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Boom! What a landslide!

Here's my recap:

• God of War is the most unanimous GOTY winner we've ever had, with 124 points and 18 GOTY votes (out of 45 voters)! Persona 5 was the record holder with 122 points from 54 voters, so no contest. God of War was GOTY for 8 of the first 10 lists I received, two thirds of the voters gave it at least a point, it's 55 points ahead of second place, I could keep going with the stats. God of War, take a bow!
• It was such a crazy race between Red Dead Redemption 2 and Marvel's Spider-Man for second place. Spidey had it for most of the run but the very last list I received edged Red Dead above it, much to my dismay. Given it had 6 GOTY votes against 1 for Spider-Man, I'd say it's fair anyway. Goes to show that every vote counts!
• 5 games from the Top 10 are from Japanese developers, as is tradition.
• 2 Yakuza games in the Top 10. It's surprisingly not the first time we get 2 games of the same series both rank that high, we had 2 Danganronpa titles in the Top 10 of 2014!
• Assassin's Creed Odyssey ranked unusually high for the series with #7. Given how little love the series has received from these nominations in the past, that's quite an achievement.
• Top indie game is Return of the Obra Dinn at #10, congrats! It's also the only PC exclusive.
• 7 PlayStation 4 exclusives, including a PS VR exclusive with Astro Bot Rescue Mission, 2 of those in the top 3.
• PlayStation 4 won GOTY for 3 years in a row now (Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Persona 5, God of War), they sure got something going!
• 4 Switch exclusives, same as last year, but with the highest in 5th place it didn't soar quite as high as for its debut. No doubt this year with Metroid Prime 4 it will... wait... :(
• 1 Xbox One (+PC) exclusive, Forza Horizon 4.
• Now, who are the biggest losers? Shadow of the Colossus scored 7 points, same as Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden, but lost its spot due to lower "highest vote". It was the only game I played last year and actively disliked, so fine by me!
• 6 points: Dragon Ball FighterZ, Hitman 2, Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise.
• 5 points: The Banner Saga 3, Subnautica, Metal Gear Survive, Dead Cells, Beat Saber, Warhammer: Vermintide 2, 428: Shibuya Scramble.
• 4 points: Onrush, Black Bird, Shining Resonance Refrain, Azur Lane, Mega Man 11, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, SoulCalibur VI, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Fallout 76, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales.
• 3 points: Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, The Council, All Our Asias, Battlefield V, Pro Evolution Soccer 2019, Sea of Thieves.
• 2 points: The Walking Dead: The Final Season, Part Time UFO, Yoku's Island Express, Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun!, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, Donut County.
• 1 point: Wandersong, Kirby Star Allies, State of Mind, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, Football Manager 2019, Overcooked 2, Florence, Black Desert Remastered, GRIS, Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight, Super Mario Party, Full Metal Furies, WWE 2K19, Pit People.
• 0 point: The Quiet Man.

I've played (and completed!) 9 out of these 25 games. The ones I'm hoping to play in the future: Yakuza 6: The Song of Life, Valkyria Chronicles 4, Astro Bot Rescue Mission, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden.

Thanks again to everyone who participated and voted with your hearts! I love making those and feel like we always end up with a great representation of most people's tastes.

Now time for the intense battle for GOTY 2019 between Yoshi's Crafted World and Biomutant!

Hey everyone, I've noticed a rise in hostility around these parts in the past few days/weeks and I feel the need to remind everyone of the EZA motto, Love & Respect.

This is E3, it should be the most exciting time of the year, and I'm seeing many pointless, endless arguments.

I would hate for this forum to become another Reddit dominated by "edgy" cynicism.

Of course we can be critical of games we don't like, we can disagree, but please try to remain civil and keep the negativity and aggressiveness down.

L&R

This has been one of the most entertaining GOTY races to follow for me, it was a lot tighter than the final scores suggest, and multiple games held first place at some point.

