Honestly I don't think a lot of it is port-begging from a Nintendo standpoint. I think it's more from a portable standpoint. If the other companies made comparable portable devices I imagine we'd see something similar.
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ResetEra Games of the Year Awards 2018
- Thread starter SweetNicole
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Lol amazing, you're acting like Sony's game don't deserve to be up there because you think people are only voting for them because Sony.
Thanks for all the effort gone into making the thread. Congrats to all the winners.
Now that 2018 is over, I can see that 2019 is going to be WAY more competitive and unpredictable compared with 2018, with so many major releases as well as potential candidates as sleeper hits from different publishers from both west and east. I predict the voting no. is going to climb back or even exceed that of 2017. Incredibly exciting year ahead, so it is good for the industry as well as all the users here.
Now that 2018 is over, I can see that 2019 is going to be WAY more competitive and unpredictable compared with 2018, with so many major releases as well as potential candidates as sleeper hits from different publishers from both west and east. I predict the voting no. is going to climb back or even exceed that of 2017. Incredibly exciting year ahead, so it is good for the industry as well as all the users here.
Yep. The general media got it right as well.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-awards-season-begins-2018-goty-list-aggregate-thread.85709/
Japan having a quiet year? Monster Hunter is a massive game, Dragon Quest is a massive game. Yakuza switching to their next generation. There is no hint of being quiet there. It's the best you can do and much more.
It was a great year for japanese games.
The 2017 thread is HERE. Yakuza 0 and Nioh were 6th and 11th respectively. Mario 8XD didn't make the top 20. In fact, Xenoblade and Splatoon were 9 and 12, bookending Lost Legacy and Nioh at 10 and 11, so they were basically a wash. That made point totals 1,2, and 20 v. 4, 5, 6.Take away Phantom Thief and the number of threads are probably much more normal ;).
There's also this datapoint:
In a year of BotW, Mario Kart 8XD, Mario Odyssey, Splatoon 2, Xenoblade 2, Mario + Rabbids, Nintendo exclusives only narrowly outvoted Sony exclusives Persona 5, Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted Lost Legacy, and erm, Gravity Rush 2?
People focus too much on platforms versus forum gaming preferences. This forums likes single player games with a strong focus on either gameplay and mechanics or a compelling narrative. We're a bunch of "games as art" snobs basically. Give us a combination of the two (like GoW) and we're really happy. This is why online games do far, far worse here than with the general public. Why most PC strategy games (heavily instanced) don't do very well each year, etc..
Then you add the layer of comfy couch v. handheld flexibility. Once upon a time the Switch port begging was Vita port begging for example. That wasn't a shift in loyalty from Sony to Nintendo, that was people who always wanted to play console-like experiences on handhelds merging with traditional handheld fans and the two amplifying each other.
When Sony were shitting their pants the first half of last gen. GAF didn't GAF about Sony. It was heavily X360 because that was the lead platform for the industry. MS dropped the ball to start this gen and Sony ran with it, layering on an explosion in first party productivity coupled with leveraging their ability to land and then promote Japanese 3rd party exclusives to a willing audience.
Sony has some wrongheaded ideas on the services side of things but they know how to put together a release calendar. That's what ResetEra posters care about more than anything else. New games for the "discussion" mill (I'm dubious that what occurs here should actually be called discussion).
I posted a similar comparison to the Most Anticipated list earlier in the thread. But it's definitely striking to filter out the shoo-ins, as you've done here, and list the titles that didn't have a giant (and in some cases years-long) marketing effort behind them, reaching a smaller but no less passionate player base. There's no question in my mind that Celeste was the big winner this year, and even as one of the bigger VR pessimists around, I was excited to see the high placement of games like Astro Bot and Tetris Effect. They had to overcome the limited reach of VR adoption to get there, which speaks to how well they satisfied that community and perhaps to a VR adoption rate here that is higher than I assumed.
In many ways, I think this is the central value of running this poll at all, along with how it incentivizes the more loquacious members of this board to turn out some interesting writing and commentary (thanks in part to the much-maligned requirement to say at least one thing of minimal substance, which is well worth keeping). To a certain extent, people on this community, an agglomeration of Sony or Nintendo partisans as they may be, are still in thrall to the big hype cycles and blockbuster releases that seem to have a place on the GOTY ballot reserved for them well in advance. But it doesn't happen in quite the same way as anywhere else, and so what makes this whole exercise distinctive are the surprises and deviations peculiar to us, such that niche games are still able to place respectably in a popularity contest, even if there is a hard cap on them because they just can't pull the same numbers simply by meeting high expectations like the blockbusters do.
