The problem with writing a column about the web trends of 2012 is that I can’t exactly prophesies about flying cars, giant robots or alien visitations. Reason being, change on the internet is a little less dramatic (and less cliched) but as important all the same.

2011 has been its growing up year of sorts. From Egypt to Russia along with pitstops along the UK, US and to an extent India, you’d have to be living under a rock not to take notice of the role Twitter and Facebook have played in advocating governmental change.

While this doesn’t mean that we’d stop using social media to document drunken nights of debauchery, it just means the methods of doing so will change. Here’s my predictions for 2012′s internet trends.

1. Social media goes visual: rather than fill in your Facebook or Twitter status updates with random song quotes or banal whining about how crowded the local train was, video and photo uploads allow you those few moments to think “is this really worth sharing?”. Throw in the fact that your average cellphone camera is competent to film and shoot with ease, and that images speak louder than 140 characters, you get fledgling networks like Instagram ( a photo app currently for iOS devices only but heading to Android phones soon) and Viddy (a video editing and sharing app for smartphones) primed to steal a slice of Facebook’s and Twitters social pie.

2. Year of the mobile. For real: every year seems to the be the year when mobile internet takes off. 2012 is one of them. But what makes us believe it will finally happen? For starters smartphone prices are next to nothing, social apps like Facebook and Google Plus are now mobile in a big way and hardware manufacturers such as Nokia are pushing Near Field Communication to allow for contactless payments too. So you’d be using your phone for more than just Whatsapp or Angry Birds. Oh and the occasional call. Now if they’d just lower iPhone 4S prices…

3. Anonymity becomes a hot-button topic: Be it what movies you’re watching or where you are shopping, a lot of what you do in real life finds its way on the internet. If you don’t share, your friends will. It’s this always connected, always sharing system of social media that leads to privacy concerns. This is made worse by the fact that all your information is archived, making it easy to find at any given time. For example, the last thing a prospective job candidate would want, is a recruiter to chance upon his or her not so printable thoughts on Sunny Leone on Bigg Boss. On a more serious note, anonymity allows users to speak up without fear and gives whistleblowers much needed protection. The point is, as more people are aware of the importance for anonymity, it opens up an avenue to charge for it rather than leave you without a choice. Don’t be surprised if Facebook and Google Plus offer that option in 2012.

So there you have it, three of the bigger internet trends for the new year which promises to be more agile, vibrant and effervescent than the last.

1. How fat your internet pipe is.
2. How often you’re willing to stretch your electric bill in the name of grabbing those levels that should have shipped with the game in the first place.
3. Your willingness to spend $10 for a scrap of paper over and above your used game purchase.

There’s been a lot of drama around publishers and their online policies to curb used games. Be it locking out campaign levels, multiplayer modes or just modern day horse armour, it’s become a bit of a nuisance we’ve grown to tolerate. Gone is the time when you could just boot up a game and play it, there’s an install, patches, and of course, some varying chunks of megabytes of content that you’d to download before you can even think of playing your game. Add the obligatory driver downloads, config file edits and swearing if you’re a PC gamer. You’re spending less time experiencing the thrills of Arkham City and wasting more time waiting for the damn content that should have been on the disc to be downloaded.

I’m worried about is how this would affect single-player only experiences. Now, not all of us (read: me) are big multiplayer gamers. I like my solo fun be it mining for minerals in Mass Effect 2 (I actually liked that, true story) or flirting with fellow classmates in Persona 3, single-player games, particularly RPGS, are, for the lack of a better term, my jam.

