2008 was one hell of a year. It started out quiet and ended with a huge bang, or perhaps more appropriately, a collapse. The global economy went head long off a cliff, and not even the "recession-proof" industry of video games, with their always loyal fanbase, was immune. It was a year when there were many great games, but just as many big gaming disappointments. For ever Left 4 Dead, there was a Haze. For every Gears of War 2, a Wii Music.

But as I began to really think back on 2008, now some six weeks past the end of the year, I began to wonder more about 2009 and what would lie ahead for all of us. And as I did that, I began to write things down, what I honestly felt would happen to the industry and the gaming world as a whole for the year. I'm not sure I got everything I wanted down, as I'll be doing something a bit later on my precise predictions, but this is, in general, my thoughts on the upcoming year:

To be honest, I see a lot of pain in the year ahead. I think the sale of Free Radical to Crytek is just a harbinger of what's to come. Take-Two Interactive almost certainly won't survive to the end of 2009, and who knows where Rockstar will end up when they fade away. The big guns like Activison and EA will cut more and more games from their line-ups and shut down more and more studios to help streamline production and save their bottom line. Developers will have to work harder for less, which might lead to a lot of burnt out programmers, designers, writers and testers. There's a lot to be fearful of in the next 12 months.

But where opportunity is taken away, it will arise somewhere else. Perhaps some smaller developers, many of whom have been working on digital download games or freeware PC titles, will get a chance to rise up to prominence and see their futures unfold. Maybe those who are laid off will band together, form new studios and work on new projects, free from the shackles of their once corporate jobs. Maybe competition will do what it always does, stoke the fires of creativity and save us from the constant deluge of the same old, same old that plagues gaming today. And some old faces, like Atari, just might be able to pick up some of those canceled games and turn them around into titles that will help save them. Heck, they already have started doing that when they picked up Ghostbusters from Activision Blizzard. There's a lot to be hopeful for in the next 12 months.

I'm sure some things will stay constant: the Wii will still sell, albeit in reduced numbers. Sony and Microsoft fanboys will fight tooth and nail over every review that comes out. We'll still get a Madden game and they'll take something else out of the game that I enjoyed. There will be games that sell far less than they should and games that sell far more than they should. But 2009, more so than 2008 and 2007, has the chance to be a watershed year for video games. It could either be a year of progress and great ideas, or it could be a return to 1983, something we've all quietly hoped would never happen again.

I want to try and be optimistic by nature, but I am a bit guarded. The economy is an underlying thread through all the big factors, like developers, publishers and gamers, and how things turn out on that front this year is going to have a big impact on how we remember this in 2010. But I think, and maybe this is a stretch, that we might be in store for a changing of the guard in 2009, a shift in how games are made and sold to us. Maybe it means more digital downloads, or maybe it means a riot against microtransactions that puts an end to some of the more silly ones. Maybe it means more games that are compilations of work more than single titles.

Whatever the case may be, all I know is that I'm along for the ride, and it's gonna be one hell of a good time.