The format and rules are fine. (I admittedly have my doubts about the usefulness of presenting a "sort by metadata tag" as a series of category prizes, and whether it's really worth the time of the organizers to go through all that tagging manually, when it doesn't seem to shed light on very much and always attracts complaints and confusion; still, the problem may be with the way these are presented and explained, and not so much the process itself.) But reading through the postmortem discussions, I always get the sense that awards are invariably buried under the same immaturity as review scores, where people fuss and fidget ever so loudly about platform bias or placements that seem too high or too low, and miss the whole point of what these polls are for—the signal in the information, not the noise.
I posted something nearly identical in last year's results thread, amidst all the complaints about Nintendo bias, and I think it applies just as well this year with Nintendo swapped out for Sony:
Nobody denies that the demographics here cluster around a console-centric consensus where platform exclusives are still considered the major events worth talking about, just like they were at the dawn of the current Nintendo/MS/Sony era in the early 2000s. It's like those habits have never changed. (In fact, I'd say that people have their heads in the sand about how poor this is at reflecting the true diversity of the so-called "hardcore" market, or the general question of what the game industry looks like, what it's about, and what matters to the business.) But I find that I'm just not concerned at all about a Sony or Nintendo bias. The slant is bigger than that—more precise, more substantial, more interesting to define and locate—and Sony or Nintendo have just recently alternated in rewarding it. As far as the voting goes, we have more than enough multi-console "independents" here to tip the scales either way. The lack of interest in certain genres, publishers, or platforms here that are a pretty big deal elsewhere, and the preening entitlement we often seem to have to ownership of the core-market label, are so conspicuous here that when I see the petty exchanges over whether we have a Sony bias or a Nintendo bias, I can only point and laugh.
Popular votes at any scale will never act as deliberative substitutes for jury prizes. We should fixate less on the ranks and more on the oddball peculiarities. I never participate in these with the expectation that my tastes will be well reflected. (If I had that expectation, there would really be no point in voting.) It's more of an excuse to have a retrospective conversation, and I find it a whole lot healthier to engage with the process that way.
They're just video games. Not worth crying about them like a child. Go outside and enjoy life breh...
The word you're looking for is "middlebrow". And I think you're right on the money. The range of discussion here appeals to players who like to think of themselves as informed and discriminating, in the form of staying plugged into what's scoring over 90 on Metacritic, what's charting in Japan or NPD, what's performing at 60fps, who said the latest outrageous thing to merit a boycott or a firing, what's the latest word from the verified insiders in the rumour mill—all things we can lean on to pat ourselves on the back for being tasteful. It helps if we actually like the games, of course, and we often do. But in the end this is just one niche among many in a large-scale commercial market, and we're all in the thrall of big business. (Yes, even those of us who mostly play the indies.)
I'm not saying this a bad thing—I'm here in the pit with the rest of you, after all, and it's nice to be in a place with enough of a shared basis in history that you can name-drop Kamiya or Suda51 without having to explain who they are, and chuck all kinds of acronyms and abbreviations around that are instantly understood—but it all reminds me of a lot of what put me off about online film circles a long time ago: they'd be full of people who believed themselves to be highly tasteful, championing a few award-winners and well-known auteurs and lesser-known productions that were still fundamentally very populist in their tone, genre, or accessibility, and at the end of the day, they all gravitate back into heated conversations about Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson or the MCU, because that's where they really have opinions. You'd find very quickly that they didn't have the mettle for anything truly adventurous that didn't already have a stamp of prestige or expectation, and worst of all, that even if they did know everything about film, they knew very little about anything other than film. You would run into so many people who think of themselves as snobs, and might even want to be snobs, but who really didn't have the cultural literacy, in or out of their medium, to truly be snobs.
It's why I abandoned the games-as-art conversation years ago. (Juvenile, hysterical arguments for games as art have done more than anything in the world to persuade me, for the slightest moment, that games might not be art.) The base for "prestige" video games is way too populist, and far too in denial about it, to treat subjects like "art" and "story" with the nuance they deserve, in a way that doesn't degenerate in seconds. Maybe that's exciting when you're twenty and new to all this; maybe that's still exciting if you never outgrew it. But perhaps it's enough to enjoy the mass commercial entertainment we do—most of which is honestly pretty competent and polished even when it's utterly bland—and justify it to ourselves in some way that seems to come down to communicable objective properties and not pure, personal, solipsistic, inexplicable taste.
