Game of the Year discussion

Well it's not over yet, but 2008 looks like it's been (and is going to be) another bumper year for gamers. As always, your opinions matter (otherwise what's the point in running a community-led games site!) so we'll be collecting those votes once again.

I'm just tweaking the code and seeing if it all still works, but here's the link to the voting system - it's ugly but we're looking at a better way to properly integrate it with the site a bit more - but it's ready to use.

In the meantime some guidelines:

1) The top 5 votes will be allocated a score - First place voted game will get 10, second 8, third 6, fourth 4 and finally the fifth place game will get 2 points. Your score total will be added up and will contribute to the overall game score for each voted game.

2) Voting multiple times for the same game will pretty much mean your vote's binned. This is all done for a bit of a giggle, not for marketing purposes - just to see what your peers here play and like. Shoving the same game in all 5 slots is like a pencil without lead. Pointless.

3) Other categories are also for shits and giggles, so don't take them too seriously.

4) Your votes and answers will be featured in a big ol' roundup. Once all voting is finished I'll be sticking the article together - but I'll also be making the data available for people to browse so if you don't like the idea of this, don't vote basically.

5) Please make sure you're logged in with a legit account before you vote. You could of course register for another account if you want to try and boost a game's score but...Pencil. Without lead.

Hokay, stay tuned for the URL which will go up slightly nearer the end of November / Early December. As ever, fun suggestions for extra voting categories are always welcome.

Cheers!

Have I got to think of five games worth playing from this year? Have there been five worth playing? :-/

/can only think of three, and that's including the crop about to hit this/next month

Yes :P

I hope a "Most annoying character" category will find it's way into the poll.

I'm looking at you DJ Atomica

Retroid, turn your xbox off, some of us have to work and its not fair :)

I'd vote for the entire cast of GTA4 long before considering DJ Moronica

If I include downloads and DS I can come up with a fair few, actually ;-)

You found 5 DS games worth voting for this year?
Own up, how many of them have either the word "Imagine" or at least 1 "z" in the title? ;-)

I should jolly well hope you are counting those.

^____^

If it's any consolation (oh-ho!) I'm trying to download Portal (I don't have time to play anything) and it keeps giving me an error code :(

Nah, one DS game (Layton, but not for the same reasons given in reviews) and at least two downloads

I think there's going to be some interesting vote skews this year.

People can (legitimately) vote for Okami (again) cos it came out on Wii over here. They could vote for Portal (again) because of the recent DLC on PC and 360. And they could vote for Bioshock (again) because of the PS3 version.

As I said, it's all for shits and giggles and the results will pretty much just be seen by people who vote or use AATG so there's no harm done and there's not even a hard and fast rule for voting for stuff for this year (it'd be a bit of a pointless exercise if everyone just voted for COD4 every single year though so we'll see wot appens guv)

Can I still vote for Zelda and Mario 64? Nothing so far come close to beating those games. :)

I guess. If you really think nothing's touched 'em as your game of the year 2008.

Well, LittleBigPlanet might do and BP was very nice, but they are in a different category.

Well aye, but they were at least released this year - so they might contribute to the results. Basically unless everyone who votes also votes for Mario 64 or Zelda they might end up a no show.

Can't wait to see how it all turns out because it's been a 'long' gaming year with some real classics released early on (BP was just into January wasn't it?)

So it's a good memory test as well (for me especially because I'm horribly forgetful!)

Portal came out on PS3 this year did it not? It's good but not GOTY material IMO.

Well Portal's out on 360 again, now, so it could count.

Yep, BP came out early this year.

Why did you like Layton, then? (I'm not sure what the consensus reasons were in reviews, but it's utimately a fairly shallow game with only two potential hooks, imo).

Also, re: games not realeased in 2008, I do find it a touch self defeating when people are allowed to vote for "old" games, sorry.

I do too but I'm just too magnanimous to say 'no' to 'em :)

As I said, it's a bit of a results-skewer anyway because most people who took part last year voted for 2007 games and (IIRC) it was quite an interesting turnout and a really close result at the end.

To be honest, it's best to not count re-releases or ports (unless significantly different from the original). Otherwise we may as well vote for VC releases too. :)

K

In the great scheme of things I'd like to say "keep it to 2008. Keep it to new releases"

But it's all for a bit of fun. None of the data's being sold to marketing companies, none of it will be seen by anyone who doesn't use the site so...it's really just to help me stick together a nice set of end-of-year articles rolling up the gaming year of 2008.

I could offer prizes as incentives I guess, but I'm doing it off my own back in my own time and it's not the easiest job in the world when there's a million other things clamouring at me so c'mon, take part, and see what ends up getting voted as the AATGers game of the year.

I'll take part but I need to do some homework and remind myself what games I've played this year!

Ditto. I took the pre-emptive step of sorting my shelves out, so this year's crop are on a shelf of their own.

Maybe I should hold off a bit mind you as Far Cry 2 and Wrath of the Lich King may make an appearance.

Aye there's no hurry. Closing date for the GOTY will properly be Dec 31st this year so the articles won't be going up till the new year this time.

The presentation was excellent but as a "game" it fell apart thanks to the total irrelevance of the puzzles you were solving compared to the actual tasks at hand.

Where it succeeded was by bringing PROPER puzzles back to the forefront. Videogames have murdered proper puzzles - everything became about block moving or filling lines. This re-introduced proper maths, maze and code-breaking puzzles.

Yes it was insanely easy, but it's a start, and it deserves more credit for getting cerebral proceses flowing than a million "Brain Age" games put together.

Wow, what did the reviews praise it for, then?! You either like the presentation, or you like the puzzles, or you like both, but separately, for me, too.

Oh, I totally agree, but I do think (and I'm sounding a bit like Monica from Friends here) that "fun" things like this are always better when properly regulated.