OPINION | 2023 is the best year ever in gaming

Was 2023 the best year ever for video games? A question that you cannot actually answer without ranking all games in all years and then giving the most objective assessment possible on that basis. But this is a column and I’m a bit lazy, so we’re not going to do any of that. I’m going to be nice and subjective and throw around a lot of hyperbole (maybe, if I’m not too lazy for that either).

Now, spin it however you like, 2023 was a phenomenal year for games: Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomthe remake of Resident Evil 4, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Bros. Wonder in Street Fighter 6 were all games that came out this year. Then I won’t mention quite a few and we haven’t talked about smaller games like COCOON, Dave the Diver in Sea of Stars. If you are a gamer and you dared to say in 2023 that you didn’t have a single good game to play, then you belonged on a funeral pyre or something (aha, not too lazy for a hyperbole here and there).

“If you’re a gamer and you dared to say in 2023 that you didn’t have a single good game to play, you belonged on a funeral pyre or something.”

I’ve been gaming for more than 30 years now and have been in “the world” for about 15 years and I can’t really remember a better year. That may have happened, but it was a damn long time ago. Maybe sometime in the mid-90s when we got two great consoles on our plates with the Nintendo 64 and the first PlayStation. But then again, the large number of absolute toppers we received this year was actually too ridiculous.

Not that I want to complain, but I’m going to complain a little. Why were there so many? Can’t all those publishers now agree on when they will launch new top games? There are only so many hours in a day. For example, is it really necessary to get Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Spider-Man 2 launching on the same day?

Okay, back to my original point: is 2023 the best year for gamers ever? I think so and I say that with the knowledge that there will be a lot of people who will be happy to contradict me, but this is my column, so nice puh!

I have that opinion because over the years I’ve been pretty successful at actually playing most of the titles I really wanted to play. This is much less the case this year. Nice indies have almost all been dropped in the backlog, but I also just didn’t touch big titles like Baldur’s Gate 3 (maybe fortunately, because in exchange for all the hours I could have put into that, I was able to play ten other games) . Not to mention my immense backlog of Nintendo games, which grows longer year after year.

“Two groups that might think 2023 is the biggest shit year ever: Call of Duty fans and FIFA players.”

Strangely enough, there are two groups that may think 2023 is the biggest shit year ever: Call of Duty fans and FIFA players (yay, EA Sports FC…). They are two groups that mainly play one game throughout the year and are largely disappointed by the latest addition to their favorite series. Both Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and EA Sports FC 24 received some of the lowest scores in living memory for a new game within their franchise.

For those people, 2023 is far from the best year in gaming ever, but as we have previously established, this is my column and I think completely differently about it.

So I can only hope one thing and that is that 2024 has everything to match or at least approach 2023, because then we may gradually be able to speak of a new golden age. Fingers crossed.