GotG thread, how are you voting?

Voting for the most influential would be exceedingly boring. We would have people looking up sales figures, going through lists of games with similar features and drawing parallels, arguing over whether one game was influenced by another, and on and on. What a boring conversation that would inspire. I'm not saying the current situation is inspiring a more enlightened discourse, but at least it's not as boring as that.

That said, I've played 58 of the 64 games and in most cases can choose the game I enjoyed more. I can see someone who has played fewer games justifiably resorting to voting for what they believe is the most influential game.

(Justifiably Resorting is the name of my new JRPG)

I'm voting for whatever game I enjoyed most, simple as that. Sure, Minecraft has had a massive impact on gaming, doesn't mean I'd ever vote for it over something like Pac-Man CE:DX.

I'm kinda doing both. With some games, it's hard to know whether or not they'll actually be influential, but believe that they are. So mostly, I'm looking at it from the perspective of "am I going to look back at this game 5-10 years from now and think 'What a hell of a video game. Man.'" Now, this can get weird sometimes. I think The Last of Us is probably one of the best(and let's say that best and greatest are different because I don't know if TLOU will be important at all) games of the generation, but I will never see it the same way I see something like Mega Man. I will never just casually(or probably in any other way) pop in TLOU for a trip down memory lane and overall enjoyable experience. But I think that goes for most games this generation.

That said, I don't like Call of Duty. At all. But COD 4 being knocked out by Skyrim? That's very questionable to me. I would say that game deserves to still be in this competition, especially over Skyrim.

The only other game that I think really deserves to still be in right now is League of Legends. Say what you want about the game, but it's the biggest game in the world. It ushered in MOBAs, it's leading the charge for esports, and it's practically a paragon of free to play. LoL is practically spearheading three industry movements, two which are pretty important. And again, it's fucking gigantic.

I vote for the one I like more and might be losing. Basically what I think matters to me most about the generation and what I want to encourage to have more of. In Call of Duty 4 vs Skyrim's case, I just didn't care much for Call of Duty and the kind of games it influenced, while Oblivion and Skyrim and their modding community impacted my life (and I think many others' too) in a pretty big way.

Anyway, if everyone is judging by influence on the industry alone, Angry Birds or Wii Sports would probably win...

I'm voting for the better game. How influential the game has been factors into that to some degree, but the more subjective "do I think this is the best game" is what I'm voting with. COD MW might be the most influential game of this gen, but I think Skyrim is a better game for what it's trying to do. So I voted Skyrim.

MW is a LOT more influential than Dark Souls, but I still regard Dark Souls to be the best game of this generation.

I voiced my uncertainty with this quandary in the main GotG thread a handful of days ago, the issue of judging my like of a game against my perceived importance of it. I tend to fall more toward influence/importance (I voted for LoL despite not having played it, and really liking Dota 2). But there are times where my liking of a game is just too strong that it outweighs all attempts at truly objective evaluation of importance.

So, yeah, it's a mix? I think it just comes down to the person and what is important to them. People vote how they want the generation to be remembered. Judging by the poll results, it seems that the resounding thought is in a few years, people saying "Remember how flippin' awesome that game was?" is of more value than "This one was a game-changer." Or something like that.

Either way, I'm really enjoying all the discourse and of course all the work that @mracoon has put in and continues to put in. Really fun to appreciate the past 8 years while evaluating what the next generation has to offer.

who can say for sure what's influential? nobody really has the oversight to see these things except in broad general patterns, and even still, to use it as a benchmark for greatness doesn't make a lot of sense to me, the craft is too varied to administer grades to in that way.

my personal preference is far from rock solid of course, it changes over time, and a lot of what people like or don't like comes down to timing, sometimes you're in the mood and you fall in love with garbage, sometimes you're cranky and you dismiss greatness, but expressing your gut response is, to me, just a lot more in tune with how unscientific and unclassifiable entertainment is.

@hh said:

Words of wisdom right here.

More influential from my perspective, because if I just went off my favorite games of the generation, they'd almost all be absent from the voting at this point. I think most of these comparisons are of games that are not even comparable on a personal preference level, because really, you like different games for different reasons. Yet, I can at least try to look at how gaming has changed over time and consider what may be more influential of the two titles.

Personal preference.

@dudeglove said:

I like that picture but totally don't get what you're saying at all. (And I don't even know what it is)

I'm opting not to vote. I often have several "favorites" of any given medium, all of which I get a different enjoyment out of. Rarely do I think any of them is "the best" more than any other, I can't think of any medium where I have read, watched, or played something where I've thought "Yes, this thing is completely without flaws, there is not a single trope or story convention that bothers me, everything I like is in here, not a single piece of flimsy writing or design..."

Also, I found in this gen that a lot of games I liked were sort of soured in my mind by running into total jerkbags online while playing. Nothing the devs did that was wrong, but the jerkbags did steer me away from playing certain things for awhile.

Bit of both. For the Portal 2 vs Batman match, I finished and loved Portal 2 and I'd only played and an hour of Batman but I think Batman should. I think it's a better game and influential more than Portal 2.