My highlights:

• Resident Evil 2 is a solid winner, 16 points ahead of second place. But it has the fourth-lowest total for a GOTY so far with 68 points, and the third-lowest amount of #1 votes (only 7). There was clearly something for everyone this year, and less of a consensus compared to the landslide wins of God of War (124 pts) or Persona 5 (122 pts).
• Second place goes to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, after an insane comeback! After the first 15 votes, it only had 6 points and was not even in the top 25. But it got 24 points across the last 10 votes. Just like its players, it never gave up and eventually triumphed through sheer perseverence.
• The Outer Worlds managed the unprecedented performance of placing 3rd without a single #1 vote. Nobody truly loves you, Outer Worlds, you're the potato salad of 2019!
• It was a rollercoaster ride for Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Its first 4 votes were all #1 votes, and it was in first place after 14 votes. It then slipped and slipped down the rankings, falling as low as sixth place before a final push got it close to the podium. It's the best ranking ever for a Fire Emblem game, beating Awakening's 8th place in 2013.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (7th) is the first EA game to place in the top 10 since Dragon Age: Inquisition in 2014!
• Another notable comeback was Astral Chain, which only had 5 points after the first 27 votes, but ended up in 8th place! I'm sure there's a logical correlation between voting late and enjoying Platinum games, but I'm not clever enough to figure it out.
• The top 15 games are all singleplayer games! Not such Easy Allies after all.
• 6 games from the top 10 are from Japanese developers, what would we do without them?
• 2 Capcom games in the top 10, the GOTY itself and Devil May Cry 5. Redemption arc complete!
• 4 Switch exclusives with Fire Emblem (highest ranked exclusive), Astral Chain, Link's Awakening and Tetris 99, 2 of them in the top 10!
• Only 4 PS4 exclusives, Death Stranding, Days Gone, The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, Judgment. Only one in the top 10. After winning GOTY 3 years in a row, this was a bit of a slump for Sony.
• One Xbox One (+PC) exclusive, Gears 5. Come on Microsoft, dazzle us in the next gen!
• One PC exclusive, Disco Elysium.
• So who got massively snubbed? Pokémon Sword and Shield, Dragon Quest Builders 2 and Luigi's Mansion 3 (my personal #4 and highly recommended!) all scored 8 points, which usually is enough to make the top 25, but not this time. Let's consider them our collective honorable mentions!
• 7 points: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.
• 5 points: Slay the Spire, Shenmue III, Pathologic 2.
• 4 points: Don't Call Me Mama But Yes I Am Your Mama (that's right!), Total War: Three Kingdoms, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Katana Zero.
• 3 points: Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes, SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech, Void Bastards, Yoshi's Crafted World.
• 2 points: Forager, MLB The Show 19, Observation, Concrete Genie, Heaven's Vault, Ape Out, Super Mario Maker 2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order.
• 1 point: Trials of Mana, Anthem, Untitled Goose Game, eFootball Pro Evolution Soccer 2020, Football Manager 2020, The Touryst, Baba Is You, Daemon X Machina, Hypnospace Outlaw, Omega Labyrinth Life, Creature in the Well, AI: The Somnium Files, Planet Zoo, GreedFall, The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince, Code Vein, Rage 2, Mortal Kombat 11, Dauntless, Ring Fit Adventure, The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan, Crackdown 3, Samurai Shodown, Wattam, Tom Clancy's The Division 2.
• 0 point: Far Cry New Dawn, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint, MediEvil...

I've played 7 out of these 25 games. The ones I still want to play: The Outer Worlds, Astral Chain, Metro Exodus, Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds, Gears 5, Judgment.

Thank you to everyone who participated, you made this super fun! And I always really appreciate the conversations each reveal triggers, it's nice to give each game its time in the spotlight. I wish I could have participated in those discussions but I've been quite busy.

Looking forward to 2020, if all the planned big blockbusters come out it should be a hell of a competition!

This is it!

2017 was a hell of a year with many, many games deserving of a shout-out, but the people have spoken and narrowed down the list to a Top 25.

54 lists, 83 games nominated, this is more than last year so thanks a lot to all of you!

As usual I'll reveal one game a day, so strap in!

