Gaming Blend 2012 Recap: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

All right, here's a complete rundown, recap and overview of all the highlights that took place throughout calendar year 2012. We have an overview of everything that helped shape, destroy, distort, repair and change the way we view video game entertainment and interactive entertainment product consumption. The gaming industry definitely made some changes for better and worse and you can read through what some of those changes were that happened throughout 2012. There's also no doubt that some of those said changes will certainly shape or modify how we experience 2013. So without further ado, here is the Gaming Blend 2012 recap.

January

Ah, January. What can we say? It was the start of a new year and everything was getting into focus. All the horrors of 2012 that would forever help shape a new direction for the gaming industry weren't even whispers floating around on a breezy winter night. No, January was basically a recap of 2011 and then some horribly disappointing foreshadowing for the rest of 2012: More of the same from mainstream gaming with little or no effort put into creatively expanding a medium entirely based on creative expansion. Sony and Microsoft both confirmed that there would be no new consoles showcased, hinted at or sold in 2012 and that it would be more of the same. Business as usual. Boy, wasn't that a hard truth to swallow. Thankfully, Nintendo kept the community's interest piqued with the Wii U.

February

February wasn't really rocket-busting but we had some sad news in the fact that LEGO Universe closed up shop, Epic made their first hints about the future of gaming with the Unreal Engine 4 announcement and Sony unsuccessfully tried to get everyone to start saying “SEN” for the Sony Entertainment Network as opposed to “PSN”, which relates to the PlayStation Network. Does anyone even say SEN? Anyway, United Front Games also re-announced True Crime: Streets of Hong Kon as Sleeping Dogs, which would go on to become one of the highlights of the year. Unfortunately, February didn't have much of anything else to offer other than the standard-fare bit of news.

March

March...wow, mama jamma. That's a good way to sum up March. This is where things started to spiral out of control and the unrest within the core gaming community became a thunderous chorus for change. Capcom and BioWare kicked things off by competing to piss off fans in a fans-pissing-off contest; on Capcom's end there was on-disc DLC and on BioWare's end there was...well...the Mass Effect 3 ending. All while this was taking place EA was building up evil rep points, with tidbits of information spilling out to give gamers more and more reasons to hate them, but it all got some vitriolic traction when the viral marketer came out and spilled the beans about the company's expensive marketing practices.

April

April was basically March Part 2. A lot of what started in March carried over into April and this is where EA took off the “I'm pretending to be your friend” cap and let all their ugly intentions hang out like the tainted junk from a Subway flasher. All the crap EA pulled eventually caught up to them and they were voted as the worst company in America. On the flipside, both developers and gamers realized that the big publishing giants were no longer needed for having fun and the emerging popularity and growth of Kickstarter for crowd-funding video games came to a head. Capcom also got a royal pummeling in the public media circuits thanks to their Better Business Bureau rankings taking a dive. On the plus side April paved a way for two top-end titles to get announced, including Crysis 3 and the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.

May

May oh my...the month that kickstarted the launch of Diablo III and gave us our first glimpse at next-gen with the Demon Knight teaser from Epic Games. May also setup what would be the start of the season of Diablo III Haterade, which eventually devolved into a lot of childhoods being spoiled, fond memories being tainted and nostalgia being promptly raped. But things didn't stop there...Pirate Bay promptly came under fire from record and movie industry, going as far as being banned in the UK by traditional access means. We also received the first tidbits of hints and information about the Elder Scrolls Online. On the upside Microsoft introduced the first $99 Xbox 360 (of course, with a two-year contract to Xbox Live) and ACTA gets the first dosage of deadism, but there's more on that later.

June

Ah, June, the month of E3. This is where gamers get the most excited, where tempers and console war exclusives butt heads. However, this time around the 2012 E3 was as safe as safe could be, with the only company daring to step outside the box being Ubisoft. Gamers got their first taste of Watch Dogs and most everyone agreed that the game was definitely something geared toward next-gen. Many Wii U titles get the spotlight at E3 as well, including Pikmin 3, ZombiU and Lego City Undercover. Blizzard also undergoes major trouble with the Korean government and the FTC over Diablo III. Australia's government also implement the first phase of allowing for R18 games. After EA's stock takes a dive they finally work with BioWare to unleash some improved endings and Valve launches the Source Filmmaker, which has been a real boon to the indie movie making scene.