Most games I like are the best anyway :D

Solaire needs your votes:

I'm voting for the game I liked better.

I've been voting for the game that I feel is more influential and I'm surprised that people are just voting for the games that they like better

Personal preference unless i never/barely played either choice.

I'm voting simply to troll everybody else.

This to me is what I thought the 'Game of the Generation' would be, it's a lofty title so why not take a serious (albeit more boring to some) approach to it. Hell, its GB, *thee* wiki on games, we should be able to draw parallels between games and say which is better. The RPG mechanics found in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare set a new era in multiplayer FPS's but then Modern Warfare 2 arguably expanded open this foundation with more features and expanded customization. I'd love to have that conversation, about all games, looking back and seeing what actually changed the course of video games in this generation and made it different from the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era.

At the start having stuff like Fable II Vs. Rock Band made the whole thing moot. Were they even attempting to do the same thing? No. So can you hold 'it not being an RPG' against Rock Band or vice versa. Now though we are getting into the actual conversations - Walking Dead vs the Last of Us. Mechanically different games but thematically similar. Who did a better job at representing that type of world? Which was more successful in making you care about your companions? Having a child in the forefront of the action, did they manage to convey the tone and character qualities of a child or did it just come off as ham-fisted? etc etc

I don't know, those conversations are fun to me but maybe I'm 'boring'.

The conversations you mention in the last paragraph are about subjective quality, not measurable influence. Deciding which game is most influential heavily favors a discussion of quantity over quality. How many sales, how any people play/ed it, how many games copied it, etc. The conversations you want are the type most pertinent to a different kind of discussion altogether, one of comparing thematically similar games or same genre games to each other. That was never the goal of this, and even if it was a poll to decide the most influential game, those conversation would be lost because they aren't relevant to establishing the measurable influence of a game, or are peripheral to doing so at best.

I also think that when you start talking about a question as sophisticated as that, the people you're polling are not qualified to respond. What they are qualified to tell you is what they liked.

If it were most influential game of the generation, League of Legends and Farmville should have been strong contenders.

Edit: Also, I'm not voting for the game I like better, I'm voting for the game I think is better. It's a subtle but key distinction.

I'm only voting in brackets where I've played both games. I'm voting for the game I like better in hindsight. Stuff like Uncharted 2, GTAV and Red Dead are great in the moment but in hindsight I have serious problems with them. The Dark Souls and Sleeping Dogs of the world are both great in the moment and in hindsight.

i typically move my mouse cursor over the radio button of the game i want to vote for, click to fill it in, then click on the Vote button.

If we were voting for most influential in this gen, basically we could all just write in Call of Duty 4 and call it a day.

This is more or less the greater perspective governing the reality of this bracket. Even if we wanted to stage a question that academic, the knowledge base of the demographic involved in the deliberations derives from fandom, not from critical study, so a lot of the discussions become skewed categorically.

Actually my top 6 picks for the GotG would also make an awesome "Most Influential" bracket.

Call of Duty 4 vs. League of Legends vs. Braid vs. Mass Effect 1

Honorable mention: Portal, The Walking Dead

The better game.

My votes are a bit of a combination. Mostly the influential ones are the ones I like anyway. For the close calls I'm going for the influential ones (which is why I'd actually favour Portal over Portal 2; also why I think CoD4 should continue). The other thing that I think is difficult for a lot of people is to separate current feelings about a franchise from feelings of the past (CoD is the best example of this)

I'm voting purely based on what I think is a better game. If this was most influential, we would just give it to Call of Duty 4 and this whole thing would be pointless.

I'm voting on the one that was on less platforms.

I'm voting for the game i like the best because that's the one that provided me with the most entertainment. Influence be damned, i want entertainment and if the most influential game in the world isn't entertaining then it failed.

Same. I'm voting based on my personal enjoyment of the games. Whether or not it was influential isn't very meaningful to me.

I don't think the game of the generation needs to be the most influential. I think games like Skyrim and Oblivion would be more influential if they weren't so difficult to make. Where as making a multiplayer game with RPG mechanics is a lot easier idea to copy.

I see a lot of people voting with "Well I really liked game x but I spent more time with game y so game y wins"

That's not right

I vote for the game I like more, but if I'm inclined to believe that a game will be influential in a positive way, then that makes me like it more.

The game I like more. Since round 3 I think only 1 or 2 of the games I voted for got through. You're all wrong.

Influential, because I am PISSED that Angry Birds and Minecraft aren't winning everything.

I am voting for the game that is more influential. Because the games I like more lose anyway.

Of course I'm voting for the game I like.

But lets be honest Game of the Generation? That's kind of a big thing to put on a single game. WoW or CoD probably had the most effect on other games, but people kind of hate them now so they won't win.

I think I voted for the one thing because I haven't played a lot of these damn games.

I'm voting for what I believe to be critically objectively better, not what I like better. Influence is but one criteria among several.

@sjwho2: Why wasn't WoW on the list again? Was it shot down in prelims?

I think WoW wasn't on the list because it was released in North America 2 months too early.

1. I only vote if I played both games
2. I vote for whichever I enjoyed more

Mind-blowing insights right there.