Here's some stats and observations:

• This was the lowest participation we've ever had with only 36 lists, I think this is due to being a retro list for a year in which some weren't born yet or at least not old enough to play games, as well as some of the usual voters not being active on these forums anymore. Hopefully the GOTY 2018 will be more heated!
• Final Fantasy XI is a solid winner with 9 GOTY votes and 66 points, 21 points ahead of second place!
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is 8 points ahead of third place, so also pretty comfortable. But it only got 4 GOTY votes, as many as 5th place Pokémon Gold and Silver.
• After that, it was really tight between 3rd to 5th place within 5 points of each other.
• In terms of platform exclusives (at least around the time of launch), it was a pretty even year with everyone getting their fair share of accolades. PC and the aging PlayStation triumph with 6 exclusives each, but the PS One edges it by having the GOTY!
• Its little sister the PlayStation 2 managed to secure 3 spots in our list, not bad for a launch window!
• The Nintendo 64 has 4 exclusives, and if you add Pokémon that's 5 games for Nintendo!
• The Dreamcast has 3 exclusives, all pretty niche, not quite enough against such competition.
• Third-party publishers also all had their time in the sun, SquareSoft and EA got 3 games each, while Activision and Eidos got 2.
• So who missed out? Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Pokémon Stadium and Crazy Taxi got 7 points, so close to securing a spot!
• Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, the actual GOTY and arguably GOAT, only got 6 points, shame on you all! Others on 6 points: Breath of Fire IV, Crash Bash, Grandia II, Wild Arms 2, Harvest Moon: Back to Nature.
• 5 points: Need for Speed: Porsche Challenge, Legend of Dragoon.
• 4 points: MediEvil 2, Syphon Filter 2, Kirby 64, Parasite Eve II, Hitman: Codename 47.
• 3 points: Dead or Alive 2, Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion.
• 2 points: Power Stone 2, Grand Prix 3, Escape from Monkey Island, Mario Tennis, Icewind Dale, Space Channel 5, Thief II: The Metal Age, Resident Evil: Code Veronica.
• 1 point: Soldier of Fortune, Medal of Honor: Underground, Crimson Skies, Threads of Fate, Legend of Mana, Colin McRae Rally 2.0, MDK2, Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Mega Man Legends 2.

I only played 6 of those 25 games (that's counting The Sims for one evening).

The only one I'll realistically play in the future is Final Fantasy IX, that's a true classic I just have to experience some day, and the Switch version will be perfect for that.

Thanks again to everyone who voted, you make this super fun and I can't wait to host the GOTY 2018, that one's going to be a bloodbath!

Well that was a tight one!

My highlights:

• It was a tale of 5 at the top!
• Portal 2 only won by 5 points, the closest margin we've had, tied with 2014. 64 points is the third-lowest total for a winner. It also got only 5 GOTY votes, tied with Skyrim and Dark Souls. That doesn't make it a weak winner though, considering the competition.
• It is only the second Valve game to ever rank in our GOTYs, following Counter-Strike at #21 in 2000.
• 4 out of the top 5 games held first place at one point or the other (with the exception of Dark Souls), and as a pack, were pretty much always way ahead of the rest.
• Interestingly, silver medal Batman: Arkham City only got 4 GOTY votes, less than its 3 closest competitors.
• After 11 votes, Dark Souls only had 7 points (which made me wonder if everybody forgot it came out that year...), but things picked up afterwards. After Sekiro's comeback last year, I really think there's something about Souls fans and voting last.
• The top 3 are all Western games, it's only the third time it happens, after 2018 and 2012.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution ranked #6, one place above Deus Ex: Mankind Divided in 2016, but below the original Deus Ex's 3rd place in 2000. That's one consistently excellent series!
• Yakuza 4 ranked 11th with 15 points, the exact same as Yakuza 5 in 2015. But below Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2 in the following years. That's one consistently improving series!
• 18 games are singleplayer only, 4 offer singleplayer and co-op (Portal 2, Dark Souls, Gears of War 3 and Rayman Origins), and only 4 offer competitive multiplayer (Resistance 3, Gears of War 3, Pokémon Black and White and The King of Fighters XIII). Correct me if I'm wrong with those numbers, I could easily have overlooked something.
• Nintendo got 5 exclusives on this list: 2 Wii games in the top 10 (The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Xenoblade Chronicles), 2 DS games (Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and Pokémon Black and White), and only 1 3DS game in its launch year (Super Mario 3D Land).
• Only 3 PS3 exclusives: Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, inFAMOUS 2 and Resistance 3.
• 1 Xbox 360 exclusive: Gears of War 3.
• 1 PC exclusive: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (which would come to consoles a year later anyway).
• Now for the snubs! To the Moon, LittleBigPlanet 2 and Battlefield 3 narrowly missed out with 7 points!
• 6 points: Saints Row: The Third.
• 5 points: Minecraft, Assassin's Creed: Revelations.
• 4 points: Fight Night Champion, Tropico 4.
• 3 points: Sonic Generations, Killzone 3, The Binding of Isaac, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds.
• 2 points: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Mortal Kombat, MotorStorm: Apocalypse, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Mighty Switch Force!, Mario Kart 7, Kirby's Return to Dream Land, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, Alice: Madness Returns.
• 1 point: Total War: Shogun 2, Arcana Heart 3, Magicka, Before the Echo, Patapon 3, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, From Dust, Forza Motorsport 4, Outland, Radiant Historia, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars, Aliens: Infestation, Gods Eater Burst, Hyperdimension Neptunia, Rage, Bulletstorm, Dead Island, The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, Child of Eden, Anno 2070.
• 0 point: Homefront, Crysis 2, Brink, Need for Speed: The Run...