That's what polls like this achieve, along with this discussion board as a whole. And I'm resigned to that. Some of you are a lot of fun to read, there's just enough overlap in what we play that we can feed off each other, and there's just enough difference in what we play that being here introduces me to new things. It's enough to keep me coming back, as someone who is frequently pretty far out of the local norms.
Or maybe we could just accept that Sony simply published some really great games this year and the GOTY votes reflect that.
You mean the same "Sony presence" that led to BotW and Mario Odyssey winning 1-2 last year? God of War and Spider-Man were never going to cannibalise each other, not when God of War was clearly the more popular of the two. Just look at the data, Spider-Man got a really small amount of first place votes, what got it second place was the sheer number of second to fourth place votes. The way points are allocated (rightly) doesn't make that a huge disadvantage, so cannibalising isn't really a big factor.
As for Forza Horizon 4, it's in a genre that isn't popular here and gets a sequel every other year (and a Forza Motorsport between them), so it did about as well as could be expected. Still a hell of a lot better than the annual sports games do.
Anyway, I'm happy to see God of War win and Spider-Man, DQXI and Yakuza 6 do really well (even if Kiwami 2 was better than 6...). As far as the "2017 vs 2018" debate goes, personally 2018 was a year of higher highs and lower lows. My top 5 in 2018 were amazing and crushed my 2017 top 5 but after those, I struggled to come up with a top 10.
On a side note, is there any chance we could get more data this year? I was really disappointed last year's GOTY thread didn't bring over all the cool additional data like User Affinity.
Hear hear! I always browse thru the lists to find those well-written write-ups and popularity-bucking (yet natural) choices. You get people SELLING us on their picks rather than ORDERING us to hew our own to theirs. It's really refreshing, and I end up engorging my backlog by 1-3 after doing so. heh
And yeah, speaking of refreshing, going into it knowing you may exact a change and to see how well "yours" did is very different when your #1s from over the years rank like this:
2011: 26th
2012: 12th
2013: 70th
2014: 57th
2015: 4th
2016: 74th
2017: 42nd
2018: 100th
Perspective follows, or maybe it leads, I dunno. I do get to chuckle over particularly salty posts over my ginger ale, and that counts for something too.
Damn was gonna vote the last day but forgot!
Was trying to play more games but I'm glad GOW won, it's everything I could have wanted from a GOW game. Glad Spidey got some love.
Also loving that Astro Bot and DQ XI got so high on the list. I have Detroit but haven't played it yet, so looking forward to it.
Great year of games and 2019 could be even better.
Was trying to play more games but I'm glad GOW won, it's everything I could have wanted from a GOW game. Glad Spidey got some love.
Also loving that Astro Bot and DQ XI got so high on the list. I have Detroit but haven't played it yet, so looking forward to it.
Great year of games and 2019 could be even better.
OP
OP
There was a Japan release of the game on Nintendo Switch: https://www.polygon.com/2018/9/16/17866542/assassins-creed-odyssey-nintendo-switch-streaming-japan
Regarding the discussion on categories and metadata tags, it is a hold over of how things were done in years previously. In some cases, it can result in weird conclusions, such as Assassin's Creed Odyssey under the Nintendo Switch category. It also severely limits the actual categories available since any categories that aren't based off of metadata cannot be done under the current system.
As part of the GOTY team's post wrap-up for this year, we're discussing how this most recent GOTY voting went and what where we'd like to see things go moving forward for GOTY voting. Tentatively, we're looking at doing a postmortem thread for GOTY 2018 sometime next month. If there are going to be any changes to the format, a majority of the community would need to be on board.
I just shook my head as I scrolled down to see it. The entire list of winners points to a big bias here honestly.
No Subnautica in the top 20 seriously makes me sad and find myself wondering if ERA didn't love it as much as I did or wondering if not that not many have played it...seriously Go play Subnautica. If you haven't already. Guess it could be seen as old hat too since it was in EA for so long, but I didn't first play it until around this same time in 2018.
Other than that a lot of great games made the list; even if I've not played all of them or would have placed them differently on mine.
Other than that a lot of great games made the list; even if I've not played all of them or would have placed them differently on mine.
Or maybe RDR2 just wasn't as good as Spider-Man in most people's eyes :)
I don't know what I'm more happy to see: Monster Hunter World being voted as the 5th best game we got this year, or it somehow becoming the best PC game out of all the others we got this year. I suppose though it did narrowly edge out Celeste, but it is still a constant reminder that 2018 was the year of Monster Hunter (between having World, Generations Ultimate, and an appearance in Smash Ultimate).