Which is why this entire debacle of locking out single-player content in the name of protecting first hand purchases is preposterous. Even more so when a triple-A title like Arkham City does it simply because it sets precedent. But if we’re to be historically accurate, I do believe precedent was set with Dragon Age: Origins’ Shale DLC which punished gamers who didn’t pre-order or buy day one by missing out on the coolest character and her side-quest in the game. To be honest, I don’t think the game would be quite the same without having a big hulking stone golem with a psychotic dislike for pigeons and a disdain for humanity by my side. But I digress…

My major issue with this wholesale adoption of online passes is that it corrupts the design process. It dilutes the impact that a title would have. Imagine how FFVII would have been if you were asked to pay to access the death of Aeris? Or if Modern Warfare’s All Ghillied Up mission was an optional download? Would these have the same effect as they did when you saw them for the first time? I highly doubt it. You’d end up with thinking a little lesser of the game than you should. And you can’t be blamed either.

After all, it’s not like the developers and business folk have the best idea of what should be listed as an online pass what shouldn’t. There are some moments in a game that everyone should be able to access regardless of their type of purchase be it day one or two years hence, new or used.

Hell, it was quite tragic that the Naked City case in LA Noire was a download-only affair in certain territories. Reason being it was, in my opinion one of the cases that the game should have shipped with. It did a good job of fleshing out the details of 1940s Los Angeles’, it deserved more than being bunged in with the rest of Rockstar’s dismal online pass offerings.

Another caveat of restricting content to a digital code is the actual gameplay duration you get out of a single-player game. Fundamentally it means that you’re never going to get all the hours the game promises you unless you connect to the Internet and download the data as soon as you purchase it.

I wonder if any of the executives at publishers have ever thought how stupid it is to keep content out from a paying customer just because of his or her Internet reliability (Warner Bros and Rocksteady, I’m looking at you). It’s not like everyone has access to a blistering fast broadband connection or is comfortable with downloading a ton of data. Mass Effect 2 comes to mind where the collective wisdom of EA and Bioware thought it was a good idea to let us download close to a gig worth of content (Normandy crash mission, Zaeed Massani’s quests) after purchasing the game instead of dumping it on the disc.

Though the US figures show a different picture, it’s not exactly true for the rest of the world. Especially when some countries have ISPs that think it’s cool to have a fair usage policy restricted to 25GB. Sometimes I feel that the publishers are in bed with Internet providers and electric companies in order to make us spend more than we should on electricity and Internet to get something we’ve already paid $60 for.

To sum it up, online passes would, in my opinion result developers create half-assed single-player campaigns that make a mockery of your hard-earned money. After all, it’s not like you make it a habit buy a used car without wheels, or a used book without half its pages. Some might argue that games are not products, they’re services. I believe that games are neither. Games are moments.

And for this reason alone that this entire online pass hoopla is a complete clusterfuck in the making.We’re not far from the time when what could be classic moments that make video games special get sliced and diced as pre-order or day one add-ons. So go ahead, do your bit and don’t support titles that are making a making a mockery of the very core of gaming because as gamers, we deserve better treatment.

Heck, Nintendo doesn’t even have a legit presence in the region, so we’re officially three formats short.Throw in the fact that the two biggest formats in terms of install base are the PS2 and PC, even games like Forza and Gears aren’t that easy to come by unless you really hunt for them. Having said that, if it’s not labelled God of War, WWE, Uncharted, Halo, Cricket 20xx, Assassin’s Creed, FIFA, GTA or Hanuman Boy Warrior you’d be at your wits end trying to find it.

Digital distribution services such as Steam aren’t exactly the most accessible of options thanks to a glorious Fair Usage Policy (FUP) that caps your downloads to 25GB (yes, I shit you not, I rather get an aneurysm than explain to a customer rep why their policies suck) and the fact that local, physical boxed PC games cost around $20-25 at launch. Yes, we’re perhaps the cheapest for PC games in the world. But that counts for nothing when a good portion of titles don’t even release here, officially or otherwise.