I've played 12 out of these 25 games. The ones I still want to play: Yakuza 4, Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective. Not bad!

Thanks to all of you for sending in your votes, and for your comments on every game, I love reading about why each title means so much to some of you. I think it was also one of our most unexpected winners ever, usually it's easy to guess which one or two games will make it to the top, but I doubt many of us would have bet on Portal 2 (top 5 yes, but maybe not winner).

Now I'd like to ask your opinion on something, I'll make a separate thread for it soon!

Alright, let's recap this bad boy!

• The Walking Dead is the GOTY with only 43 points and only 4 GOTY votes, the lowest score ever. The previous "worst winner" was Shovel Knight in 2014 with 48 points. But we had only 31 people voting, so it didn't help.
• To its credit, it is, with Shovel Knight, only the second indie game (I think it classifies?) to win GOTY!
• Mass Effect 3 took second place, despite its bad rep! It's the highest ranking ever achieved by an EA game, their previous best was #6 with Dragon Age: Inquisition.
• In third place, Dishonored with 3 GOTY votes, more than Mass Effect 3 (only 2). Its sequel, Dishonored 2, didn't even rank in 2016 with only 4 points. What happened, fans?
• This means the top 3 are all Western-developed games, a feat only achieved in 2014 and 2018! All third-party publishers too, first-party studios were in a bit of a slump!
• Guess which platform had the most exclusives that year? The mighty PC, with 4 games (Hotline Miami, Diablo III, FTL: Faster Than Light, Katawa Shoujo)!
• The PlayStation 3 follows up with... 3 exclusives: Journey, Tokyo Jungle and Tales of Graces f.
• Its little sister the PlayStation Vita launched that year and 2 exclusives made it: Gravity Rush (#5!)and Wipeout 2048.
• Slow year for the 3DS with 2 exclusives: Kid Icarus: Uprising and Resident Evil: Revelations.
• 1 lonely Wii exclusive: The Last Story.
• This means Kid Icarus: Uprising is the only Nintendo game in the list, which is also a record, what a sad year it was to be a Nintendo fan.
• Not a single Wii U launch title made it! But remember the PS4 and Xbox One also scored zero exclusive for their launch a year later.
• Zero Xbox 360 exclusive as well, but we're used to that!
• Now for the games that almost made it! Lego The Lord of the Rings, Binary Domain and Nintendo Land with 6 points!
• 5 points: Need for Speed: Most Wanted, The Unfinished Swan, Super Hexagon, Halo 4.
• 4 points: Rhythm Heaven Fever, Ys Origins, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2, Darksiders II, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Legend of Grimrock, Pandora's Tower, New Super Mario Bros. U, The Darkness II.
• 3 points: Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed, Dust: An Elysian Tail, Syndicate, Fez.
• 2 points: Dance Central 3, Resident Evil 6, Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, Theatrhythm Final Fantasy.
• 1 point: Persona 4 Arena, Mark of the Ninja, NCAA Football 13, Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, Rock Band Blitz, WWE '13, Street Fighter X Tekken, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Resistance: Burning Skies, CounterStrike: Global Offensive, Natural Selection 2, Forza Horizon, Thomas Was Alone, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, Lollipop Chainsaw, Crusader Kings II, Dustforce, ZombiU.
• 0 point: Soulcalibur V, Ninja Gaiden 3, Kinect Star Wars, New Super Mario Bros. 2, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Hitman: Absolution, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale...

