2011 Community GOTY Awards: I need your input

In years past, Sinatar has collected votes for our annual community game of the year awards, but last year he decided to not do that, and I took up the mantel in his place. Unless he objects, I plan to do it again this year.

But, before all that goes down later this year, I'd like your input on a few things. These are your community awards, after all.

  • Are you all interested in doing a community game of the year poll? The reason Sinatar passed on managing the voting last year was because of a lack of community interest the year before. Like I said, I plan to handle all of that again this year, but only if there's genuine interest. Otherwise, I can declare Catherine the community game of the year and be done with it.
  • When do you want the voting thread to go up? Traditionally, the last big games in each year release in around the end of November and the beginning of January. The Old Republic throws that off a bit this year, but that one title aside, the thread could go up as early as the first part of December.

    Last year, there were two or three threads started before the final voting thread went up sometime late in December (I think; it's been awhile). This suggests to me that there's interest in putting up the voting thread before the actual end of the year.

    Most publications put out their game of the year lists a week or two before Christmas. If we wanted our game of the year voting to roughly coincide with the rest of the internet gaming community at large, the thread could go up around the 11th of December. The big question is, since we're hobbyists who aren't paid to play games, would we, as a community, feel like we'd had time to play the big releases we wanted to play before then?

  • When do you want voting to end? This ties into the last question. If we're wanting our community voting to go up around about when everyone else is putting theirs up, we should probably wrap things up before Christmas. If we as a community aren't too concerned about that, we can leave the thread open until a bit after New Year's so that people can play the big releases over the holiday break.
  • Can we just do a top five? I know that traditional end of the year lists are all about the top ten this and that. I don't know about you all, but between the cost of new games, the time it takes to play some of them, and the size of the pile, I'm lucky if I play ten new games the year they're released. In past years of voting, I've had a solid top five but have really struggled to flesh out the bottom half of the list (Chaos Rings is one of the ten best games of the year? That's scraping the barrel, for sure). We're busy adults, and we're mostly not paid game reviewers, so can we just post our top five games of the year, or are you really wedded to the idea of a traditional top ten?
  • How do you want to count votes? Last year, since we were doing a top ten, I gave ten votes to a person's number one pick, nine to their number two pick, et cetera, down to one vote for their tenth pick. Is that a fair way to do things?

    Now, what about when someone, and there's inevitably someone, who posts a list of unranked games? Do they all get a set, smaller number of votes? Are their votes not counted? Ranked by first letter and assigned that way?

    And what of the person who posts fifteen or twenty games (there always seems to be one of those, too)? Count each one? Only the top ten?

If we're going to do it, top 5 is fine by me. I may actually have played 5 games that were released this year. I know I didn't play 10.
For scoring: 5 points for #1, 4 for #2 and so on sounds fine. If someone just throws up a list, they don't get counted. If someone ranks more than 5 games, only their first 5 will be counted.
As to the question of when: I'd say start the thread sometime in January, and have it run for a month, or until we stop getting new lists from non-coffee grinders (no offense to coffee grinders).

1. Yes. I would love to participate.

2. I think the middle of December is a fine time.

3. Leave it open until after the holidays so everyone has a chance.

4. Yes a top 5 is about right.

5. Beats me. I will go with whatever the consensus is.

I also want to say I appreciate your doing this. It is a commitment of time and effort. Thanks.

Agree with everything farley3k says except I'd prefer a Top 10 so more sofware is recognized.

I'm of the opinion you should start the voting Sunday January 1st (with the cut off being Saturday January 7th at noon either EST or PST). I tend to get a couple of titles under the Christmas tree and would want about a week after to play them before casting my votes.

Otherwise, I'm fine with a top 5 list. As for unranked lists, I'd just tag the first one they list as their number 1 and so on up to the fifth in their list being credited as number 5.

I like this idea. For me personally, I'd have to look at what I played and figure out what actually came out this year. I probably have 5.

For scoring, while a site-level ranking might be useful, I feel like any ranking on the personal level would be kind of arbitrary, and a hard limit of 5 seems low.

