Geoff Keighley's The Game Awards

[Todinho]

So I think everyone here know the infamous VGA's that happen every year but after last year VGX the show seems to be over with Geoff Keighley breaking off and forming his own award show(also funded from his own pocket apparently) even if the VGA are the laughing stock of the gamming community I think Keighley really wants this one to be something respectable and without his TV overlords watching over him maybe he can,he announced the nominees yesterday: http://thegameawards.com/nominees/# it could still be a trainwreck but I think this stands more of a chance than the VGA's ever did so hopefully it wont suck.

[Alex79]

We should have our own forum awards. We could nominate then have voting threads for the final vote or something.

[Todinho]

There was something like that in 2012 maybe it can be a thing again.

[Alex79]

My game of the year would be a toss up between Dark Souls 2 and BOI:R.

[James]

A surprisingly short shortlist for Game Of The Year.

I don't see why we couldn't run a forum vote. We'd have to come up with categories and nominees, of course. Seems like the sort of thing we could run over the Christmas period, once all of 2014's games have had a couple of weeks of playtime.

[hazeredmist]

That Game of the Year list is a bit off isn't it? Dragon Age is barely out yet it makes a shortlist of 5? Where's Destiny?

Skimmed some of the other category lists and can't relate to any of it. Maybe it's me

I'd love to partake in a C&R vote though. Like minded boffins and all.

[James]

Yeah, I'd have made some very different choices for the nominees. Still, here's hoping that the event is successful enough to warrant the risk Geoff Keighley must be taking.

As for a CaR vote, polling on the forums is a single question affair, which means either setting up a thread for each category (perhaps in its own area to avoid swamping 'Videogame Discussion') or tallying manually from responses to a single all-encompassing post. I'll have a chat with Leon, Jay and Tony to see if there's a preferred method as far as they're concerned.

[Flabyo]

I curated a game of the year poll on another forum for a few years in the mid 00's, and unless the forum has thousands of members I found its best to stick to 'name your 10 favourite games of the year' and just do a tally. (I used metacritic to tie-break, mwahaha)

If you ask a smallish pool of people to pick, say, best driving game you'll just get a list of every driving game launched that year, and one or two might have more than 1 vote.

[James]

Ah, good point. I suppose, if we had enough responses, it'd be possible to tally votes for other categories from top 10 lists anyway.

Thanks!

[JaySevenZero]

Personally speaking, I couldn't care less about 'game of the year' awards and their ilk and rarely pay them much attention. The criteria for the initial choices and eventual winners often seem to have been the ones that have been lobbied the hardest by the publishers/sponsors anyway.

Besides., I'm hardly their target audience anyway, since I hardly ever give a damn about remaining 'current' in my gaming these days, one of my favourite games of 2013 was Dark Souls - a game released in 2011 and this year one of my favourites has been Dragon's Dogma, released in 2012.

[James]

Generally, I agree. The only exceptions are when it is couched around a larger discussion (e.g. the Joypod/Midnight Resistance and Giantbomb end of year podcasts) or if the choices are by people I know. Here on the forums I wager there'll be a good deal of discussion thrown up be some people's choices. And there's no harm in putting forward your own list, whatever year the games were released in. It'd be easy enough to only tally those from 2014.

Over recent years older games have always overshadowed the current year's crop for me too. In fact, I think all of my favourite games are ones I played well after release. Alas!

Come on, Jay, it'll be fun.

[Flabyo]

I mean, if we were looking at entirely the amount of time spent playing, then Hearthstone is almost the only thing I've spent any serious time on this year

[Todinho]

C'mon I get it the whole "game of the year" lists are largely pointless but you cant deny they are fun to do.
I found the list of the Keighly awards respectable enough,there was no Call of duty or Watch Dogs or even Destiny and if you wanna talk lobby those are the big ones right there I mean look they have Bayonetta 2 which is almost universally regarded as a fantastic game then we have hearthstone which took the world by storm,Mordor that blew everyone away with it's nemesis system then Dragon Age that people are saying is Bioware back to form and Dark souls 2 one of the best designed games this year even if it is lacking in comparison to the predecessors.

