Community Game of the Year: The First 10 Years - Results!

Gravey wrote:

Yes, I've played it for a bit, loved what I saw, but again I just really hate managing followers/party members. But I should get back to that one before spending money on Dragon Age again. Thanks for reminding me! As for the story, I've heard the ending is something to see—one of the reasons I wanted to play it—and have kept myself spoiler-free so far.

I'm trying to remember how in-depth the party managing aspects can be with Pawns. Usually you didn't swap equipment out, though simultaneously when I played I was exchanging Pawns with other GWJers as they were playing alongside me so who the Hell knows what it's like now. Generally they just sort of did what they did and it helped me do what I did, which was typically climb up the back of a cyclops, slash at his neck, jump away when I thought he was gonna get dangerously close to hurting me.

It was actually a disadvantage at times when I wanted specific elements linked to my weaponry, but the A.I. was typically smart enough that I could rain ice arrows on lizard folk and slaughter them in a hail of icy oblivion.

But, I will grant that it's not the perfect medieval fantasy game. It's just the top one that comes to mind in the realm of open world fantasy RPG's that are neither Bethesda nor Bioware. Kinda makes me realize that for as well-tread of ground as Western fantasy is, there aren't really any games that fit a good single-character action style. Even Zelda games like Twilight Princess are thoroughly Japanese in their characters.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Instead of being strongly binary, your choices are more finely differentiated (Generous Fantasy Doormat versus Grumpy Fantasy Doormat) to make your character less prone to mood swings than Shepherd was, which is a nice gain for characterization. On the other hand, instead of having a single morality meter to manage, you now have individual approval meters with every one of your companions, which requires you to be aware of their feelings about all the minor political nuances of the realm and to anticipate their reactions to your own range of choices.

I found it exhausting, and I eventually stopped caring if I made people happy or unhappy. The game expects a level of intimacy with your companions that I simply couldn't sustain.

Yikes, I can barely sustain levels of intimacy with the people I know in real life. Part of what appeals to me about Far Cry 2 and Metro 2033 is that no part of the morality system is exposed to the player other than the consequences—they don't even hint that they have morality systems. You can't game it or be bogged down by it, just play it and live with it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I hate managing parties, I hate preparation and planning, I don't have an interest in supervisory positions at work...

It's interesting to see you say this, because my experience with Bethesda's games (even the ones I like) has been that they're characterized by a constant level of management. You're constantly having to manage your inventory and the firehose of items coming your way. You manage your skills and which ones you're using at which times, and which ones you need to level up, and then all those endless quests. You may not manage other characters than your own very often, but Bethesda's games have a larger volume of work than many party-based RPGs I've played. They're among the fussiest RPGs out there.

Ha! Fussy is a great way to describe a lot of RPGs that, I would say, aren't Bethesda's. My experience couldn't be any more opposite. I never feel like I'm managing anything in a TES, so much as role-playing. Among the many things I hate are managing inventory firehoses, so I don't play Diablo or Torchlight or Borderlands, and even Mass Effect was becoming a pain (combat, manage inventory, combat, manage inventory...), so I much prefer TES for that reason. Unless I want to sell them, most of the items I find can be ignored; I never bother with any consumables that aren't health potions; enchanting, level-scaling, and since Skyrim smithing/crafting, mean I can keep almost piece of gear capable, and don't have to worry about a loot treadmill. The use-it-to-improve-it skill system makes skill progression organic and not something I have to think about, while each TES game has further refined attributes and skills by whittling down the major/minor/miscellaneous skill tiers to Skyrim's lean system (Fallout 3 is a bit different, grafting together SPECIAL and TES, and TESCO is a different beast in many of these regards.)

This dovetails with the appeal of Cyrodiil (or Skyrim), with its lifeless characters and hit-or-miss writing and theme park towns. I don't generally care about anyone else in Tamriel except my character, or any story except the one I'm writing myself. And those are often physical stories, about geography, topology, architecture, and lots and lots of mooks. The occasional interesting character or good quest is just a bonus (although I feel that way about a lot of video games). Otherwise they're just rationales to have a direction to explore in. And so I don't fuss over my inventory beyond what makes me look how I want to look, and just do what I want while I pretend to be a (typically) lone adventurer finding excitement and treasure wherever his/her feet take him/her. I find the TES games to provide me with the most natural feeling of role-playing, of pretending to be in another world with all the types of agency I would want, this side of a dice-strewn table.