For example my attempt to find a copy of Fallout: New Vegas for the PC was a disaster. Thanks to D-toid and a few friends on Steam who were raving about it my interest was piqued. I figured it shouldn’t be much of an issue getting it. Never had I been so wrong. The first stumbling block was finding someone who knew about it outside my merry band of virtual friends, there wasn’t anyone at retail or real-life per se who had an idea about the latest in post-apocalyptic simulation. Most trips to stores were like this:

“Do you have Fallout: New Vegas?”
“No but we have FIFA 11.”
“Oh, no thanks.”
“Sir we have this new game, GTA4. Just came in. Brand new!”
Me: facepalm

At least Fallout 3 was easier to source due to it being banned (pro-tip: you want a game to sell, get it banned and have parallel importers bring it in and charge a boatload) no such news of New Vegas being banned ensured that my local grey market importers were equally clueless.

Ironic isn’t it? There I was, searching for a game that focused on the sheer lack of humanity in post-apocalyptic times and I never felt more alone in my quest for it in the 6th most populous city in the world. Forget obscure, it hadn’t even been heard of. No, it doesn’t get better.

Entire genres get ignored so much so that RTS or RPGs outside their initial run are absolutely painful to find. This means if you don’t snap up a copy of Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect 2 within the first week or two, you’re more or less boned till it makes it on the shelves as a platinum/greatest hits release.

Don’t even get me started about platform parity, for the longest time, things were so bad with Xbox 360 sales that we only got the arcade SKU a year and a half after the rest of the world did. I guess it probably had to do with MS’ smart idea of straight math, assuming that ten percent of a 1 billion-odd population with a per capita income of $1219 would actually be able to afford a $500 Xbox 360 Pro console. At least we got Xbox Live before a ton of other territories including the Middle East.

However we’re by and large a PlayStation country with PS3 games selling around three to four times as more as they would on the Xbox 360. This basically means if you ever bought an Xbox 360 you’re screwed as games are hard to come by because so few of them are brought in unless you’re the sort looking to pirate because in that case it’s easy to get your hands on a console and games, in some places even easier than getting an unmodified Xbox. The same applies to the Wii in quite a few places as well.

And it gets worse. A few months ago a couple of leading distributors thought it would be a nice idea to start a price cartel, preventing retailers to price games as they saw fit. In fact, no retailer would be allowed to price any EA, Sony first party, MS first party, Capcom or Namco Bandai titles at a discount. All games from these publishers have to sell at suggested maximum retail price for the first two months. The end result? A ton of retailers parallel importing product and some of them doing it catastrophically wrong to the point where NTSC U/C PS2 and Xbox 360 games litter store shelves when we’re a PAL territory.

It’s a bone-headed policy that’s probably going to do more harm than good. Luckily, other distributors aren’t too interested in maintaining a stranglehold on day one pricing. Yet. Problem is EA is the topdog publisher in the region and has a major influence on how other big publishers such as Ubisoft and THQ do business.

Are we going to end up with price fixing that’s borderline, if not completely illegal? It’s too soon to tell, but it’s just one of the many glaring problems that gamers in India face. The hilarity of all of this is, how do you expect to keep piracy down if everyone selling legit games is hellbent on making things more difficult? It’s these inane reasons as to why people continue to flock to piracy regardless of format. Interested in games for your PS3? Sure, hop on over to your friendly neighbourhood store with your PS3 in tow and wait for 30 minutes as the salesman loads the games of your choice on your PS3′s hard drive right infront of you.

All in all,things are oppressive at best. And until the industry decides to be a little more open, a little more perceptive and a little more interested in actually serving a market instead of shoving crap down its throat, it sucks to be a gamer here.

Oh and I did manage to get my copy of Fallout: New Vegas after pulling in a massive favor from a friend overseas. Not something I’m likely to try again. How easy is it for you to get your games in that little slice of paradise you call your country?

Next week, why locally created video game content should die in a fire.