If there is a "lobby award" this year is the freaking remaster category but at the same time we have the games for change thing that's trying to reward games that are trying to explore different things and that's cool,even if im 99% sure Left behind will win this,overall award shows and game of the years are dumb but they can be a fun celebration of videogames.And I know it can seem unfair that only AAA games get a shot at game of the year but you also have to bear in mind that they also take alot more work to make and usually have alot more content than smaller games so it would be unfair comparing the 2 in that regard.

PS:My game of the year so far is Shovel Knight a 16-bit inspired plataformer funded by kickstarter but if I include all titles I played this year regardless of date then it's Symphony of the Night a game that's almost 20 years old followed by the original Rondo of Blood XD.
PPS:Funny thing about this awards is that Kojima is in the advisory board but his favorite game of the year a IOS game by the name of "FRAMED" wasnt nominated for anything,by the way watching the reaction of the FRAMED creators to Kojima tweets was really heartwarming to see =)

[dezm0nd]

Gameplay of the new Zelda title was shown, as well as No Mans Sky and Kings Quest. Not bad. I bet the fallout fans are disappointed though

[richie_in_japan]

Generally, I agree. The only exceptions are when it is couched around a larger discussion (e.g. the Joypod/Midnight Resistance and Giantbomb end of year podcasts) or if the choices are by people I know. Here on the forums I wager there'll be a good deal of discussion thrown up be some people's choices. And there's no harm in putting forward your own list, whatever year the games were released in. It'd be easy enough to only tally those from 2014.

I agree about Giantbomb. Really couldn't care less about the outcome, it's the discussion to get there which is interesting. Although, I still haven't listened to the 2013 podcasts as there are games I haven't got round to which will definitely get spoiled!

[Todinho]

So it happened this show still share's much of the same DNA of the VGA's but I thought this was probably the best by far in comparison to all that came before I think if they cut 1 hour from it(what is easily done by toning down the music performances)have more developer moments and more actual awards shown I think it can be good,my favorite moment from the show was Roberta Williams and her husband winning the industry icon thing it was genuinely heartwarming and I hope to see more of things like that in the future:


Other than that the actual awards where ok Ubisoft didnt win dev of the year,Shovel Knight got best indie game and Totalbiscuit had great acceptance speech so yeah it's a good start.

PS:Also kinda of a dick move by Tim Schafer to basically dump all over Kiefer Sutherland when he came on stage.

[ratsoalbion]

Jesus, someone gave the (supposedly) acceptable face of GamerGits TotalBiscuit an award?
What was that for - biggest differential between talent and profile?

[Todinho]

No how about being a good human being who has done some actual good in the industry for the last 5 years ,I honestly dont understand the Totalbiscuit hate but I guess he associating himself with gamergate is enough and even then he was the one always trying for dialogue and understanding but I guess this doesnt really fit the us vs them mentality right.
You can say the award was stupidy or whatever but his speech was great:

[ratsoalbion]

It's really nothing to do with 'us v them' from my point of view. I've never understood his appeal and his association with GG actually just served to illustrate and cement what I already felt about him and his (in my view) ill-considered, ignorant and uninteresting opinions.

[Todinho]

wow thank god you dont act like that to people you disagree with in the podcast. But I take it you're not talking about his opinions on videogames,which is weird because I see you two sharing alot of views when it comes to "social issues" incredible isnt it,but his aproach to things sees to be trying to talk to people and see all points of view instead of shouting at people.
And by the way the reason he "joined" GG is because of people,like yourself I believe,calling him things like nazi because of neutral tweet on the matter and calling gamers scum worst then ISIS. I can understand disagreeing with the guy or not liking his personality but the level of Mccarthyism this has gotten to is ridiculous.