A Friendly Fantasy Reviewer Made Me Hope 2023 Is Full Of Bad Games

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While every other outlet seems to gravitate toward AI-generated, algorithm-based content, here at TheGamer, we still employ real people to write all of the articles. The TG crew are a lively group of salt of the earth who live and breathe video games. We’re so committed, in fact, that when we’re done playing and writing about games during the day, we get together at night to play a game about games. This year, as a team building activity, TG is leading a league of fantastic critics.

Earlier this week, we all got together for the inaugural draft and took turns picking the plays we thought would score well throughout the year. While it was all fun and I was definitely excited to think about this year’s upcoming games, an unintended consequence of it all was my now intense desire to see almost every game in 2023 fail miserably.

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If you’ve ever played fantasy sports, you probably already know how it works, but I’m going to take a chance and assume a lot of you aren’t football fans and explain it anyway. During the draft, the whole league gets together and takes turns picking the games they think will score well. To make things fair, we’ve followed a snake-like pick order, so the person who picks the first game can’t pick another one until everyone has picked two games. We started by picking five games, and as new games are announced throughout the year, we’ll have the option of picking five more. Of these, two are to be new game franchises – so not sequels, remakes, or remasters – and one unannounced game – something rumored or probable, but not officially confirmed.

Related: For God’s Sake, Let Me Buy 3DS Games

Drafting is a surprisingly strategic process, and turn order has a huge impact on how you decide to choose. I was very lucky and was able to finish fourth, but that meant the biggest hitters of the year, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Resident Evil 4 Remake and Hades 2, were claimed in first. For my top pick, I went with Hollow Knight: Silksong. If it ends up being delayed until 2024 I can drop it for another game, but if it comes out this year I’m sure it will be a 90+ game.

20 games were drafted before it finally came back to me, which greatly limited my choices. I went into the draft with a list of games in mind, and almost everything was taken by the time I got my second pick. With 14 players in the league, nearly all triple-A hits were made before the end of the second round. Diablo 4, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Final Fantasy 16, Dead Space, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Street Fighter 6, Starfield and Alan Wake 2 all went fast. There are plenty of great games coming out this year, but not enough for everyone.

This is when you need to start getting a little smarter with your choices. As the list of great games dwindles, it’s important to consider all that’s left and try to pick games that other people will also want to pick. Knowing the tastes of the people choosing after you can give you a big advantage, but everyone else is trying to get you too. In poker, we call this process “leveling”. Does he know that I know he knows that I know, or am I still one step ahead? Some people will inevitably pick the games they personally look forward to, but most try to stay ahead of the pack and pick a game that will disrupt someone else’s strategy.

I feel good with the games I ended up with. After Hollow Knight: Silksong, I grabbed WrestleQuest, a wrestling-themed RPG I played at PAX East last year that shows all the signs of indie success. When he quickly returned, I went with the long-gestating She Dreams Elsewhere, which drew groans from the competition setting this one up for a late draft. Then I went with Horizon Call of the Mountain, which I saved for fourth place because I knew no one else would pick it. Sony’s flagship launch title on its $550 VR subsystem has to be a hit, there’s no way it won’t. But TheGamer team is not very comfortable with virtual reality, so I had an easy victory. Finally I went with Animal Well, which I played at Summer Game Fest last year and which is having a lot of buzz right now thanks to it being the first game published by Dunkey’s company, Bigmode. I still have five games to choose from this year, but I think I’m off to a good start.

When the draft is over, everyone takes turns taking the counter pick of two games. The baseline for counter picks is 70, so any points below 70 the game scores you will add to your total, but every point around 70 will be subtracted from it. This is perhaps the most strategic turn of all, as your counter pick “locks” that game to whoever picked it, meaning they can no longer drop out of the game if they don’t go out. This year. You can cross-choose something like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth if you think it’ll be delayed to 2024, but if it does come out you’ll probably lose a lot of points. For the record, I went against Forspoken and Palworld, two games that I think will come out and be bad.

But I’m not just against Forspoken and Palworld, I’m against almost everything. I was really looking forward to Alan Wake 2 and Redfall before, but someone else picked them up, so now I’m hoping these are trash fires. Maybe I’m too competitive, but this whole league makes me hope that 2023 will be full of bombs for me to emerge victorious. I know people have spent years of their lives on these games, and millions of gamers are eagerly awaiting their arrival, but I just don’t care. I’d love it if Tears of the Kingdom ran at 10fps and Resident Evil 4 was a complete mess as long as I got a few extra points in my meaningless fantasy league. I thought I had high hopes for 2023, but now I just want to watch the world burn.

If you want to turn your friends into nihilistic gamer goblins like me, you can sign up for your own league at Fantasycritic.games. Now is the perfect time to start, and if you can muster it by the weekend, the only major title you’ll have missed is Fire Emblem Engage. It might make you a little cynical, but on the plus side, whenever a game you’re passionate about turns out to be bad, at least you’ll always have a reason to celebrate.

Next: Halo Infinite Didn’t Deserve To Be A Failure

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