Giant Bomb GOTY Central 2013

Hey duders. Thought it might be useful to have a go to place in case you want to keep current on all things GOTY. I'll update this thread as more content comes out. Moderators, if you want to help out, you're more than welcome. Without further ado...

Bombsquad Top Ten's

Drew

Patrick

Vinny

Recaps

Day One Recap

Day Two Recap

Day Three Recap

Articles

Day One Awards

Day Two Awards

Day Three Awards

Podcasts

Day One Deliberations

Day Two Deliberations

Day Three Deliberations

Guest Top Ten's

Mike Drucker

Eric Pope

Zoe Quinn

Brad Muir

Paul Barnett (audio)

John Carpenter

Dan Teasdale

Dan Ryckert

Greg Kasavin

Xavier Woods

Casey Malone

Dean Evans

Carrie Gouskos

Ha!

Was anyone else dumb and thought at first that this would be GOTY week? In retrospect I know this isn't traditionally the week it's done, but man did it bum me out to realise i'd have to go another week without one of my favourite pieces of content that the staff produces.

Jeff just posted the lengths for the GOTY podcasts on twitter

Day five is three hours long. Good, that means Brad and Jeff argued for an hour again.

Delicious!

I wonder for what games. Maybe Jeff was Bioshock and Brad was DOTA2 or Brothers or Last of us.

Brothers, Zelda and the Last of US i think there was a discusion on the last day of witch of them shoud be game of the year

I like the idea of the argument being between Brothers & Divekick.

The only speculation I will make is that I think/hope the videos will be Wind Jammers inspired.

Yup! Exactly what I was hoping for.

Hasn't Day 5 been like 5 hours by itself before?

Patrick posted on his Tumblr today that they're not doing videos for their top 10's this year.

Last year there was talk of them doing them in podcast form, maybe that's what they're gonna do this year? I guess an article would be fine, that's a tad disappointing though.

I hope a lot of their GOTY stuff is based more around mechanics instead of story. I'm sort of sick of all the publications praising story so much... BioShock, Last of Us, and such. Not to say they're bad games.... but are they fun to play? Back in the day there were barely stories to games if any at all. It was all about the gameplay and controls and was it fun? I wish games would go back to this a little more in 2014.

Jeff seemed pretty unhappy with the overall top 10, which means heated discussions, which means good times. But the question remains, how many games will be considered better than brothers!

It all comes down to your personal preferences in games. Me personally, a game with just a great story and characters ends up sticking with me more than a game with just great gameplay (though of course a game that was great at all of that would be the best). Yeah I've heard repeatedly the complaint that too many games are just trying to be movies but honestly, I don't have a problem with games going with this more cinematic route because it's not like we're running short of games that focus on just the mechanics (the majority of games are still like this, it's just there's more AAA games going this route and it's not surprising that those games get more coverage since they've got a larger budget so more marketing and exposure and what not). The large number of great downloadable titles in the last few years that are focused on just the mechanics is proof that that stuff ain't going away.

I just went and looked up the times to be sure and yeah I think the longest was the Day 5 2011 deliberations which went for almost 4 hours so that's probably the one you're thinking of.

Very true. It's just a lot of the game of the year stuff from a lot of publications focuses on story. Also I f'ing love RESOGUN.

Resogun is cool but uh... I don't think it can hang in the Top 10. I'd sooner give Ibb & Obb a spot in the top ten over Resogun.

I need to hurry up and finish some games before the podcasts come out.

As long as Dota 2 makes an appearance on the top 10 overall list, I'll be fine. Although it would be extremely hilarious if the only way Brad could get everyone to agree to put Dota on the list was to get rid of Brothers.

Do we need anything more besides that video?

If I had to guess I would say the Stanley Parable will be their game of the year....I haven't heard any of them say anything bad about it and I think Jeff really liked it

UPDATE:

The GOTY Central is updated. Tell your friends!

What is the proper order to consume all the GOTY content? Podcast first and then the Day One Video and text Article?

@brwilliams: Yes. If you care about spoilers, you have to find out what is spoiled in the podcast before you listen to it.

@brwilliams: I usually go recap first, then podcast. I like to get the suspense of the videos first, and hearing the arguments later.

The theme of the videos is clearly less ambitious and less entertaining than the fake TV shows last year. And then to top it off they don't do Top 10 videos this year either.

Kinda lazy GOTY I think... podcast was good, at least?

@matthewroberts: Less ambitious maybe, but I found it very entertaining and really like the idea of doing a "video game show of every decade video games have existed", which I assume is what this is gonna be.

The Top 10 videos I didn't really care that much about to begin with to be honest. But yeah, I would of course have liked it to be top 10 videos.

I'm loving the lists over the top 10 videos. It's great to see some writing from Drew, and I think the rest of the staff are fantastic--yet infrequent--writers for the website. Will be good to read.

Ok so the video recap is for us who don't have time to listen to the podcast?

Yeah, or just those who devour anything Giant Bomb. Not as good as last years so far, but that's to be expected considering all the crazy stuff that happened this year.

Man, I miss Ryan...

Not really complaining, but I'm curious if there were time and/or budget constraints for this year. Considering barely anything happened on the site for three weeks, I thought it would be like last year where they were planning something just as big, but they don't even have personal top ten videos and the video recap seems like half the time compared to previous years.

Oh well. At least there's the podcasts.

Well I know Ryan wrote a lot of last year's video vignettes, so that probably didn't help. But prior to that, weren't the awards usually more like this? Just random themes for the list?

Yep with the lack of content recently I was expecting something even grander than last year, not ten steps back.

I recall them saying Vinny wrote most of the scripts for the stuff last year, and that most of the scripts were just a first draft that didn't get touched again until they started actually filming.

I guess? Maybe I assumed since the move to CBSi, they would have the resources now to make stuff like those parodies, but like I said, there could have been limitations this year. Maybe the money went in to make those "shows" didn't translate into the projected views the company was expecting. I don't know.

Eh. I'm not a fan of the "gaming across the decades," if that's what it ends up being. Jeff and Vinny's stoner look while wearing knock-off disco polyester was kind of an odd pairing. But Rorie's cameo made me laugh my ass off, so at least there's that.

Again, I don't want to sound ungrateful or anything, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little bummed with the results considering not a lot has been going on with the site since Thanksgiving.

If you click on Alex' profile and look at his recent activity, you can get a preview of at least two or three of the people who will post guest top 10 (the uploaded pictures). One is an industry legend.

Also:

The thread has been updated! Santa Claus lives.