Doom ii hell on earth e32/8/2024 ![]() Gamers and critics love to argue about the medium's best year of all time, but 2023 is the first serious contender since 2017, which delivered The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Destiny 2, Super Mario Odyssey, Horizon Zero Dawn, Cuphead, and Resident Evil 7. ![]() So which is it? Are we entering a gaming renaissance that will rival the cultural impact of the golden age of Hollywood, or was 2023 just a fluke thanks to a pandemic-delayed backlog of titles? Are gaming CEOs driving away the bright minds of the industry’s future to make an extra buck today, or are we on the brink of a worker-led revolution? On the other hand, thousands of game workers were laid off in 2023 despite record-breaking sales figures, while many of their still-employed colleagues say they’re suffering from low pay, long hours, harassment, and discrimination-due in part to the fact that the video game industry has no national unions like Hollywood’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA to set benchmarks for wages, benefits, and working conditions. On the one hand, this year feels like a turning point for video games that could herald a new era, something akin to the “Peak TV” period that began with HBO’s The Sopranosin 1999. But when I ask Miller if 2023 could be considered the industry's best year of all time, he has an answer that might surprise a lot of happy gamers.īehold: the mystical-looking Cyan Worlds, which is the oldest surviving independent video game studio in America. “Even the shooters are adding narrative in a way that feels inherent now, not just scabbed on like it used to be,” he says. In addition to the blockbusters I mentioned above, this year’s smaller and more experimental games-such as Cocoon, Chants of Sennaar, Jusant, and Cyan’s own Firmament-are built around narrative mysteries in addition to their logic puzzles. I didn’t come all this way just because he’s been making video games longer than most people in America, but because I think many of 2023’s best games have something in common with Cyan’s classics in the '90s: a literary approach to narrative and environmental storytelling. I could keep going: Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo IV, The Talos Principle 2, Lies of P, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, and Assassin’s Creed Mirage, to name a few more.Īt Cyan, I sit across a conference table from Rand Miller, the CEO and co-creator of Myst and Riven. Bethesda’s long-awaited space epic, Starfield, was set across nearly 1,700 different moons and planets, making it the largest explorable universe ever built. ![]() Baldur’s Gate 3, the role-playing game based on Dungeons & Dragons, took high-fantasy escapism to new heights. It’s a dramatic superlative, sure, but the sheer number of well-received games that have hit consoles and PCs since January is staggering.Įsquire’s Game of the Year, Alan Wake 2, combined a Lynchian horror story with live-action film sequences and an unforgettable musical number. I’m here because throughout 2023, gamers and industry experts have been openly wondering if this is the best year of all time for video games. Founded in 1987, it produced two of the best-selling and most influential games of all time in the '90s- Myst and Riven-which are still celebrated three decades later for their visual storytelling. This is Cyan Worlds, the oldest surviving independent video game studio in America. When I turn left down an unmarked road, one of the strangest structures I’ve ever seen comes into view: a brick-and-masonry edifice surrounded by an earthen moat, accessible only by a footbridge, through an arch that looks like it was torn off the front of the building by an angry god. After 12 hours in transit, two connecting flights, and a meandering drive through millions of Douglas firs and ponderosa pines, I reach a small town near the border of Idaho and Washington State, where there are more woodpeckers than people.
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