It's the first time my personal GOTY wins!

I've only played 6 games out of this Top 25. The only one on my backlog would be Mass Effect 3, but I haven't even played 2...

Thanks again to all participants, you're all making this super fun! Next stop will be in January for the much anticipated 2019 GOTY, I feel it's gonna be an unpredictable one!

I just missed the deadline for October's Community Showcase but I'll submit this list to the Allies in November so they can tell us how wrong we are, feel free to remind me of doing it when the time comes.

#1. Persona 5 - 122 points

Votes

#1: 13 (sunpraiser, Inustar, bard91, A7X458, Hidz, SabotageTheTruth, Capnbobamous, ACardAttack, ZyloWolfBane, michemagius, jbluzb, Tragosaurus, Fridge-man)
#2: 7 (TokyoSlim, ffff0, FutureCorpse, DIPSET, Helge, Whiskeyjack, Lux Noctis)
#3: 7 (FF7Cloud, DeweyDTruman, ib0show, DMCMaster, Sazime, Musou Tensei, Exist 2 Inspire)
#4: 3 (FerrisK96, Alex840, Tearju Engi)
HM: 2 (bam541, logic__error)

Information

Release date: April 4 [US/EU]
Developer: P-Studio
Publisher: Atlus, Deep Silver
Genre: Role-playing
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3

Links

Trailer
Wikipedia
EZA Review

It's been tricky for some of us to remember the games of 2014. Was it because it was so long ago or because they weren't that memorable in the first place?

Now our votes have been cast, and we've already broken a record, the total amount of games nominated: 96 games, from 40 voters!

Thanks to everyone who voted, 35-40 voters is definitely the sweet spot we need to reach to have a meaningful ranking so I'm glad we made it!

Let's begin the countdown!

That one was rocky, but what a winner! I don't think many of us would have bet on Shovel Knight taking GOTY when this started.

Here's the hard stats:

• Shovel Knight is the lowest score for a winner so far (48 pts vs 71 pts for The Witcher 3, previous lowest score). It also won by the smallest margin, 5 pts ahead of second place. With 48 pts, it would have been 3rd in 2015, 5th in 2016 and 7th in 2017.
• But Shovel Knight is the first indie game to win GOTY (unless you count The Witcher 3 as an indie, I guess).
• Wolfenstein: The New Order actually earned the most #1 votes (5 vs 4 for Shovel Knight) and the most total votes (17 people).
• The Top 3 are all Western-developed games, that's unusual for this community!
• The scores were very close below the Top 4. One vote would have been enough to bump up 12th place Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze to 5th place instead (4 pts difference). Hope all those who forgot it feel extra guilty now!
• The two Danganronpa games ending up in the top 10 are the two big surprises of the list (outside of the winner itself).
• 4 Wii U exclusives, including 2 in the Top 5. 2014 was the year of the Wii U! It was also the only home console on which the GOTY Shovel Knight was available in 2014.
• 3 PC exclusives (Hearthstone, The Banner Saga, Divinity: Original Sin).
• 2 PS4 exclusives, including a demo. Interesting to remember that Sony only started killing it with its exclusives in 2015.
• 0 Xbox One exclusive.
• It was actually the year of the third-party games! The stand-outs being Ubisoft with 3 games (South Park: The Stick of Truth, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts: The Great War) and Bethesda with 2 (Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Evil Within).
• Notorious games that missed out: Watch Dogs, Titanfall, 6 points.
• Sunset Overdrive, Wasteland 2, 5 points.
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, 4 points.
• Infamous First Light, Far Cry 4, Hyrule Warriors, Kirby: Triple Deluxe, 3 points.
• Driveclub, Nidhogg, 2 points.
• Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Assassin's Creed Unity, Assassin's Creed Rogue, Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, 1 point.