I would propose that each person nominate up to, say, 10 games, with no particular order. Overall site-level ranking would be determined by appearing on the largest number of lists.

Also, I think we need some kind of policy on what qualifies as a simple re-releases versus what counts as a new game. e.g. Mass Effect 2 came out originally in 2010, but the PS3 port was this year.

SaintFaucet wrote:

I'm of the opinion you should start the voting Sunday January 1st (with the cut off being Saturday January 7th at noon either EST or PST). I tend to get a couple of titles under the Christmas tree and would want about a week after to play them before casting my votes.

This is a good point.

Are you all interested in doing a community game of the year poll?Yes.

When do you want the voting thread to go up?
When do you want voting to end?Beginning of January. End voting at the end that week. Easy. Plus we get a chance to actually play stuff that comes out at the end of the year. Screw everyone else, if I wanted to read their nonsense, I'd go there and read it.

Can we just do a top five? Sure, why not.

How do you want to count votes? 5 for 1st, 4 for 2nd, etc. is fine. If people cannot follow directions, just make the first 5 in their list their top 5 and to hell with 'em. If people want to list more than 5, fine, but only 5 get votes. If people make edits after you count their picks, to hell with them too - think before you post, Gertrude

Just call me Mr. Happy.

Nightmare wrote:

Are you all interested in doing a community game of the year poll?Yes.

When do you want the voting thread to go up?
When do you want voting to end?Beginning of January. End voting at the end that week. Easy. Plus we get a chance to actually play stuff that comes out at the end of the year. Screw everyone else, if I wanted to read their nonsense, I'd go there and read it.

Can we just do a top five? Sure, why not.

How do you want to count votes? 5 for 1st, 4 for 2nd, etc. is fine. If people cannot follow directions, just make the first 5 in their list their top 5 and to hell with 'em. If people want to list more than 5, fine, but only 5 get votes. If people make edits after you count their picks, to hell with them too - think before you post, Gertrude

Just call me Mr. Happy.

+1 to all this. As to the third question, I say the later, the better, as that gives more people time to play the games they accumulated over the course of the year (and maybe someone gets something they really want for Christmas).

Aaron D. wrote:

Agree with everything farley3k says except I'd prefer a Top 10 so more sofware is recognized.

I've got some ideas for highlighting a greater variety of software, like spotlighting games that one or two people are enthusiastic about that don't get attention from anyone else. That might do a better job than a top ten of highlighting games off the beaten path.

Garden Ninja wrote:

I would propose that each person nominate up to, say, 10 games, with no particular order. Overall site-level ranking would be determined by appearing on the largest number of lists.

But would that highlight the games people loved or just the games most people played? If Petz Horsez is everyone's ninth-favorite game of the year that would get the nod even though no one was particularly enthusiastic about it.

Also, I think we need some kind of policy on what qualifies as a simple re-releases versus what counts as a new game. e.g. Mass Effect 2 came out originally in 2010, but the PS3 port was this year.

I figured we go by the standard used in the pile threads where games are dated by the first release on any platform and where re-releases and extended editions don't count. So, Mass Effect 2 is a 2010 game, even if you're playing it on the PS3; Ico doesn't count even though the HD release came out this year; and Devil Survivor Overclocked, while it has new content, is still pretty much 2009's Devil Survivor. However, I won't be a dick and tell someone they can't rank their games that way, I'll just not count their votes.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

But would that highlight the games people loved or just the games most people played? If Petz Horsez is everyone's ninth-favorite game of the year that would get the nod even though no one was particularly enthusiastic about it.

I was assuming that we would still only nominate the games we enjoyed the most during the year, so anything that people weren't enthusiastic about wouldn't be on the list at all. If that means you only nominate 3 games, so be it. I just meant that, if we are already talking about the most awesome games of the year, ranking them would be at least somewhat arbitrary. For example, ranking Gears of War 3 vs LA Noire. They are vastly different games so there isn't much to compare between the except to say that they are both excellent games (assuming you think that in the first place).