July

July was a month of resolution for many gamers. Aside from celebrating Independence Day, gamers got their first taste of the tweedpunk hunting game, Sir, You Are Being Hunted. ACTA, as mentioned previously, finally gets the nail in the coffin and is voted out of propriety and kicked to the legislative curb. EA's stock woes continue to plague them throughout the summer, making those vacations for executives a bit of a pang in the side while bringing a smile to many a gamer's face. July also brought us the first bit of news about Ouya, the first $99 game console that will be open to mods, hacks and everything else in between. News also surfaces for DICE's Battlefield 4, and how beta access can be acquired. Square Enix also gets off their high horse and finally decides to revamp and redo Final Fantasy XIV by calling it Final Fantasy XIV: Reborn.

August

August was the month of “saving face” for Electronic Arts. They spent a lot of time, energy, marketing power and money suing Zynga and making it as public as possible. This slimy tactic actually worked as many gamers sided with them as the lesser of two evils. The tactic was so sly and effective that it actually boosted their stock price during the whole thing. Blizzard reported a drop in subscriptions for World of Warcraft while EA tried hogging even more of the spotlight with announcement for Army of Two: Devil's Cartel. Dead “Rocket” Hall makes it known that DayZ will become a standalone product and Apogee's Rise of the Triad makes a return to form under Interceptor Entertainment. Kojima also announced Metal Gear Solid 5 while later that month a movie for Metal Gear was also confirmed. In a bit of a twist, churches admitted to using the game Journey to help enlighten their congregation and Microsoft re-announces their open-world zombie game, State of Decay as an Xbox 360 exclusive.

September

There was hardly anything special about September, which was basically rumor round-up for all things Nintendo Wii U. Theories about power consumption, video card capabilities and processing power filled September to the brim, but not without a little contention from other competitors, including lots of loot-and-shoot news for Gearbox's Borderlands 2 and an announcement that a standalone Slender Man game would be arriving. EA sinks a little further, though, with NBA Live 13 biting the proverbial dust, IGN getting caught red-handed in a vote-cheating scheme that got them banned from Reddit, and Bethesda butting heads in a bad way with PS3 gamers over Skyrim's many bugs and glitches that prevented PlayStation 3 console owners from having a chance at playing the game's downloadable content. Steam also unleashed one of the best new things that could happen to gaming called Greenlight, which enables and empowers the community to upvote the games they want to play.

October

The month of Doritos. That's the official name of October. Filled to the brim with controversy, October saw Cliffy B., resign from Epic Games as their lead designer as well as Geoff Keighley get hammered in the press thanks to that exposing and truthfully unflattering article from Rab Florence over at Eurogamer. We saw a premature leak of Star Wars: First Assault, mixed and damning reviews for Resident Evil 6 that played a partial role in the game's unfortunate short tail-end sales, as well as Sony suing the actor who portrayed their former front-man, Kevin Butler. The news continued to stir controversy with Halo 4's premature leak a month before the game's official release. Nintendo was also caught in the media crossfire when they were called out for supporting Foxconn, who had underage kids slaving away to manufacture Wii U units, which followed on the heels of other downing news such as IGN being auctioned off by News Corp. However, things did pick up with announcements for highly anticipated games like Star Citizen and Square's licensing of the Unreal Engine 4. So October wasn't a complete bust.

November

November is when the official money-counting days begin for big publishers. Games released in this month included Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II, each one managed to bring smiles to the faces of the head-honchos over at the publishing headquarters but they weren't all the rat and rave of the month. Nintendo continued to steal the spotlight with the launch of the Wii U and the Wii Minis. EA confirmed that Mass Effect 4 would be running on the Frostbite 2.0 and Rockstar gave gamers so much information, screenshots and enough content from a new trailer to make some gamers lose their bowels enough times to make doctors think that a viral breakout of bowel incontinence had spread throughout the gaming community. Rockstar wasn't the only that had a ton of info to share about their highly anticipated title. Bungie also had unleashed details about the Activision-published Destiny, set for next-gen consoles. Gamefly also set a new benchmark, enabling PC gamers to rent PC titles and Blizzard continued banning Linux users in Diablo III.

December

December, the final month of 2012 and wrapping up a year that was mostly an epic fail in the mainstream arena and some epic win for the indie community. The beginning of the month paid tribute to the great games that released throughout the year with Spike TV's VGAs, including a surprise win for TellTale's Walking Dead. This was followed by Valve unleashing two big news items: the Big Picture Mode and an announcement about a Steam Box home entertainment PC designed to operate out of the living room. Things wrapped up on a positive note for 2012, though, despite THQ filing for bankruptcy the company still has control over their IP and operations will resume as usual and a bunch of holiday sales took place throughout the latter half of December even up until right now as of the publishing of this article, so despite some of the rotten stuff that happened throughout the year the good part is that it all ended on a high note and hopefully you walked away with a few good deals on Xbox, PlayStation and PC games. The staff of Gaming Blend also share the top picks of games played throughout 2012 as we gear up for all the great games geared to release in 2013.