You could probably psychoanalyze how and why I love TES games rather than narrative-driven character-filled RPGs, and I'll cop to any diagnosis of being anti-social.

Edit: I'd be interested to hear how you play the Bethesda games you have (Oblivion, TESCO, ...?), or what your expectations are of them, that your experience with them seems so different than mine. bekkilyn, what appeals to you about TES games sounds totally in line with my feelings. jdzappa, no argument that BioWare is stronger than Bethesda about the thing that BioWare focuses on in their games and Bethesda doesn't.

I love my Bethesda games. As long as they are not Oblivion. Coming from Morrowind, it ended up as one the biggest gaming disappoints for me ever.
I do have a plan to replay Oblivion with all kinds of mods at some point, I'm sure there is a good game far far down.
Actually went trough the whole obscure process of installing said mods based on a thread on the forums long ago. Some day...

Gravey wrote:

Edit: I'd be interested to hear how you play the Bethesda games you have (Oblivion, TESCO, ...?), or what your expectations are of them, that your experience with them seems so different than mine. bekkilyn, what appeals to you about TES games sounds totally in line with my feelings. jdzappa, no argument that BioWare is stronger than Bethesda about the thing that BioWare focuses on in their games and Bethesda doesn't. ;)

Yep, I don't care about morality systems, main quests, character romances, etc. in Bethesda games. It all just gets in the way of *my* character's stories. As much as I love Fallout 3 and 4, I get so annoyed by them forcing me into a character background I don't want. TES games are so much better with just putting you on a boat and dumping you in Seyda Neen in Morrowind, or throwing you into a prison like in Daggerfall or Oblivion, or sending to you to your death in a cart as in Skyrim. No forcing your character to have fathers or children to find.

I also dislike managing multiple characters and inventories and only play party management RPGs for other reasons and then just put up with the party management for the sake of the other stuff I do like. I do like the companions in the later Bioware games, but enjoy playing those games in easy or normal modes the best if for nothing else but that I can just set the party AI and everyone but my character fend for him/her-self rather than being bogged down by figuring out what everyone's going to do at every turn. Don't have to worry about any of that in a Bethesda game, thankfully! Companions tend to mostly be walking backpacks more than anything else.

In Skyrim, I also don't bother to loot much. Just the small things like gems, scrolls, potions. Or unless it's something I want to wear or display in my house or it's a special artifact. I rarely ever get overburdened in Skyrim even when I don't have a walking backpack with me. In my modded game on PC, I do keep a lot of inventory on my horse, but that's because my character likes to have her full wardrobe with her as she's a traveling bard and needs all the various guises available. But with my vanilla games, I don't bother.

I don't mind story-based games like Bioware makes and enjoy them too, but not for the same reasons I enjoy Bethesda games. I do *NOT* want Bethesda to become some sort of Bioware imitator with pre-designated backstories and making the main quest important. I'm really also not into all the romance thing, though I do like companion NPCs having backstories and side quests (as in Fallout 4) just as long as it's all optional. I don't want Bethesda games to have endings like I expect with Bioware story-driven games because I'm not playing Bethesda games for the same reason I play Bioware games. In Bethesda games, I expect to be able to make my own stories and the characters and the quests in the Bethesda sandbox worlds are there for the purpose of enhancing *my* stories and not forcing someone else's stories onto my character.

Thanks Gravey for organizing this!

Budo wrote:

As for Bioshock: Infinite, I just wonder if we were all expecting something else. I enjoyed my time with it but really feel no inclination to return.

That hype train was really really hard to get off of. Remember, this is the game that this site's podcast team + friends wrote a radio play about. I also assume many of us didn't play BioShock 2 before Infinite. That was certainly my mistake, and I've certainly come to realize that B:I is what many feared Doom 2016 was going to be: a generic modern AAA man-shoot "wearing the skin of a better game" (to paraphrase Rob Zacny on Idle Weekend a month or two ago).

I don't think it's a coincidence that Arkane started making deliberate moves towards becoming the new Looking Glass successor this year. Even if Irrational hadn't closed up shop after B:I I don't think they would've had much credibility to back up their claim to that throne after B:I.