I've played 12 out of those 25 games. I'm only interested in one day trying Transistor and The Banner Saga (soon on Switch!).

Next time we do one of those retro GOTYs, I'll add a list of games to my original post to make sure big names don't get forgotten, but I still encourage you to comb Wikipedia for the more obscure ones that you may have loved!

It's been super fun for me as usual, thanks to everyone who participated! Til next time!

@mcgeezaks said in The Naughty Dog Agenda:

I don't like when they bring in politically charged topics into video games, that's not why I play them.

That's the thing I find hilarious.

What "politically charged topic" is being brought into TLOU 2? If you're referring to the fact that Ellie has a girlfriend, how is this having a political agenda? Naughty Dog aren't the ones making a big deal out of it, you guys are!

The main character of this game just happens to be a lesbian girl. It's not supposed to be revolutionary, it's just a normal thing that's part of our world. Homosexuality isn't the theme of the game, is it? That's just a character trait she has, among many others. She could be heterosexual and kissing a guy in this trailer and the rest story would be exactly the same.

They had Nathan Drake who was very much a generic gung-ho straight white dude as a lead for 4 games, now they want to mix things up with a lesbian white girl. That's all there is to it. It's not even a matter of diversity but merely of variety.

The only people making it political are the people complaining about it.

Here we go again, some fun facts and some sad facts:

• The Last of Us wins with 76 points, and a spectacular 12 GOTY votes! That's a better score than 2015's winner The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (71 pts), 2000's winner Final Fantasy IX (66 pts), and 2014's winner Shovel Knight (48 pts). And it did that with the lowest amount of voters ever, only 31 people. No contest.
• Also, the winner is yet another PlayStation exclusive, after 2016, 2017 and 2018!
• Where you at, GTA V? Second place with 51 points, it was never in danger but also never close to catching up with TLOU. Only 2 GOTY votes, which several other games lower in the list accomplished. Maybe it's just the most played game rather than the most loved?
• Third place for The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, despite receiving only 4 points from the first 12 voters. Crazy comeback. This is the same spot as Breath of the Wild in 2017, but one spot lower than Majora's Mask in 2000, to date the best ranking ever for a Nintendo exclusive (shame on you!).
• 4 games from the Top 5 are from Western developers, back when some said Japanese development was dead.
• The top indie game is The Stanley Parable at #9.
• Only 2 PlayStation 3 exclusives, but at least it went out with a bang and the GOTY!
• 2 Wii U exclusives, The Wonderful 101 and Super Mario 3D World. Say what you will about it, this console still managed to sneak in a few games in all of our GOTY lists!
• 2 3DS exclusives, both in the Top 10!
• Zero PlayStation 4 or Xbox One exclusive, despite those consoles launching at the end of that year.
• So who missed out on the Top 20? Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag scored 8 points, same as Gone Home and DmC: Devil May Cry, but lost to them as its highest vote was only #3.
• 7 points: Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.
• 6 points: Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA F, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Pikmin 3, Remember Me, Tales of Xillia, Rayman Legends, Resogun, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon.
• 5 points: God of War: Ascension, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney − Dual Destinies, Bravely Default.
• 4 points: Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Saints Row IV, Battlefield 4, Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse, Shadow Warrior, Tearaway.
• 3 points: Injustice: Gods Among Us, Ratchet & Clank: Into the Nexus, Gran Turismo 6, Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, Pokémon X and Y, Guacamelee!, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.
• 2 points: Killzone: Mercenary, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Payday 2, Shadowrun Returns, Lego Marvel Super Heroes, The Walking Dead: Season Two.
• 1 point: Killzone Shadow Fall, Path of Exile, Anarchy Reigns, Mighty Switch Force! 2, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 3, Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, Ys: Memories of Celceta, Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk, Peggle 2, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Blacklist, Dota 2, Deadpool, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Project X Zone, DuckTales: Remastered, Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
• 0 point: Knack.

I've played 7 out of this Top 20. Now on my backlog: The Wonderful 101 and Gone Home.

