coming back.

4. Blizzard teaming up with Twitch to censor gamers: I just recently made an article on this so I'll keep this brief. This is a very Orwellian tactic that will cost gamers their digital libraries and police what they say. And considering how very easily offended SJWs can get, some gamers could get their entire libraries lost and money wasted. It's a very good thing I haven't bought a Blizzard product in a while and don't use Twitch but still go fuck yourselves Blizzard and fuck Twitch.

3. Increasing greed and blind defense of micro-transactions and loot boxes: Despite micro-transactions and lootboxes becoming the most hated feature in any video game as well as addictive, companies will still use them to milk as much money from the player. Yeah they've existed for a while but I don't think they were as bad as what we've seen this year. $10 for a save slot in Metal Gear Survive, a dollar for an aiming dot in Call of Duty Ops (it's cheap to encourage gamers to spend more money plus it's bullshit to force players to spend money on something so simple and readily available for free in most other games), and the announcement of in-game ads for Street Fighter V which can be disabled but you'll gain less resources for doing so. I've already heard of a woman spending over $31,000 in loot boxes. They say loot boxes are a form of gambling but truth is, it's even worse. With gambling you have a chance to earn back more that what you put in. With loot boxes you don't get nothing back. When Belgium banned loot boxes in games, Square Enix refused to sell two loot box games in Belgium as a result.

2. Fallout 76: Holy mother of God, this is what happens when a trainwreck just keeps going. I've already said this was a Dethroning Moment of Suck for me in the forums so for this I'll just do a copy paste: ''The company Bethesda was one of my favorite companies after playing the Elder Scrolls series. I even have Skyrim as one of my all time favorite games. However Fallout wasn't among my favorites, more due to my preference towards fantasy over sci-fi. But then Fallout 76. While I haven't played the game (thank God), the game was just controversy after controversy, from false advertising, a canvas bag, accidental doxxing, banning players for some anti-gay jokes (despite the fact they spent $60 to God forbid $200 to play said product and are now being denied said product), and banning modders and making them write an essay to get back in. Let me get this straight, your piece of crap game which generates more controversy than fun actually has some users and you are banning them? The banning for the gay jokes also scream "getting woke" so loud in my hear, my own brain made me go deaf. I was looking forward to see what Elder Scrolls 6 would bring, but now I don't really care anymore. It's amazing, I held Bethesda in such high regards and with just one single game, completely destroyed that. And that's one hell of an accomplishment.''

And the number 1 worst moment for gaming in 2018 is:

1. Playstation Censorship: While I still love the Playstation brand and even regard the PlayStation 1 as the king of RPG consoles (I guess that makes the Super Nintendo the queen), and hold a huge love for the Playstation 2and like the Playstation 3 and the PS4, the Playstation division just had to move to California which has encouraged censorship of fanservice games because of SJW infiltration. While I'm not a big fan of fanservice and don't even own the games that were censored, this is a slippery slope that I don't want to go sliding down on and so after 25 years, I can no longer support the brand. And that's why I consider the censorship of Playstation games the worst moment for 2018.

Thankfully we did get some positives. Normal and casual gamers are waking up, loot boxes are being investigated and companies that are getting woke are going broke and I'm proud of my fellow gamers for standing up to this corruption. We even got a few good games like Megaman 11, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Octopath Traveler. However right now I can't willfully support the industry right now so for my New Year's Resolution, I am not going to buy a single game from 2018 to 2019. Thankfully with the amount of consoles I own, that won't be too hard. Maybe 2020, I'll get those good games but right now, well at least I can focus on retro collecting.