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I figured we go by the standard used in the pile threads where games are dated by the first release on any platform and where re-releases and extended editions don't count. So, Mass Effect 2 is a 2010 game, even if you're playing it on the PS3, Ico doesn't count even though the HD release came out this year, and Devil Survivor Overclocked, while it has new content, is still pretty much 2009's Devil Survivor. However, I won't be a dick and tell someone they can't rank their games that way, I'll just not count their votes.

That sounds fair.

Does it make sense to have a definitive list for games that are eligible? We could start with this, and rip out the re-releases / remakes / ports.

I've got a question...

[Researcher mode: Activated]

Is there really a need to restrict the nomination pool to games that were released only this past year? Why not keep voting unrestricted and then filter out games that weren't released in the past calendar year after the fact? This would provide a more accurate accounting of the community's opinion on game quality and popularity.

Potentially you could end up with a raw list consisting of older games that trump newer ones, and while to some this may seem problematic I think it's perfectly natural. I've enjoyed the hell outta League of Legends this year and I would consider it my GOTY, if not for the fact that it wasn't actually released this year.

The quality of a game is dynamic over its operational life span, whether due to changing opinions or literally in the form of patches or new content. Should that prevent it from getting the credit that it's due?

Just my humble suggestion: I think completely unrestricted raw results would be pretty interesting to look at. I also think that GWJ has a large enough sample pool to knock out any ridiculous outliers ( looking at you WoW players ) And for those who don't care for this type of information you still get your Top 5 GOTY results

[Researcher mode: Disabled]

Who the heck is this guy? Get off the lawn troglodyte!

Voting start at Jan 1 and run just a week? Sheesh. I'll be lucky to play just one of my Christmas haul games in that time frame.

mr_n00b wrote:

I've got a question...

[Researcher mode: Activated]

Is there really a need to restrict the nomination pool to games that were released only this past year? Why not keep voting unrestricted and then filter out games that weren't released in the past calendar year after the fact? This would provide a more accurate accounting of the community's opinion on game quality and popularity.

Potentially you could end up with a raw list consisting of older games that trump newer ones, and while to some this may seem problematic I think it's perfectly natural. I've enjoyed the hell outta League of Legends this year and I would consider it my GOTY, if not for the fact that it wasn't actually released this year.

The quality of a game is dynamic over its operational life span, whether due to changing opinions or literally in the form of patches or new content. Should that prevent it from getting the credit that it's due?

Just my humble suggestion: I think completely unrestricted raw results would be pretty interesting to look at. I also think that GWJ has a large enough sample pool to knock out any ridiculous outliers ( looking at you WoW players ) And for those who don't care for this type of information you still get your Top 5 GOTY results

[Researcher mode: Disabled]

Who the heck is this guy? Get off the lawn troglodyte!

It might be interesting, but it'd also be a different competition. Release year gives us some objective point of reference. The GOTY awards has become an annual event and what you propose would be something else.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

It might be interesting, but it'd also be a different competition. Release year gives us some objective point of reference. The GOTY awards has become an annual event and what you propose would be something else.

Definitely. I remember reading a thread (can't remember when it was offhand) that was any game you played this year, regardless of release date. That was pretty interesting, but that would also be a different competition.

Edit: I think this is the thread I was thinking of: Favorite older games you played in 2010
There is also this one, that I thought was pretty interesting, though obviously less structured:And the best [insert category]

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Voting start at Jan 1 and run just a week? Sheesh. I'll be lucky to play just one of my Christmas haul games in that time frame.

What do you think is a more reasonable amount of time? Stengah suggested a month, but I can't help but think that interest in the thread would flag long before the month was over.

Upper cap of a month seems reasonable. If interest wanes before that, we could end early.

I originally had a month in my Mr. Happy screed but decided it was too long. Maybe it isn't. Since I'm not doing any work on this but voting once, make it last as long as you want to!