Thank you to everyone who voted, hopefully next time we can get more people to participate!

I will send this list to the next Community Showcase to get the Allies' opinion of it and promote the future editions as well as the forums as a whole.

Here's something to keep you confined people busy!

This time, we're going to vote for our GOTY of 2011, the year the 3DS came out and the PS3/360 saw some generation-defining titles released, before starting their decline.

Let's go through the shamelessly copy-pasted rules:

You may select up to 8 games, a ranked Top 4 and up to 4 honorable mentions. They will be scored as follows:

#1: 5 points
#2: 4 points
#3: 3 points
#4: 2 points
Honorable mentions: 1 point each

Honorable mentions are optional, but try to vote for at least a Top 4.

Votes are secret!! Don't post them here and instead send me your list via the chat function / private message of the forum.

Games are eligible only if they were released in the West (US and/or Europe) for the first time in 2011, with the following caveats:

• "Straight" ports to new platforms in 2011 (such as Mass Effect 2 on PS3) are not eligible.
• "Enhanced" ports, with some new content/features, (like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D on 3DS) are also not eligible.
• DLCs and expansions are not eligible.
• Games in beta / early access are not eligible.
• Stand-alones (such as Infamous: Festival of Blood) are eligible.
• Full remakes are eligible.

To make sure you don't forget anything, I've compiled a non-exhaustive list of eligible games in the post below. If a game you liked is not in this list but fits the criteria, feel free to vote for it anyway!

If you're unsure whether a game is eligible or not, feel free to ask in this thread and we'll discuss it. Check Wikipedia for more ideas too.

The votes will close somewhere around the end of April, I'll compile the results and publish them here as a countdown.

Enjoy!

2011 turned out to be quite the banger, possibly the peak of the PS360 generation. It also saw the timid launch of the Nintendo 3DS with a few must-have games of its own.

Plenty of series received a sequel or a threequel, and some of them ended up becoming the best of their respective franchises.

37 people voted to elect the best of them, and nominated 68 different games.

Thanks to all of you, and without further ado...

Another batch of games I've never played, but I'm so glad to see such diversity in genres and "fame". Half of these games would never make the Top 100 list of any regular videogame publication, because they're too "small" or niche, but it's obvious we've been voting with our hearts here, not just for big names (although I fully expect the top 50 to be much more traditional in that sense).

Adding Papers, Please next to Transistor on my list of EZA recommended games to play!

This is a very broad topic but I think some of the replies here are not exactly addressing the actual topic at hand.

Charles Randall is talking about individual developers at any level - be it a one-man indie studio or one level designer in a 500-strong team - not being able to candidly address various topics or share anecdotes without inevitably facing backlash. But honestly I think it's no different from the secrecy surrounding movie production or book writing. People in those fields also don't openly communicate about the problems they encounter or the decisions they're making while in the middle of production.

You wouldn't expect JK Rowling to come out halfway through writing the new Harry Potter book, and say "Hey so I was going to have Hermione die in chapter 5 but I've now changed my mind and will keep her around because I have bigger plans for her in the future". Imagine the shitstorm.

Without giving details, I can also say that on every single game I've worked on, the story/characters/quests all changed dozens of times throughout development, and the stuff you get in the end is just the latest - hopefully best - version. What good would it do to players to know that a character that was planned was eventually cut or altered? Even if it's for a good reason, it would still only lead to disappointment. Keep in mind that the developers are the first ones to be crushed when a feature or a quest that we've been working on for months ends up being cut. I've had many arguments and fights for things I believed in that just didn't make it in the end. So the last thing we need is to then have to justify it to thousands of people online.

Then there's the issue of some developers being too "honest" for their own good, for example Peter Molyneux or more recently Sean Murray. I don't think they maliciously made false promises initially when hyping up their games, they probably really wanted to include all the features they talked about. That's enthusiasm and optimism talking and it often leads to disappointment. (In No Man's Sky's case I agree that they clearly went too far with plain lies shortly before release, so the backlash was deserved). There's a very fine balance to find between hyping your game up to make it stand out and not over-promising.

