MassivelyOP’s 2022 Awards: Best MMO Trend

December 13, 2022 11:00 AM

Welcome back to Massively Overpowered’s formal end-of-the-year awards!

Today’s award is for the Best MMO Trend, which was awarded to the gaming industry’s unionization efforts last year. This award is meant to highlight a pervasive trend that we can identify and actually appreciate seeing in the industry. Don’t forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end!

And the MassivelyOP staff pick for the Best MMO Trend of 2022 is…

INDUSTRY UNIONIZATION

Andrew Ross: Games industry unionization.

Andy McAdams: Games industry unionization.

Brianna Royce: Games industry unionization. This won last year too, as I recall, but it deserved it much more this year, with three major groups organizing – one just a few weeks ago. Last year, unionization was just simmering; now it’s a flashfire, and this industry desperately needs it to curb abuses. It won’t be perfect – it never is – but it’ll come much closer to a balance of power.

Chris Neal: Multiple Kickstarter games launching, games industry unionization. It’s a crying shame it took this much and this long for this movement to happen, but better late than never. I truly hope this continues to proliferate. The people who make the games we love deserve to be treated with respect, dignity, and fairness.

Eliot Lefebvre: If this year has reminded me of anything? It’s the fact that I need more cats. But the other thing is how intensely important unionization is in every field.

Justin Olivetti: Big launches for older MMOs. In my eyes, the best trend this year was seeing so many older MMOs and their studios crushing it by putting out great new releases. Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons, New World’s Brimstone Sands, Lord of the Rings Online: Before the Shadow, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, FFXIV’s player islands, Wizard101’s guilds, and so many more kept the year exciting and lively as we waited on in-development titles to come to fruition.

MJ Guthrie: Games industry unionization. I’ll follow behind the bandwagon and say the unionization. After the horrible treatment and crunch conditions we keep hearing about, devs need a way to make their jobs more humane. And this trend definitely exploded this past year.

Tyler Edwards: Games industry unionization.

Games industry unionization took our award for Best MMO Trend. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: What was the best MMO trend of 2022?

Games industry unionization (29%, 176 Votes)
Multiple Kickstarter MMOs (Embers, DU, Temtem, Zenith, Fractured) launching (2%, 12 Votes)
Big launches for older MMOs (10%, 62 Votes)
Industry and player pushback against blockchain shenanigans (18%, 110 Votes)
Player pushback against gross MMO monetization (15%, 92 Votes)
The mainstreaming of rogue servers (4%, 27 Votes)
Widespread industry support for Ukraine (3%, 17 Votes)
Fresh start servers for lots of MMOs (4%, 26 Votes)
The defactionalization of game design (2%, 12 Votes)
Return to launching new classes in MMOs (2%, 14 Votes)
The rise of cozy MMOs (6%, 35 Votes)
Lots of new MMOs on the horizon (4%, 23 Votes)
Something else (tell us in the comments!) (0%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 414

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How does MassivelyOP choose the winner?

Our team gathers together to nominate and discuss candidates and hopefully settle on a consensus winner. We don’t have a hard vote, but we do include commentary from writers so that you can see our thought process. The site’s award goes to the staff selection, but we’ll include both it and the community’s top nomination in our debrief in January.

How does MassivelyOP populate this poll?

Poll options include all MMOs nominated plus a few others we thought should be included.