Isometrics: On New Beginnings and the Isometrics Awards

Welcome to Isometrics, the Belated Bellevue of the literary world of computer and video games. It has been an amazingly long time since the last Isometrics, for various reasons I won't go into here, but suffice to say many of those concerns are no longer a factor in my life and thus Isometrics lives again. I figure the best time to come back would be December because it means I can discuss the gaming year and will have more than one post a week.

There's a little bit of caretaking and cobweb dusting to do first before we leap back into the fray, so I apologise in advance for a bit of a cluttered article. Currently all my old Isometrics posts are on Geek Pride (Link to a little library of them here), but as far as I know in the immediate future they will be on The Clinkening, which is my old blog of sorts (there's plenty of my old stuff here but don't look, it's terrible!). That will be the home of Isometrics until I either create a new site or someone decides that they'd like to see these articles on their website and I somehow pitch it successfully.

In any case, the time has come for the Isometrics Awards, which is a set of five articles that will be released over the Christmas period. This didn't happen last year because they would have been my first Isometrics articles and it didn't seem right to discuss a year I'd not written about in some way.

The first will be a review of the year “On Gaming in the Year 2014”, where I discuss how gaming changed, progressed and changed in the year 2014, and my oh my is there a lot to talk about. That will be up either this week or next, depending on how everything falls into place in terms of my life. That should be up on Friday all going well

Next week there is the crowning of the Worst and Best games of 2014. I've wanted to do a list like this for so long, where I chronicle the crowning achievements and the deepest lows of video games in 2014, from the most evocative epics to the most repulsive ideas. There are ground rules I hold, which I'm not sure are the same for every games media person doing a list like this, but mine are as follows:

To qualify, the game must have received a full release in one of the three major territories (Japan, USA and Europe) between 1^st December 2013 and 31^st December 2014. A release in this definition is a retail release of a full game, or in the case of freeware games that may make the list, the release of a 1.0 and a sourced report that the game is no longer a beta. The reason for the date overlap is that while this list is based on a full year, it will by definition be released before the start of the next, so to ensure that games that may have been ignored in the lull after cyber monday are not ignored, they are eligible for next year's list as well.

Games released in a paid beta programme or Steam's Early Access are not eligible until they receive a full release, to encourage the speedy development and release of said games. Episodic games are eligible, providing their first episode was released within the window of release, so long as the game's intention was to be episodic, as opposed to an attempt to buy more development time (This is known as the Broken Age Rule).

Freemium games (aka “Free to Play”, “Free to Start” and “Confidence Tricks”) are not eligible due to the inherent issues with the format. Exceptions will be made for particularly egregiously terrible examples that defy the standard issues that plague Free to Play games. Note that I have not mentioned any ways Freemium games could enter the Best Games list. A particularly excellent example may well qualify, but it is difficult to explain the conditions that would lead to it, and will likely be decided on a case by case basis.

There is a thorny issue of remakes, ports and expanded rereleases. Generally as a rule straight ports of a game are not allowed as a means to get around the release date limit. This would for example, disqualify Valkyria Chronicles from the 2014 lists (For the record, it would have been very high up the Best of list, had it been allowed.). HD Rereleases, expanded ports and remakes are disallowed unless they have enough content and gameplay alterations to differentiate themselves from the original game, which may well be up to me to justify. An example of this in action is that Resident Evil would qualify for 1996 for being an original game. Resident Evil for Gamecube (the REmake) would also qualify for 2002 for being significantly different from the original game (new enemies, new enemy types, story differentiation, new modes), while the 2015 HD rerelease of that would not qualify because it is not different enough. It is a rule that makes more sense in practise.

Regarding games with inferior ports, generally I will go with whatever version I've played (Almost entirely the PC this year), as opposed to treating different ports as different games. It just gets confusing that way especially with games like GTA V, which would in theory be eligible for three years in a row.

Finally, while all my reasons and justifications will be explained in my review, they are in the end subjective, at least based on what I have and have not played. I will only be including games I have played myself this year, which may discount a lot of AAA games. My judging criteria is based on active joy and active malice, so the game that gave me the most amount of joy and did the most amount of amazing things with the medium will win Game of the Year, and the opposite is true for the Worst Game of the Year. In the end these are all basically opinions I explain and elaborate, so don't take it to heart if a game you really like is not in my list.

I've been looking forward to this all year, and my list has changed in so many ways since my predictions at the start of the year.

Then there is the Isometrics Awards, the big list of miscellaneous awards based around the world of literary gaming, from the ridiculously serious to the seriously ridiculous. Basically as much of the craziness, joy, splendour and stupidity of video games and game culture will be brought to the fore.

After all that, there is the Isometric New Year's Resolutions, which will be five predictions/hopes/pleas to the gaming zeitgeist for things to change in 2015. I had a blast writing the resolutions last year and so I'll definitely have a ton to say this year.

With everything else I want to say to everyone who read Isometrics (or pretty much anything else I posted), thank you ever so much. It meant a lot that people read my works. I had some great discussions with friends about the things I had written and the feedback I received was nice. I'm also really sorry that other articles and work commitments got in the way of new articles, but with a new beginning for 2015, there will be a greater endeavour to continue writing what I love rather than what I need to.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and all the rest!