I agree it's not a pure horror game, but it has a psychological thriller/horror theme to it's story/setting. Think something more like Jacob's Ladder.
The checkpoint system in The MISSING is pretty forgiving from what I remember. There might be a couple points in the game that could be frustrating, but overall the game is pretty easy.
It's short, but a good experience. Definitely worth it, IMO.
Just want to say this is a good post. Thanks for voicing this more eloquently than I could.
As a person who fits into that camp it is annoying to constantly have to explain that it isn't Nintendo fanboyism, though at this point I have pretty much given up. This community always has to turn everything into platform warring.
Jacob's Ladder is the kind of horror I fancy. I'll add the game to my wishlist, and wait for a price drop. Thanks for the info.
I just hope it doesn't have as much time-limited platforming as Inside and Limbo had.
If there's a bias on this site, it's the dramatic fall of third party multiplatform games from last year to this year. It's speculation, but GaaS has seem to really done a number on the perception of the user base.
Good I say.
Good I say.
Amazing to see GoW get 1st place.
Spidey in 2nd is aweome as its the most fun game I've played all gen.
RDR2 in third is good too, I would have it higher in 1st/2nd but I understand for some its a flawed masterpiece.
Spidey in 2nd is aweome as its the most fun game I've played all gen.
RDR2 in third is good too, I would have it higher in 1st/2nd but I understand for some its a flawed masterpiece.
Why are you so salty? Because it is Sony game?
For me personally RDR2 was better then Spider-Man, but if people here like spidey more then so what? It is still Spider-Man. Old and beloved character and many people here have grown up reading comics or watching animate series. And MCU is big right now.
You mean like the adults did when The Witcher 3 smacked Bloodborne around, because i remember vividly the reactions of the fanbase that always like to act hollier than thou, except when things don't go their way. I will say this, if RDR2 would won this one, some of the posters acting all sanctamonious in this thread now, would be the ones acting worse, i have a good memory for usernames.
Of course, this is all ridiculous, if GOW won, it surely deserved it, same for Spider-Man with second place but is is beyond ridiculous to act like this forum doesn't have a huge Sony fans userbase, same as Nintendo. I would guess it is dificult for a 3rd party game to win here.
Stating the truth as to this sites bias is now "being salty" according to this guy smh
I own both a PS4 and XB1X and all the games mentioned for GotY for those systems, I have no specific stake in the game. But to sit here and pretend the bias for Sony on this site doesn't exist with the voting done here is ridiculous.
My last post concerning this as I know how quickly some of you move to report any and everyone that doesn't tow the line leading to uncalled for moderation.
Your bias is just making you think everyone else is bias. Spidey beat RDR2 because it just consistently placed higher, RDR2 got more top spots than it. Do I agree with it? Not really (Spidey is either 4th or 5th for me), but it is what it is, I can get people liking it a lot without necessarily loving it more than everything else and it adding up. My 3rd placed game is 18th, I'm not gonna cry over it, because I think it should be higher or some bollocks.
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Nice to see Spider-Man up there. Such a fun experience and it got pretty emotional with some great character moments. Well deserved.
RDR2 deserves all the praise in the world for the story, attention to detail and the dynamic systems. While I kinda admire their decision to go all out immersive with all those animations and specific actions, it's really not for me. I just can't stand the sluggishness and how slow and deliberate everything is. It might add to the feel of the world, but man do I not want to play it.
RDR2 deserves all the praise in the world for the story, attention to detail and the dynamic systems. While I kinda admire their decision to go all out immersive with all those animations and specific actions, it's really not for me. I just can't stand the sluggishness and how slow and deliberate everything is. It might add to the feel of the world, but man do I not want to play it.
It helps that Spider-Man doesn't play like horseshit. Can't say the same for RDR2.
Except 3x more people thought RDR2 was their GotY than Spider-Man. It's just that due to the polarizing nature of the game (especially on this forum), RDR2 either topped someone's list or it was absent or at the bottom. Spider-Man, on the other hand, didn't top so many people's lists, but appeared consistently near the top or middle on enough lists to barely put it over RDR2. I think it makes perfect sense how it ended up in the context of the continued forum controversy around how RDR2 feels to play versus the obvious craftsmanship that went into the game.
It's also incredible how this forum bounces from Nintendo to Sony biased year to year, according to some. It seems to be based on where the most quality games come out in a given year, rather than some insidious fanboy nonsense, but surely it can't be that simple, can it?
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