10 Things Gaming Did Right in 2011 - G4tv.com

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Some people set their New Year's resolutions to address failures of the year gone by, but we prefer to look at setting goals for 2012 that build on successes. This got us wondering what gaming had done right in 2011.

By "gaming" we mean the entirety of the video game world: developers, critics, publishers, pundits and fans. We're all part of the gaming community and have the potential to contribute in meaningful ways to make our pasttime better. Here are 10 examples from 2011, some serious, some silly, and presented in no particular order.

Successfully fought California's violent video game law

Not since the days of Jack Thompson have we had to put up with such stupidity as California's law criminalizing the sale of ?extremely violent video games? to minors. The psychiatric science behind California's law was so bad that California State Senator Leland Yee, who holds a Ph.D. in Child Psychology and introduced the law in 2005, should be ashamed of himself.

Thanks to the efforts of the Entertainment Merchants Association, who fought the California law all the way to the United States Supreme Court (which struck the law down in a 7-2 ruling in June of this year), not only will it be more difficult for anyone to try and pass such absurd laws in the future, but video games are now officially recognized as protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Of all the wins scored for video games in 2011, this one was the most epic.

Persistence in role playing games

Part of what makes tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons fun is creating characters that carry over from adventure to adventure. Groups of tabletop RPG players can have characters they play for decades, and that rich history feeds into the quality of their adventures. RPGs in the video game world have traditionally been stand-alone experiences, or if they were franchises, didn't reflect choices from previous games in a series.

In two games released this year, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age 2, developer Bioware allowed players to transfer choices from Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins respectively. The effect of this mechanic in Dragon Age 2 was subtle, but in Mass Effect 2 the differences in game world based on importing different sets of player choices was pronounced. The sense of Commander Shepard, the hero of the Mass Effect games, inhabiting a living world was thus enhanced. This is a positive development for single-player RPGs, and hopefully a mechanic that will be employed by other games in the genre by multiple developers.

MotionScan

While L.A. Noire was problematic as a complete work on many counts, there's no denying that the MotionScan system pioneered by developer Team Bondi is a major step forward in portraying realistic characters in video games. Consider the technology by itself for a moment. Can you imagine a role playing game where all the characters' performances were shot using MotionScan?

If future iterations of the technology can be made cheaper and easier to implement such that it could be widely employed by game developers, the potential for realistic character performances could have positive repercussions across the entire video game industry.

A gun peripheral worth having

Veteran gamers have seen a lot of chintzy gun peripherals over the years. The Nintendo Entertainment System's Zapper was cute, and the modern incarnation for the Wii is equally adorable, but in terms of gun peripherals that properly felt like guns the entries have been few and far between.

Enter Sony's Sharp Shooter, which works in tandem with the Move motion control system. The Sharp Shooter's body is reminiscent of a Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun. Loading the Move into the Sharp Shooter feels like changing a barrel and if you really want to geek out, pushing the Navigation controller home might be loading an under-barrel grenade launcher.

What really matters is how the peripheral feels in action, and playing games with the Sharp Shooter can be surprisingly smooth and satisfying. There's still work to be done on perfecting gun peripherals, mind you, but the Sharp Shooter was an important step in the right direction. Cute, it is not.

Bringing the RPG to MMORPG's

Massively multiplayer online role playing games always deliver on the MMO, at least as long as people are subscribing to them, but are usually light on the RPG. It's much easier to replicate tabletop role playing game mechanics like loot and statistics and die-roll-based combat than it is to try and recreate the exchanges that take place between human players role playing their characters at the table.

When you break it down, what Bioware did with The Old Republic was take the same sort of story and dialogue sequences they have mastered in single player RPGs and melded them with the tried-and-true MMO formula pioneered by games like EverQuest and perfected by World of Warcraft. It required a tremendous investment of time and money, but Bioware's gamble worked.

No longer do MMO players have to roll a character on a role playing server and hope enough of the people on that server are actually there to role play in order to get their RPG on. It's a standard part of the package that is The Old Republic. Whether or not this is feasible for all MMO games is debatable, but Bioware has at least proven that it can successfully be done.

Brink's AI Squad Commander

The first person shooter community is unruly to put it kindly. Getting a random group of FPS players to stay on task in objective-based multiplayer matches can feel like herding cats. Trying to organize the effort on chat can amount to nothing more than an invitation for verbal abuse. Understanding all of this is necessary to appreciate what English development studio Splash Damage accomplished with Brink's Squad Commander.