Also, looking at the 2013 in Gaming wikipedia article, there really doesn't seem to have been much in the way of stand-out AAA console/PC titles that year. AC IV: Black Flag seems to be the closest thing, but that franchise had already been sullied by AC III the year prior. Ok, there's Saints Row IV, but that's still a smaller release than anything AC.

EDIT: Oh, GTA V was this year. I'm guessing no PC release at the time hurt it here. It seems like console + PC is a necessity for racking up a top placement in our GotY votes (hence why Japanese games rarely garner any recognition).

Ironically, the DLC for that game actually improved it's long-term value.

This. None of it's essential but it's a much better experience than the original release was. The arena shooter DLC makes the combat sing in ways the original campaign never could, and while Burial At Sea never really gets game back to the immersive sim roots, Rapture's enclosed spaces just works better than Columbia.

shoptroll wrote:

Also, looking at the 2013 in Gaming wikipedia article, there really doesn't seem to have been much in the way of stand-out AAA console/PC titles that year. AC IV: Black Flag seems to be the closest thing, but that franchise had already been sullied by AC III the year prior. Ok, there's Saints Row IV, but that's still a smaller release than anything AC.

What do you mean by "smaller release"? It wasn't considered smaller by this community, as SR4 ranked #7 that year, whereas AC4:BF barely made the cut, coming in at #10.

shoptroll wrote:

It seems like console + PC is a necessity for racking up a top placement in our GotY votes

Depends on what you mean by "top placement". Obviously, the more platforms a game is released on, the better chance it will be played by more people.

Anyway, here are console-only and PC-only games that ranked #4 or higher:

2015: PS4-only game ranked #4
2014: PC-only game (for that year) ranked #3
2013: PS3-only game ranked #2 and PC-only game ranked #4
2012: PC-only game ranked #4
2010: Console-only game ranked #2. Wii-only game and PC-only game tied for #3. Furthermore, 7 of the 10 games on 2010's list were either PC-only or console-only.
2009: PC-only game ranked #3
2008: PC-only game ranked #3
2006: X360-only game ranked #2. Gamecube/Wii-only game ranked #3. PC-only game ranked #4.

MeatMan wrote:

What do you mean by "smaller release"? It wasn't considered smaller by this community, as SR4 ranked #7 that year, whereas AC4:BF barely made the cut, coming in at #10.

AC4:BF outsold SR4 by at least a 2:1 margin. Doesn't make it less beloved. Those examples were just things I picked up as I scrolled through that Wikipedia article. Very little in 2013 seemed to really be as big an "event" as B:I was (barring GTAV but I'm assuming that resonated more outside our corner of the Internet than it did here).

shoptroll wrote:

Thanks Gravey for organizing this!

Budo wrote:

As for Bioshock: Infinite, I just wonder if we were all expecting something else. I enjoyed my time with it but really feel no inclination to return.

That hype train was really really hard to get off of. Remember, this is the game that this site's podcast team + friends wrote a radio play about. I also assume many of us didn't play BioShock 2 before Infinite. That was certainly my mistake, and I've certainly come to realize that B:I is what many feared Doom 2016 was going to be: a generic modern AAA man-shoot "wearing the skin of a better game" (to paraphrase Rob Zacny on Idle Weekend a month or two ago).

Looking back at the thread for that year, there's another explanation. People were surprised in the year that it won, let alone three years later. A long discussion of it with very polarized opinions followed. From Clockwork's write up: "Hotly anticipated and highly controversial, Bioshock Infinite was ranked on more lists than any other game but was also called out more than any other for dishonorable mention."

In other words, it looks like it's not people changing their opinions, it's a change in the makeup of the opinion sample.

shoptroll wrote:

That hype train was really really hard to get off of. Remember, this is the game that this site's podcast team + friends wrote a radio play about.

It can be easy to forget ten years later, but the first Bioshock was the Witcher 3 of its day. It was the mature, artful game that redefined the dominant genre of the time for many of the people who played it. Bioshock Infinite was the "real" sequel to that game from its original creators.

It also waned for a lot of people around here in particular as a result of political and social conversations that happened after its Game of the Year win. Someone pointed out to me that the conversation in the thread looks in many ways like a preview of the conversations that would consume gaming culture online in 2014.

