5 things we want from gaming in 2015

2014 was an up and down year in gaming. While we’ve had some great games and experiences, there’s been a lot of not-so-great things too. There’s not too much we can do about the past, even though the gaming community loves to live in it (can’t wait for that PS4 port of the PC port of FFVII).

So, looking to the future, there are some better practices and a couple of random wishes we’d like to see in gaming.

Security for paid services

The holiday break was ruined for a lot of gamers when hacker group Lizard Squad kept DDoSing PlayStation Network and Xbox Live. Even now, Sony is struggling to restore its PSN service. To make matters worse, Lizard Squad has launched a tool called “Lizard Stresser” that lets anyone sign up, pay a subscription, and gain access to a booter that can be used to take down a website or online service of their choice. All we want from Microsoft and Sony is better security and defenses against these type of outages and attacks. We understand there is going to be downtime from here to there, but these service outages from hackers are far too frequent. We as customers expect better from the services that are required for us to play online.

Stable launches

When multiplayer is a huge part of your design — whether PvP or Co-op — make sure it freakin works. It’s a feature that groups of friends buy games for… for the ability to play together. Or to be part of a large open-world in a game. Or to dominate other players in a deathmatch. Or to take on a mission with three other players that culminates in a boss fight. These are features that were promised for certain games this year — promises that came up short. Open-world racer Driveclub has its servers improving, but it’s still not available on PlayStation Plus. Destiny still has little in the way of social options. Halo: The Master Chief Collection had nothing but multiplayer matchmaking issues. And Assassin’s Creed Unity was riddled with performance issues. We just ask for a stable launch. Or if your game has a large online multiplayer component, make sure people can access it.

Tony Romo on the cover of Madden The return of NCAA Football

***We get it Matt, you're a Cowboys fan. But we do not want Tony Romo on the cover of Madden.*** Realistically, the return of NCAA Football won’t happen any time soon, but that doesn’t mean we want it any less. While it’s nice to get our NFL football fix, fans of the college game are left with nothing. I, like many other sports gamers, preferred the NCAA Football games to the Madden franchise. There’s just something about playing with a couple of your friends in a dynasty, recruiting against them, and battling them for National Championships to see who can build a powerhouse program. And you always have that one friend that chooses Alabama while everyone else tries to build up smaller programs. Please, NCAA, EA, student athletes, conferences, and all lawyers involved, can we get a resolution and find a happy middle ground so fans of college football can have a game again?

An end to pre-order bonuses

This was going to be “an end to post-launch review embargoes,” but we don’t think any publisher is stupid enough to do that again. Instead, we want pre-order bonuses to end. Everyone that purchases a game should get whatever that bonus is, and a consumer shouldn’t be penalized for being careful about what game they are purchasing with their money. Far too frequent do insanely hyped games launch in a broken state, buggy as hell, or completely different than how it was portrayed. Gamers have been burned too many times by pre-orders (that goes for Season Passes as well). If you’re going to keep pre-orders going, there needs to be open betas. This will hopefully assure more polished products and give consumers better knowledge of the game they’re going to drop at least $60 on.

Borderlands on Xbox One and PS4

I watched a video today that compares Borderlands and Destiny. It’s a video from October, so some of the arguments are no longer relevant, but I can’t help but yearn for a Borderlands (at least the pre-sequel) on Xbox One or PlayStation 4. I still play Destiny and enjoy it, but I keep feeling that it’s not what I wanted from the game after all of the hype and expectations. I know that all of my friends and I would have played a lot more Borderlands over Destiny had the two released on next-gen consoles. When Borderlands does come to the Xbox One and PS4, I wouldn’t be surprised if it too had more social features, more players allowed in a given space, and more of what Destiny tried to do — but doing it better.