I think announcing games closer to release, when most of the main features are pretty much set in stone, is the most efficient way to avoid that sort of problem. But if you're AAA you sometimes want or need to announce something early for various reasons (shareholders, platform support, etc.). In this case I think the less you say, the better.

We were all over the moon with a simple Metroid Prime 4 logo. The announcement did its job: it reassured Metroid fans, leading to a better reception of Samus Returns, it showed future support for the Switch, etc. If Nintendo had also said "It will take place on 5 different planets, there will be first-person and third-person sections, and we're looking at a multiplayer mode!" and later on had to cut multiplayer and 2 planets, people would shit on them.

Now what some of you are mentioning are the bad business practices of some publishers (false advertising, micro-transactions, buggy releases, PR bullshit, etc.). That's a different beast and should rightfully be criticized, I don't think anybody is arguing that. The problem is that sadly, just like everything on internet it seems, a certain vocal minority can get very aggressive, insulting and most importantly personal.

Criticizing the end result, the game itself, is perfectly fine, but calling out the people who worked on it is rarely fair. Bad decisions are not usually made by one person in isolation. Equally, a huge part of the team won't have a say in how things are done and will work their butts off to compensate for a bad management call or simply unfortunate circumstances.

Last point for @Torigasa-Reta, I think your post sort of reflects that. Calling Mass Effect Andromeda a "hack job from a talentless B-Team" is extremely disrespectful and ignorant, no matter how you feel about the game. There were other Kotaku articles explaining what went wrong and if you read them you'll see that it was a series of bad decisions / over-ambition that led to their troubles. Not that every single person working on the game was talentless, far from it.

Teams change a lot from one game to the next anyway, so the "original" Mass Effect doesn't exist anymore and will never exist again. Just like the Retro Studios that made Metroid Prime isn't the one that made Tropical Freeze. People move, evolve, gain experience, mess up, do better. Just because a team or a studio is new doesn't mean the people who compose it are all newbies.

Ladies and gentlemen!

It is finally time for us to cast our votes and collectively rank the games that came out during the Best Year in Videogames Ever™.

There's been a lot of trepidation on these forums lately so I'm launching the nominations early, but I'll leave them running for at least 2 weeks, so if you still have a couple 2017 games to catch up on, feel free to wait until you vote (or vote now and update your list later).

You can check out the GOTY 2016 thread to have an idea of the sort of list we'll end up with.

Because this year was exceptionally crowded, the nomination process will be slightly different this time.

You may rank up to 8 games, a Top 4 and a maximum of 4 honorable mentions. They will be scored as follows:

#1: 5 points
#2: 4 points
#3: 3 points
#4: 2 points
Honorable mentions: 1 point

If you've got less than 8 games, no problem, the honorable mentions are optional.

Send me this list via PM or at eza.goty@gmail.com. Don't forget to mention your forum username if you send an email.

The list of games eligible only includes games released in the West (US and/or Europe) in 2017.

• Games that came out prior to 2017 and were ported to new platforms in 2017 (such as Stardew Valley on Switch) are not eligible.
• DLCs (like The Champions' Ballad) are also not eligible.
• Stand-alones such as Dishonored Death of the Outsider or Uncharted The Lost Legacy are eligible.

Wikipedia offers a comprehensive list of 2017 releases if you want to make sure you don't forget anything.

As always, do not post your list on the forum before the reveal is over.

After about 2 weeks, the nominations will be closed, and I will proceed to tally the votes and reveal our GOTY list via a countdown.

This one could seriously go in many different ways, so hopefully we get as many participants as possible!

You can still vote, so last call for everyone who still wants to send their GOTY list, or update the one they sent already!

I'll close the votes on Monday 23rd and start revealing the Top 25 (we made it to a Top 25!).

Voting is now closed!

I will start posting the Top 25 games of 2018 on Monday, one game a day.

Time to celebrate yet another crazy year in gaming!

2017 is the best year in videogames ever, they said.

2018 will never be able to top it, they said.

I'm not sure if it did, but it sure as hell got close!

And here's the undeniable proof of 2018's quality, with 25 games diligently curated by this community of connoisseurs.

45 voters, 73 games nominated, but only 1 GOTY, here we go!