Mr. X: Recommend me a sitcom pls Dudeee

me: Suits

Mr. X: Dude saw it, anything else

Mr. X: N btw suits is not a sitcom :p its drama

Mr. X: Sitcom is only comedy

Mr. X: Like himym,friends,seinfeld

Mr. X: Think n tell

me: Community Big Bang Theory, South park

Mr. X: Seen

Mr. X: Then

Mr. X: Anything new?

me: 2 girls 1 cup

Mr. X: Or really old

Mr. X: Whats that abt?

me: watch it

Mr. X: 1 girls 2 cups is normal

Mr. X: Ok

me: lemonparty

Mr. X: Hmm

Mr. X: Checking these two thanks

Mr. X: Tell me more if u know

me: Goatse

Mr. X: K checkin

Mr. X: Cant find goatse on imdb

me: google or youtube

Mr. X: Wow all 3 not listed

Mr. X: So these just air on youtube

Mr. X: No download

me: look around, you’ll find ‘em

Mr. X: Wtf is that porn?

Mr. X: 0_o

me: lol no

Mr. X: Search says not safe

me: your machine is prolly a pr0n server

Mr. X: Its something to trick ur friends n record reactions

me: lulwut?! It’s not a reality show, it’s a sitcom

Mr. X: Download link pls

me: *redacted*

Mr. X: Is it nsfw?

me: no

Mr. X: Cool

Mr. X’s new status message – Im The Lyrical Gangster \m/

Now Listening to: Metallica- Ronnie

Soaked clothes, floods and insane traffic: yes, it’s India’s rainy season. For further proof, scan tabloids for the word “deluge”, broadsheets for yet more articles about preventing malaria, and these tell-tale techy revealers…

1. The New Booze Invasion

With the rains comes bars trying to grab your attention with new variations of your usual poison. Do you go for a sugarcane-infused lager or take a chance on the banana beer? And what’s that fancy neon green thingamajig that it’s being dispensed from all about? One thing’s for sure: one pint later you’ll be back on Kingfisher. Unless you had to fortitude of ordering one with another free during happy hours, which means you will end up with a hangover that makes The Hangover 2 seem like a good idea.

2. Fair-Weather Walkers

The first word of rain has summer couch-potatoes everywhere grow legs and reach for their porous raincoats and squeaky rubber slippers. And before you know it they’re blocking up every square inch of walking space wherever possible with their best Fred Alastaire Singing In The Rain persona gladly risking possible death and disease for some mindless fun. Until they realise that their spiffy new iPhones (bought on EMIs no less) much like their mood, the gutters and most of the country, are heavily waterlogged.

3. Social Network Updates

Halfway through your fifth planning meeting of the day you steal a glimpse at Facebook, only to see that half of your acquaintances are ranting about how bad the weather is and the rest getting supremely emo over how it’s the greatest thing since the iPad. This season is clearly Dr. Jekyll to some and Mr. Hyde to others but all parts fun if you’re the sort who lives vicariously.

4. The Big Bollywood Item Number

Blaring from every possible radio or computer with a pair of speakers you pass is a horribly compelling mix of the cheesiest, borderline pornographic lyrics, some kind of novelty instrument – Irish flutes and circus kazoos perhaps – and a scantily clad formerly famous film actor exhorting you to umm…do something, if her gyrations didn’t render you temporarily deaf.

5. Municipal Corporation Madness

Another year since the epic floods of 2005 and you’ll still find your local civic administration drumming up Pulitzer Prize winning excuses as to why you won’t be able to step out of your flat due to them not being able to cover up a pothole and clean the drains. Problematic if you don’t want to drown when you need to make an emergency run to the drug store for aspirin. You know, in the event that you’ve to succumb to drunkenness as detailed in point number 1.

6. Aquaphobia

Symptoms include draping belongings in layers of plastic bags and possessing enough raincoats and umbrellas to keep a small country dry. If they could they’d laminate themselves. We recommend in investing in plastic companies and a good shrink for your pals.

1. New Vegas! Now with a better soundtrack, post-apocalyptic goodness, more options than an octopus has tentacles and no dorky Zach Galifianakis or anyone remotely associated with The Hangover. Unless someone makes a mod for it. Bring your own roofies though.

