Geek News Roundup for 12/27/09 -- 2009 Year In Review

2009 has certainly been one of those years.  I don't think there are very many people who ended the year better off than they started it.  Plenty of celebrities died this year (but then again, they always do).  Certain video games did well despite the recession.  People were dumb (but then again, they always are).  And the world kept turning.

When it came to people being dumb, big corporations were the dumbest and the greediest.  Not only were they stupid enough to fail, but back in 2008 (and into 2009), many of them cried out to the government for help, saying that they were also "too big to fail".  In other words, it would make things worse if they did go bankrupt.  It's gotten so ridiculous that I've decided to get fat.  Then, the next time I'm in financial hardship, I can call upon the government to bail me out, since I'll be too big to fail.  Well, the governor of the Bank of England, this year, decided that if you're too big to fail, then you're too big in the first place.  Also speaking out against being too big to fail was the Lake Superior State University, whose list of banned words this year included the much overused phrase.

"Balloon Boy" might not have made the list, but he does represent another overdone trend that seems to have lost some steam and credibility this year, for many of those people who cried out for attention this year got what was coming to them.  The parents of the unfortunate kid who supposedly couldn't wait to kiss the ground wherever he touched back down ended up receiving some attention from a judge, as well as jail time.  Not only that, but their initial plan to turn this into a successful reality show was also nixed: they're banned from using this ordeal to make a profit, for the next four years.  Plenty of time to become nobodies again.  Meanwhile, the Octomom received nothing but negativity from the general public (as well as movie and television offers from various sources), and Jon and Kate got divorced.  Perhaps this means that there will be fewer attention hogs in 2010, but I doubt it.

Popular television got dealt a few other blows this year.  It turns out that ratings are no longer the be all and end all for a show to be successful.  It must be cheap as well.  Case in point: CBS waited until the last possible moment to announce which show they wanted to renew back in May, between Without A Trace and Numb3rs.  The less expensive show won out.  Then, recently, Comedy Central announced they're cutting The Jeff Dunham Show off, partially because it's more expensive to make than some of their crappier shows.  What this means for television in 2010 is unclear, but it may mean that the age of the expensive television is coming to a close, and cheap programming such as game shows and reality TV might be coming back again.  (Of course, lower ratings can still kill a long-running show, but that's another story entirely.)

Back in 2008, the gaming industry was thought by some to be recession-proof.  Forget "too big to fail".  They thought that gaming was not going to fail in the first place.  Tell that to Eidos Interactive, Midway Games, 3D Realms, and Microsoft, among others.  But just when things were looking bleak, a few timely miracles happened.  The latter stages of 2009 were full of big games such as Assassin's Creed II, Left 4 Dead 2, and Final Fantasy XIII (in Japan; North America can expect to see it in early 2010).  Sales records were broken when Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was released.  Batman: Arkham Asylum ended up being more than just your average superhero video game... in fact, it was far better than a superhero video game.  And the Xbox 360's sales in Japan doubled.  Then again, double nothing is still nothing, so what can you do?

This year saw some oddly timed death, as well as the continuation of things cut short by oddly timed deaths from past years.  Case in point: The Guin Saga anime premiered in April of this year.  One month later, the author of the series died.  Then in June, celebrities started dropping like flies (one of them dying while working on his final, farewell concert tour).  But all was not bad ugliness and death.  This year was the year that the last Harry Potter book was published, and unlike what happened to Douglas Adams and Robert Jordan in years past, J.K. Rowling did not die while writing the book (which I think means that we haven't seen the last of Harry in book form.  Either that, or Rowling is going to suddenly die during the premiere of the eighth and final movie).  And speaking of both Adams and Jordan, the last Hitchhiker's Guide book was published this year, as well as the beginning of the last Wheel of Time book.

The war on music piracy was always a losing battle for the RIAA (and to a lesser extent, the Canadian version, CRIA), no matter how many small victories they claimed.  But this year, the major players in the industry were shown to be full of nothing but shit.  First, it comes out that CRIA hasn't even been paying artists for use of their music, which could technically make the past few decades' worth of Canadian-published compilation CDs illegal unless an agreement can be reached.  From the looks of it, it could be a very expensive agreement.  Then, it's made known that artists still haven't been paid for when their songs are played on the radio.  And if you take a look on the list, it appears on the surface to be full of obscure or hard to find musicians.  Like a group of rising stars who just released their first album this year.  Oh, and Uncle Kracker, too.

So that was 2009 in brief.  Where does that leave us for 2010?  Well, for movies, we have crappy-looking remakes, delayed remakes, Furry Vengeance, lots of sequels, some of them completely unnecessary, and that's not counting the latest in the Twilight, Harry Potter, and Narnia series.  On television, FOX is losing their reality channel, when it turns into... a National Geographic channel.  I'm serious.  Meanwhile, I'm beginning to think that 2010 will be the year that television dramas die.  My prediction is that shows like Numb3rs and CSI will fade away this year (more on that in the next few days).  In anime, you can probably tell what kind of a year it's going to be with titles such as "Cat Shit One" and "Ladies versus Butlers!" coming out this year.  As for video games, there are a lot to look forward to, like Final Fantasy XIII in North America and Europe, The 3rd Birthday, the new Lunar port for the five people who still don't own a single version of the game, and more.

Lastly, I look forward to continuing my interrupted series of Final Fantasy retrospective reviews, culminating in my own review for Dissidia (Geoff's excellent review can be found here).  But we'll see what happens.