Gravey wrote:

I'd be interested to hear how you play the Bethesda games you have (Oblivion, TESCO, ...?), or what your expectations are of them, that your experience with them seems so different than mine.

Oblivion, TESO, and Fallout 4. My experience with all three of these games is of being inundated with ... content. I'm not sure what else to call it, because it encompasses the full spectrum of what games generally offer: here's a parade of items, weapons, places, enemies, characters, quests, stories, abilities, and mechanics. It's an all you can eat buffet of content that is constantly being pushed at you.

Creating an idea of a character in these games is like making a sandwich in the kitchen of someone with a lot of cats. You're trying to make a tasty sandwich, but you're constantly having to pick out the cat hair. Playing a Bethesda game, you're constantly winding up with things that aren't relevant to the experience you're trying to have. It's this constant effort of sorting and fiddling. Which things that you're looting from this chest or body are actually useful and relevant? How did I end up with a quest for the Thieves Guild when I'm not trying to play a thief? How did I end up with seven pipe pistols on my melee character?

Followers are glorified backpacks in case you want a second inventory to mess with, but they're backpacks that are bad at sneaking and fighting so they keep starting fights they need to be rescued from. I share your dislike of party management, and Bethesda party members are such a terrible intersection of high maintenance and low personality that I go out of my way to avoid getting any (and then get frustrated when I accidentally acquire one; another cat hair).

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It also waned for a lot of people around here in particular as a result of political and social conversations that happened after its Game of the Year win. Someone pointed out to me that the conversation in the thread looks in many ways like a preview of the conversations that would consume gaming culture online in 2014.

Maybe this post?

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

In some sense, it's a game that at some point understands it is irrelevant to the conversations that are coming to the culture, and shuffles off the stage.

You've got the vote totals off of a link here at the bottom of the 2013 GOTY post; I wonder if it waned for a lot of people here, or it waned for a lot of people who do a lot of the talking and posting here.

I do remember Adam Sessler making a comment about how positive the initial reaction in the games press was and how it flipped considerably.

Thanks Gravey for all your work!
IMAGE(http://distractionware.com/blog/images/nov07/Weighted_Companion_Cube_by_saejinoh.jpg)

Awwww... I never saw that fan art. Adorable!

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Gravey wrote:

I'd be interested to hear how you play the Bethesda games you have (Oblivion, TESCO, ...?), or what your expectations are of them, that your experience with them seems so different than mine.

Oblivion, TESO, and Fallout 4. My experience with all three of these games is of being inundated with ... content. I'm not sure what else to call it, because it encompasses the full spectrum of what games generally offer: here's a parade of items, weapons, places, enemies, characters, quests, stories, abilities, and mechanics. It's an all you can eat buffet of content that is constantly being pushed at you.

Creating an idea of a character in these games is like making a sandwich in the kitchen of someone with a lot of cats. You're trying to make a tasty sandwich, but you're constantly having to pick out the cat hair. Playing a Bethesda game, you're constantly winding up with things that aren't relevant to the experience you're trying to have. It's this constant effort of sorting and fiddling. Which things that you're looting from this chest or body are actually useful and relevant? How did I end up with a quest for the Thieves Guild when I'm not trying to play a thief? How did I end up with seven pipe pistols on my melee character?

I understand what you're saying about the inundation of a wide variety of content. I guess that's the cost of TES' "do anything, be anyone" fantasy, existing in a wooly world that wants to make sure you always have something-from-everything to do. In terms of how to sort and understand it all, I just look at whatever item or quest through the lens of "Is it interesting to me now?" Does it add to the character I'm trying to role-play right now? If not, dump it or ignore it—even if the game is stuffing unsolicited content into my inventory:

See, this is what happens when you try to avoid adventure in Skyrim: Skyrim gets annoyed with you and runs up when your back is turned and jams a giant stolen enchanted sword into your underpants and makes you have an adventure.

I haven't played FO4, but I wonder if Skyrim (while acknowledging the bit I just quoted) addresses in part some of your issues. It refined a lot of Oblivion's systems, for example doing away with classes, attributes, and major/minor skills, getting more of that fiddliness (a lot of which TESCO brought roaring back) out of the way. Not that I'm saying you need to play Skyrim soon, but I would say it's worth keeping in the back of your mind the next time you might be interested in an undirected singleplayer RPG.