2. Aside from battling giant sentient alien ships and tapping your crew members, Mass Effect 2′s greatest success is making you playthrough 30-odd hours of what is actually, the world’s first intergalactic recruitment simulator.

3. While Rockstar’s stellar Red Dead Redemption has absolutely no relation to Nintendo’s pink ball of joy, Kirby’s Epic Yarn  was the polar opposite of the coolest rendition of the Wild West (complete with being able to tie a woman to a railway track!). With the objective of confusing the crap out of everyone and pissing off the purists, the above picture does the job. As well as confirm nothing but both games are awesome and you’d be a dark empty void if you don’t play either. And both.

4. Shamelessly ripped from my IVG write up on Vanquish:

Overheard at a video game store:
“Oh, what’s this game Vanquish about?”
“Hmmm, I dunno, I’d Google it but my EDGE network sucks.”
“Well, it looks interesting, guns and all. But, but, but…the dude is not Kratos, Master Chief, Marcus Phoenix, Sam Fisher or even those random soldiers from COD.”
“You’re right, without any of those on the cover, it’s definitely not a good game. Let’s get Splinter Cell: Conviction instead!”
That is probably why Vanquish is the Best Game No One Played. It leads to two observations. One: people are too lazy to read the back of the box. Two: a decent portion of you have played the game; enough to recognize that this is without a doubt the most superlative title that everyone missed out on. It’s a tragedy because it’s got great gameplay, fantastic production values, and it allows you to throw back rockets fired at you by giant robots.

 

5. Bonus image! Best dialogue of 2010:

Wait, what?

By “hearing” I mean seeing, reading or absorbing in some form or another. In some cases, even spewing.

“If I talk ballcurry to someone like you about video games, you will know it’s ballcurry. For example if I told you I knew the chief CEO of Konami, you know I’m talking ballcurry!”, a good friend who decided to set the world record for a sentence with the word, “ballcurry”.

“I play with dogs…not women.”, another friend on his reason for volunteering with the Welfare For Stray Dogs.

“God of War is an RPG! You play the role of Kratos.”, the lengths to which a point can be proven. Also, shit my Sam says to prove a point.

“Judas Priest is opening for Metallica. They’re some 90s band. Like the Spice Girls.”, spewed from the same mouth that gave us ballcurry and chief CEO.

“When you hear the song Pokerface, do you think of Po from Kung Fu Panda or Lady Gaga?”, as you can see, I am a deep thinker. And stuff.

“I can’t be a sycopanth but I can be a yes man!”, the same world record setting friend describing his strategy for tackling his boss.

“Honesty is expensive. Cheap people don’t have it.”, sign outside a church.

“Your PC sucks because it doesn’t warn me when I close a window!”, the sisterbot on why Macs are awesome.

“Video games = you’re a nano-augmented bad ass. Movies = you’re a transgendered travelling salesman.”, as seen on Twitter.

“Snow Leopard? What is that?”,  the collective staff at the Breach Candy iStore.

 ”Malaika how friendly are you with gadgets?” , random suit at a press con featuring Malaika Arora.

“Malaika wanted to touch, feel and do things to all the products presented to her!”, same random suit showing his lecherous side to all and sundry. See the video at a torrent site near you!

“Apple removed JPEG support for the iPad or what?” , expertly called by a fellow Apple skeptic. And more believable than funny.

“Publishers have a good rapport with journalists and get good reviews. “, explains a games developer on how things work. Guess we know why a lot of games get bad reviews then.

“Register, pay $99 and download it for free!”, the same developer elucidating how easy it is to develop for iOS.

“You have any friends in the suburbs? I’m looking for a maid.”, this is what happens when townies decide to move to the ‘burbs.

“Get your time periods right woman!”, this is me trying to correct said ex-townie five minutes later.

Vital Stats:

Quotes featuring Apple in one form or another: 3

Quotes about some Bollywood celeb: 2

Quotes with video games: 4

Quotes resulting in facepalm: all of them