The Squad Commander is a dynamic AI routine that highlights potential mission objectives and changes to reflect game conditions. The Squad Commander worked precisely as advertised, keeping teams organized and on-task even when no one was directly communicating with anyone else. You may have to be a team FPS player to appreciate the innovation the Squad Commander represents, but we wanted to give Splash Damage a nod for making it easier to play online first person shooters without pulling one's hair out.

Glasses-free 3D technology

Regardless of whether or not Nintendo delivered on the ?wow factor? from E3 2010 when the 3DS handheld was first shown to the public, this is another example of appreciating a technical achievement independently of whether it was implemented properly or not. Who among us would have thought five years ago that true three-dimension displays without 3D glasses were possible?

Maybe the science writers or developers in the audience just raised their hands, but it's a safe bet that most of us had no idea what was on the horizon. It's worth noting that part of the reason glasses-free 3D technology hasn't been implemented very well yet in video games because Nintendo didn't want to make games that depending on 3D mechanics, in order not to alienate users who couldn't use the 3D technology for whatever reason.

That was a reasonable stance for a company that prides itself on accessibility, but now that the technology is available to third parties, try to imagine playing first person shooters on full-size glasses-free 3D television sets. Or glasses-free 3D movies as a matter of course. If we ever get there, the gaming industry will have blazed that trail by making the technology readily-accessible to consumers for the first very time.

Core Gaming on iOS devices

In late 2010 Infinity Blade drew lots of attention for running the Unreal engine on an iPhone. It was a turning point in the debate as to whether or not core gaming belonged in or could be supported by the iPhone market. In 2011 games like Dead Space, Zombie Gunship, Infinity Blade II and GTA III: Anniversary Edition were released on the iPhone and effectively ended the debate.

This is a fundamental shift in our perception of the relationship between mobile gaming and traditional gaming platforms. Twin-stick control schemes continue to not work very well on iOS devices, but now that core gaming on those devices is a proven commodity, who's to say we won't see gamepads for the iPad popularized in the near future?

A successful MMO was established on a console

We don't want to give the impression that DC Universe Online is a pioneering game, as other traditional-design MMOs have appeared on consoles. EverQuest Adventures and Final Fantasy XI immediately come to mind, but neither game made a huge splash in North America and so the perception has continued to linger that MMOs will never be appropriate for consoles. DCUO provides a cogent argument for questioning this notion.

Since going free to play in November, the player base for DC Universe Online has reportedly skyrocketed. Going free to play after launching with a subscription model is no knock against the game, as we've seen PC MMOs catapult into profitability after making the same transition. While DCUO features a combat system that is more akin to action games than traditional MMOs the quest, loot and group encounter mechanics are all standard MMO fare.

The hump that console MMOs have to get over is the social aspect of the genre facilitated by keyboards on the PC. We've seen the Xbox 360 Chatpad, however. The challenge is not insurmountable, and if DC Universe Online continues to gain and hold a strong player base, other developersgt may take up that challenge in earnest.

Raised visibility of the need for equal representation in gaming

The other ridiculousness we continue to put up besides the whole ?violent video games? thing, is the perception by the uninformed as to who gamers are. Our average age is somewhere in the mid-to-late 30's depending on which study you cite. At least 40% of us are female. We are an incredibly diverse group of people, and it was heartening to see The Economist trumpet these realities in its December 10-16 issue.

Public perception is one thing. Making sure that we are including everyone in our gaming community is another, and this year a lot of noise was made about making sure this task is not left untended. Penny Arcade came under fire for making light of serious women's issues. Kotaku published columns by gay and transgender gamers who wanted their voices heard alongside everyone else's. The potential sexism of Batman: Arkham City's dialogue was questioned.

When it comes to social change, conversations like these have value for their own sake. They raise awareness that we're not all a bunch of 18-30 year old men playing shooters. We're men and women and kids and adults and core gamers and casual gamers, and embracing that diversity doesn't mean diluting how hardcore our shooters are or forcing everyone into the confines of political correctness. Embracing our diversity as a community means putting an end to the stereotype of who the average gamer is, which helps video games take their rightful place as the 21^st century's most exciting form of media, and ultimately leads to more and better games for all of us.

Dennis Scimeca is a freelance video game journalist from Boston, MA. His weekly video game opinion column First Person runs Thursdays on The Escapist. You can reach him through his blog, Punching Snakes, or enjoy his random excitations on Twitter:

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