But here's what will happen, knowing folks around here (you all know this will happen ):
Days 1-3: Extreme excitement, much voting and discussion.
Days 4-7: Some voting, some discussion, the train bound for Cleveland enters the station.
Days 8-28: Nobody votes. People who already voted change their votes. The train bound for Cleveland leaves the station. Random Darksiders babble occurs.
Days 29-30: People vote who couldn't be bothered to vote before because the deadline is nearly reached.
Day 31: Votes tallied and posted. More discussion ensues.
Days 32-45: People who couldn't be bothered to vote during the time period place their votes. Some will be upset that their votes don't "count".
Days 46-20000: The thread falls into the abyss of dead threads
Day 20001: Clocky necros it

Which is fine. Looking forward to it.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/65326.gif)

Nightmare wrote:

Day 20001: Clockworkhouse necros it

At which point he'll be 85 years old?

I don't think release date should be restricted. If enough GWJers felt like the GOG release of Baldurs Gate was GotY, why deny that? You'll also be cutting out all of last December's games.

I think it's an unnecessary restriction that will be implicitly satisfied anyway, and leaving it off means no need to police it.

My GotY this year is probably L4D2. It's constantly updated and it pulled 30% of my game time.

I am interested and top 5 seems doable.
5 Points for the 1st place, 4 to the 2nd etc.
First week of the year sounds good.

I would restrict to games released in 2011.
There are games that are being updated and all that.
But I rather see a list that changes every year.
Otherwise, here is your list for the upcoming years
1: WoW
2: SC2
3: L4D2
4: TF2
5: CoD

The alternative to keeping it open a month is to move the start date later in January.

Yes, I'd love to do it. Games released this year. Top 10.

This is all moot, since Arkham City is going to win, without question. I guess you could try and see which game will come in 2nd though.

A month for voting is, IMHO, way too long. I'd do 7 days, 14 days max (still too long, IMO). People who are going to vote will do so in the first week.

Top 5, top 10, doesn't matter. It's all about 2nd place ... since, you know, Arkham City will win.

My vote: do it in March. Every year, I end up wanting to change my votes after I've gotten around to playing the games that all came out at the end of the year and that I couldn't play simultaneously.

*Legion* wrote:

My vote: do it in March. Every year, I end up wanting to change my votes after I've gotten around to playing the games that all came out at the end of the year and that I couldn't play simultaneously.

I've actually thought about doing a thread in January and one again in June for just that reason.

Putting things in ranked lists is fun, and usually sparks some spirited debates. I love making personal top ten lists. I've got lists for the top ten SNES RPGs, top ten fantasy authors, top ten drunk food spots within stumbling distance of several bars, top ten shots to drink while playing Joust...

I'd be happy to participate in any list in any month.

1. Yes
2. Whenever is fine by me.
3. Two weeks seems sufficient.
4. Top five works for me.
5. I'd go with standard scoring. Anyone who can't follow instructions doesn't get their vote counted.

1. Yeah, I always enjoy the community GOTY stuff. Hear and on Giantbomb.
2. Probably start it the week before Christmas.
3. Two weeks from the start.
4. I'm constantly shifting my 6-10 anyway so 5 is probably for the best.
5. 5 points for a #1 ranking, 4 for 2, etc.? That's how GB does theirs.

I'm one of the people that'll throw everything off with unusual choices...

Jeff-66 wrote:

This is all moot, since Arkham City is going to win, without question.

See? I don't even plan on playing Arkham City. Maybe next year.

Blind_Evil wrote:

2. Probably start it the week before Christmas.

You want to start voting on 2011 GOTY before the year even ends?

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Blind_Evil wrote:

2. Probably start it the week before Christmas.

You want to start voting on 2011 GOTY before the year even ends?

Most games are released by then. Whether or not they're played by then is a different story. I didn't finish New Vegas until May of this year. Of course, I'm a fan of voting in December and then revisiting the year in March to May.

Just off a rudimentary running tally it looks like the most popular choice is:

Format: Top 5
When: January
Duration: 1 Week
Voting: Inverse Scoring (Rank 1-5 -> Value 5-1)

I approve of this consensus, though I still believe releasing a raw score list as an extra is not a bad idea.